23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	t	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	t	\N
19929331	Native language experience plays a critical role in shaping speech categorization, but the exact mechanisms by which it does so are not well understood. Investigating category learning of nonspeech sounds with which listeners have no prior experience allows their experience to be systematically controlled in a way that is impossible to achieve by studying natural speech acquisition, and it provides a means of probing the boundaries and constraints that general auditory perception and cognition bring to the task of speech category learning. In this study, we used a multimodal, video-game-based implicit learning paradigm to train participants to categorize acoustically complex, nonlinguistic sounds. MMN responses to the nonspeech stimuli were collected before and after training, and changes in MMN resulting from the nonspeech category learning closely resemble patterns of change typically observed during speech category learning. Results indicate that changes in mismatch negativity resulting from the nonspeech category learning closely resemble patterns of change typically observed during speech category learning. This suggests that the often-observed "specialized" neural responses to speech sounds may result, at least in part, from the expertise we develop with speech categories through experience rather than from properties unique to speech (e.g., linguistic or vocal tract gestural information). Furthermore, particular characteristics of the training paradigm may inform our understanding of mechanisms that support natural speech acquisition.	t	\N
20578033	Understanding the basic neural processes that underlie complex higher-order cognitive operations and functional domains is a fundamental goal of cognitive neuroscience. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive and relatively inexpensive method for assessing neurophysiological function that can be used to achieve this goal. EEG measures the electrical activity of large, synchronously firing populations of neurons in the brain with electrodes placed on the scalp. This unit outlines the basics of setting up an EEG experiment with human participants, including equipment, and a step-by-step guide to applying and preparing an electrode cap. Also included are support protocols for two event-related potential (ERP) paradigms, P50 suppression, and mismatch negativity (MMN), which are measures of early sensory processing. These paradigms can be used to assess the integrity of early sensory processing in normal individuals and clinical populations, such as individuals with schizophrenia.	t	\N
20665718	Subjects detected rarely occurring shifts between two simple tone-patterns, in a paradigm that dissociated the effects of rarity from those of pitch, habituation, and attention. Whole-head magnetoencephalography suggested that rare attended pattern-shifts evoked activity first in the superior temporal plane (sTp, peak ~100 ms), then superior temporal sulcus (sTs, peak ~130 ms), then posteroventral prefrontal (pvpF, peak ~230 ms), and anterior temporal cortices (aT, peak ~370 ms). Activity was more prominent in the right hemisphere. After subtracting the effects of nonshift tones (balanced for pitch and habituation status), weak but consistent differential effects of pattern-shifts began in aT at 90-130 ms, spread to sTs and sTp at ∼130 ms, then pvpF, and finally returned to aT. Cingulate activity resembled prefrontal. Responses to pattern shifts were greatly attenuated when the same stimuli were ignored, suggesting that the initial superior temporal activity reflected an attention-related mismatch negativity. The prefrontal activity at ~230 ms corresponded in latency and task correlates with simultaneously recorded event-related potential components N2b and P3a; the subsequent temporal activity corresponded to the P3b. These results were confirmed in sensors specific for frontal or temporal cortex, and thus are independent of the inverse method used. Overall, these results suggest that auditory working memory for temporal patterns begins with detection of the pattern change by an interaction of anterior and superior temporal structures, followed by identification of the event and its consequences led by posteroventral prefrontal and cingulate cortices, and finally, definitive encoding of the event in anterior temporal areas.	t	\N
20929535	We investigated the processing of task-irrelevant and unexpected novel sounds and its modulation by working-memory load in children aged 9-10 and in adults. Environmental sounds (novels) were embedded amongst frequently presented standard sounds in an auditory-visual distraction paradigm. Each sound was followed by a visual target. In two conditions, participants evaluated the position of a visual stimulus (0-back, low load) or compared the position of the current stimulus with the one two trials before (2-back, high load). Processing of novel sounds were measured with reaction times, hit rates and the auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) Mismatch Negativity (MMN), P3a, Reorienting Negativity (RON) and visual P3b. In both memory load conditions novels impaired task performance in adults whereas they improved performance in children. Auditory ERPs reflect age-related differences in the time-window of the MMN as children showed a positive ERP deflection to novels whereas adults lack an MMN. The attention switch towards the task irrelevant novel (reflected by P3a) was comparable between the age groups. Adults showed more efficient reallocation of attention (reflected by RON) under load condition than children. Finally, the P3b elicited by the visual target stimuli was reduced in both age groups when the preceding sound was a novel. Our results give new insights in the development of novelty processing as they (1) reveal that task-irrelevant novel sounds can result in contrary effects on the performance in a visual primary task in children and adults, (2) show a positive ERP deflection to novels rather than an MMN in children, and (3) reveal effects of auditory novels on visual target processing.	t	\N
21368051	Certain features of objects or events can be represented by more than a single sensory system, such as roughness of a surface (sight, sound, and touch), the location of a speaker (audition and sight), and the rhythm or duration of an event (by all three major sensory systems). Thus, these properties can be said to be sensory-independent or amodal. A key question is whether common multisensory cortical regions process these amodal features, or does each sensory system contain its own specialized region(s) for processing common features? We tackled this issue by investigating simple duration-detection mechanisms across audition and touch; these systems were chosen because fine duration discriminations are possible in both. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the human event-related potential provides a sensitive metric of duration processing and has been elicited independently during both auditory and somatosensory investigations. Employing high-density electroencephalographic recordings in conjunction with intracranial subdural recordings, we asked whether fine duration discriminations, represented by the MMN, were generated in the same cortical regions regardless of the sensory modality being probed. Scalp recordings pointed to statistically distinct MMN topographies across senses, implying differential underlying cortical generator configurations. Intracranial recordings confirmed these noninvasive findings, showing generators of the auditory MMN along the superior temporal gyrus with no evidence of a somatosensory MMN in this region, whereas a robust somatosensory MMN was recorded from postcentral gyrus in the absence of an auditory MMN. The current data clearly argue against a common circuitry account for amodal duration processing.	t	\N
21483666	Acute stress is a stereotypical, but multimodal response to a present or imminent challenge overcharging an organism. Among the different branches of this multimodal response, the consequences of glucocorticoid secretion have been extensively investigated, mostly in connection with long-term memory (LTM). However, stress responses comprise other endocrine signaling and altered neuronal activity wholly independent of pituitary regulation. To date, knowledge of the impact of such "paracorticoidal" stress responses on higher cognitive functions is scarce. We investigated the impact of an ecological stressor on the ability to direct selective attention using event-related potentials in humans. Based on research in rodents, we assumed that a stress-induced imbalance of catecholaminergic transmission would impair this ability. The stressor consisted of a single cold pressor test. Auditory negative difference (Nd) and mismatch negativity (MMN) were recorded in a tonal dichotic listening task. A time series of such tasks confirmed an increased distractibility occurring 4-7 minutes after onset of the stressor as reflected by an attenuated Nd. Salivary cortisol began to rise 8-11 minutes after onset when no further modulations in the event-related potentials (ERP) occurred, thus precluding a causal relationship. This effect may be attributed to a stress-induced activation of mesofrontal dopaminergic projections. It may also be attributed to an activation of noradrenergic projections. Known characteristics of the modulation of ERP by different stress-related ligands were used for further disambiguation of causality. The conjuncture of an attenuated Nd and an increased MMN might be interpreted as indicating a dopaminergic influence. The selective effect on the late portion of the Nd provides another tentative clue for this. Prior studies have deliberately tracked the adrenocortical influence on cognition, as it has proven most influential with respect to LTM. However, current cortisol-optimized study designs would have failed to detect the present findings regarding attention.	t	\N
21750713	In the present study we investigated the capacity of the memory store underlying the mismatch negativity (MMN) response in musicians and nonmusicians for complex tone patterns. While previous studies have focused either on the kind of information that can be encoded or on the decay of the memory trace over time, we studied capacity in terms of the length of tone sequences, i.e., the number of individual tones that can be fully encoded and maintained. By means of magnetoencephalography (MEG) we recorded MMN responses to deviant tones that could occur at any position of standard tone patterns composed of four, six or eight tones during passive, distracted listening. Whereas there was a reliable MMN response to deviant tones in the four-tone pattern in both musicians and nonmusicians, only some individuals showed MMN responses to the longer patterns. This finding of a reliable capacity of the short-term auditory store underlying the MMN response is in line with estimates of a three to five item capacity of the short-term memory trace from behavioural studies, although pitch and contour complexity covaried with sequence length, which might have led to an understatement of the reported capacity. Whereas there was a tendency for an enhancement of the pattern MMN in musicians compared to nonmusicians, a strong advantage for musicians could be shown in an accompanying behavioural task of detecting the deviants while attending to the stimuli for all pattern lengths, indicating that long-term musical training differentially affects the memory capacity of auditory short-term memory for complex tone patterns with and without attention. Also, a left-hemispheric lateralization of MMN responses in the six-tone pattern suggests that additional networks that help structuring the patterns in the temporal domain might be recruited for demanding auditory processing in the pitch domain.	t	\N
21808660	Have you ever shouted your child's name from the kitchen while they were watching television in the living room to no avail, so you shout their name again, only louder? Yet, still no response. The current study provides evidence that young children process loudness changes differently than pitch changes when they are engaged in another task such as watching a video. Intensity level changes were physiologically detected only when they were behaviorally relevant, but frequency level changes were physiologically detected without task relevance in younger children. This suggests that changes in pitch rather than changes in volume may be more effective in evoking a response when sounds are unexpected. Further, even though behavioral ability may appear to be similar in younger and older children, attention-based physiologic responses differ from automatic physiologic processes in children. Results indicate that 1) the automatic auditory processes leading to more efficient higher-level skills continue to become refined through childhood; and 2) there are different time courses for the maturation of physiological processes encoding the distinct acoustic attributes of sound pitch and sound intensity. The relevance of these findings to sound perception in real-world environments is discussed.	t	\N
22163029	The detection of deviant sounds is a crucial function of the auditory system and is reflected by the automatically elicited mismatch negativity (MMN), an auditory evoked potential at 100 to 250 ms from stimulus onset. It has recently been shown that rarely occurring frequency and location deviants in an oddball paradigm trigger a more negative response than standard sounds at very early latencies in the middle latency response of the human auditory evoked potential. This fast and early ability of the auditory system is corroborated by the finding of neurons in the animal auditory cortex and subcortical structures, which restore their adapted responsiveness to standard sounds, when a rare change in a sound feature occurs. In this study, we investigated whether the detection of intensity deviants is also reflected at shorter latencies than those of the MMN. Auditory evoked potentials in response to click sounds were analyzed regarding the auditory brain stem response, the middle latency response (MLR) and the MMN. Rare stimuli with a lower intensity level than standard stimuli elicited (in addition to an MMN) a more negative potential in the MLR at the transition from the Na to the Pa component at circa 24 ms from stimulus onset. This finding, together with the studies about frequency and location changes, suggests that the early automatic detection of deviant sounds in an oddball paradigm is a general property of the auditory system.	t	\N
22213909	Behavioural and electrophysiological studies give differing impressions of when auditory discrimination is mature. Ability to discriminate frequency and speech contrasts reaches adult levels only around 12 years of age, yet an electrophysiological index of auditory discrimination, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reported to be as large in children as in adults. Auditory ERPs were measured in 30 children (7 to 12 years), 23 teenagers (13 to 16 years) and 32 adults (35 to 56 years) in an oddball paradigm with tone or syllable stimuli. For each stimulus type, a standard stimulus (1000 Hz tone or syllable [ba]) occurred on 70% of trials, and one of two deviants (1030 or 1200 Hz tone, or syllables [da] or [bi]) equiprobably on the remaining trials. For the traditional MMN interval of 100–250 ms post-onset, size of mismatch responses increased with age, whereas the opposite trend was seen for an interval from 300 to 550 ms post-onset, corresponding to the late discriminative negativity (LDN). Time-frequency analysis of single trials revealed that the MMN resulted from phase-synchronization of oscillations in the theta (4–7 Hz) range, with greater synchronization in adults than children. Furthermore, the amount of synchronization was significantly correlated with frequency discrimination threshold. These results show that neurophysiological processes underlying auditory discrimination continue to develop through childhood and adolescence. Previous reports of adult-like MMN amplitudes in children may be artefactual results of using peak measurements when comparing groups that differ in variance.	t	\N
22221004	Deviations from repetitive auditory stimuli evoke a mismatch negativity (MMN). Counterintuitively, omissions of repetitive stimuli do not. Violations of patterns reflecting complex rules also evoke MMN. To detect a MMN to missing stimuli, we developed an auditory gestalt task using one stimulus. Groups of six pips (50 ms duration, 330 ms stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA], 400 trials), were presented with an intertrial interval (ITI) of 750 ms while subjects (n=16) watched a silent video. Occasional deviant groups had missing 4th or 6th tones (50 trials each). Missing stimuli evoked a MMN (p<.05). The missing 4th (-0.8 µV, p<.01) and the missing 6th stimuli (-1.1 µV, p<.05) were more negative than standard 6th stimuli (0.3 µV). MMN can be elicited by a missing stimulus at long SOAs by violation of a gestalt grouping rule. Patterned stimuli appear more sensitive to omissions and ITI than homogenous streams.	t	\N
22551948	Recent studies show that electrophysiological markers of auditory processing such as the cortical 100 ms response (M100) and the mismatch field, derived from magnetoencephalography, might be used to identify children with autism spectrum disorders--M100 peak latency--and to stratify children with autism according to the degree of language impairment--mismatch field peak latency. The present study examined the latency of right superior temporal gyrus M100 and mismatch field in a cohort of children and young adolescents with specific language impairment (n=17), in comparison with age-matched and nonverbal intelligence quotient-matched typically developing controls (n=21). Neither group showed symptoms associated with autism. Although M100 latency (reflecting early auditory processing) did not distinguish controls from children with specific language impairment, the later 'change detection' mismatch field response was significantly delayed (by >50 ms) in the specific language impairment group. Linear discriminant analysis confirmed the role of mismatch field latency (92%) but not M100 latency (8%) in distinguishing groups. The present results lend support to the claim that a delayed M100 is specific to autism spectrum disorders (with relative independence of degree of language impairment) and that a delayed mismatch field reflects an abnormality more generally associated with language impairment, suggesting that mismatch field delay in the present specific language impairment group and previously reported in autistic children with language impairment may be indicative of a common neural system dysfunction.	t	\N
22570723	Multisensory learning and resulting neural brain plasticity have recently become a topic of renewed interest in human cognitive neuroscience. Music notation reading is an ideal stimulus to study multisensory learning, as it allows studying the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information processing. The present study aimed at answering whether multisensory learning alters uni-sensory structures, interconnections of uni-sensory structures or specific multisensory areas. In a short-term piano training procedure musically naive subjects were trained to play tone sequences from visually presented patterns in a music notation-like system [Auditory-Visual-Somatosensory group (AVS)], while another group received audio-visual training only that involved viewing the patterns and attentively listening to the recordings of the AVS training sessions [Auditory-Visual group (AV)]. Training-related changes in cortical networks were assessed by pre- and post-training magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of an auditory, a visual and an integrated audio-visual mismatch negativity (MMN). The two groups (AVS and AV) were differently affected by the training. The results suggest that multisensory training alters the function of multisensory structures, and not the uni-sensory ones along with their interconnections, and thus provide an answer to an important question presented by cognitive models of multisensory training.	t	\N
22815876	The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech sound representations are still a matter of debate. Proponents of 'sparse representations' assume that on the level of speech sounds, only contrastive or otherwise not predictable information is stored in long-term memory. Here, in a passive oddball paradigm, we challenge the neural foundations of such a 'sparse' representation; we use words that differ only in their penultimate consonant ("coronal" [t] vs. "dorsal" [k] place of articulation) and for example distinguish between the German nouns Latz ([lats]; bib) and Lachs ([laks]; salmon). Changes from standard [t] to deviant [k] and vice versa elicited a discernible Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response. Crucially, however, the MMN for the deviant [lats] was stronger than the MMN for the deviant [laks]. Source localization showed this difference to be due to enhanced brain activity in right superior temporal cortex. These findings reflect a difference in phonological 'sparsity': Coronal [t] segments, but not dorsal [k] segments, are based on more sparse representations and elicit less specific neural predictions; sensory deviations from this prediction are more readily 'tolerated' and accordingly trigger weaker MMNs. The results foster the neurocomputational reality of 'representationally sparse' models of speech perception that are compatible with more general predictive mechanisms in auditory perception.	t	\N
22916282	Auditory deviance detection in humans is indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) occurring at a latency of 100-250 ms after stimulus onset. However, by using classic oddball paradigms, differential responses to regularity violations of simple auditory features have been found at the level of the middle latency response (MLR) of the AEP occurring within the first 50 ms after stimulus (deviation) onset. These findings suggest the existence of fast deviance detection mechanisms for simple feature changes, but it is not clear whether deviance detection among more complex acoustic regularities could be observed at such early latencies. To test this, we examined the pre-attentive processing of rare stimulus repetitions in a sequence of tones alternating in frequency in both long and middle latency ranges. Additionally, we introduced occasional changes in the interaural time difference (ITD), so that a simple-feature regularity could be examined in the same paradigm. MMN was obtained for both repetition and ITD deviants, occurring at 150 ms and 100 ms after stimulus onset respectively. At the level of the MLR, a difference was observed between standards and ITD deviants at the Na component (20-30 ms after stimulus onset), for 800 Hz tones, but not for repetition deviants. These findings suggest that detection mechanisms for deviants to simple regularities, but not to more complex regularities, are already activated in the MLR range, supporting the view that the auditory deviance detection system is organized in a hierarchical manner.	t	\N
23028971	For the perception of timbre of a musical instrument, the attack time is known to hold crucial information. The first 50 to 150 ms of sound onset reflect the excitation mechanism, which generates the sound. Since auditory processing and music perception in particular are known to be hampered in cochlear implant (CI) users, we conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study with an oddball paradigm to evaluate the processing of small differences in musical sound onset. The first 60 ms of a cornet sound were manipulated in order to examine whether these differences are detected by CI users and normal-hearing controls (NH controls), as revealed by auditory evoked potentials (AEPs). Our analysis focused on the N1 as an exogenous component known to reflect physical stimuli properties as well as on the P2 and the Mismatch Negativity (MMN). Our results revealed different N1 latencies as well as P2 amplitudes and latencies for the onset manipulations in both groups. An MMN could be elicited only in the NH control group. Together with additional findings that suggest an impact of musical training on CI users' AEPs, our findings support the view that impaired timbre perception in CI users is at partly due to altered sound onset feature detection.	t	\N
23131615	This study investigated whether the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential (ERP) could be evoked by purely top-down, attentional control. An infrequently occurring tone was designated as a target prior to presenting a randomized sequence of five equi-probably occurring tones. MMN elicitation to the tones categorized as "high", "medium", or "low" frequency, and designated as the target, would indicate that the change detection process can be driven solely by top-down control. However, MMNs were not elicited by the categorized tones. Only the N2b and P3b attention-driven target detection components were elicited. These results suggest that top-down factors alone cannot generate mismatch negativity. Standard formation by stimulus-driven factors is required.	t	\N
23241212	Coloured-hearing (CH) synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which an acoustic stimulus (the inducer) initiates a concurrent colour perception (the concurrent). Individuals with CH synesthesia "see" colours when hearing tones, words, or music; this specific phenomenon suggesting a close relationship between auditory and visual representations. To date, it is still unknown whether the perception of colours is associated with a modulation of brain functions in the inducing brain area, namely in the auditory-related cortex and associated brain areas. In addition, there is an on-going debate as to whether attention to the inducer is necessarily required for eliciting a visual concurrent, or whether the latter can emerge in a pre-attentive fashion. By using the EEG technique in the context of a pre-attentive mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we show that the binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is associated with increased MMN amplitudes in response to deviant tones supposed to induce novel concurrent colour perceptions. Most notably, the increased MMN amplitudes we revealed in the CH synesthetes were associated with stronger intracerebral current densities originating from the auditory cortex, parietal cortex, and ventral visual areas. The automatic binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is accompanied by an early pre-attentive process recruiting the auditory cortex, inferior and superior parietal lobules, as well as ventral occipital areas.	t	\N
23308266	Computational and experimental research has revealed that auditory sensory predictions are derived from regularities of the current environment by using internal generative models. However, so far, what has not been addressed is how the auditory system handles situations giving rise to redundant or even contradictory predictions derived from different sources of information. To this end, we measured error signals in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to violations of auditory predictions. Sounds could be predicted on the basis of overall probability, i.e., one sound was presented frequently and another sound rarely. Furthermore, each sound was predicted by an informative visual cue. Participants' task was to use the cue and to discriminate the two sounds as fast as possible. Violations of the probability based prediction (i.e., a rare sound) as well as violations of the visual-auditory prediction (i.e., an incongruent sound) elicited error signals in the ERPs (Mismatch Negativity [MMN] and Incongruency Response [IR]). Particular error signals were observed even in case the overall probability and the visual symbol predicted different sounds. That is, the auditory system concurrently maintains and tests contradictory predictions. Moreover, if the same sound was predicted, we observed an additive error signal (scalp potential and primary current density) equaling the sum of the specific error signals. Thus, the auditory system maintains and tolerates functionally independently represented redundant and contradictory predictions. We argue that the auditory system exploits all currently active regularities in order to optimally prepare for future events.	t	\N
23585888	To localize the neural generators of the musically elicited mismatch negativity with high temporal resolution we conducted a beamformer analysis (Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry, SAM) on magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a previous musical mismatch study. The stimuli consisted of a six-tone melodic sequence comprising broken chords in C- and G-major. The musical sequence was presented within an oddball paradigm in which the last tone was lowered occasionally (20%) by a minor third. The beamforming analysis revealed significant right hemispheric neural activation in the superior temporal (STC), inferior frontal (IFC), superior frontal (SFC) and orbitofrontal (OFC) cortices within a time window of 100-200 ms after the occurrence of a deviant tone. IFC and SFC activation was also observed in the left hemisphere. The pronounced early right inferior frontal activation of the auditory mismatch negativity has not been shown in MEG studies so far. The activation in STC and IFC is consistent with earlier electroencephalography (EEG), optical imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that reveal the auditory and inferior frontal cortices as main generators of the auditory MMN. The observed right hemispheric IFC is also in line with some previous music studies showing similar activation patterns after harmonic syntactic violations. The results demonstrate that a deviant tone within a musical sequence recruits immediately a distributed neural network in frontal and prefrontal areas suggesting that top-down processes are involved when expectation violation occurs within well-known stimuli.	t	\N
23617597	The human auditory cortex automatically encodes acoustic input from the environment and differentiates regular sound patterns from deviant ones in order to identify important, irregular events. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response is a neuronal marker for the detection of sounds that are unexpected, based on the encoded regularities. It is also elicited by violations of more complex regularities and musical expertise has been shown to have an effect on the processing of complex regularities. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the MMN response to salient or less salient deviants by varying the standard probability (70%, 50% and 35%) of a pattern oddball paradigm. To study the effects of musical expertise in the encoding of the patterns, we compared the responses of a group of non-musicians to those of musicians. We observed significant MMN in all conditions, including the least salient condition (35% standards), in response to violations of the predominant tone pattern for both groups. The amplitude of MMN from the right hemisphere was influenced by the standard probability. This effect was modulated by long-term musical training: standard probability changes influenced MMN amplitude in the group of non-musicians only. This study indicates that pattern violations are detected automatically, even if they are of very low salience, both in non-musicians and musicians, with salience having a stronger impact on processing in the right hemisphere of non-musicians. Long-term musical training influences this encoding, in that non-musicians benefit to a greater extent from a good signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. high probability of the standard pattern), while musicians are less dependent on the salience of an acoustic environment.	t	\N
23708059	The auditory system is organized such that progressively more complex features are represented across successive cortical hierarchical stages. Just when and where the processing of phonemes, fundamental elements of the speech signal, is achieved in this hierarchy remains a matter of vigorous debate. Non-invasive measures of phonemic representation have been somewhat equivocal. While some studies point to a primary role for middle/anterior regions of the superior temporal gyrus (STG), others implicate the posterior STG. Differences in stimulation, task and inter-individual anatomical/functional variability may account for these discrepant findings. Here, we sought to clarify this issue by mapping phonemic representation across left perisylvian cortex, taking advantage of the excellent sampling density afforded by intracranial recordings in humans. We asked whether one or both major divisions of the STG were sensitive to phonemic transitions. The high signal-to-noise characteristics of direct intracranial recordings allowed for analysis at the individual participant level, circumventing issues of inter-individual anatomic and functional variability that may have obscured previous findings at the group level of analysis. The mismatch negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological response elicited by changes in repetitive streams of stimulation, served as our primary dependent measure. Oddball configurations of pairs of phonemes, spectro-temporally matched non-phonemes, and simple tones were presented. The loci of the MMN clearly differed as a function of stimulus type. Phoneme representation was most robust over middle/anterior STG/STS, but was also observed over posterior STG/SMG. These data point to multiple phonemic processing zones along perisylvian cortex, both anterior and posterior to primary auditory cortex. This finding is considered within the context of a dual stream model of auditory processing in which functionally distinct ventral and dorsal auditory processing pathways may be engaged by speech stimuli.	t	\N
23715097	In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics' speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired.	t	\N
23825422	Hierarchical predictive coding suggests that attention in humans emerges from increased precision in probabilistic inference, whereas expectation biases attention in favor of contextually anticipated stimuli. We test these notions within auditory perception by independently manipulating top-down expectation and attentional precision alongside bottom-up stimulus predictability. Our findings support an integrative interpretation of commonly observed electrophysiological signatures of neurodynamics, namely mismatch negativity (MMN), P300, and contingent negative variation (CNV), as manifestations along successive levels of predictive complexity. Early first-level processing indexed by the MMN was sensitive to stimulus predictability: here, attentional precision enhanced early responses, but explicit top-down expectation diminished it. This pattern was in contrast to later, second-level processing indexed by the P300: although sensitive to the degree of predictability, responses at this level were contingent on attentional engagement and in fact sharpened by top-down expectation. At the highest level, the drift of the CNV was a fine-grained marker of top-down expectation itself. Source reconstruction of high-density EEG, supported by intracranial recordings, implicated temporal and frontal regions differentially active at early and late levels. The cortical generators of the CNV suggested that it might be involved in facilitating the consolidation of context-salient stimuli into conscious perception. These results provide convergent empirical support to promising recent accounts of attention and expectation in predictive coding.	t	\N
23850664	Over the last four decades, a range of different neuroimaging tools have been used to study human auditory attention, spanning from classic event-related potential studies using electroencephalography to modern multimodal imaging approaches (e.g., combining anatomical information based on magnetic resonance imaging with magneto- and electroencephalography). This review begins by exploring the different strengths and limitations inherent to different neuroimaging methods, and then outlines some common behavioral paradigms that have been adopted to study auditory attention. We argue that in order to design a neuroimaging experiment that produces interpretable, unambiguous results, the experimenter must not only have a deep appreciation of the imaging technique employed, but also a sophisticated understanding of perception and behavior. Only with the proper caveats in mind can one begin to infer how the cortex supports a human in solving the "cocktail party" problem. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	t	\N
23886958	The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that sound context modulates the magnitude of auditory distraction, indexed by behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Participants were asked to identify tone duration, while irrelevant changes occurred in tone frequency, tone intensity, and harmonic structure. Frequency deviants were randomly intermixed with standards (Uni-Condition), with intensity deviants (Bi-Condition), and with both intensity and complex deviants (Tri-Condition). Only in the Tri-Condition did the auditory distraction effect reflect the magnitude difference among the frequency and intensity deviants. The mixture of the different types of deviants in the Tri-Condition modulated the perceived level of distraction, demonstrating that the sound context can modulate the effect of deviance level on processing irrelevant acoustic changes in the environment. These findings thus indicate that perceptual contrast plays a role in change detection processes that leads to auditory distraction.	t	\N
23920129	A better understanding of melodic pitch perception in cochlear implants (CIs) may guide signal processing and/or rehabilitation techniques to improve music perception and appreciation in CI patients. In this study, the mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to infrequent changes in 5-tone pitch contours was obtained in CI users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Melodic contour identification (MCI) was also measured. Results showed that MCI performance was poorer in CI than in NH subjects; the MMNs were missing in all CI subjects for the 1-semitone contours. The MMNs with the 5-semitone contours were observed in a smaller proportion of CI than NH subjects. Results suggest that encoding of pitch contour changes in CI users appears to be degraded, most likely due to the limited pitch cues provided by the CI and deafness-related compromise of brain substrates.	t	\N
24143195	Unexpected physical increases in the intensity of a frequently occurring "standard" auditory stimulus are experienced as obtrusive. This could either be because of a physical change, the increase in intensity of the "deviant" stimulus, or a psychological change, the violation of the expectancy for the occurrence of the lower intensity standard stimulus. Two experiments were run in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to determine whether "psychological" increments (violation of an expectancy for a lower intensity) would be processed differently than psychological decrements (violation of an expectancy for a higher intensity). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects were presented with auditory tones that alternated between low and high intensity. The subjects ignored the auditory stimuli while watching a video. Deviants were created by repeating the same stimulus. In the first experiment, pairs of stimuli alternating in intensity, were presented in separate increment (H-L...H-L...H-H...H-L, in which H = 80 dB SPL and L = 60 dB SPL) and decrement conditions (L-H...L-H...L-L... L-H, in which H = 90 dB SPL and L = 80 dB SPL). The paradigm employed in the second experiment consisted of an alternating intensity pattern (H-L-H-L-H-H-H-L) or (H-L-H-L-L-L-H-L). Importantly, the stimulus prior to the deviant (the standard) and the actual deviants in both increment and decrement conditions in both experiments were physically identical (80 dB SPL tones). The repetition of the lower intensity tone therefore acted as a psychological rather than a physical decrement (a higher intensity tone was expected) while the repetition of the higher intensity tone acted as a psychological increment (a lower intensity tone was expected). The psychological increments in both experiments elicited a larger amplitude mismatch negativity (MMN) than the decrements. Thus, regardless of whether an acoustic change signals a physical increase in intensity or violates an expected decrease in intensity, a large MMN will be elicited.	t	\N
24158725	The goal of this review article is to redefine what the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related potentials reflects in auditory scene analysis, and to provide an overview of how the MMN serves as a valuable tool in Cognitive Neuroscience research. In doing so, some of the old beliefs (five common 'myths') about MMN will be dispelled, such as the notion that MMN is a simple feature discriminator and that attention itself modulates MMN elicitation. A revised description of what MMN truly reflects will be provided, which includes a principal focus onto the highly context-dependent nature of MMN elicitation and new terminology to discuss MMN and attention. This revised framework will help clarify what has been a long line of seemingly contradictory results from studies in which behavioral ability to hear differences between sounds and passive elicitation of MMN have been inconsistent. Understanding what MMN is will also benefit clinical research efforts by providing a new picture of how to design appropriate paradigms suited to various clinical populations.	t	\N
24366694	One of the major challenges in human brain science is the functional hemispheric asymmetry of auditory processing. Behavioral and neurophysiological studies have demonstrated that speech processing is dominantly handled in the left hemisphere, whereas music processing dominantly occurs in the right. Using magnetoencephalography, we measured the auditory mismatch negativity elicited by band-pass filtered click-trains, which deviated from frequently presented standard sound signals in a spectral or temporal domain. The results showed that spectral and temporal deviants were dominantly processed in the right and left hemispheres, respectively. Hemispheric asymmetry was not limited to high-level cognitive processes, but also originated from the pre-attentive neural processing stage represented by mismatch negativity.	t	\N
24475052	The brain response to auditory novelty comprises two main eeg components: an early mismatch negativity and a late P300. Whereas the former has been proposed to reflect a prediction error, the latter is often associated with working memory updating. Interestingly, these two proposals predict fundamentally different dynamics: prediction errors are thought to propagate serially through several distinct brain areas, while working memory supposes that activity is sustained over time within a stable set of brain areas. Here we test this temporal dissociation by showing how the generalization of brain activity patterns across time can characterize the dynamics of the underlying neural processes. This method is applied to magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings acquired from healthy participants who were presented with two types of auditory novelty. Following our predictions, the results show that the mismatch evoked by a local novelty leads to the sequential recruitment of distinct and short-lived patterns of brain activity. In sharp contrast, the global novelty evoked by an unexpected sequence of five sounds elicits a sustained state of brain activity that lasts for several hundreds of milliseconds. The present results highlight how MEG combined with multivariate pattern analyses can characterize the dynamics of human cortical processes.	t	\N
24548430	Natural sound environments are dynamic, with overlapping acoustic input originating from simultaneously active sources. A key function of the auditory system is to integrate sensory inputs that belong together and segregate those that come from different sources. We hypothesized that this skill is impaired in individuals with phonological processing difficulties. There is considerable disagreement about whether phonological impairments observed in children with developmental language disorders can be attributed to specific linguistic deficits or to more general acoustic processing deficits. However, most tests of general auditory abilities have been conducted with a single set of sounds. We assessed the ability of school-aged children (7-15 years) to parse complex auditory non-speech input, and determined whether the presence of phonological processing impairments was associated with stream perception performance. A key finding was that children with language impairments did not show the same developmental trajectory for stream perception as typically developing children. In addition, children with language impairments required larger frequency separations between sounds to hear distinct streams compared to age-matched peers. Furthermore, phonological processing ability was a significant predictor of stream perception measures, but only in the older age groups. No such association was found in the youngest children. These results indicate that children with language impairments have difficulty parsing speech streams, or identifying individual sound events when there are competing sound sources. We conclude that language group differences may in part reflect fundamental maturational disparities in the analysis of complex auditory scenes.	t	\N
24771006	Detecting regularity and change in the environment is crucial for survival, as it enables making predictions about the world and informing goal-directed behavior. In the auditory modality, the detection of regularity involves segregating incoming sounds into distinct perceptual objects (stream segregation). The detection of change from this within-stream regularity is associated with the mismatch negativity, a component of auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs). A central unanswered question is how the detection of regularity and the detection of change are interrelated, and whether attention affects the former, the latter, or both. Here we show that the detection of regularity and the detection of change can be empirically dissociated, and that attention modulates the detection of change without precluding the detection of regularity, and the perceptual organization of the auditory background into distinct streams. By applying frequency spectra analysis on the EEG of subjects engaged in a selective listening task, we found distinct peaks of ERP synchronization, corresponding to the rhythm of the frequency streams, independently of whether the stream was attended or ignored. Our results provide direct neurophysiological evidence of regularity detection in the auditory background, and show that it can occur independently of change detection and in the absence of attention.	t	\N
25178752	The ability to read passages of information fluently and with comprehension is a basic component of socioeconomic success. Reading ability depends on the integrity of underlying visual and auditory (phonological) systems. This study investigated the integrity of reading ability in schizophrenia relative to the integrity of underlying visual and auditory function. The participants were 45 schizophrenia patients, 19 clinical high-risk patients, and 65 comparison subjects. Reading was assessed using tests sensitive to visual or phonological reading dysfunction. Sensory, neuropsychological, and functional outcome measures were also obtained. Schizophrenia patients displayed reading deficits that were far more severe (effect size >2.0) than would be predicted based on general neurocognitive impairments (effect size 1.0-1.4). The deficits correlated highly with both visual and auditory sensory measures, including impaired mismatch negativity generation (r=0.62, N=51, p=0.0002). Patients with established schizophrenia displayed both visual and phonological impairments, whereas high-risk patients showed isolated visual impairments. More than 70% of schizophrenia patients met criteria for acquired dyslexia, with 50% reading below eighth grade level despite intact premorbid reading ability. Reading deficits also correlated significantly (rp=0.4, N=30, p=0.03) with failure to match parental socioeconomic achievement, over and above contributions of more general cognitive impairment. Patients with schizophrenia display severe deficits in reading ability that represent a potentially remediable cause of impaired socioeconomic function. Such deficits are not presently captured during routine clinical assessment. Deficits most likely develop during the years immediately surrounding illness onset and may contribute to the reduced educational and occupational achievement associated with schizophrenia.	t	\N
25231619	In animal models, single-neuron response properties such as stimulus-specific adaptation have been described as possible precursors to mismatch negativity, a human brain response to stimulus change. In the present study, we attempted to bridge the gap between human and animal studies by characterising responses to changes in the frequency of repeated tone series in the anesthetised guinea pig using small-animal magnetoencephalography (MEG). We showed that 1) auditory evoked fields (AEFs) qualitatively similar to those observed in human MEG studies can be detected noninvasively in rodents using small-animal MEG; 2) guinea pig AEF amplitudes reduce rapidly with tone repetition, and this AEF reduction is largely complete by the second tone in a repeated series; and 3) differences between responses to the first (deviant) and later (standard) tones after a frequency transition resemble those previously observed in awake humans using a similar stimulus paradigm.	t	\N
25342520	Neurofeedback is a strong direct training method for brain function, wherein brain activity patterns are measured and displayed as feedback, and trainees try to stabilize the feedback signal onto certain desirable states to regulate their own mental states. Here, we introduce a novel neurofeedback method, using the mismatch negativity (MMN) responses elicited by similar sounds that cannot be consciously discriminated. Through neurofeedback training, without participants' attention to the auditory stimuli or awareness of what was to be learned, we found that the participants could unconsciously achieve a significant improvement in the auditory discrimination of the applied stimuli. Our method has great potential to provide effortless auditory perceptual training. Based on this method, participants do not need to make an effort to discriminate auditory stimuli, and can choose tasks of interest without boredom due to training. In particular, it could be used to train people to recognize speech sounds that do not exist in their native language and thereby facilitate foreign language learning.	t	\N
25379456	Although sensory processing abnormalities contribute to widespread cognitive and psychosocial impairments in schizophrenia (SZ) patients, scalp-channel measures of averaged event-related potentials (ERPs) mix contributions from distinct cortical source-area generators, diluting the functional relevance of channel-based ERP measures. SZ patients (n = 42) and non-psychiatric comparison subjects (n = 47) participated in a passive auditory duration oddball paradigm, eliciting a triphasic (Deviant-Standard) tone ERP difference complex, here termed the auditory deviance response (ADR), comprised of a mid-frontal mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a positivity, and re-orienting negativity (RON) peak sequence. To identify its cortical sources and to assess possible relationships between their response contributions and clinical SZ measures, we applied independent component analysis to the continuous 68-channel EEG data and clustered the resulting independent components (ICs) across subjects on spectral, ERP, and topographic similarities. Six IC clusters centered in right superior temporal, right inferior frontal, ventral mid-cingulate, anterior cingulate, medial orbitofrontal, and dorsal mid-cingulate cortex each made triphasic response contributions. Although correlations between measures of SZ clinical, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning and standard (Fz) scalp-channel ADR peak measures were weak or absent, for at least four IC clusters one or more significant correlations emerged. In particular, differences in MMN peak amplitude in the right superior temporal IC cluster accounted for 48% of the variance in SZ-subject performance on tasks necessary for real-world functioning and medial orbitofrontal cluster P3a amplitude accounted for 40%/54% of SZ-subject variance in positive/negative symptoms. Thus, source-resolved auditory deviance response measures including MMN may be highly sensitive to SZ clinical, cognitive, and functional characteristics.	t	\N
21159322	Phonology is a lower-level structural aspect of language involving the sounds of a language and their organization in that language. Numerous behavioral studies utilizing priming, which refers to an increased sensitivity to a stimulus following prior experience with that or a related stimulus, have provided evidence for the role of phonology in visual word recognition. However, most language studies utilizing priming in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have focused on lexical-semantic aspects of language processing. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neurobiological substrates of the automatic, implicit stages of phonological processing. While undergoing fMRI, eighteen individuals performed a lexical decision task (LDT) on prime-target pairs including word-word homophone and pseudoword-word pseudohomophone pairs with a prime presentation below perceptual threshold. Whole-brain analyses revealed several cortical regions exhibiting hemodynamic response suppression due to phonological priming including bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG), middle temporal gyri (MTG), and angular gyri (AG) with additional region of interest (ROI) analyses revealing response suppression in the left lateralized supramarginal gyrus (SMG). Homophone and pseudohomophone priming also resulted in different patterns of hemodynamic responses relative to one another. These results suggest that phonological processing plays a key role in visual word recognition. Furthermore, enhanced hemodynamic responses for unrelated stimuli relative to primed stimuli were observed in midline cortical regions corresponding to the default-mode network (DMN) suggesting that DMN activity can be modulated by task requirements within the context of an implicit task.	t	\N
21500313	The effects of neural activity on cerebral hemodynamics underlie human brain imaging with functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. However, the threshold and characteristics of the converse effects, wherein the cerebral hemodynamic and metabolic milieu influence neural activity, remain unclear. We tested whether mild hypercapnia (5% CO2 ) decreases the magnetoencephalogram response to auditory pattern recognition and visual semantic tasks. Hypercapnia induced statistically significant decreases in event-related fields without affecting behavioral performance. Decreases were observed in early sensory components in both auditory and visual modalities as well as later cognitive components related to memory and language. Effects were distributed across cortical regions. Decreases were comparable in evoked versus spontaneous spectral power. Hypercapnia is commonly used with hemodynamic models to calibrate the blood oxygenation level-dependent response. Modifying model assumptions to incorporate the current findings produce a modest but measurable decrease in the estimated cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen change with activation. Because under normal conditions, low cerebral pH would arise when bloodflow is unable to keep pace with neuronal activity, the cortical depression observed here may reflect a homeostatic mechanism by which neuronal activity is adjusted to a level that can be sustained by available bloodflow. Animal studies suggest that these effects may be mediated by pH-modulating presynaptic adenosine receptors. Although the data is not clear, comparable changes in cortical pH to those induced here may occur during sleep apnea, sleep, and exercise. If so, these results suggest that such activities may in turn have generalized depressive effects on cortical activity.	t	\N
22496909	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 voxel-wise 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.	t	\N
23777481	Numerous studies have provided clues about the ontogeny of lateralization of auditory processing in humans, but most have employed specific subtypes of stimuli and/or have assessed responses in discrete temporal windows. The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to establish changes in hemodynamic activity in the neocortex of preverbal infants (aged 4-11 months) while they were exposed to two distinct types of complex auditory stimuli (full sentences and musical phrases). Measurements were taken from bilateral temporal regions, including both anterior and posterior superior temporal gyri. When the infant sample was treated as a homogenous group, no significant effects emerged for stimulus type. However, when infants' hemodynamic responses were categorized according to their overall changes in volume, two very clear neurophysiological patterns emerged. A high-responder group showed a pattern of early and increasing activation, primarily in the left hemisphere, similar to that observed in comparable studies with adults. In contrast, a low-responder group showed a pattern of gradual decreases in activation over time. Although age did track with responder type, no significant differences between these groups emerged for stimulus type, suggesting that the high- versus low-responder characterization generalizes across classes of auditory stimuli. These results highlight a new way to conceptualize the variable cortical blood flow patterns that are frequently observed across infants and stimuli, with hemodynamic response volumes potentially serving as an early indicator of developmental changes in auditory-processing sensitivity.	t	\N
22786953	Auditory spatial perception plays a critical role in day-to-day communication. For instance, listeners utilize acoustic spatial information to segregate individual talkers into distinct auditory "streams" to improve speech intelligibility. However, spatial localization is an exceedingly difficult task in everyday listening environments with numerous distracting echoes from nearby surfaces, such as walls. Listeners' brains overcome this unique challenge by relying on acoustic timing and, quite surprisingly, visual spatial information to suppress short-latency (1-10 ms) echoes through a process known as "the precedence effect" or "echo suppression." In the present study, we employed electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the neural time course of echo suppression both with and without the aid of coincident visual stimulation in human listeners. We find that echo suppression is a multistage process initialized during the auditory N1 (70-100 ms) and followed by space-specific suppression mechanisms from 150 to 250 ms. Additionally, we find a robust correlate of listeners' spatial perception (i.e., suppressing or not suppressing the echo) over central electrode sites from 300 to 500 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, vision's powerful contribution to echo suppression occurs late in processing (250-400 ms), suggesting that vision contributes primarily during late sensory or decision making processes. Together, our findings support growing evidence that echo suppression is a slow, progressive mechanism modifiable by visual influences during late sensory and decision making stages. Furthermore, our findings suggest that audiovisual interactions are not limited to early, sensory-level modulations but extend well into late stages of cortical processing.	t	\N
25710328	To form a veridical percept of the environment, the brain needs to integrate sensory signals from a common source but segregate those from independent sources. Thus, perception inherently relies on solving the "causal inference problem." Behaviorally, humans solve this problem optimally as predicted by Bayesian Causal Inference; yet, the underlying neural mechanisms are unexplored. Combining psychophysics, Bayesian modeling, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and multivariate decoding in an audiovisual spatial localization task, we demonstrate that Bayesian Causal Inference is performed by a hierarchy of multisensory processes in the human brain. At the bottom of the hierarchy, in auditory and visual areas, location is represented on the basis that the two signals are generated by independent sources (= segregation). At the next stage, in posterior intraparietal sulcus, location is estimated under the assumption that the two signals are from a common source (= forced fusion). Only at the top of the hierarchy, in anterior intraparietal sulcus, the uncertainty about the causal structure of the world is taken into account and sensory signals are combined as predicted by Bayesian Causal Inference. Characterizing the computational operations of signal interactions reveals the hierarchical nature of multisensory perception in human neocortex. It unravels how the brain accomplishes Bayesian Causal Inference, a statistical computation fundamental for perception and cognition. Our results demonstrate how the brain combines information in the face of uncertainty about the underlying causal structure of the world.	t	\N
20146608	The neural responses to sensory consequences of a self-produced motor act are suppressed compared with those in response to a similar but externally generated stimulus. Previous studies in the somatosensory and auditory systems have shown that the motor-induced suppression of the sensory mechanisms is sensitive to delays between the motor act and the onset of the stimulus. The present study investigated time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback in response to self-produced vocalizations. ERPs were recorded in response to normal and pitch-shifted voice auditory feedback during active vocalization and passive listening to the playback of the same vocalizations. The pitch-shifted stimulus was delivered to the subjects' auditory feedback after a randomly chosen time delay between the vocal onset and the stimulus presentation. Results showed that the neural responses to delayed feedback perturbations were significantly larger than those in response to the pitch-shifted stimulus occurring at vocal onset. Active vocalization was shown to enhance neural responsiveness to feedback alterations only for nonzero delays compared with passive listening to the playback. These findings indicated that the neural mechanisms of auditory feedback processing are sensitive to timing between the vocal motor commands and the incoming auditory feedback. Time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback may be an important feature of the audio-vocal integration system that helps to improve the feedback-based monitoring and control of voice structure through vocal error detection and correction.	t	\N
20493828	Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an increasingly popular non-invasive tool used to record, on a millisecond timescale, the magnetic field changes generated by cortical neural activity. MEG has the advantage, over fMRI for example, that it is a direct measure of neural activity. In the current investigation we used MEG to measure cortical responses to tactile and auditory stimuli in the macaque monkey. We had two aims. First, we sought to determine whether MEG, a technique that may have low spatial accuracy, could be used to distinguish the location and organization of sensory cortical fields in macaque monkeys, a species with a relatively small brain compared to that of the human. Second, we wanted to examine the temporal dynamics of cortical responses in the macaque monkey relative to the human. We recorded MEG data from anesthetized monkeys and, for comparison, from awake humans that were presented with simple tactile and auditory stimuli. Neural source reconstruction of MEG data showed that primary somatosensory and auditory cortex could be differentiated and, further, that separate representations of the digit and lip within somatosensory cortex could be identified in macaque monkeys as well as humans. We compared the latencies of activity from monkey and human data for the three stimulation types and proposed a correspondence between the neural responses of the two species. We thus demonstrate the feasibility of using MEG in the macaque monkey and provide a non-human primate model for examining the relationship between external evoked magnetic fields and their underlying neural sources.	t	\N
20598152	The detection of any abrupt change in the environment is important to survival. Since memory of preceding sensory conditions is necessary for detecting changes, such a change-detection system relates closely to the memory system. Here we used an auditory change-related N1 subcomponent (change-N1) of event-related brain potentials to investigate cortical mechanisms underlying change detection and echoic memory. Change-N1 was elicited by a simple paradigm with two tones, a standard followed by a deviant, while subjects watched a silent movie. The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a fixed sound pressure deviance (70 dB vs. 75 dB) was negatively correlated with the logarithm of the interval between the standard sound and deviant sound (1, 10, 100, or 1000 ms), while positively correlated with the logarithm of the duration of the standard sound (25, 100, 500, or 1000 ms). The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a deviance in sound pressure, sound frequency, and sound location was correlated with the logarithm of the magnitude of physical differences between the standard and deviant sounds. The present findings suggest that temporal representation of echoic memory is non-linear and Weber-Fechner law holds for the automatic cortical response to sound changes within a suprathreshold range. Since the present results show that the behavior of echoic memory can be understood through change-N1, change-N1 would be a useful tool to investigate memory systems.	t	\N
20633569	Studies in all sensory modalities have demonstrated amplification of early brain responses to attended signals, but less is known about the processes by which listeners selectively ignore stimuli. Here we use MEG and a new paradigm to dissociate the effects of selectively attending, and ignoring in time. Two different tasks were performed successively on the same acoustic stimuli: triplets of tones (A, B, C) with noise-bursts interspersed between the triplets. In the COMPARE task subjects were instructed to respond when tones A and C were of same frequency. In the PASSIVE task they were instructed to respond as fast as possible to noise-bursts. COMPARE requires attending to A and C and actively ignoring tone B, but PASSIVE involves neither attending to nor ignoring the tones. The data were analyzed separately for frontal and auditory-cortical channels to independently address attentional effects on low-level sensory versus putative control processing. We observe the earliest attend/ignore effects as early as 100 ms post-stimulus onset in auditory cortex. These appear to be generated by modulation of exogenous (stimulus-driven) sensory evoked activity. Specifically related to ignoring, we demonstrate that active-ignoring-induced input inhibition involves early selection. We identified a sequence of early (<200 ms post-onset) auditory cortical effects, comprised of onset response attenuation and the emergence of an inhibitory response, and provide new, direct evidence that listeners actively ignoring a sound can reduce their stimulus related activity in auditory cortex by 100 ms after onset when this is required to execute specific behavioral objectives.	t	\N
21233780	The neural origins of the cortical response to rare sensory events remain poorly understood. Using simultaneous event-related potentials and magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the anatomical profile of regional activity at various processing stages during performance of auditory and visual variants of an oddball paradigm. The earliest rarity-detection response was found in sensory-specific cortices, rapidly spreading to tertiary association areas, mesial temporal and frontal cortices by 150-200 ms. P3m-related activity was not found in sensory-specific cortices. On the basis of the anatomic distribution of P3m-related activity, this component is likely to reflect more generalized cognitive abilities hosted by association cortical regions.	t	\N
21261633	Humans must often focus attention onto relevant sensory signals in the presence of simultaneous irrelevant signals. This type of attention has been explored in vision with the N2pc component, and the present study sought to find an analogous auditory effect. In Experiment 1, two 750-ms sounds were presented simultaneously, one from each of two lateral speakers. On each trial, participants indicated whether one of the two sounds was a pre-defined target. We found that targets elicited an N2ac component: a negativity in the N2 latency range at anterior contralateral electrodes. We also observed a later and more posterior contralateral positivity. Experiment 2 replicated these effects and demonstrated that they arose from competition between attended and unattended tones rather than reflecting lateralized effects of attention for individual tones. The N2ac component may provide a useful tool for studying selective attention within auditory scenes.	t	\N
21305666	Both sighted and blind individuals can readily interpret meaning behind everyday real-world sounds. In sighted listeners, we previously reported that regions along the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci (pSTS) and middle temporal gyri (pMTG) are preferentially activated when presented with recognizable action sounds. These regions have generally been hypothesized to represent primary loci for complex motion processing, including visual biological motion processing and audio-visual integration. However, it remained unclear whether, or to what degree, life-long visual experience might impact functions related to hearing perception or memory of sound-source actions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared brain regions activated in congenitally blind versus sighted listeners in response to hearing a wide range of recognizable human-produced action sounds (excluding vocalizations) versus unrecognized, backward-played versions of those sounds. Here, we show that recognized human action sounds commonly evoked activity in both groups along most of the left pSTS/pMTG complex, though with relatively greater activity in the right pSTS/pMTG by the blind group. These results indicate that portions of the postero-lateral temporal cortices contain domain-specific hubs for biological and/or complex motion processing independent of sensory-modality experience. Contrasting the two groups, the sighted listeners preferentially activated bilateral parietal plus medial and lateral frontal networks, whereas the blind listeners preferentially activated left anterior insula plus bilateral anterior calcarine and medial occipital regions, including what would otherwise have been visual-related cortex. These global-level network differences suggest that blind and sighted listeners may preferentially use different memory retrieval strategies when hearing and attempting to recognize action sounds.	t	\N
21380858	Most ecologically natural sensory inputs are not limited to a single modality. While it is possible to use real ecological materials as experimental stimuli to investigate the neural basis of multi-sensory experience, parametric control of such tokens is limited. By using artificial bimodal stimuli composed of approximations to ecological signals, we aim to observe the interactions between putatively relevant stimulus attributes. Here we use MEG as an electrophysiological tool and employ as a measure the steady-state response (SSR), an experimental paradigm typically applied to unimodal signals. In this experiment we quantify the responses to a bimodal audio-visual signal with different degrees of temporal (phase) congruity, focusing on stimulus properties critical to audiovisual speech. An amplitude modulated auditory signal ('pseudo-speech') is paired with a radius-modulated ellipse ('pseudo-mouth'), with the envelope of low-frequency modulations occurring in phase or at offset phase values across modalities. We observe (i) that it is possible to elicit an SSR to bimodal signals; (ii) that bimodal signals exhibit greater response power than unimodal signals; and (iii) that the SSR power at specific harmonics and sensors differentially reflects the congruity between signal components. Importantly, we argue that effects found at the modulation frequency and second harmonic reflect differential aspects of neural coding of multisensory signals. The experimental paradigm facilitates a quantitative characterization of properties of multi-sensory speech and other bimodal computations.	t	\N
21807011	In real-world settings, information from multiple sensory modalities is combined to form a complete, behaviorally salient percept - a process known as multisensory integration. While deficits in auditory and visual processing are often observed in schizophrenia, little is known about how multisensory integration is affected by the disorder. The present study examined auditory, visual, and combined audio-visual processing in schizophrenia patients using high-density electrical mapping. An ecologically relevant task was used to compare unisensory and multisensory evoked potentials from schizophrenia patients to potentials from healthy normal volunteers. Analysis of unisensory responses revealed a large decrease in the N100 component of the auditory-evoked potential, as well as early differences in the visual-evoked components in the schizophrenia group. Differences in early evoked responses to multisensory stimuli were also detected. Multisensory facilitation was assessed by comparing the sum of auditory and visual evoked responses to the audio-visual evoked response. Schizophrenia patients showed a significantly greater absolute magnitude response to audio-visual stimuli than to summed unisensory stimuli when compared to healthy volunteers, indicating significantly greater multisensory facilitation in the patient group. Behavioral responses also indicated increased facilitation from multisensory stimuli. The results represent the first report of increased multisensory facilitation in schizophrenia and suggest that, although unisensory deficits are present, compensatory mechanisms may exist under certain conditions that permit improved multisensory integration in individuals afflicted with the disorder.	t	\N
21958655	Perceptual sensitivities are malleable via learning, even in adults. We trained adults to discriminate complex sounds (periodic, frequency-modulated sweep trains) using two different training procedures, and used psychoacoustic tests and evoked potential measures (the N1-P2 complex) to assess changes in both perceptual and neural sensitivities. Training took place either on a single day, or daily across eight days, and involved discrimination of pairs of stimuli using a single-interval, forced-choice task. In some participants, training started with dissimilar pairs that became progressively more similar across sessions, whereas in others training was constant, involving only one, highly similar, stimulus pair. Participants were better able to discriminate the complex sounds after training, particularly after progressive training, and the evoked potentials elicited by some of the sounds increased in amplitude following training. Significant amplitude changes were restricted to the P2 peak. Our findings indicate that changes in perceptual sensitivities parallel enhanced neural processing. These results are consistent with the proposal that changes in perceptual abilities arise from the brain's capacity to adaptively modify cortical representations of sensory stimuli, and that different training regimens can lead to differences in cortical sensitivities, even after relatively short periods of training.	t	\N
22367585	In recent years, it has become evident that neural responses previously considered to be unisensory can be modulated by sensory input from other modalities. In this regard, visual neural activity elicited to viewing a face is strongly influenced by concurrent incoming auditory information, particularly speech. Here, we applied an additive-factors paradigm aimed at quantifying the impact that auditory speech has on visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited to visual speech. These multisensory interactions were measured across parametrically varied stimulus salience, quantified in terms of signal to noise, to provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of audiovisual speech perception. First, we measured a monotonic increase of the amplitude of the visual P1-N1-P2 ERP complex during a spoken-word recognition task with increases in stimulus salience. ERP component amplitudes varied directly with stimulus salience for visual, audiovisual, and summed unisensory recordings. Second, we measured changes in multisensory gain across salience levels. During audiovisual speech, the P1 and P1-N1 components exhibited less multisensory gain relative to the summed unisensory components with reduced salience, while N1-P2 amplitude exhibited greater multisensory gain as salience was reduced, consistent with the principle of inverse effectiveness. The amplitude interactions were correlated with behavioral measures of multisensory gain across salience levels as measured by response times, suggesting that change in multisensory gain associated with unisensory salience modulations reflects an increased efficiency of visual speech processing.	t	\N
22464943	Limited information is available on the relationship between antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and early filtering, or gating, of information, even though this could contribute to the repeatedly reported impairment in ASPD of higher-order information processing. In order to investigate early filtering in ASPD, we compared electrophysiological measures of auditory sensory gating assessed by the paired-click paradigm in males with ASPD (n = 37) to healthy controls (n = 28). Stimulus encoding was measured by P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials; auditory sensory gating (ASG) was measured by a reduction in amplitude of evoked potentials following click repetition. Effects were studied of co-existing past alcohol or drug use disorders, ASPD symptom counts, and trait impulsivity. Controls and ASPD did not differ in P50, N100, or P200 amplitude or ASG. Past alcohol or drug use disorders had no effect. In controls, impulsivity related to improved P50 and P200 gating. In ASPD, P50 or N100 gating was impaired with more symptoms or increased impulsivity, respectively, suggesting impaired early filtering of irrelevant information. In controls the relationship between P50 and P200 gating and impulsivity was reversed, suggesting better gating with higher impulsivity scores. This could reflect different roles of ASG in behavioral regulation in controls versus ASPD.	t	\N
22547804	Bilingualism profoundly affects the brain, yielding functional and structural changes in cortical regions dedicated to language processing and executive function [Crinion J, et al. (2006) Science 312:1537-1540; Kim KHS, et al. (1997) Nature 388:171-174]. Comparatively, musical training, another type of sensory enrichment, translates to expertise in cognitive processing and refined biological processing of sound in both cortical and subcortical structures. Therefore, we asked whether bilingualism can also promote experience-dependent plasticity in subcortical auditory processing. We found that adolescent bilinguals, listening to the speech syllable [da], encoded the stimulus more robustly than age-matched monolinguals. Specifically, bilinguals showed enhanced encoding of the fundamental frequency, a feature known to underlie pitch perception and grouping of auditory objects. This enhancement was associated with executive function advantages. Thus, through experience-related tuning of attention, the bilingual auditory system becomes highly efficient in automatically processing sound. This study provides biological evidence for system-wide neural plasticity in auditory experts that facilitates a tight coupling of sensory and cognitive functions.	t	\N
22592306	Poor sensitivity to the interaural time difference (ITD) constrains the ability of human bilateral cochlear implant users to listen in everyday noisy acoustic environments. ITD sensitivity to periodic pulse trains degrades sharply with increasing pulse rate but can be restored at high pulse rates by jittering the interpulse intervals in a binaurally coherent manner (Laback and Majdak. Binaural jitter improves interaural time-difference sensitivity of cochlear implantees at high pulse rates. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105: 814-817, 2008). We investigated the neural basis of the jitter effect by recording from single inferior colliculus (IC) neurons in bilaterally implanted, anesthetized cats. Neural responses to trains of biphasic pulses were measured as a function of pulse rate, jitter, and ITD. An effect of jitter on neural responses was most prominent for pulse rates above 300 pulses/s. High-rate periodic trains evoked only an onset response in most IC neurons, but introducing jitter increased ongoing firing rates in about half of these neurons. Neurons that had sustained responses to jittered high-rate pulse trains showed ITD tuning comparable with that produced by low-rate periodic pulse trains. Thus, jitter appears to improve neural ITD sensitivity by restoring sustained firing in many IC neurons. The effect of jitter on IC responses is qualitatively consistent with human psychophysics. Action potentials tended to occur reproducibly at sparse, preferred times across repeated presentations of high-rate jittered pulse trains. Spike triggered averaging of responses to jittered pulse trains revealed that firing was triggered by very short interpulse intervals. This suggests it may be possible to restore ITD sensitivity to periodic carriers by simply inserting short interpulse intervals at select times.	t	\N
22628458	Successful integration of auditory and visual inputs is crucial for both basic perceptual functions and for higher-order processes related to social cognition. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social cognition and are associated with abnormalities in sensory and perceptual processes. Several groups have reported that individuals with ASD are impaired in their ability to integrate socially relevant audiovisual (AV) information, and it has been suggested that this contributes to the higher-order social and cognitive deficits observed in ASD. However, successful integration of auditory and visual inputs also influences detection and perception of nonsocial stimuli, and integration deficits may impair earlier stages of information processing, with cascading downstream effects. To assess the integrity of basic AV integration, we recorded high-density electrophysiology from a cohort of high-functioning children with ASD (7-16 years) while they performed a simple AV reaction time task. Children with ASD showed considerably less behavioral facilitation to multisensory inputs, deficits that were paralleled by less effective neural integration. Evidence for processing differences relative to typically developing children was seen as early as 100 ms poststimulation, and topographic analysis suggested that children with ASD relied on different cortical networks during this early multisensory processing stage.	t	\N
22735387	Decreased blood hemoglobin (HbB) levels and anemia have been associated with abnormal brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAER). Lead (Pb) exposure has also been associated with anemia and aberrant BAER. This study investigated the relationship between HbB level and BAER wave latency and amplitude in Pb-exposed Andean children. Sixty-six children aged 2 to 15 years (mean age: 9.1; SD: 3.3) living in Pb-contaminated villages were screened for HbB levels, blood Pb (PbB) levels and BAER latencies and amplitudes. The mean HbB level observed in the study group was 11.9 g/dL (SD: 1.4; range: 8.6-14.8 g/dL). The mean HbB level corrected for altitude was 10.3g/dL (SD: 1.4; range: 6.9-13.1 g/dL), and suggestive of anemia. The mean PbB level was 49.3 μg/dL (SD: 30.1; range: 4.4-119.1 μg/dL) and indicative of Pb poisoning. Spearman rho correlation analyses revealed significant associations between the BAER absolute latencies and HbB level, indicating that as the HbB level decreased, the BAER wave latency increased. Children with low HbB levels (≤11 g/dL) showed significantly prolonged absolute latencies of waves I, II, III, IV and V compared to the children with normal HbB levels. Although a significant relationship between HbB and BAER waves was observed, no significant associations between PbB level and BAER parameters were found. Low hemoglobin levels may diminish auditory sensory-neural function, and is therefore an important variable to consider when assessing BAER in children with anemia and/or Pb exposure.	t	\N
22773777	Many neurons adapt their spike output to accommodate the prevailing sensory environment. Although such adaptation is thought to improve coding of relevant stimulus features, the relationship between adaptation at the neural and behavioral levels remains to be established. Here we describe improved discrimination performance for an auditory spatial cue (interaural time differences, ITDs) following adaptation to stimulus statistics. Physiological recordings in the midbrain of anesthetized guinea pigs and measurement of discrimination performance in humans both demonstrate improved coding of the most prevalent ITDs in a distribution, but with highest accuracy maintained for ITDs corresponding to frontal locations, suggesting the existence of a fovea for auditory space. A biologically plausible model accounting for the physiological data suggests that neural tuning is stabilized by inhibition to maintain high discriminability for frontal locations. The data support the notion that adaptive coding in the midbrain is a key element of behaviorally efficient sound localization in dynamic acoustic environments.	t	\N
22885999	Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tones that are self-initiated are reduced in their magnitude in comparison with ERPs to tones that are externally generated. This phenomenon has been taken as evidence for an efference copy of the motor command acting to suppress the sensory response. However, self-initiation provides a strong temporal cue for the stimulus which might also contribute to the ERP suppression for self-initiated tones. The current experiment sought to investigate the suppression of monaural tones by temporal cueing and also whether the addition of self-initiation enhanced this suppression. Lastly, the experiment sought to investigate the lateralisation of the ERP suppression via presenting these monaural tones to each ear respectively. We examined source waveforms extracted from the lateralised auditory cortices and measured the modulation of the N1 and P2 components by cueing and self-initiation. Self-initiation significantly reduced the amplitude of the N1 component. Temporal cueing without self-initiation significantly reduced the P2 component. There were no significant differences in the amplitude of either the N1 or the P2 between self-initiation and temporal cuing. There was a significant lateralisation effect on the N1-it being significantly larger contralateral to the ear of stimulation. There was no interaction between lateralisation and side of the temporal cue or side of self-initiation suggesting that the effects of self-initiation and temporal cuing are equal bilaterally. We conclude that a significant proportion of ERP suppression by self-initiation is a result of inherent temporal cueing.	t	\N
23071654	Selectively attending to task-relevant sounds whilst ignoring background noise is one of the most amazing feats performed by the human brain. Here, we studied the underlying neural mechanisms by recording magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses of 14 healthy human subjects while they performed a near-threshold auditory discrimination task vs. a visual control task of similar difficulty. The auditory stimuli consisted of notch-filtered continuous noise masker sounds, and of 1020-Hz target tones occasionally (p = 0.1) replacing 1000-Hz standard tones of 300-ms duration that were embedded at the center of the notches, the widths of which were parametrically varied. As a control for masker effects, tone-evoked responses were additionally recorded without masker sound. Selective attention to tones significantly increased the amplitude of the onset M100 response at ~100 ms to the standard tones during presence of the masker sounds especially with notches narrower than the critical band. Further, attention modulated sustained response most clearly at 300-400 ms time range from sound onset, with narrower notches than in case of the M100, thus selectively reducing the masker-induced suppression of the tone-evoked response. Our results show evidence of a multiple-stage filtering mechanism of sensory input in the human auditory cortex: 1) one at early (~100 ms) latencies bilaterally in posterior parts of the secondary auditory areas, and 2) adaptive filtering of attended sounds from task-irrelevant background masker at longer latency (~300 ms) in more medial auditory cortical regions, predominantly in the left hemisphere, enhancing processing of near-threshold sounds.	t	\N
23145143	It has been previously demonstrated by our group that a visual stimulus made of dynamically changing luminance evokes an echo or reverberation at ~10 Hz, lasting up to a second. In this study we aimed to reveal whether similar echoes also exist in the auditory modality. A dynamically changing auditory stimulus equivalent to the visual stimulus was designed and employed in two separate series of experiments, and the presence of reverberations was analyzed based on reverse correlations between stimulus sequences and EEG epochs. The first experiment directly compared visual and auditory stimuli: while previous findings of ~10 Hz visual echoes were verified, no similar echo was found in the auditory modality regardless of frequency. In the second experiment, we tested if auditory sequences would influence the visual echoes when they were congruent or incongruent with the visual sequences. However, the results in that case similarly did not reveal any auditory echoes, nor any change in the characteristics of visual echoes as a function of audio-visual congruence. The negative findings from these experiments suggest that brain oscillations do not equivalently affect early sensory processes in the visual and auditory modalities, and that alpha (8-13 Hz) oscillations play a special role in vision.	t	\N
23251704	Cognitive task demands in one sensory modality (T1) can have beneficial effects on a secondary task (T2) in a different modality, due to reduced top-down control needed to inhibit the secondary task, as well as crossmodal spread of attention. This contrasts findings of cognitive load compromising a secondary modality's processing. We manipulated cognitive load within one modality (visual) and studied the consequences of cognitive demands on secondary (auditory) processing. 15 healthy participants underwent a simultaneous EEG-fMRI experiment. Data from 8 participants were obtained outside the scanner for validation purposes. The primary task (T1) was to respond to a visual working memory (WM) task with four conditions, while the secondary task (T2) consisted of an auditory oddball stream, which participants were asked to ignore. The fMRI results revealed fronto-parietal WM network activations in response to T1 task manipulation. This was accompanied by significantly higher reaction times and lower hit rates with increasing task difficulty which confirmed successful manipulation of WM load. Amplitudes of auditory evoked potentials, representing fundamental auditory processing showed a continuous augmentation which demonstrated a systematic relation to cross-modal cognitive load. With increasing WM load, primary auditory cortices were increasingly deactivated while psychophysiological interaction results suggested the emergence of auditory cortices connectivity with visual WM regions. These results suggest differential effects of crossmodal attention on fundamental auditory processing. We suggest a continuous allocation of resources to brain regions processing primary tasks when challenging the central executive under high cognitive load.	t	\N
23281832	If we initiate a sound by our own motor behavior, the N1 component of the auditory event-related brain potential (ERP) that the sound elicits is attenuated compared to the N1 elicited by the same sound when it is initiated externally. It has been suggested that this N1 suppression results from an internal predictive mechanism that is in the service of discriminating the sensory consequences of one's own actions from other sensory input. As the N1-suppression effect is becoming a popular approach to investigate predictive processing in cognitive and social neuroscience, it is important to exclude an alternative interpretation not related to prediction. According to the attentional account, the N1 suppression is due to a difference in the allocation of attention between self- and externally-initiated sounds. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated the allocation of attention to the sounds in different blocks: Attention was directed either to the sounds, to the own motor acts or to visual stimuli. If attention causes the N1-suppression effect, then manipulating attention should affect the effect for self-initiated sounds. We found N1 suppression in all conditions. The N1 per se was affected by attention, but there was no interaction between attention and self-initiation effects. This implies that self-initiation N1 effects are not caused by attention. The present results support the assumption that the N1-suppression effect for self-initiated sounds indicates the operation of an internal predictive mechanism. Furthermore, while attention had an influence on the N1a, N1b, and N1c components, the N1-suppression effect was confined to the N1b and N1c subcomponents suggesting that the major contribution to the auditory N1-suppression effect is circumscribed to late N1 components.	t	\N
23301775	Using electrophysiology, we have examined two questions in relation to musical training - namely, whether it enhances sensory encoding of the human voice and whether it improves the ability to ignore irrelevant auditory change. Participants performed an auditory distraction task, in which they identified each sound as either short (350 ms) or long (550 ms) and ignored a change in timbre of the sounds. Sounds consisted of a male and a female voice saying a neutral sound [a], and of a cello and a French Horn playing an F3 note. In some blocks, musical sounds occurred on 80% of trials, while voice sounds on 20% of trials. In other blocks, the reverse was true. Participants heard naturally recorded sounds in half of experimental blocks and their spectrally-rotated versions in the other half. Regarding voice perception, we found that musicians had a larger N1 event-related potential component not only to vocal sounds but also to their never before heard spectrally-rotated versions. We therefore conclude that musical training is associated with a general improvement in the early neural encoding of complex sounds. Regarding the ability to ignore irrelevant auditory change, musicians' accuracy tended to suffer less from the change in timbre of the sounds, especially when deviants were musical notes. This behavioral finding was accompanied by a marginally larger re-orienting negativity in musicians, suggesting that their advantage may lie in a more efficient disengagement of attention from the distracting auditory dimension.	t	\N
23316957	There is an accumulating body of evidence indicating that neuronal functional specificity to basic sensory stimulation is mutable and subject to experience. Although fMRI experiments have investigated changes in brain activity after relative to before perceptual learning, brain activity during perceptual learning has not been explored. This work investigated brain activity related to auditory frequency discrimination learning using a variational Bayesian approach for source localization, during simultaneous EEG and fMRI recording. We investigated whether the practice effects are determined solely by activity in stimulus-driven mechanisms or whether high-level attentional mechanisms, which are linked to the perceptual task, control the learning process. The results of fMRI analyses revealed significant attention and learning related activity in left and right superior temporal gyrus STG as well as the left inferior frontal gyrus IFG. Current source localization of simultaneously recorded EEG data was estimated using a variational Bayesian method. Analysis of current localized to the left inferior frontal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus revealed gamma band activity correlated with behavioral performance. Rapid improvement in task performance is accompanied by plastic changes in the sensory cortex as well as superior areas gated by selective attention. Together the fMRI and EEG results suggest that gamma band activity in the right STG and left IFG plays an important role during perceptual learning.	t	\N
23326548	Auditory distraction is a failure to maintain focus on a stream of sounds. We investigated the neural correlates of distraction in a selective-listening pitch-discrimination task with high (competing speech) or low (white noise) distraction. High-distraction impaired performance and reduced the N1 peak of the auditory Event-Related Potential evoked by probe tones. In a series of simulations, we explored two theories to account for this effect: disruption of sensory gain or a disruption of inter-trial phase consistency. When compared to these simulations, our data were consistent with both effects of distraction. Distraction reduced the gain of the auditory evoked potential and disrupted the inter-trial phase consistency with which the brain responds to stimulus events. Tones at a non-target, unattended frequency were more susceptible to the effects of distraction than tones within an attended frequency band.	t	\N
23616340	Previous studies on crossmodal spatial orienting typically used simple and stereotyped stimuli in the absence of any meaningful context. This study combined computational models, behavioural measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate audiovisual spatial interactions in naturalistic settings. We created short videos portraying everyday life situations that included a lateralised visual event and a co-occurring sound, either on the same or on the opposite side of space. Subjects viewed the videos with or without eye-movements allowed (overt or covert orienting). For each video, visual and auditory saliency maps were used to index the strength of stimulus-driven signals, and eye-movements were used as a measure of the efficacy of the audiovisual events for spatial orienting. Results showed that visual salience modulated activity in higher-order visual areas, whereas auditory salience modulated activity in the superior temporal cortex. Auditory salience modulated activity also in the posterior parietal cortex, but only when audiovisual stimuli occurred on the same side of space (multisensory spatial congruence). Orienting efficacy affected activity in the visual cortex, within the same regions modulated by visual salience. These patterns of activation were comparable in overt and covert orienting conditions. Our results demonstrate that, during viewing of complex multisensory stimuli, activity in sensory areas reflects both stimulus-driven signals and their efficacy for spatial orienting; and that the posterior parietal cortex combines spatial information about the visual and the auditory modality.	t	\N
23624493	Findings in animal models demonstrate that activity within hierarchically early sensory cortical regions can be modulated by cross-sensory inputs through resetting of the phase of ongoing intrinsic neural oscillations. Here, subdural recordings evaluated whether phase resetting by auditory inputs would impact multisensory integration processes in human visual cortex. Results clearly showed auditory-driven phase reset in visual cortices and, in some cases, frank auditory event-related potentials (ERP) were also observed over these regions. Further, when audiovisual bisensory stimuli were presented, this led to robust multisensory integration effects which were observed in both the ERP and in measures of phase concentration. These results extend findings from animal models to human visual cortices, and highlight the impact of cross-sensory phase resetting by a non-primary stimulus on multisensory integration in ostensibly unisensory cortices.	t	\N
23647558	In the visual modality, perceptual demand on a goal-directed task has been shown to modulate the extent to which irrelevant information can be disregarded at a sensory-perceptual stage of processing. In the auditory modality, the effect of perceptual demand on neural representations of task-irrelevant sounds is unclear. We compared simultaneous ERPs and fMRI responses associated with task-irrelevant sounds across parametrically modulated perceptual task demands in a dichotic-listening paradigm. Participants performed a signal detection task in one ear (Attend ear) while ignoring task-irrelevant syllable sounds in the other ear (Ignore ear). Results revealed modulation of syllable processing by auditory perceptual demand in an ROI in middle left superior temporal gyrus and in negative ERP activity 130-230 msec post stimulus onset. Increasing the perceptual demand in the Attend ear was associated with a reduced neural response in both fMRI and ERP to task-irrelevant sounds. These findings are in support of a selection model whereby ongoing perceptual demands modulate task-irrelevant sound processing in auditory cortex.	t	\N
23664703	Both faces and voices are rich in socially-relevant information, which humans are remarkably adept at extracting, including a person's identity, age, gender, affective state, personality, etc. Here, we review accumulating evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies which suggest that the cognitive and neural processing mechanisms engaged by perceiving faces or voices are highly similar, despite the very different nature of their sensory input. The similarity between the two mechanisms likely facilitates the multi-modal integration of facial and vocal information during everyday social interactions. These findings emphasize a parsimonious principle of cerebral organization, where similar computational problems in different modalities are solved using similar solutions.	t	\N
23827717	Learning and maintaining the sounds we use in vocal communication require accurate perception of the sounds we hear performed by others and feedback-dependent imitation of those sounds to produce our own vocalizations. Understanding how the central nervous system integrates auditory and vocal-motor information to enable communication is a fundamental goal of systems neuroscience, and insights into the mechanisms of those processes will profoundly enhance clinical therapies for communication disorders. Gaining the high-resolution insight necessary to define the circuits and cellular mechanisms underlying human vocal communication is presently impractical. Songbirds are the best animal model of human speech, and this review highlights recent insights into the neural basis of auditory perception and feedback-dependent imitation in those animals. Neural correlates of song perception are present in auditory areas, and those correlates are preserved in the auditory responses of downstream neurons that are also active when the bird sings. Initial tests indicate that singing-related activity in those downstream neurons is associated with vocal-motor performance as opposed to the bird simply hearing itself sing. Therefore, action potentials related to auditory perception and action potentials related to vocal performance are co-localized in individual neurons. Conceptual models of song learning involve comparison of vocal commands and the associated auditory feedback to compute an error signal that is used to guide refinement of subsequent song performances, yet the sites of that comparison remain unknown. Convergence of sensory and motor activity onto individual neurons points to a possible mechanism through which auditory and vocal-motor signals may be linked to enable learning and maintenance of the sounds used in vocal communication. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Communication Sounds and the Brain: New Directions and Perspectives".	t	\N
23988583	Experience-dependent characteristics of auditory function, especially with regard to speech-evoked auditory neurophysiology, have garnered increasing attention in recent years. This interest stems from both pragmatic and theoretical concerns as it bears implications for the prevention and remediation of language-based learning impairment in addition to providing insight into mechanisms engendering experience-dependent changes in human sensory function. Musicians provide an attractive model for studying the experience-dependency of auditory processing in humans due to their distinctive neural enhancements compared to nonmusicians. We have only recently begun to address whether these enhancements are observable early in life, during the initial years of music training when the auditory system is under rapid development, as well as later in life, after the onset of the aging process. Here we review neural enhancements in musically trained individuals across the life span in the context of cellular mechanisms that underlie learning, identified in animal models. Musicians' subcortical physiologic enhancements are interpreted according to a cognitive framework for auditory learning, providing a model in which to study mechanisms of experience-dependent changes in human auditory function.	t	\N
24072639	Neurobiological underpinnings of unusual sensory features in individuals with autism are unknown. Event-related potentials elicited by task-irrelevant sounds were used to elucidate neural correlates of auditory processing and associations with three common sensory response patterns (hyperresponsiveness; hyporesponsiveness; sensory seeking). Twenty-eight children with autism and 39 typically developing children (4-12 year-olds) completed an auditory oddball paradigm. Results revealed marginally attenuated P1 and N2 to standard tones and attenuated P3a to novel sounds in autism versus controls. Exploratory analyses suggested that within the autism group, attenuated N2 and P3a amplitudes were associated with greater sensory seeking behaviors for specific ranges of P1 responses. Findings suggest that attenuated early sensory as well as later attention-orienting neural responses to stimuli may underlie selective sensory features via complex mechanisms.	t	\N
24119225	Humans are able to extract regularities from complex auditory scenes in order to form perceptually meaningful elements. It has been shown previously that this process depends critically on both the temporal integration of the sensory input over time and the degree of frequency separation between concurrent sound sources. Our goal was to examine the relationship between these two aspects by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG). To achieve this aim, we combined time-frequency analysis on a sensor space level with source analysis. Our paradigm consisted of asymmetric ABA-tone triplets wherein the B-tones were presented temporally closer to the first A-tones, providing different tempi within the same sequence. Participants attended to the slowest B-rhythm whilst the frequency separation between tones was manipulated (0-, 2-, 4- and 10-semitones). The results revealed that the asymmetric ABA-triplets spontaneously elicited periodic-sustained responses corresponding to the temporal distribution of the A-B and B-A tone intervals in all conditions. Moreover, when attending to the B-tones, the neural representations of the A- and B-streams were both detectable in the scenarios which allow perceptual streaming (2-, 4- and 10-semitones). Alongside this, the steady-state responses tuned to the presentation of the B-tones enhanced significantly with increase of the frequency separation between tones. However, the strength of the B-tones related steady-state responses dominated the strength of the A-tones responses in the 10-semitones condition. Conversely, the representation of the A-tones dominated the B-tones in the cases of 2- and 4-semitones conditions, in which a greater effort was required for completing the task. Additionally, the P1 evoked fields' component following the B-tones increased in magnitude with the increase of inter-tonal frequency difference. The enhancement of the evoked fields in the source space, along with the B-tones related activity of the time-frequency results, likely reflect the selective enhancement of the attended B-stream. The results also suggested a dissimilar efficiency of the temporal integration of separate streams depending on the degree of frequency separation between the sounds. Overall, the present findings suggest that the neural effects of auditory streaming could be directly captured in the time-frequency spectrum at the sensor-space level.	t	\N
24314010	Auditory perceptual learning persistently modifies neural networks in the central nervous system. Central auditory processing comprises a hierarchy of sound analysis and integration, which transforms an acoustical signal into a meaningful object for perception. Based on latencies and source locations of auditory evoked responses, we investigated which stage of central processing undergoes neuroplastic changes when gaining auditory experience during passive listening and active perceptual training. Young healthy volunteers participated in a five-day training program to identify two pre-voiced versions of the stop-consonant syllable 'ba', which is an unusual speech sound to English listeners. Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) brain responses were recorded during two pre-training and one post-training sessions. Underlying cortical sources were localized, and the temporal dynamics of auditory evoked responses were analyzed. After both passive listening and active training, the amplitude of the P2m wave with latency of 200 ms increased considerably. By this latency, the integration of stimulus features into an auditory object for further conscious perception is considered to be complete. Therefore the P2m changes were discussed in the light of auditory object representation. Moreover, P2m sources were localized in anterior auditory association cortex, which is part of the antero-ventral pathway for object identification. The amplitude of the earlier N1m wave, which is related to processing of sensory information, did not change over the time course of the study. The P2m amplitude increase and its persistence over time constitute a neuroplastic change. The P2m gain likely reflects enhanced object representation after stimulus experience and training, which enables listeners to improve their ability for scrutinizing fine differences in pre-voicing time. Different trajectories of brain and behaviour changes suggest that the preceding effect of a P2m increase relates to brain processes, which are necessary precursors of perceptual learning. Cautious discussion is required when interpreting the finding of a P2 amplitude increase between recordings before and after training and learning.	t	\N
24423729	Across the animal kingdom, sensations resulting from an animal's own actions are processed differently from sensations resulting from external sources, with self-generated sensations being suppressed. A forward model has been proposed to explain this process across sensorimotor domains. During vocalization, reduced processing of one's own speech is believed to result from a comparison of speech sounds to corollary discharges of intended speech production generated from efference copies of commands to speak. Until now, anatomical and functional evidence validating this model in humans has been indirect. Using EEG with anatomical MRI to facilitate source localization, we demonstrate that inferior frontal gyrus activity during the 300ms before speaking was associated with suppressed processing of speech sounds in auditory cortex around 100ms after speech onset (N1). These findings indicate that an efference copy from speech areas in prefrontal cortex is transmitted to auditory cortex, where it is used to suppress processing of anticipated speech sounds. About 100ms after N1, a subsequent auditory cortical component (P2) was not suppressed during talking. The combined N1 and P2 effects suggest that although sensory processing is suppressed as reflected in N1, perceptual gaps may be filled as reflected in the lack of P2 suppression, explaining the discrepancy between sensory suppression and preserved sensory experiences. These findings, coupled with the coherence between relevant brain regions before and during speech, provide new mechanistic understanding of the complex interactions between action planning and sensory processing that provide for differentiated tagging and monitoring of one's own speech, processes disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.	t	\N
24695717	Detecting the location of salient sounds in the environment rests on the brain's ability to use differences in sounds arriving at both ears. Functional neuroimaging studies in humans indicate that the left and right auditory hemispaces are coded asymmetrically, with a rightward attentional bias that reflects spatial attention in vision. Neuropsychological observations in patients with spatial neglect have led to the formulation of two competing models: the orientation bias and right-hemisphere dominance models. The orientation bias model posits a symmetrical mapping between one side of the sensorium and the contralateral hemisphere, with mutual inhibition of the ipsilateral hemisphere. The right-hemisphere dominance model introduces a functional asymmetry in the brain's coding of space: the left hemisphere represents the right side, whereas the right hemisphere represents both sides of the sensorium. We used Dynamic Causal Modeling of effective connectivity and Bayesian model comparison to adjudicate between these alternative network architectures, based on human electroencephalographic data acquired during an auditory location oddball paradigm. Our results support a hemispheric asymmetry in a frontoparietal network that conforms to the right-hemisphere dominance model. We show that, within this frontoparietal network, forward connectivity increases selectively in the hemisphere contralateral to the side of sensory stimulation. We interpret this finding in light of hierarchical predictive coding as a selective increase in attentional gain, which is mediated by feedforward connections that carry precision-weighted prediction errors during perceptual inference. This finding supports the disconnection hypothesis of unilateral neglect and has implications for theories of its etiology.	t	\N
24956028	Listening situations with multiple talkers or background noise are common in everyday communication and are particularly demanding for older adults. Here we review current research on auditory perception in aging individuals in order to gain insights into the challenges of listening under noisy conditions. Informationally rich temporal structure in auditory signals--over a range of time scales from milliseconds to seconds--renders temporal processing central to perception in the auditory domain. We discuss the role of temporal structure in auditory processing, in particular from a perspective relevant for hearing in background noise, and focusing on sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception. Interestingly, these auditory processes, usually studied in an independent manner, show considerable overlap of processing time scales, even though each has its own 'privileged' temporal regimes. By integrating perspectives on temporal structure processing in these three areas of investigation, we aim to highlight similarities typically not recognized.	t	\N
25245785	Atypical processing and integration of sensory inputs are hypothesized to play a role in unusual sensory reactions and social-cognitive deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reports on the relationship between objective metrics of sensory processing and clinical symptoms, however, are surprisingly sparse. Here we examined the relationship between neurophysiological assays of sensory processing and (1) autism severity and (2) sensory sensitivities, in individuals with ASD aged 6-17. Multiple linear regression indicated significant associations between neural markers of auditory processing and multisensory integration, and autism severity. No such relationships were apparent for clinical measures of visual/auditory sensitivities. These data support that aberrant early sensory processing contributes to autism symptoms, and reveal the potential of electrophysiology to objectively subtype autism.	t	\N
25259525	Auditory selective attention plays an essential role for identifying sounds of interest in a scene, but the neural underpinnings are still incompletely understood. Recent findings demonstrate that neural activity that is time-locked to a particular amplitude-modulation (AM) is enhanced in the auditory cortex when the modulated stream of sounds is selectively attended to under sensory competition with other streams. However, the target sounds used in the previous studies differed not only in their AM, but also in other sound features, such as carrier frequency or location. Thus, it remains uncertain whether the observed enhancements reflect AM-selective attention. The present study aims at dissociating the effect of AM frequency on response enhancement in auditory cortex by using an ongoing auditory stimulus that contains two competing targets differing exclusively in their AM frequency. Electroencephalography results showed a sustained response enhancement for auditory attention compared to visual attention, but not for AM-selective attention (attended AM frequency vs. ignored AM frequency). In contrast, the response to the ignored AM frequency was enhanced, although a brief trend toward response enhancement occurred during the initial 15 s. Together with the previous findings, these observations indicate that selective enhancement of attended AMs in auditory cortex is adaptive under sustained AM-selective attention. This finding has implications for our understanding of cortical mechanisms for feature-based attentional gain control.	t	\N
25535356	When social animals communicate, the onset of informative content in one modality varies considerably relative to the other, such as when visual orofacial movements precede a vocalization. These naturally occurring asynchronies do not disrupt intelligibility or perceptual coherence. However, they occur on time scales where they likely affect integrative neuronal activity in ways that have remained unclear, especially for hierarchically downstream regions in which neurons exhibit temporally imprecise but highly selective responses to communication signals. To address this, we exploited naturally occurring face- and voice-onset asynchronies in primate vocalizations. Using these as stimuli we recorded cortical oscillations and neuronal spiking responses from functional MRI (fMRI)-localized voice-sensitive cortex in the anterior temporal lobe of macaques. We show that the onset of the visual face stimulus resets the phase of low-frequency oscillations, and that the face-voice asynchrony affects the prominence of two key types of neuronal multisensory responses: enhancement or suppression. Our findings show a three-way association between temporal delays in audiovisual communication signals, phase-resetting of ongoing oscillations, and the sign of multisensory responses. The results reveal how natural onset asynchronies in cross-sensory inputs regulate network oscillations and neuronal excitability in the voice-sensitive cortex of macaques, a suggested animal model for human voice areas. These findings also advance predictions on the impact of multisensory input on neuronal processes in face areas and other brain regions.	t	\N
25948269	Sensory processing involves identification of stimulus features, but also integration with the surrounding sensory and cognitive context. Previous work in animals and humans has shown fine-scale sensitivity to context in the form of learned knowledge about the statistics of the sensory environment, including relative probabilities of discrete units in a stream of sequential auditory input. These statistics are a defining characteristic of one of the most important sequential signals humans encounter: speech. For speech, extensive exposure to a language tunes listeners to the statistics of sound sequences. To address how speech sequence statistics are neurally encoded, we used high-resolution direct cortical recordings from human lateral superior temporal cortex as subjects listened to words and nonwords with varying transition probabilities between sound segments. In addition to their sensitivity to acoustic features (including contextual features, such as coarticulation), we found that neural responses dynamically encoded the language-level probability of both preceding and upcoming speech sounds. Transition probability first negatively modulated neural responses, followed by positive modulation of neural responses, consistent with coordinated predictive and retrospective recognition processes, respectively. Furthermore, transition probability encoding was different for real English words compared with nonwords, providing evidence for online interactions with high-order linguistic knowledge. These results demonstrate that sensory processing of deeply learned stimuli involves integrating physical stimulus features with their contextual sequential structure. Despite not being consciously aware of phoneme sequence statistics, listeners use this information to process spoken input and to link low-level acoustic representations with linguistic information about word identity and meaning.	t	\N
22803512	Existing 67-channel event-related potentials, obtained during recognition and working memory paradigms with words or faces, were used to examine early visual processing in schizophrenia patients prone to auditory hallucinations (AH, n = 26) or not (NH, n = 49) and healthy controls (HC, n = 46). Current source density (CSD) transforms revealed distinct, strongly left- (words) or right-lateralized (faces; N170) inferior-temporal N1 sinks (150 ms) in each group. N1 was quantified by temporal PCA of peak-adjusted CSDs. For words and faces in both paradigms, N1 was substantially reduced in AH compared with NH and HC, who did not differ from each other. The difference in N1 between AH and NH was not due to overall symptom severity or performance accuracy, with both groups showing comparable memory deficits. Our findings extend prior reports of reduced auditory N1 in AH, suggesting a broader early perceptual integration deficit that is not limited to the auditory modality.	t	\N
25231612	Atypical medial olivocochlear (MOC) feedback from brain stem to cochlea has been proposed to play a role in tinnitus, but even well-constructed tests of this idea have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, it was hypothesized that low sound tolerance (mild to moderate hyperacusis), which can accompany tinnitus or occur on its own, might contribute to the inconsistency. Sound-level tolerance (SLT) was assessed in subjects (all men) with clinically normal or near-normal thresholds to form threshold-, age-, and sex-matched groups: 1) no tinnitus/high SLT, 2) no tinnitus/low SLT, 3) tinnitus/high SLT, and 4) tinnitus/low SLT. MOC function was measured from the ear canal as the change in magnitude of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) elicited by broadband noise presented to the contralateral ear. The noise reduced DPOAE magnitude in all groups ("contralateral suppression"), but significantly more reduction occurred in groups with tinnitus and/or low SLT, indicating hyperresponsiveness of the MOC system compared with the group with no tinnitus/high SLT. The results suggest hyperresponsiveness of the interneurons of the MOC system residing in the cochlear nucleus and/or MOC neurons themselves. The present data, combined with previous human and animal data, indicate that neural pathways involving every major division of the cochlear nucleus manifest hyperactivity and/or hyperresponsiveness in tinnitus and/or low SLT. The overactivation may develop in each pathway separately. However, a more parsimonious hypothesis is that top-down neuromodulation is the driving force behind ubiquitous overactivation of the auditory brain stem and may correspond to attentional spotlighting on the auditory domain in tinnitus and hyperacusis.	t	\N
21909378	Speech is the most important form of human communication but ambient sounds and competing talkers often degrade its acoustics. Fortunately the brain can use visual information, especially its highly precise spatial information, to improve speech comprehension in noisy environments. Previous studies have demonstrated that audiovisual integration depends strongly on spatiotemporal factors. However, some integrative phenomena such as McGurk interference persist even with gross spatial disparities, suggesting that spatial alignment is not necessary for robust integration of audiovisual place-of-articulation cues. It is therefore unclear how speech-cues interact with audiovisual spatial integration mechanisms. Here, we combine two well established psychophysical phenomena, the McGurk effect and the ventriloquist's illusion, to explore this dependency. Our results demonstrate that conflicting spatial cues may not interfere with audiovisual integration of speech, but conflicting speech-cues can impede integration in space. This suggests a direct but asymmetrical influence between ventral 'what' and dorsal 'where' pathways.	t	\N
22390292	Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in a second modality. Such multisensory integration is highly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the different sensory inputs, with perceptual binding occurring within a limited range of asynchronies known as the temporal binding window (TBW). Previous studies have shown that this window is highly variable across individuals, but it is unclear how these variations in the TBW relate to an individual's ability to integrate multisensory cues. Here we provide evidence linking individual differences in multisensory temporal processes to differences in the individual's audiovisual integration of illusory stimuli. Our data provide strong evidence that the temporal processing of multiple sensory signals and the merging of multiple signals into a single, unified perception, are highly related. Specifically, the width of right side of an individuals' TBW, where the auditory stimulus follows the visual, is significantly correlated with the strength of illusory percepts, as indexed via both an increase in the strength of binding synchronous sensory signals and in an improvement in correctly dissociating asynchronous signals. These findings are discussed in terms of their possible neurobiological basis, relevance to the development of sensory integration, and possible importance for clinical conditions in which there is growing evidence that multisensory integration is compromised.	t	\N
23664001	The sight and sound of a person speaking or a ball bouncing may seem simultaneous, but their corresponding neural signals are spread out over time as they arrive at different multisensory brain sites. How subjective timing relates to such neural timing remains a fundamental neuroscientific and philosophical puzzle. A dominant assumption is that temporal coherence is achieved by sensory resynchronisation or recalibration across asynchronous brain events. This assumption is easily confirmed by estimating subjective audiovisual timing for groups of subjects, which is on average similar across different measures and stimuli, and approximately veridical. But few studies have examined normal and pathological individual differences in such measures. Case PH, with lesions in pons and basal ganglia, hears people speak before seeing their lips move. Temporal order judgements (TOJs) confirmed this: voices had to lag lip-movements (by ∼200 msec) to seem synchronous to PH. Curiously, voices had to lead lips (also by ∼200 msec) to maximise the McGurk illusion (a measure of audiovisual speech integration). On average across these measures, PH's timing was therefore still veridical. Age-matched control participants showed similar discrepancies. Indeed, normal individual differences in TOJ and McGurk timing correlated negatively: subjects needing an auditory lag for subjective simultaneity needed an auditory lead for maximal McGurk, and vice versa. This generalised to the Stream-Bounce illusion. Such surprising antagonism seems opposed to good sensory resynchronisation, yet average timing across tasks was still near-veridical. Our findings reveal remarkable disunity of audiovisual timing within and between subjects. To explain this we propose that the timing of audiovisual signals within different brain mechanisms is perceived relative to the average timing across mechanisms. Such renormalisation fully explains the curious antagonistic relationship between disparate timing estimates in PH and healthy participants, and how they can still perceive the timing of external events correctly, on average.	t	\N
24974346	We investigated whether visual speech fills in non-intact auditory speech (excised consonant onsets) in typically developing children from 4 to 14 years of age. Stimuli with the excised auditory onsets were presented in the audiovisual (AV) and auditory-only (AO) modes. A visual speech fill-in effect occurs when listeners experience hearing the same non-intact auditory stimulus (e.g., /-b/ag) as different depending on the presence/absence of visual speech such as hearing /bag/ in the AV mode but hearing /ag/ in the AO mode. We quantified the visual speech fill-in effect by the difference in the number of correct consonant onset responses between the modes. We found that easy visual speech cues /b/ provided greater filling in than difficult cues /g/. Only older children benefited from difficult visual speech cues, whereas all children benefited from easy visual speech cues, although 4- and 5-year-olds did not benefit as much as older children. To explore task demands, we compared results on our new task with those on the McGurk task. The influence of visual speech was uniquely associated with age and vocabulary abilities for the visual speech fill--in effect but was uniquely associated with speechreading skills for the McGurk effect. This dissociation implies that visual speech--as processed by children-is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon underpinned by heterogeneous abilities. These results emphasize that children perceive a speaker's utterance rather than the auditory stimulus per se. In children, as in adults, there is more to speech perception than meets the ear.	t	\N
24996043	The brain improves speech processing through the integration of audiovisual (AV) signals. Situations involving AV speech integration may be crudely dichotomized into those where auditory and visual inputs contain (1) equivalent, complementary signals (validating AV speech) or (2) inconsistent, different signals (conflicting AV speech). This simple framework may allow the systematic examination of broad commonalities and differences between AV neural processes engaged by various experimental paradigms frequently used to study AV speech integration. We conducted an activation likelihood estimation metaanalysis of 22 functional imaging studies comprising 33 experiments, 311 subjects, and 347 foci examining "conflicting" versus "validating" AV speech. Experimental paradigms included content congruency, timing synchrony, and perceptual measures, such as the McGurk effect or synchrony judgments, across AV speech stimulus types (sublexical to sentence). Colocalization of conflicting AV speech experiments revealed consistency across at least two contrast types (e.g., synchrony and congruency) in a network of dorsal stream regions in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. There was consistency across all contrast types (synchrony, congruency, and percept) in the bilateral posterior superior/middle temporal cortex. Although fewer studies were available, validating AV speech experiments were localized to other regions, such as ventral stream visual areas in the occipital and inferior temporal cortex. These results suggest that while equivalent, complementary AV speech signals may evoke activity in regions related to the corroboration of sensory input, conflicting AV speech signals recruit widespread dorsal stream areas likely involved in the resolution of conflicting sensory signals.	t	\N
20541597	Auditory perceptual 'restoration' occurs when the auditory system restores an occluded or masked sound of interest. Behavioral work on auditory restoration in humans began over 50 years ago using it to model a noisy environmental scene with competing sounds. It has become clear that not only humans experience auditory restoration: restoration has been broadly conserved in many species. Behavioral studies in humans and animals provide a necessary foundation to link the insights being obtained from human EEG and fMRI to those from animal neurophysiology. The aggregate of data resulting from multiple approaches across species has begun to clarify the neuronal bases of auditory restoration. Different types of neural responses supporting restoration have been found, supportive of multiple mechanisms working within a species. Yet a general principle has emerged that responses correlated with restoration mimic the response that would have been given to the uninterrupted sound of interest. Using the same technology to study different species will help us to better harness animal models of 'auditory scene analysis' to clarify the conserved neural mechanisms shaping the perceptual organization of sound and to advance strategies to improve hearing in natural environmental settings.	t	\N
20826671	Processing of complex acoustic scenes depends critically on the temporal integration of sensory information as sounds evolve naturally over time. It has been previously speculated that this process is guided by both innate mechanisms of temporal processing in the auditory system, as well as top-down mechanisms of attention and possibly other schema-based processes. In an effort to unravel the neural underpinnings of these processes and their role in scene analysis, we combine magnetoencephalography (MEG) with behavioral measures in humans in the context of polyrhythmic tone sequences. While maintaining unchanged sensory input, we manipulate subjects' attention to one of two competing rhythmic streams in the same sequence. The results reveal that the neural representation of the attended rhythm is significantly enhanced in both its steady-state power and spatial phase coherence relative to its unattended state, closely correlating with its perceptual detectability for each listener. Interestingly, the data reveal a differential efficiency of rhythmic rates of the order of few hertz during the streaming process, closely following known neural and behavioral measures of temporal modulation sensitivity in the auditory system. These findings establish a direct link between known temporal modulation tuning in the auditory system (particularly at the level of auditory cortex) and the temporal integration of perceptual features in a complex acoustic scene, while mediated by processes of attention.	t	\N
20844143	Segregation of concurrent sounds in complex acoustic environments is a fundamental feature of auditory scene analysis. A powerful cue used by the auditory system to segregate concurrent sounds, such as speakers' voices at a cocktail party, is inharmonicity. This can be demonstrated when a component of a harmonic complex tone is perceived as a separate tone "popping out" from the complex as a whole when it is sufficiently mistuned from its harmonic value. The neural bases of perceptual "pop out" of mistuned harmonics are unclear. We recorded multiunit activity from primary auditory cortex (A1) of behaving monkeys elicited by harmonic complex tones that were either "in tune" or that contained a mistuned third harmonic set at the best frequency of the neural populations. Responses to mistuned sounds were enhanced relative to responses to "in-tune" sounds, thus correlating with the enhanced perceptual salience of the mistuned component. Consistent with human psychophysics of "pop out," response enhancements increased with the degree of mistuning, were maximal for neural populations tuned to the frequency of the mistuned component, and were not observed under comparable stimulus conditions that do not elicit perceptual "pop out." Mistuning was also associated with changes in neuronal temporal response patterns phase locked to "beats" in the stimuli. Intracortical auditory evoked potentials paralleled noninvasive neurophysiological correlates of perceptual "pop out" in humans, further augmenting the translational relevance of the results. Findings suggest two complementary neural mechanisms for "pop out," based on the detection of local differences in activation level or coherence of temporal response patterns across A1.	t	\N
20975559	Analysis of the auditory environment, source identification and vocal communication all require efficient brain mechanisms for disambiguating, representing and understanding complex natural sounds as 'auditory objects'. Failure of these mechanisms leads to a diverse spectrum of clinical deficits. Here we review current evidence concerning the phenomenology, mechanisms and brain substrates of auditory agnosias and related disorders of auditory object processing. Analysis of lesions causing auditory object deficits has revealed certain broad anatomical correlations: deficient parsing of the auditory scene is associated with lesions involving the parieto-temporal junction, while selective disorders of sound recognition occur with more anterior temporal lobe or extra-temporal damage. Distributed neural networks have been increasingly implicated in the pathogenesis of such disorders as developmental dyslexia, congenital amusia and tinnitus. Auditory category deficits may arise from defective interaction of spectrotemporal encoding and executive and mnestic processes. Dedicated brain mechanisms are likely to process specialized sound objects such as voices and melodies. Emerging empirical evidence suggests a clinically relevant, hierarchical and modular neuropsychological model of auditory object processing that provides a framework for understanding auditory agnosias and makes specific predictions to direct future work.	t	\N
21196054	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds and follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we argue instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed towards a particular feature (e.g. pitch) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g. timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources.	t	\N
21209201	Auditory figure-ground segregation, listeners' ability to selectively hear out a sound of interest from a background of competing sounds, is a fundamental aspect of scene analysis. In contrast to the disordered acoustic environment we experience during everyday listening, most studies of auditory segregation have used relatively simple, temporally regular signals. We developed a new figure-ground stimulus that incorporates stochastic variation of the figure and background that captures the rich spectrotemporal complexity of natural acoustic scenes. Figure and background signals overlap in spectrotemporal space, but vary in the statistics of fluctuation, such that the only way to extract the figure is by integrating the patterns over time and frequency. Our behavioral results demonstrate that human listeners are remarkably sensitive to the appearance of such figures. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, aimed at investigating preattentive, stimulus-driven, auditory segregation mechanisms, naive subjects listened to these stimuli while performing an irrelevant task. Results demonstrate significant activations in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the superior temporal sulcus related to bottom-up, stimulus-driven figure-ground decomposition. We did not observe any significant activation in the primary auditory cortex. Our results support a role for automatic, bottom-up mechanisms in the IPS in mediating stimulus-driven, auditory figure-ground segregation, which is consistent with accumulating evidence implicating the IPS in structuring sensory input and perceptual organization.	t	\N
21355664	The effect of context on the identification of common environmental sounds (e.g., dogs barking or cars honking) was tested by embedding them in familiar auditory background scenes (street ambience, restaurants). Initial results with subjects trained on both the scenes and the sounds to be identified showed a significant advantage of about five percentage points better accuracy for sounds that were contextually incongruous with the background scene (e.g., a rooster crowing in a hospital). Further studies with naive (untrained) listeners showed that this incongruency advantage (IA) is level-dependent: there is no advantage for incongruent sounds lower than a Sound/Scene ratio (So/Sc) of -7.5 dB, but there is about five percentage points better accuracy for sounds with greater So/Sc. Testing a new group of trained listeners on a larger corpus of sounds and scenes showed that the effect is robust and not confined to a specific stimulus set. Modeling using spectral-temporal measures showed that neither analyses based on acoustic features, nor semantic assessments of sound-scene congruency can account for this difference, indicating the IA is a complex effect, possibly arising from the sensitivity of the auditory system to new and unexpected events, under particular listening conditions.	t	\N
21387016	Important sounds can be easily missed or misidentified in the presence of extraneous noise. We describe an auditory illusion in which a continuous ongoing tone becomes inaudible during a brief, non-masking noise burst more than one octave away, which is unexpected given the frequency resolution of human hearing. Participants strongly susceptible to this illusory discontinuity did not perceive illusory auditory continuity (in which a sound subjectively continues during a burst of masking noise) when the noises were short, yet did so at longer noise durations. Participants who were not prone to illusory discontinuity showed robust early electroencephalographic responses at 40-66 ms after noise burst onset, whereas those prone to the illusion lacked these early responses. These data suggest that short-latency neural responses to auditory scene components reflect subsequent individual differences in the parsing of auditory scenes.	t	\N
21428515	The precedence effect (PE) describes the ability to localize a direct, leading sound correctly when its delayed copy (lag) is present, though not separately audible. The relative contribution of binaural cues in the temporal fine structure (TFS) of lead-lag signals was compared to that of interaural level differences (ILDs) and interaural time differences (ITDs) carried in the envelope. In a localization dominance paradigm participants indicated the spatial location of lead-lag stimuli processed with a binaural noise-band vocoder whose noise carriers introduced random TFS. The PE appeared for noise bursts of 10 ms duration, indicating dominance of envelope information. However, for three test words the PE often failed even at short lead-lag delays, producing two images, one toward the lead and one toward the lag. When interaural correlation in the carrier was increased, the images appeared more centered, but often remained split. Although previous studies suggest dominance of TFS cues, no image is lateralized in accord with the ITD in the TFS. An interpretation in the context of auditory scene analysis is proposed: By replacing the TFS with that of noise the auditory system loses the ability to fuse lead and lag into one object, and thus to show the PE.	t	\N
21945789	This study investigates how acoustic change-events are represented in a listener's brain when attention is strongly focused elsewhere. Using magneto-encephalography (MEG) we examine whether cortical responses to different kinds of changes in stimulus statistics are similarly influenced by attentional load, and whether the processing of such acoustic changes in auditory cortex depends on modality-specific or general processing resources. We investigated these issues by examining cortical responses to two basic forms of acoustic transitions: (1) Violations of a simple acoustic pattern and (2) the emergence of a regular pattern from a random one. To simulate a complex sensory environment, these patterns were presented concurrently with streams of auditory and visual decoys. Listeners were required to perform tasks of high- and low-attentional-load in these domains. Results demonstrate that while auditory attentional-load does not influence the cortical representation of simple violations of regularity, it significantly reduces the magnitude of responses to the emergence of a regular acoustic pattern, suggesting a fundamentally skewed representation of the unattended auditory scene. In contrast, visual attentional-load had no effect on either transition response, consistent with the hypothesis that processing resources necessary for change detection are modality-specific.	t	\N
22036957	Parsing of sound sources in the auditory environment or 'auditory scene analysis' is a computationally demanding cognitive operation that is likely to be vulnerable to the neurodegenerative process in Alzheimer's disease. However, little information is available concerning auditory scene analysis in Alzheimer's disease. Here we undertook a detailed neuropsychological and neuroanatomical characterization of auditory scene analysis in a cohort of 21 patients with clinically typical Alzheimer's disease versus age-matched healthy control subjects. We designed a novel auditory dual stream paradigm based on synthetic sound sequences to assess two key generic operations in auditory scene analysis (object segregation and grouping) in relation to simpler auditory perceptual, task and general neuropsychological factors. In order to assess neuroanatomical associations of performance on auditory scene analysis tasks, structural brain magnetic resonance imaging data from the patient cohort were analysed using voxel-based morphometry. Compared with healthy controls, patients with Alzheimer's disease had impairments of auditory scene analysis, and segregation and grouping operations were comparably affected. Auditory scene analysis impairments in Alzheimer's disease were not wholly attributable to simple auditory perceptual or task factors; however, the between-group difference relative to healthy controls was attenuated after accounting for non-verbal (visuospatial) working memory capacity. These findings demonstrate that clinically typical Alzheimer's disease is associated with a generic deficit of auditory scene analysis. Neuroanatomical associations of auditory scene analysis performance were identified in posterior cortical areas including the posterior superior temporal lobes and posterior cingulate. This work suggests a basis for understanding a class of clinical symptoms in Alzheimer's disease and for delineating cognitive mechanisms that mediate auditory scene analysis both in health and in neurodegenerative disease.	t	\N
22280585	Despite many studies investigating auditory spatial impressions in rooms, few have addressed the impact of simultaneous visual cues on localization and the perception of spaciousness. The current research presents an immersive audiovisual environment in which participants were instructed to make auditory width judgments in dynamic bi-modal settings. The results of these psychophysical tests suggest the importance of congruent audio visual presentation to the ecological interpretation of an auditory scene. Supporting data were accumulated in five rooms of ascending volumes and varying reverberation times. Participants were given an audiovisual matching test in which they were instructed to pan the auditory width of a performing ensemble to a varying set of audio and visual cues in rooms. Results show that both auditory and visual factors affect the collected responses and that the two sensory modalities coincide in distinct interactions. The greatest differences between the panned audio stimuli given a fixed visual width were found in the physical space with the largest volume and the greatest source distance. These results suggest, in this specific instance, a predominance of auditory cues in the spatial analysis of the bi-modal scene.	t	\N
22371616	Auditory streaming and visual plaids have been used extensively to study perceptual organization in each modality. Both stimuli can produce bistable alternations between grouped (one object) and split (two objects) interpretations. They also share two peculiar features: (i) at the onset of stimulus presentation, organization starts with a systematic bias towards the grouped interpretation; (ii) this first percept has 'inertia'; it lasts longer than the subsequent ones. As a result, the probability of forming different objects builds up over time, a landmark of both behavioural and neurophysiological data on auditory streaming. Here we show that first percept bias and inertia are independent. In plaid perception, inertia is due to a depth ordering ambiguity in the transparent (split) interpretation that makes plaid perception tristable rather than bistable: experimental manipulations removing the depth ambiguity suppressed inertia. However, the first percept bias persisted. We attempted a similar manipulation for auditory streaming by introducing level differences between streams, to bias which stream would appear in the perceptual foreground. Here both inertia and first percept bias persisted. We thus argue that the critical common feature of the onset of perceptual organization is the grouping bias, which may be related to the transition from temporally/spatially local to temporally/spatially global computation.	t	\N
22371619	Recent studies have shown that auditory scene analysis involves distributed neural sites below, in, and beyond the auditory cortex (AC). However, it remains unclear what role each site plays and how they interact in the formation and selection of auditory percepts. We addressed this issue through perceptual multistability phenomena, namely, spontaneous perceptual switching in auditory streaming (AS) for a sequence of repeated triplet tones, and perceptual changes for a repeated word, known as verbal transformations (VTs). An event-related fMRI analysis revealed brain activity timelocked to perceptual switching in the cerebellum for AS, in frontal areas for VT, and the AC and thalamus for both. The results suggest that motor-based prediction, produced by neural networks outside the auditory system, plays essential roles in the segmentation of acoustic sequences both in AS and VT. The frequency of perceptual switching was determined by a balance between the activation of two sites, which are proposed to be involved in exploring novel perceptual organization and stabilizing current perceptual organization. The effect of the gene polymorphism of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) on individual variations in switching frequency suggests that the balance of exploration and stabilization is modulated by catecholamines such as dopamine and noradrenalin. These mechanisms would support the noteworthy flexibility of auditory scene analysis.	t	\N
22371621	Auditory stream segregation involves linking temporally separate acoustic events into one or more coherent sequences. For any non-trivial sequence of sounds, many alternative descriptions can be formed, only one or very few of which emerge in awareness at any time. Evidence from studies showing bi-/multistability in auditory streaming suggest that some, perhaps many of the alternative descriptions are represented in the brain in parallel and that they continuously vie for conscious perception. Here, based on a predictive coding view, we consider the nature of these sound representations and how they compete with each other. Predictive processing helps to maintain perceptual stability by signalling the continuation of previously established patterns as well as the emergence of new sound sources. It also provides a measure of how well each of the competing representations describes the current acoustic scene. This account of auditory stream segregation has been tested on perceptual data obtained in the auditory streaming paradigm.	t	\N
22612172	Observers often remember a scene as containing information that was not presented but that would have likely been located just beyond the observed boundaries of the scene. This effect is called boundary extension (BE; e.g., Intraub & Richardson, 1989). Previous studies have observed BE in memory for visual and haptic stimuli, and the present experiments examined whether BE occurred in memory for auditory stimuli (prose, music). Experiments 1 and 2 varied the amount of auditory content to be remembered. BE was not observed, but when auditory targets contained more content, boundary restriction (BR) occurred. Experiment 3 presented auditory stimuli with less content and BR also occurred. In Experiment 4, white noise was added to stimuli with less content to equalize the durations of auditory stimuli, and BR still occurred. Experiments 5 and 6 presented trained stories and popular music, and BR still occurred. This latter finding ruled out the hypothesis that the lack of BE in Experiments 1-4 reflected a lack of familiarity with the stimuli. Overall, memory for auditory content exhibited BR rather than BE, and this pattern was stronger if auditory stimuli contained more content. Implications for the understanding of general perceptual processing and directions for future research are discussed.	t	\N
22753470	A visual scene is perceived in terms of visual objects. Similar ideas have been proposed for the analogous case of auditory scene analysis, although their hypothesized neural underpinnings have not yet been established. Here, we address this question by recording from subjects selectively listening to one of two competing speakers, either of different or the same sex, using magnetoencephalography. Individual neural representations are seen for the speech of the two speakers, with each being selectively phase locked to the rhythm of the corresponding speech stream and from which can be exclusively reconstructed the temporal envelope of that speech stream. The neural representation of the attended speech dominates responses (with latency near 100 ms) in posterior auditory cortex. Furthermore, when the intensity of the attended and background speakers is separately varied over an 8-dB range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker but not to the intensity of the background speaker, suggesting an object-level intensity gain control. In summary, these results indicate that concurrent auditory objects, even if spectrotemporally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are neurally encoded individually in auditory cortex and emerge as fundamental representational units for top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up neural adaptation.	t	\N
22829899	In natural environments, sensory information is embedded in temporally contiguous streams of events. This is typically the case when seeing and listening to a speaker or when engaged in scene analysis. In such contexts, two mechanisms are needed to single out and build a reliable representation of an event (or object): the temporal parsing of information and the selection of relevant information in the stream. It has previously been shown that rhythmic events naturally build temporal expectations that improve sensory processing at predictable points in time. Here, we asked to which extent temporal regularities can improve the detection and identification of events across sensory modalities. To do so, we used a dynamic visual conjunction search task accompanied by auditory cues synchronized or not with the color change of the target (horizontal or vertical bar). Sounds synchronized with the visual target improved search efficiency for temporal rates below 1.4 Hz but did not affect efficiency above that stimulation rate. Desynchronized auditory cues consistently impaired visual search below 3.3 Hz. Our results are interpreted in the context of the Dynamic Attending Theory: specifically, we suggest that a cognitive operation structures events in time irrespective of the sensory modality of input. Our results further support and specify recent neurophysiological findings by showing strong temporal selectivity for audiovisual integration in the auditory-driven improvement of visual search efficiency.	t	\N
22844509	In auditory scene analysis, population separation and temporal coherence have been proposed to explain how auditory features are grouped together and streamed over time. The present study investigated whether these two theories can be applied to tactile streaming and whether temporal coherence theory can be applied to crossmodal streaming. The results show that synchrony detection between two tones/taps at different frequencies/locations became difficult when one of the tones/taps was embedded in a perceptual stream. While the taps applied to the same location were streamed over time, the taps applied to different locations were not. This observation suggests that tactile stream formation can be explained by population-separation theory. On the other hand, temporally coherent auditory stimuli at different frequencies were streamed over time, but temporally coherent tactile stimuli applied to different locations were not. When there was within-modality streaming, temporally coherent auditory stimuli and tactile stimuli were not streamed over time, either. This observation suggests the limitation of temporal coherence theory when it is applied to perceptual grouping over time.	t	\N
23029426	The ability to detect sudden changes in the environment is critical for survival. Hearing is hypothesized to play a major role in this process by serving as an "early warning device," rapidly directing attention to new events. Here, we investigate listeners' sensitivity to changes in complex acoustic scenes-what makes certain events "pop-out" and grab attention while others remain unnoticed? We use artificial "scenes" populated by multiple pure-tone components, each with a unique frequency and amplitude modulation rate. Importantly, these scenes lack semantic attributes, which may have confounded previous studies, thus allowing us to probe low-level processes involved in auditory change perception. Our results reveal a striking difference between "appear" and "disappear" events. Listeners are remarkably tuned to object appearance: change detection and identification performance are at ceiling; response times are short, with little effect of scene-size, suggesting a pop-out process. In contrast, listeners have difficulty detecting disappearing objects, even in small scenes: performance rapidly deteriorates with growing scene-size; response times are slow, and even when change is detected, the changed component is rarely successfully identified. We also measured change detection performance when a noise or silent gap was inserted at the time of change or when the scene was interrupted by a distractor that occurred at the time of change but did not mask any scene elements. Gaps adversely affected the processing of item appearance but not disappearance. However, distractors reduced both appearance and disappearance detection. Together, our results suggest a role for neural adaptation and sensitivity to transients in the process of auditory change detection, similar to what has been demonstrated for visual change detection. Importantly, listeners consistently performed better for item addition (relative to deletion) across all scene interruptions used, suggesting a robust perceptual representation of item appearance.	t	\N
23145699	Listeners are good at attending to one auditory stream in a crowded environment. However, is there an upper limit of streams present in an auditory scene at which this selective attention breaks down? Here, participants were asked to attend one stream of spoken letters amidst other letter streams. In half of the trials, an initial primer was played, cueing subjects to the sound configuration. Results indicate that performance increases with token repetitions. Priming provided a performance benefit, suggesting that stream selection, not formation, is the bottleneck associated with attention in an overcrowded scene. Results' implications for brain-computer interfaces are discussed.	t	\N
23423817	A variety of perceptual correspondences between auditory and visual features have been reported, but few studies have investigated how rhythm, an auditory feature defined purely by dynamics relevant to speech and music, interacts with visual features. Here, we demonstrate a novel crossmodal association between auditory rhythm and visual clutter. Participants were shown a variety of visual scenes from diverse categories and asked to report the auditory rhythm that perceptually matched each scene by adjusting the rate of amplitude modulation (AM) of a sound. Participants matched each scene to a specific AM rate with surprising consistency. A spatial-frequency analysis showed that scenes with greater contrast energy in midrange spatial frequencies were matched to faster AM rates. Bandpass-filtering the scenes indicated that greater contrast energy in this spatial-frequency range was associated with an abundance of object boundaries and contours, suggesting that participants matched more cluttered scenes to faster AM rates. Consistent with this hypothesis, AM-rate matches were strongly correlated with perceived clutter. Additional results indicated that both AM-rate matches and perceived clutter depend on object-based (cycles per object) rather than retinal (cycles per degree of visual angle) spatial frequency. Taken together, these results suggest a systematic crossmodal association between auditory rhythm, representing density in the temporal domain, and visual clutter, representing object-based density in the spatial domain. This association may allow for the use of auditory rhythm to influence how visual clutter is perceived and attended.	t	\N
23516340	Many sound sources can only be recognised from the pattern of sounds they emit, and not from the individual sound events that make up their emission sequences. Auditory scene analysis addresses the difficult task of interpreting the sound world in terms of an unknown number of discrete sound sources (causes) with possibly overlapping signals, and therefore of associating each event with the appropriate source. There are potentially many different ways in which incoming events can be assigned to different causes, which means that the auditory system has to choose between them. This problem has been studied for many years using the auditory streaming paradigm, and recently it has become apparent that instead of making one fixed perceptual decision, given sufficient time, auditory perception switches back and forth between the alternatives-a phenomenon known as perceptual bi- or multi-stability. We propose a new model of auditory scene analysis at the core of which is a process that seeks to discover predictable patterns in the ongoing sound sequence. Representations of predictable fragments are created on the fly, and are maintained, strengthened or weakened on the basis of their predictive success, and conflict with other representations. Auditory perceptual organisation emerges spontaneously from the nature of the competition between these representations. We present detailed comparisons between the model simulations and data from an auditory streaming experiment, and show that the model accounts for many important findings, including: the emergence of, and switching between, alternative organisations; the influence of stimulus parameters on perceptual dominance, switching rate and perceptual phase durations; and the build-up of auditory streaming. The principal contribution of the model is to show that a two-stage process of pattern discovery and competition between incompatible patterns can account for both the contents (perceptual organisations) and the dynamics of human perception in auditory streaming.	t	\N
23527271	The auditory system creates a neuronal representation of the acoustic world based on spectral and temporal cues present at the listener's ears, including cues that potentially signal the locations of sounds. Discrimination of concurrent sounds from multiple sources is especially challenging. The current study is part of an effort to better understand the neuronal mechanisms governing this process, which has been termed "auditory scene analysis". In particular, we are interested in spatial release from masking by which spatial cues can segregate signals from other competing sounds, thereby overcoming the tendency of overlapping spectra and/or common temporal envelopes to fuse signals with maskers. We studied detection of pulsed tones in free-field conditions in the presence of concurrent multi-tone non-speech maskers. In "energetic" masking conditions, in which the frequencies of maskers fell within the ± 1/3-octave band containing the signal, spatial release from masking at low frequencies (~600 Hz) was found to be about 10 dB. In contrast, negligible spatial release from energetic masking was seen at high frequencies (~4000 Hz). We observed robust spatial release from masking in broadband "informational" masking conditions, in which listeners could confuse signal with masker even though there was no spectral overlap. Substantial spatial release was observed in conditions in which the onsets of the signal and all masker components were synchronized, and spatial release was even greater under asynchronous conditions. Spatial cues limited to high frequencies (>1500 Hz), which could have included interaural level differences and the better-ear effect, produced only limited improvement in signal detection. Substantially greater improvement was seen for low-frequency sounds, for which interaural time differences are the dominant spatial cue.	t	\N
23691185	Listening to and understanding people in a "cocktail-party situation" is a remarkable feature of the human auditory system. Here we investigated the neural correlates of the ability to localize a particular sound among others in an acoustically cluttered environment with healthy subjects. In a sound localization task, five different natural sounds were presented from five virtual spatial locations during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Activity related to auditory stream segregation was revealed in posterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally, anterior insula, supplementary motor area, and frontoparietal network. Moreover, the results indicated critical roles of left planum temporale in extracting the sound of interest among acoustical distracters and the precuneus in orienting spatial attention to the target sound. We hypothesized that the left-sided lateralization of the planum temporale activation is related to the higher specialization of the left hemisphere for analysis of spectrotemporal sound features. Furthermore, the precuneus - a brain area known to be involved in the computation of spatial coordinates across diverse frames of reference for reaching to objects - seems to be also a crucial area for accurately determining locations of auditory targets in an acoustically complex scene of multiple sound sources. The precuneus thus may not only be involved in visuo-motor processes, but may also subserve related functions in the auditory modality.	t	\N
23825404	In a complex auditory scene, a "cocktail party" for example, listeners can disentangle multiple competing sequences of sounds. A recent psychophysical study in our laboratory demonstrated a robust spatial component of stream segregation showing ∼8° acuity. Here, we recorded single- and multiple-neuron responses from the primary auditory cortex of anesthetized cats while presenting interleaved sound sequences that human listeners would experience as segregated streams. Sequences of broadband sounds alternated between pairs of locations. Neurons synchronized preferentially to sounds from one or the other location, thereby segregating competing sound sequences. Neurons favoring one source location or the other tended to aggregate within the cortex, suggestive of modular organization. The spatial acuity of stream segregation was as narrow as ∼10°, markedly sharper than the broad spatial tuning for single sources that is well known in the literature. Spatial sensitivity was sharpest among neurons having high characteristic frequencies. Neural stream segregation was predicted well by a parameter-free model that incorporated single-source spatial sensitivity and a measured forward-suppression term. We found that the forward suppression was not due to post discharge adaptation in the cortex and, therefore, must have arisen in the subcortical pathway or at the level of thalamocortical synapses. A linear-classifier analysis of single-neuron responses to rhythmic stimuli like those used in our psychophysical study yielded thresholds overlapping those of human listeners. Overall, the results indicate that the ascending auditory system does the work of segregating auditory streams, bringing them to discrete modules in the cortex for selection by top-down processes.	t	\N
23926291	Previously, Gygi and Shafiro (2011) found that when environmental sounds are semantically incongruent with the background scene (e.g., horse galloping in a restaurant), they can be identified more accurately by young normal-hearing listeners (YNH) than sounds congruent with the scene (e.g., horse galloping at a racetrack). This study investigated how age and high-frequency audibility affect this Incongruency Advantage (IA) effect. In Experiments 1a and 1b, elderly listeners ( N = 18 for 1a; N = 10 for 1b) with age-appropriate hearing (EAH) were tested on target sounds and auditory scenes in 5 sound-to-scene ratios (So/Sc) between -3 and -18 dB. Experiment 2 tested 11 YNH on the same sound-scene pairings lowpass-filtered at 4 kHz (YNH-4k). The EAH and YNH-4k groups exhibited an almost identical pattern of significant IA effects, but both were at approximately 3.9 dB higher So/Sc than the previously tested YNH listeners. However, the psychometric functions revealed a shallower slope for EAH listeners compared with YNH listeners for the congruent stimuli only, suggesting a greater difficulty for the EAH listeners in attending to sounds expected to occur in a scene. These findings indicate that semantic relationships between environmental sounds in soundscapes are mediated by both audibility and cognitive factors and suggest a method for dissociating these factors.	t	\N
24003112	After hearing a tone, the human auditory system becomes more sensitive to similar tones than to other tones. Current auditory models explain this phenomenon by a simple bandpass attention filter. Here, we demonstrate that auditory attention involves multiple pass-bands around octave-related frequencies above and below the cued tone. Intriguingly, this "octave effect" not only occurs for physically presented tones, but even persists for the missing fundamental in complex tones, and for imagined tones. Our results suggest neural interactions combining octave-related frequencies, likely located in nonprimary cortical regions. We speculate that this connectivity scheme evolved from exposure to natural vibrations containing octave-related spectral peaks, e.g., as produced by vocal cords.	t	\N
24052177	The fundamental perceptual unit in hearing is the 'auditory object'. Similar to visual objects, auditory objects are the computational result of the auditory system's capacity to detect, extract, segregate and group spectrotemporal regularities in the acoustic environment; the multitude of acoustic stimuli around us together form the auditory scene. However, unlike the visual scene, resolving the component objects within the auditory scene crucially depends on their temporal structure. Neural correlates of auditory objects are found throughout the auditory system. However, neural responses do not become correlated with a listener's perceptual reports until the level of the cortex. The roles of different neural structures and the contribution of different cognitive states to the perception of auditory objects are not yet fully understood.	t	\N
24239869	Perceptual representations of auditory stimuli (i.e., sounds) are derived from the auditory system's ability to segregate and group the spectral, temporal, and spatial features of auditory stimuli-a process called "auditory scene analysis". Psychophysical studies have identified several of the principles and mechanisms that underlie a listener's ability to segregate and group acoustic stimuli. One important psychophysical task that has illuminated many of these principles and mechanisms is the "streaming" task. Despite the wide use of this task to study psychophysical mechanisms of human audition, no studies have explicitly tested the streaming abilities of non-human animals using the standard methodologies employed in human-audition studies. Here, we trained rhesus macaques to participate in the streaming task using methodologies and controls similar to those presented in previous human studies. Overall, we found that the monkeys' behavioral reports were qualitatively consistent with those of human listeners, thus suggesting that this task may be a valuable tool for future neurophysiological studies.	t	\N
24475030	In our daily lives, auditory stream segregation allows us to differentiate concurrent sound sources and to make sense of the scene we are experiencing. However, a combination of segregation and the concurrent integration of auditory streams is necessary in order to analyze the relationship between streams and thus perceive a coherent auditory scene. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates the relative role and neural underpinnings of these listening strategies in multi-part musical stimuli. We compare a real human performance of a piano duet and a synthetic stimulus of the same duet in a prioritized integrative attention paradigm that required the simultaneous segregation and integration of auditory streams. In so doing, we manipulate the degree to which the attended part of the duet led either structurally (attend melody vs. attend accompaniment) or temporally (asynchronies vs. no asynchronies between parts), and thus the relative contributions of integration and segregation used to make an assessment of the leader-follower relationship. We show that perceptually the relationship between parts is biased towards the conventional structural hierarchy in western music in which the melody generally dominates (leads) the accompaniment. Moreover, the assessment varies as a function of both cognitive load, as shown through difficulty ratings and the interaction of the temporal and the structural relationship factors. Neurally, we see that the temporal relationship between parts, as one important cue for stream segregation, revealed distinct neural activity in the planum temporale. By contrast, integration used when listening to both the temporally separated performance stimulus and the temporally fused synthetic stimulus resulted in activation of the intraparietal sulcus. These results support the hypothesis that the planum temporale and IPS are key structures underlying the mechanisms of segregation and integration of auditory streams, respectively.	t	\N
24478375	Adaptation to both common and rare sounds has been independently reported in neurophysiological studies using probabilistic stimulus paradigms in small mammals. However, the apparent sensitivity of the mammalian auditory system to the statistics of incoming sound has not yet been generalized to task-related human auditory perception. Here, we show that human listeners selectively adapt to novel sounds within scenes unfolding over minutes. Listeners' performance in an auditory discrimination task remains steady for the most common elements within the scene but, after the first minute, performance improves for distinct and rare (oddball) sound elements, at the expense of rare sounds that are relatively less distinct. Our data provide the first evidence of enhanced coding of oddball sounds in a human auditory discrimination task and suggest the existence of an adaptive mechanism that tracks the long-term statistics of sounds and deploys coding resources accordingly.	t	\N
24681354	The auditory system is designed to transform acoustic information from low-level sensory representations into perceptual representations. These perceptual representations are the computational result of the auditory system's ability to group and segregate spectral, spatial and temporal regularities in the acoustic environment into stable perceptual units (i.e., sounds or auditory objects). Current evidence suggests that the cortex-specifically, the ventral auditory pathway-is responsible for the computations most closely related to perceptual representations. Here, we discuss how the transformations along the ventral auditory pathway relate to auditory percepts, with special attention paid to the processing of vocalizations and categorization, and explore recent models of how these areas may carry out these computations.	t	\N
24711409	Human perception, cognition, and action are laced with seemingly arbitrary mappings. In particular, sound has a strong spatial connotation: Sounds are high and low, melodies rise and fall, and pitch systematically biases perceived sound elevation. The origins of such mappings are unknown. Are they the result of physiological constraints, do they reflect natural environmental statistics, or are they truly arbitrary? We recorded natural sounds from the environment, analyzed the elevation-dependent filtering of the outer ear, and measured frequency-dependent biases in human sound localization. We find that auditory scene statistics reveals a clear mapping between frequency and elevation. Perhaps more interestingly, this natural statistical mapping is tightly mirrored in both ear-filtering properties and in perceived sound location. This suggests that both sound localization behavior and ear anatomy are fine-tuned to the statistics of natural auditory scenes, likely providing the basis for the spatial connotation of human hearing.	t	\N
24788808	This work analyzed the perceptual attributes of natural dynamic audiovisual scenes. We presented thirty participants with 19 natural scenes in a similarity categorization task, followed by a semi-structured interview. The scenes were reproduced with an immersive audiovisual display. Natural scene perception has been studied mainly with unimodal settings, which have identified motion as one of the most salient attributes related to visual scenes, and sound intensity along with pitch trajectories related to auditory scenes. However, controlled laboratory experiments with natural multimodal stimuli are still scarce. Our results show that humans pay attention to similar perceptual attributes in natural scenes, and a two-dimensional perceptual map of the stimulus scenes and perceptual attributes was obtained in this work. The exploratory results show the amount of movement, perceived noisiness, and eventfulness of the scene to be the most important perceptual attributes in naturalistically reproduced real-world urban environments. We found the scene gist properties openness and expansion to remain as important factors in scenes with no salient auditory or visual events. We propose that the study of scene perception should move forward to understand better the processes behind multimodal scene processing in real-world environments. We publish our stimulus scenes as spherical video recordings and sound field recordings in a publicly available database.	t	\N
24821552	Many studies have shown that attention modulates the cortical representation of an auditory scene, emphasizing an attended source while suppressing competing sources. Yet, individual differences in the strength of this attentional modulation and their relationship with selective attention ability are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether differences in how strongly attention modulates cortical responses reflect differences in normal-hearing listeners' selective auditory attention ability. We asked listeners to attend to one of three competing melodies and identify its pitch contour while we measured cortical electroencephalographic responses. The three melodies were either from widely separated pitch ranges ("easy trials"), or from a narrow, overlapping pitch range ("hard trials"). The melodies started at slightly different times; listeners attended either the leading or lagging melody. Because of the timing of the onsets, the leading melody drew attention exogenously. In contrast, attending the lagging melody required listeners to direct top-down attention volitionally. We quantified how attention amplified auditory N1 response to the attended melody and found large individual differences in the N1 amplification, even though only correctly answered trials were used to quantify the ERP gain. Importantly, listeners with the strongest amplification of N1 response to the lagging melody in the easy trials were the best performers across other types of trials. Our results raise the possibility that individual differences in the strength of top-down gain control reflect inherent differences in the ability to control top-down attention.	t	\N
24841996	Auditory objects, like their visual counterparts, are perceptually defined constructs, but nevertheless must arise from underlying neural circuitry. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of the neural responses of human subjects listening to complex auditory scenes, we review studies that demonstrate that auditory objects are indeed neurally represented in auditory cortex. The studies use neural responses obtained from different experiments in which subjects selectively listen to one of two competing auditory streams embedded in a variety of auditory scenes. The auditory streams overlap spatially and often spectrally. In particular, the studies demonstrate that selective attentional gain does not act globally on the entire auditory scene, but rather acts differentially on the separate auditory streams. This stream-based attentional gain is then used as a tool to individually analyze the different neural representations of the competing auditory streams. The neural representation of the attended stream, located in posterior auditory cortex, dominates the neural responses. Critically, when the intensities of the attended and background streams are separately varied over a wide intensity range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker, irrespective of the intensity of the background speaker. This demonstrates object-level intensity gain control in addition to the above object-level selective attentional gain. Overall, these results indicate that concurrently streaming auditory objects, even if spectrally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are individually neurally encoded in auditory cortex, as separate objects.	t	\N
25433224	Pitch plays a fundamental role in audition, from speech and music perception to auditory scene analysis. Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that appears to affect primarily pitch and melody perception. Pitch is normally conveyed by the spectro-temporal fine structure of low harmonics, but some pitch information is available in the temporal envelope produced by the interactions of higher harmonics. Using 10 amusic subjects and 10 matched controls, we tested the hypothesis that amusics suffer exclusively from impaired processing of spectro-temporal fine structure. We also tested whether the inability of amusics to process acoustic temporal fine structure extends beyond pitch by measuring sensitivity to interaural time differences, which also rely on temporal fine structure. Further tests were carried out on basic intensity and spectral resolution. As expected, pitch perception based on spectro-temporal fine structure was impaired in amusics; however, no significant deficits were observed in amusics' ability to perceive the pitch conveyed via temporal-envelope cues. Sensitivity to interaural time differences was also not significantly different between the amusic and control groups, ruling out deficits in the peripheral coding of temporal fine structure. Finally, no significant differences in intensity or spectral resolution were found between the amusic and control groups. The results demonstrate a pitch-specific deficit in fine spectro-temporal information processing in amusia that seems unrelated to temporal or spectral coding in the auditory periphery. These results are consistent with the view that there are distinct mechanisms dedicated to processing resolved and unresolved harmonics in the general population, the former being altered in congenital amusia while the latter is spared.	t	\N
25654748	In noisy settings, listening is aided by correlated dynamic visual cues gleaned from a talker's face-an improvement often attributed to visually reinforced linguistic information. In this study, we aimed to test the effect of audio-visual temporal coherence alone on selective listening, free of linguistic confounds. We presented listeners with competing auditory streams whose amplitude varied independently and a visual stimulus with varying radius, while manipulating the cross-modal temporal relationships. Performance improved when the auditory target's timecourse matched that of the visual stimulus. The fact that the coherence was between task-irrelevant stimulus features suggests that the observed improvement stemmed from the integration of auditory and visual streams into cross-modal objects, enabling listeners to better attend the target. These findings suggest that in everyday conditions, where listeners can often see the source of a sound, temporal cues provided by vision can help listeners to select one sound source from a mixture.	t	\N
25659464	To probe sensitivity to the time structure of ongoing sound sequences, we measured MEG responses, in human listeners, to the offset of long tone-pip sequences containing various forms of temporal regularity. If listeners learn sequence temporal properties and form expectancies about the arrival time of an upcoming tone, sequence offset should be detectable as soon as an expected tone fails to arrive. Therefore, latencies of offset responses are indicative of the extent to which the temporal pattern has been acquired. In Exp1, sequences were isochronous with tone inter-onset-interval (IOI) set to 75, 125 or 225ms. Exp2 comprised of non-isochronous, temporally regular sequences, comprised of the IOIs above. Exp3 used the same sequences as Exp2 but listeners were required to monitor them for occasional frequency deviants. Analysis of the latency of offset responses revealed that the temporal structure of (even rather simple) regular sequences is not learnt precisely when the sequences are ignored. Pattern coding, supported by a network of temporal, parietal and frontal sources, improved considerably when the signals were made behaviourally pertinent. Thus, contrary to what might be expected in the context of an 'early warning system' framework, learning of temporal structure is not automatic, but affected by the signal's behavioural relevance.	t	\N
25726262	Auditory development involves changes in the peripheral and central nervous system along the auditory pathways, and these occur naturally, and in response to stimulation. Human development occurs along a trajectory that can last decades, and is studied using behavioral psychophysics, as well as physiologic measurements with neural imaging. The auditory system constructs a perceptual space that takes information from objects and groups, segregates sounds, and provides meaning and access to communication tools such as language. Auditory signals are processed in a series of analysis stages, from peripheral to central. Coding of information has been studied for features of sound, including frequency, intensity, loudness, and location, in quiet and in the presence of maskers. In the latter case, the ability of the auditory system to perform an analysis of the scene becomes highly relevant. While some basic abilities are well developed at birth, there is a clear prolonged maturation of auditory development well into the teenage years. Maturation involves auditory pathways. However, non-auditory changes (attention, memory, cognition) play an important role in auditory development. The ability of the auditory system to adapt in response to novel stimuli is a key feature of development throughout the nervous system, known as neural plasticity.	t	\N
22240459	Humans and other animals often communicate acoustically in noisy social groups, in which the background noise generated by other individuals can mask signals of interest. When listening to speech in the presence of speech-like noise, humans experience a release from auditory masking when target and masker are spatially separated. We investigated spatial release from masking (SRM) in a free-field call recognition task in Cope's gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis). In this species, reproduction requires that females successfully detect, recognize, and localize a conspecific male in the noisy social environment of a breeding chorus. Using no-choice phonotaxis assays, we measured females' signal recognition thresholds in response to a target signal (an advertisement call) in the presence and absence of chorus-shaped noise. Females experienced about 3 dB of masking release, compared with a co-localized condition, when the masker was displaced 90° in azimuth from the target. The magnitude of masking release was independent of the spectral composition of the target (carriers of 1.3 kHz, 2.6 kHz, or both). Our results indicate that frogs experience a modest degree of spatial unmasking when performing a call recognition task in the free-field, and suggest that variation in signal spectral content has small effects on both source identification and spatial unmasking. We discuss these results in the context of spatial unmasking in vertebrates and call recognition in frogs.	t	\N
20649227	The lateralization of 250-ms trains of brief noise bursts was measured using an acoustic pointing technique. Stimuli were designed to assess the contribution of the interaural time delay (ITD) of the onset binaural burst relative to that of the ITDs in the ongoing part of the train. Lateralization was measured by listeners' adjustments of the ITD of a pointer stimulus, a 50-ms burst of noise, to match the lateral position of the target train. Results confirmed previous reports of lateralization dominance by the onset burst under conditions in which the train is composed of frozen tokens and the ongoing part contains multiple ambiguous interaural delays. In contrast, lateralization of ongoing trains in which fresh noise tokens were used for each set of two alternating (left-leading/right-leading) binaural pairs followed the ITD of the first pair in each set, regardless of the ITD of the onset burst of the entire stimulus and even when the onset burst was removed by gradual gating. This clear lateralization of a long-duration stimulus with ambiguous interaural delay cues suggests precedence mechanisms that involve not only the interaural cues at the beginning of a sound, but also the pattern of cues within an ongoing sound.	t	\N
21131368	The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) is a shell-shaped gamma amino butyric acid (GABA)ergic nucleus, which is uniquely placed between the thalamus and the cortex, because it receives excitatory afferents from both cortical and thalamic neurons and sends inhibitory projections to all nuclei of the dorsal thalamus. A review of the evidence suggesting that the TRN is implicated in the neurobiology of schizophrenia. TRN-thalamus circuits are implicated in bottom-up as well as top-down processing. TRN projections to nonspecific nuclei of the dorsal thalamus mediate top-down processes, including attentional modulation, which are initiated by cortical afferents to the TRN. TRN-thalamus circuits are also involved in bottom-up activities, including sensory gating and the transfer to the cortex of sleep spindles. Intriguingly, deficits in attention and sensory gating have been consistently found in schizophrenics, including first-break and chronic patients. Furthermore, high-density electroencephalographic studies have revealed a marked reduction in sleep spindles in schizophrenics. On the basis of our current knowledge on the molecular and anatomo-functional properties of the TRN, we suggest that this thalamic GABAergic nucleus may be involved in the neurobiology of schizophrenia.	t	\N
22087275	How quickly do listeners recognize emotions from a speaker's voice, and does the time course for recognition vary by emotion type? To address these questions, we adapted the auditory gating paradigm to estimate how much vocal information is needed for listeners to categorize five basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness) and neutral utterances produced by male and female speakers of English. Semantically-anomalous pseudo-utterances (e.g., The rivix jolled the silling) conveying each emotion were divided into seven gate intervals according to the number of syllables that listeners heard from sentence onset. Participants (n = 48) judged the emotional meaning of stimuli presented at each gate duration interval, in a successive, blocked presentation format. Analyses looked at how recognition of each emotion evolves as an utterance unfolds and estimated the "identification point" for each emotion. Results showed that anger, sadness, fear, and neutral expressions are recognized more accurately at short gate intervals than happiness, and particularly disgust; however, as speech unfolds, recognition of happiness improves significantly towards the end of the utterance (and fear is recognized more accurately than other emotions). When the gate associated with the emotion identification point of each stimulus was calculated, data indicated that fear (M = 517 ms), sadness (M = 576 ms), and neutral (M = 510 ms) expressions were identified from shorter acoustic events than the other emotions. These data reveal differences in the underlying time course for conscious recognition of basic emotions from vocal expressions, which should be accounted for in studies of emotional speech processing.	t	\N
22384211	Recent behavioral neuroscience research revealed that elementary reactive behavior can be improved in the case of cross-modal sensory interactions thanks to underlying multisensory integration mechanisms. Can this benefit be generalized to an ongoing coordination of movements under severe physical constraints? We choose a juggling task to examine this question. A central issue well-known in juggling lies in establishing and maintaining a specific temporal coordination among balls, hands, eyes and posture. Here, we tested whether providing additional timing information about the balls and hands motions by using external sound and tactile periodic stimulations, the later presented at the wrists, improved the behavior of jugglers. One specific combination of auditory and tactile metronome led to a decrease of the spatiotemporal variability of the juggler's performance: a simple sound associated to left and right tactile cues presented antiphase to each other, which corresponded to the temporal pattern of hands movement in the juggling task. A contrario, no improvements were obtained in the case of other auditory and tactile combinations. We even found a degraded performance when tactile events were presented alone. The nervous system thus appears able to integrate in efficient way environmental information brought by different sensory modalities, but only if the information specified matches specific features of the coordination pattern. We discuss the possible implications of these results for the understanding of the neuronal integration process implied in audio-tactile interaction in the context of complex voluntary movement, and considering the well-known gating effect of movement on vibrotactile perception.	t	\N
22896044	Thresholds of school-aged children are elevated relative to those of adults for intensity discrimination and amplitude modulation (AM) detection. It is unclear how these findings are related or what role stimulus gating and dynamic envelope cues play in these results. Two experiments assessed the development of sensitivity to intensity increments in different stimulus contexts. Thresholds for detecting an increment in level were estimated for normal-hearing children (5- to 10-year-olds) and adults. Experiment 1 compared intensity discrimination for gated and continuous presentation of a 1-kHz tone, with a 65-dB-SPL standard level. Experiment 2 compared increment detection and 16-Hz AM detection introduced into a continuous 1-kHz tone, with either 35- or 75-dB-SPL standard levels. Children had higher thresholds than adults overall. All listeners were more sensitive to increments in the continuous than the gated stimulus and performed better at the 75- than at the 35-dB-SPL standard level. Both effects were comparable for children and adults. There was some evidence that children's AM detection was more adultlike than increment detection. These results imply that memory for loudness across gated intervals is not responsible for children's poor performance but that multiple dynamic envelope cues may benefit children more than adults.	t	\N
23716244	This study investigated monaural envelope correlation perception (Richards 1987) for noise bandwidths ranging from 25 to 1,600 Hz. The high-frequency side of the low band was fixed at 3,000 Hz and the low-frequency side of the high band was fixed at 3,500 Hz. When comodulated, the magnitude spectra of the pair of noise bands were either identical or reflected around the midpoint. Six listeners with normal hearing participated. Listeners showed similar performance for identical and reflected-spectrum conditions, with best performance usually occurring for bandwidths between 200 and 800 Hz. Results were considered in terms of envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of multiple peripheral filters or envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of central filters set to the bandwidths of the noise stimuli. Some aspects of the results were incompatible with the account based on multiple peripheral filters. However, the results of a supplementary condition involving the gating of band subregions indicated that this incompatibility could be accounted for by nonoptimal weighting of peripheral filter outputs.	t	\N
24298171	While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack into a coherent percept. Multisensory integration can lead to emotion elicitation on which soundtrack valences may have a modulatory impact. Here, dynamic kissing scenes from romantic comedies were presented to 22 participants (13 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The kissing scenes were either accompanied by happy music, sad music or no music. Evidence from cross-modal studies motivated a predefined three-region network for multisensory integration of emotion, consisting of fusiform gyrus (FG), amygdala (AMY) and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). The interactions in this network were investigated using dynamic causal models of effective connectivity. This revealed bilinear modulations by happy and sad music with suppression effects on the connectivity from FG and AMY to aSTG. Non-linear dynamic causal modeling showed a suppressive gating effect of aSTG on fusiform-amygdalar connectivity. In conclusion, fusiform to amygdala coupling strength is modulated via feedback through aSTG as region for multisensory integration of emotional material. This mechanism was emotion-specific and more pronounced for sad music. Therefore, soundtrack valences may modulate emotion elicitation in movies by differentially changing preprocessed visual information to the amygdala.	t	\N
24736181	Although a number of recent studies have examined functional connectivity at rest, few have assessed differences between connectivity both during rest and across active task paradigms. Therefore, the question of whether cortical connectivity patterns remain stable or change with task engagement continues to be unaddressed. We collected multi-scan fMRI data on healthy controls (N=53) and schizophrenia patients (N=42) during rest and across paradigms arranged hierarchically by sensory load. We measured functional network connectivity among 45 non-artifactual distinct brain networks. Then, we applied a novel analysis to assess cross paradigm connectivity patterns applied to healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia. To detect these patterns, we fit a group by task full factorial ANOVA model to the group average functional network connectivity values. Our approach identified both stable (static effects) and state-based differences (dynamic effects) in brain connectivity providing a better understanding of how individuals' reactions to simple sensory stimuli are conditioned by the context within which they are presented. Our findings suggest that not all group differences observed during rest are detectable in other cognitive states. In addition, the stable differences of heightened connectivity between multiple brain areas with thalamus across tasks underscore the importance of the thalamus as a gateway to sensory input and provide new insight into schizophrenia.	t	\N
24801767	Despite advances in the treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with atypical antipsychotics (AAPs), there is still need for compounds with improved efficacy/side-effect ratios. Evidence from challenge studies suggests that the assessment of gating functions in humans and rodents with naturally low-gating levels might be a useful model to screen for novel compounds with antipsychotic properties. To further evaluate and extend this translational approach, three AAPs were examined. Compounds without antipsychotic properties served as negative control treatments. In a placebo-controlled, within-subject design, healthy males received either single doses of aripiprazole and risperidone (n=28), amisulpride and lorazepam (n=30), or modafinil and valproate (n=30), and placebo. Prepulse inhibiton (PPI) and P50 suppression were assessed. Clinically associated symptoms were evaluated using the SCL-90-R. Aripiprazole, risperidone, and amisulpride increased P50 suppression in low P50 gaters. Lorazepam, modafinil, and valproate did not influence P50 suppression in low gaters. Furthermore, low P50 gaters scored significantly higher on the SCL-90-R than high P50 gaters. Aripiprazole increased PPI in low PPI gaters, whereas modafinil and lorazepam attenuated PPI in both groups. Risperidone, amisulpride, and valproate did not influence PPI. P50 suppression in low gaters appears to be an antipsychotic-sensitive neurophysiologic marker. This conclusion is supported by the association of low P50 suppression and higher clinically associated scores. Furthermore, PPI might be sensitive for atypical mechanisms of antipsychotic medication. The translational model investigating differential effects of AAPs on gating in healthy subjects with naturally low gating can be beneficial for phase II/III development plans by providing additional information for critical decision making.	t	\N
25024207	Historic theories of speech perception (Motor Theory and Analysis by Synthesis) invoked listeners' knowledge of speech production to explain speech perception. Neuroimaging data show that adult listeners activate motor brain areas during speech perception. In two experiments using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated motor brain activation, as well as auditory brain activation, during discrimination of native and nonnative syllables in infants at two ages that straddle the developmental transition from language-universal to language-specific speech perception. Adults are also tested in Exp. 1. MEG data revealed that 7-mo-old infants activate auditory (superior temporal) as well as motor brain areas (Broca's area, cerebellum) in response to speech, and equivalently for native and nonnative syllables. However, in 11- and 12-mo-old infants, native speech activates auditory brain areas to a greater degree than nonnative, whereas nonnative speech activates motor brain areas to a greater degree than native speech. This double dissociation in 11- to 12-mo-old infants matches the pattern of results obtained in adult listeners. Our infant data are consistent with Analysis by Synthesis: auditory analysis of speech is coupled with synthesis of the motor plans necessary to produce the speech signal. The findings have implications for: (i) perception-action theories of speech perception, (ii) the impact of "motherese" on early language learning, and (iii) the "social-gating" hypothesis and humans' development of social understanding.	t	\N
25544613	Perception routinely integrates inputs from different senses. Stimulus temporal proximity critically determines whether or not these inputs are bound together. Despite the temporal window of integration being a widely accepted notion, its neurophysiological substrate remains unclear. Many types of common audio-visual interactions occur within a time window of ∼100 ms. For example, in the sound-induced double-flash illusion, when two beeps are presented within ∼100 ms together with one flash, a second illusory flash is often perceived. Due to their intrinsic rhythmic nature, brain oscillations are one candidate mechanism for gating the temporal window of integration. Interestingly, occipital alpha band oscillations cycle on average every ∼100 ms, with peak frequencies ranging between 8 and 14 Hz (i.e., 120-60 ms cycle). Moreover, presenting a brief tone can phase-reset such oscillations in visual cortex. Based on these observations, we hypothesized that the duration of each alpha cycle might provide the temporal unit to bind audio-visual events. Here, we first recorded EEG while participants performed the sound-induced double-flash illusion task and found positive correlation between individual alpha frequency (IAF) peak and the size of the temporal window of the illusion. Participants then performed the same task while receiving occipital transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), to modulate oscillatory activity either at their IAF or at off-peak alpha frequencies (IAF±2 Hz). Compared to IAF tACS, IAF-2 Hz and IAF+2 Hz tACS, respectively, enlarged and shrunk the temporal window of illusion, suggesting that alpha oscillations might represent the temporal unit of visual processing that cyclically gates perception and the neurophysiological substrate promoting audio-visual interactions.	t	\N
19933712	Despite robust evidence of hippocampal abnormalities in schizophrenia, it is unclear whether hippocampal dysfunction predates the onset of psychosis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate hippocampal function in subjects with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). Eighteen subjects meeting criteria for an ARMS and 22 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and premorbid IQ, were scanned while performing a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory task. During an encoding phase, subjects read lists of words aloud. Following a delay, they were presented with 24 target words, 24 semantically related lure words, and 24 novel words and required to indicate if each had been presented before. Behaviorally, the ARMS group made more false alarm responses for novel words than controls (P = .04) and had a lower discrimination accuracy for target words (P = .02). During encoding, ARMS subjects showed less activation than healthy controls in the left middle frontal gyrus, the bilateral medial frontal gyri, and the left parahippocampal gyrus. Correct recognition relative to false alarms was associated with differential engagement of the hippocampus bilaterally in healthy controls, but this difference was absent in the ARMS group. The ARMS was associated with altered function in the medial temporal cortex, as well as in the prefrontal regions, during both verbal encoding and recognition. These neurofunctional differences were associated with diminished recognition performance and may reflect the greatly increased risk of psychosis associated with the ARMS.	f	\N
20146593	Top-down control of visual sensory cortex has long been tied to the orienting of visual spatial attention on a rapid, moment-to-moment basis. Here, we examined whether sensory responses in visual cortex are also modulated by natural and comparatively slower fluctuations in whether or not one is paying attention to the task at hand. Participants performed a simple visual discrimination task at fixation as the ERPs to task-irrelevant probes in the upper visual periphery were recorded. At random intervals, participants were stopped and asked to report on their attentional state at the time of stoppage-either "on-task" or "off-task." ERPs to the probes immediately preceding these subjective reports were then examined as a function of whether attention was in an on-task versus off-task state. We found that sensory-evoked responses to the probes were significantly attenuated during off-task relative to on-task states, as measured by the visual P1 ERP component. In two additional experiments, we replicated this effect while (1) finding that off-task sensory attenuation extends to the auditory domain, as measured by the auditory N1 ERP component, and (2) eliminating state-dependent shifts in general arousal as a possible explanation for the effects. Collectively, our findings suggest that sensory gain control in cortex is yoked to the natural ebb and flow in how much attention we pay to the current task over time.	f	\N
20213858	Cognitive assessment in individuals with cancer requires both measured performance on neuropsychological tests and self-report of effectiveness in functioning. Few instruments are available to assess the perceived impact of cognitive alterations on daily functioning in individuals treated for cancer. In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of a theoretically based instrument, and the Attentional Function Index (AFI), designed to measure perceived effectiveness in common activities requiring attention and working memory, particularly the ability to formulate plans, carry out tasks, and function effectively in daily life. Women (N=172), ages 27-86 years, completed the questionnaire before primary treatment for early stage breast cancer. Construct validity was established using exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. A 13-item instrument emerged with 3 subscales, namely effective action, attentional lapses, and interpersonal effectiveness, which explained 74.69% of total variance. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach's α) were 0.92 for the total instrument, and ranged from 0.80 to 0.92 for the 3 subscales. Further examination of validity indicated that the scores on the AFI (1) showed expected correlations with established measures of ability to concentrate, cognitive failures, states of confusion, and mental fatigue, and (2) could distinguish differences in perceived cognitive functioning between younger and older age groups. AFI scores were not significantly associated with years of education or presence of comorbid conditions. The brief AFI has demonstrated usefulness for assessment of perceived cognitive functioning in populations with life-threatening and chronic illness, such as breast cancer.	f	\N
20350175	Grapheme-color synesthesia is a heritable trait where graphemes ("2") elicit the concurrent perception of specific colors (red). Researchers have questioned whether synesthetic experiences are meaningful or simply arbitrary associations and whether these associations are perceptual or conceptual. To address these fundamental questions, ERPs were recorded as 12 synesthetes read statements such as "The Coca-Cola logo is white and 2," in which the final grapheme induced a color that was either contextually congruous (red) or incongruous ("...white and 7," for a synesthetes who experienced 7 as green). Grapheme congruity was found to modulate the amplitude of the N1, P2, N300, and N400 components in synesthetes, suggesting that synesthesia impacts perceptual as well as conceptual aspects of processing. To evaluate whether observed ERP effects required the experience of colored graphemes versus knowledge of grapheme-color pairings, we ran three separate groups of controls on a similar task. Controls trained to a synesthete's associations elicited N400 modulation, indicating that knowledge of grapheme-color mappings was sufficient to modulate this component. Controls trained to synesthetic associations and given explicit visualization instructions elicited both N300 and N400 modulations. Lastly, untrained controls who viewed physically colored graphemes ("2" printed in red) elicited N1 and N400 modulations. The N1 grapheme congruity effect began earlier in synesthetes than colored grapheme controls but had similar scalp topography. Data suggest that, in synesthetes, achromatic graphemes engage similar visual processing networks as colored graphemes in nonsynesthetes and are in keeping with models of synesthesia that posit early feed-forward connections between form and color processing areas in extrastriate cortex. The P2 modulation was unique to the synesthetes and may reflect neural activity that underlies the conscious experience of the synesthetic induction.	f	\N
20459310	Understanding the relation between prestimulus neural activity and subsequent stimulus processing has become an area of active investigation. Computational modeling, as well as in vitro and in vivo single-unit recordings in animal preparations, have explored mechanisms by which background synaptic activity can influence the responsiveness of cortical neurons to afferent input. How these mechanisms manifest in humans is not well understood. Although numerous EEG/MEG studies have considered the role of prestimulus alpha oscillations in the genesis of visual-evoked potentials, no consensus has emerged, and divergent reports continue to appear. The present work addresses this problem in three stages. First, a theoretical model was developed in which the background synaptic activity and the firing rate of a neural ensemble are related through a sigmoidal function. The derivative of this function, referred to as local gain, has an inverted-U shape and is postulated to be proportional to the trial-by-trial response evoked by a transient stimulus. Second, the theoretical model was extended to noninvasive studies of human visual processing, where the model variables are reinterpreted in terms of ongoing EEG oscillations and event-related potentials. Predictions were derived from the model and tested by recording high-density scalp EEG from healthy volunteers performing a trial-by-trial cued spatial visual attention task. Finally, enhanced stimulus processing by attention was linked to an increase in the overall slope of the sigmoidal function. The commonly observed reduction of alpha magnitude with attention was interpreted as signaling a shift of the underlying neural ensemble toward an optimal excitability state that enables the increase in global gain.	f	\N
20525771	Efficient attention is pivotal for cognitive functioning, and individual differences in attentional functions are likely related to variations in structural properties of the brain. Attention is supported by separate processes, and models of the relationship between attention and brain structure must take this into account. The Attention Network Test (ANT) yields behavioral measures of 3 independent attentional components: executive control (EC), alerting, and orienting. EC relates to resolving cognitive interference, alerting refers to continuous maintenance of a vigilant state, and orienting to selection of and orienting toward sensory information. Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies suggests that the ANT components recruit different cortical networks. However, the structural correlates are not established. Therefore, ANT scores were correlated with cortical thickness across the brain surface in 268 healthy adults spanning 20-84 years of age. Specific correlations were found between cortical thickness and EC and alerting in regions implicated by functional neuroimaging and lesion studies, including anterior cingulate, lateral prefrontal, and right inferior frontal gyri for EC and parietal areas for alerting. The brain-behavior correlations were relatively stable across adulthood, indicating that factors influencing cortical maturation rather than aging-related atrophy specifically were instrumental in shaping the structural foundation for visuospatial attention in adults.	f	\N
20525773	Contemporary sensory gating definitions are generally tied to the perceptual and attentional phenomenology described by McGhie and Chapman, including abnormalities in the quality of sensory input, heightened awareness of background noises, and poor selective attention reported by individuals with schizophrenia. Despite these explicit phenomenological origins, little is known about the experiential phenomena underlying contemporary operationalizations of the sensory gating construct, such as whether the construct is restricted to experiences associated with the modulation of sensory percepts includes selective attention and distractibility or even whether the construct is accessible via self-report. Because clarification of these issues has important implications for the development and testing of psychological theories and the study of psychopathology, a series of studies was conducted to (a) empirically identify the major dimensions of sensory gating-like perceptual and attentional phenomenology in healthy young adults and (b) develop a psychometrically sound self-report rating scale to capture these dimensions, the Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI). Factor analyses of Likert items measuring a broad range of sensory gating-like subjective experiences revealed 1 primary factor that encompassed anomalies of perceptual modulation (eg, perceptions of heightened stimulus sensitivity and sensory inundation) and 3 other factors measuring disturbances in the processes of focal and radial attention as well as exacerbation of sensory gating-like anomalies by fatigue and stress. Psychometrically, the SGI demonstrated strong reliability and validity. An empirically based conceptual demarcation of the sensory gating construct is offered, and directions for future research are described.	f	\N
20529417	Anorexia nervosa (AN), at the stage of starvation and emaciation, is characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function, including memory performance. It is unclear whether memory impairment persists or is reversible following weight restoration, and whether memory function differs between AN subtypes. The aim of the present study was to investigate general memory performance in currently ill and fully weight-restored patients of different AN subtypes. Memory performance was assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in a total of 99 participants, including 34 restricting-type AN patients (AN-RESTR), 19 binge-eating/purging-type AN patients (AN-PURGE), 16 weight-restored AN patients (AN-W-R) and 30 healthy controls (CONTROL). Cognitive evaluation included a battery of standardized neuropsychological tasks for validating the findings on memory function. Deficits were found with respect to immediate and delayed story recall in currently ill AN patients irrespective of AN subtype. These deficits persisted in weight-restored AN patients. Currently ill and weight-restored AN patients did not differ significantly from healthy controls with respect to working memory or other measures of neuropsychological functioning. The findings suggest that impaired memory performance is either a stable trait characteristic or a scar effect of chronic starvation that may play a role in the development and/or persistence of the disorder.	f	\N
20530459	This study evaluated the alerting, orienting, and executive attention abilities of children with ADHD and their typically developing (TD) peers using a modified version of the adult attention network test (ANT-I). A total of 25 children with ADHD, Combined Type (ADHD-C, mean age = 9.20 years), 20 children with ADHD, Predominantly Inattentive Type (ADHD-I, mean age = 9.58 years), and 45 TD children (mean age = 9.41 years) matched on age and intelligence to the ADHD group completed the ANT-I. As hypothesized, children with ADHD (n = 45) displayed significantly weaker alerting and executive attention than TD children (n = 45) but did not differ from TD children in orienting ability. Children with ADHD-C (n = 25) did not differ from children with ADHD-I (n = 20) on any of the three networks. Results supported the growing body of evidence that has found alerting and executive attention deficits in children with ADHD.	f	\N
20629939	Actigraphic (ACT) recordings are used widely in schoolchildren as a less intrusive and more extended approach to evaluation of sleep problems. However, critical assessment of the validity and reliability of ACT against overnight polysomnography (NPSG) are unavailable. Thus, we explored the degree of concordance between NPSG and ACT in school-aged children to delineate potential ACT boundaries when interpreting pediatric sleep. Non-dominant wrist ACT was recorded simultaneously with NPSG in 149 healthy school-aged children (aged 4.1-8.8 years, 41.7% boys, 80.4% Caucasian) recruited from the community. Analyses were limited to the Actiware (MiniMitter-64) calculated parameters originating from 1-min epoch sampling and medium sensitivity threshold value of 40; i.e. sleep period time (SPT), total sleep time (TST) and wake after sleep onset (WASO). SPT was not significantly different between ACT and NPSG. However, ACT underestimated TST significantly by 32.2±33.4 min and overestimated WASO by 26.3±34.4 min. The decreased precision of ACT was also evident from moderate to small concordance correlation coefficients (0.47 for TST and 0.09 for WASO). ACT in school-aged children provides reliable assessment of sleep quantity, but is relatively inaccurate during determination of sleep quality. Thus, caution is advocated in drawing definitive conclusions from ACT during evaluation of the sleep-disturbed child.	f	\N
20645311	Impaired understanding of others' sensations and emotions as well as abnormal experience of their own emotions and sensations is frequently reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is hypothesized that these abnormalities are based on altered connectivity within "shared" neural networks involved in emotional awareness of self and others. The insula is considered a central brain region in a network underlying these functions, being located at the transition of information about bodily arousal and the physiological state of the body to subjective feelings. The present study investigated the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of the insula in 14 high-functioning participants with ASD (HF-ASD) and 15 typically developing (TD) participants in the age range between 12 and 20 years by means of "resting state" or "nontask" functional magnetic resonance imaging. Essentially, a distinction was made between anterior and posterior regions of the insular cortex. The results show a reduced functional connectivity in the HF-ASD group, compared with the TD group, between anterior as well as posterior insula and specific brain regions involved in emotional and sensory processing. It is suggested that functional abnormalities in a network involved in emotional and interoceptive awareness might be at the basis of altered emotional experiences and impaired social abilities in ASD, and that these abnormalities are partly based on the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of such a network.	f	\N
20663569	The processing of emotional stimuli is thought to be negatively biased in major depression. This study investigates this issue using musical, vocal and facial affective stimuli. 23 depressed in-patients and 23 matched healthy controls were recruited. Affective information processing was assessed through musical, vocal and facial emotion recognition tasks. Depression, anxiety level and attention capacity were controlled. The depressed participants demonstrated less accurate identification of emotions than the control group in all three sorts of emotion-recognition tasks. The depressed group also gave higher intensity ratings than the controls when scoring negative emotions, and they were more likely to attribute negative emotions to neutral voices and faces. Our in-patient group might differ from the more general population of depressed adults. They were all taking anti-depressant medication, which may have had an influence on their emotional information processing. Major depression is associated with a general negative bias in the processing of emotional stimuli. Emotional processing impairment in depression is not confined to interpersonal stimuli (faces and voices), being also present in the ability to feel music accurately.	f	\N
20668875	Action perception may involve a mirror-matching system, such that observed actions are mapped onto the observer's own motor representations. The strength of such mirror system activation should depend on an individual's experience with the observed action. The motor interference effect, where an observed action interferes with a concurrently executed incongruent action, is thought to arise from mirror system activation. However, this view was recently challenged. If motor interference arises from mirror system activation, this effect should be sensitive to prior sensorimotor experience with the observed action. To test this prediction, we measured motor interference in two groups of participants observing the same incongruent movements. One group had received brief visuo-motor practice with the observed incongruent action, but not the other group. Action observation induced a larger motor interference in participants who had practiced the observed action. This result thus supports a mirror system account of motor interference.	f	\N
20704645	We studied a novel non-contact biomotion sensor, which has been developed for identifying sleep/wake patterns in adult humans. The biomotion sensor uses ultra low-power reflected radiofrequency waves to determine the movement of a subject during sleep. An automated classification algorithm has been developed to recognize sleep/wake states on a 30-s epoch basis based on the measured movement signal. The sensor and software were evaluated against gold-standard polysomnography on a database of 113 subjects [94 male, 19 female, age 53±13years, apnoea-hypopnea index (AHI) 22±24] being assessed for sleep-disordered breathing at a hospital-based sleep laboratory. The overall per-subject accuracy was 78%, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.38. Lower accuracy was seen in a high AHI group (AHI >15, 63 subjects) than in a low AHI group (74.8% versus 81.3%); however, most of the change in accuracy can be explained by the lower sleep efficiency of the high AHI group. Averaged across subjects, the overall sleep sensitivity was 87.3% and the wake sensitivity was 50.1%. The automated algorithm slightly overestimated sleep efficiency (bias of +4.8%) and total sleep time (TST; bias of +19min on an average TST of 288min). We conclude that the non-contact biomotion sensor can provide a valid means of measuring sleep-wake patterns in this patient population, and also allows direct visualization of respiratory movement signals.	f	\N
20709594	We investigated the role of the frontostriatal system in contextual processing, by examining neural correlates of local contextual processing in Parkinson's disease (PD). Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. EEG was recorded in eight PD patients and eight controls. Recording blocks consisted of targets preceded by randomized sequences of standards and by sequences including a predictive sequence signaling the occurrence of a subsequent target event. Subjects pressed a button in response to targets. Peak P3b amplitude and latency were evaluated for targets after predictive and non-predictive sequences. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures showed that controls processed predicted and random targets differentially, while PD patients processed these similarly. Reaction times were shorter for predictable than for random targets in controls but not in patients. PD patients failed to generate the expected P3b latency shift between predicted and random targets, which is observed in controls. These findings show that predictive local context effects on target detection are altered in PD patients. The findings suggest a key role for the frontostriatal system in contextual processing.	f	\N
20723021	The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, assuming that undesirable memories can become suppressed and that dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated. Here, we followed this idea adopting the 'directed forgetting' approach of experimental psychology. The voluntary suppression of unwanted memories results in impaired later retrieval. Because sleep is known to benefit consolidation of newly learned materials, including cognitive skills, we hypothesized that memory suppression would be enhanced by sleep, and perhaps particularly by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated more often with dream reports. Subjects (n=42) learned a list of word-pairs and, subsequently, the first (cue) words of the pairs were presented again; for half these words subjects had to recall respective second words (response pairs) and for the other half they had to keep respective second words out of mind (suppression pairs). Retrieval of both response and suppression pairs was tested after 8h of sleep or wakefulness (main experiment) or after 3-h periods of early slow wave sleep (SWS)-rich or late REM-rich sleep (supplementary experiment). Response pairs were generally recalled better after sleep than wakefulness (P<0.05). Recall of suppression pairs was, as expected, worse than of response pairs. Contrary to our hypothesis, memory for suppression pairs was not affected differentially by sleep. In the supplementary experiment, compared to SWS-rich sleep, REM-rich sleep even improved recall of suppression pairs (P<0.05). Thus, sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories but, on the contrary, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories making them more accessible for retrieval.	f	\N
20723987	We examined the contributions of risk factors to the psychological and neuroendocrine status of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and explored the feasibility of a full-scale study of these risk factors. A prospective, correlational design was used. Risk factors included parental stress, parental anxiety, child anxiety, severity of the child's illness, and invasive procedures administered to the child. Outcomes variables were pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and salivary cortisol levels. Measures were taken at 3 time points over 3 months. The mothers' state anxiety significantly increased over time, whereas the children's PTSD symptoms decreased. Most children with average or high anxiety demonstrated varying degrees of PTSD symptomatology, whereas children with low anxiety exhibited doubtful or mild symptoms of PTSD. As the severity of PTSD symptoms increased over time, the level of salivary cortisol decreased at two weeks and three months after hospital discharge. Predicted trends in data were found and warrant further investigation, using a similar methodology in a full-scale study with an emphasis on recruiting the most seriously ill children.	f	\N
20727700	We evaluated the cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) during the first year of life in order to obtain information on the maturation of arousal mechanisms during NREM sleep and to provide normative data for CAP parameters in this age range (5-16months). Eleven healthy children (mean age 7.9±3.3months, seven boys) were studied while they slept in the morning. They underwent a 3-h video-EEG-polysomnographic recording at the Pediatric Sleep Unit of Sant'Andrea Hospital in Rome, Italy. Sleep was scored visually for sleep architecture and CAP analysis using standard criteria. Our results were complemented by CAP data from a previous sample of healthy infants (2-4months), studied when they slept during the morning, in order to correlate CAP parameters with age. The total sample comprised 24 children. The sleep period was approximately 2h, with a first REM latency of about 30min, and a clear distinction between stages N1, N2, and N3. The arousal index was 12±2.1 events/hour of sleep. The total CAP rate was 23.7±7.6%, and it increased progressively with the deepness of sleep; the highest values were observed during stage N3 and the lowest values during stage N1. A1 phases were the most numerous (78.2%), followed by A2 (14%) and A3 (7.7%) phases. The A1 index was higher than the A2 and A3 indices, whereas the mean duration of B was higher than that of A. The correlation showed that the CAP rate, A1, A2, A3 indices, A2, A3 percentages, and the average duration of B increased with age, whereas the A1 percentage decreased. We provide the first data on CAP analysis in children aged 5-16months, studied when they slept during the morning. Our results confirm the trend toward an increase in CAP rate during the first year of life. In addition, we observed a progressive increase in CAP rate with deepness of sleep, and with age, reflecting maturation of slow-wave activity. The decreased percentage of A1 subtypes may reflect the maturation of arousability.	f	\N
20809377	Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous, or unique; experiment 2 (total n = 80: male and female children and adults) studied age and sex effects on gaze cueing. Gaze cueing appears endogenous and may strengthen in typical development. Experiment 3 tested exogenous, endogenous, and gaze-based orienting in 25 typical and 27 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. ASD children made more saccades, slowing their reaction times; however, exogenous and endogenous orienting, including gaze cueing, appear intact in ASD.	f	\N
20813504	To determine whether increased physiological arousal immediately after trauma or at emergency admission can predict post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in motor vehicle accident (MVA) survivors with physical injuries. We included 119 MVA survivors with physical injuries. In this prospective cohort study, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) were assessed during ambulance transport (T1) and at hospital admission (T2). One and four months after the accident, we assessed patients for PTSD (Davidson trauma scale, confirmed with the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV axis I disorders). Multivariate logistic regression models assessed the relationship between HR or BP and PTSD. PTSD was diagnosed in 54 (45.4%) patients at 1 month and in 39 (32.8%) at 4 months. In the multivariate analysis, HR at T1 or at T2 predicted PTSD at 1 month (OR=1.156, 95% CI [1.094;1.221] p<0.0001). Only HR at T1 (not at T2) predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.059, 95% CI [1.013; 1.108] p=0.012). Injury severity predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.207, 95% CI [1.085; 1.342] p=0.001). A cut-off of 84 beats per minute yielded a sensitivity of 62.5% and a specificity of 75.0% for PTSD. HR measured at the scene of MVA and severity of injury predicted PTSD 4 months later.	f	\N
20817320	Recently there has been much interest in social coordination of motor movements, or as it is referred to by some researchers, joint action. This paper reviews the cognitive perspective's common coding/mirror neuron theory of joint action, describes some of its limitations and then presents the behavioral dynamics perspective as an alternative way of understanding social motor coordination. In particular, behavioral dynamics' ability to explain the temporal coordination of interacting individuals is detailed. Two experiments are then described that demonstrate how dynamical processes of synchronization are apparent in the coordination underlying everyday joint actions such as martial art exercises, hand-clapping games, and conversations. The import of this evidence is that emergent dynamic patterns such as synchronization are the behavioral order that any neural substrate supporting joint action (e.g., mirror systems) would have to sustain.	f	\N
20822301	The attentional blink is the marked deficit in awareness of a 2nd target (T2) when it is presented shortly after the 1st target (T1) in a stream of distractors. When the distractors between T1 and T2 are replaced by even more targets, the attentional blink is reduced or absent, indicating that the attentional blink results from online selection mechanisms that act in response to distracting input rather than being the result of T1-induced cognitive resource depletion. However, Dell'Acqua, Jolicoeur, Luria, and Pluchino (2009) recently contended that an attentional blink is found in the multiple-target case as long as the appropriate trial context and analyses are used, thus reinstating resource-based explanations of the attentional blink and challenging the selection account. Specifically, an attentional blink reemerges when target performance is analyzed contingent on previous target accuracy. We argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that neither the trial context nor the type of analysis poses a serious problem for selection accounts. We show that the attentional blink and previous target contingency effects can be dissociated, with the latter depending more on low-level, short-range competition. We conclude that selection mechanisms involved in filtering for targets still provide a strong and coherent explanation of the attentional blink.	f	\N
20832868	Bipolar disorder (BD) and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually manifest with shared clinical symptoms, proving quite challenging to thoroughly differentiate one from another. Previous research has characterized these two disorders independently, but no study compared both pathologies from a neuropsychological perspective. The aim of this study was to compare the neuropsychological profile of adult ADHD and BD with each other and against a control group, in order to understand the way in which comprehensive cognitive assessment can contribute to their discrimination as distinct clinical entities as well as their differential diagnosis. All groups were successfully matched for age, sex, years of education, and premorbid IQ. Participants were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery evaluating multiple domains. Compared to controls, BD patients had a poorer performance on immediate verbal memory tasks. Both clinical groups exhibited significantly lower scores than controls on the recognition phase of verbal and non-verbal memory tasks, as well as on a task of executive functioning with high working memory demand. Noticeably, however, ADHD had significantly better performance than BD on the recognition phase of both the Rey list memory task and the Rey Figure. The better performance of ADHD patients over BD may reflect the crucial role of the executive component on their memory deficits and gives empirical support to further differentiate the neuropsychological profile of BD and adult ADHD patients in clinical practice.	f	\N
20835973	Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.	f	\N
20838776	Abuse and neglect are highly prevalent in children and have enduring neurobiological effects. Stressful early life environments perturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn may predispose to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. However, studies of childhood maltreatment and adult HPA function have not yet rigorously investigated the differential effects of maltreatment subtypes, including physical abuse. In this study, we sought to replicate our previous finding that childhood maltreatment was associated with attenuated cortisol responses to stress and determine whether the type of maltreatment was a determinant of the stress response. Salivary cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was examined in a non-clinical sample of women (n = 110). Subjects had no acute medical problems and were not seeking psychiatric treatment. Effects of five maltreatment types, as measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, on cortisol response to the TSST were investigated. To further examine the significant (p < 0.005) effect of one maltreatment type, women with childhood physical abuse (PA) (n = 20) were compared to those without past PA (n = 90). Women reporting childhood PA displayed a significantly blunted cortisol response to the TSST compared with subjects without PA, after controlling for estrogen use, age, other forms of maltreatment, and other potential confounds. There were no differences between PA and control groups with regard to physiological arousal during the stress challenge. In a non-clinical sample of women with minimal or no current psychopathology, physical abuse is associated with a blunted cortisol response to a psychosocial stress task.	f	\N
20859069	The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among gait and mobility under single and dual task conditions in older adults. Community-dwelling older adults (n=41, mean age=75) completed mobility and gait tasks. Mobility was assessed with the Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG). Select gait parameters were examined while individuals walked at their preferred speed across the GAITRite electronic walkway. Two age groups were studied (younger age group=65-75; older age group=76+). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between gait and mobility under single vs dual conditions. Older adults required more time to complete the TUG when concurrently performing a second cognitive task (10.84 sec vs 15.77 sec). In addition, one or more gait characteristic such as stride length, cadence and stance explained (a) a high percentage of variance in mobility performance under single task conditions (TUG 74%) and (b) a smaller portion of variance in mobility performance under dual task conditions (TUGc 25%). No salient age group differences were observed in TUG performance, but gait characteristics accounted for a larger portion of variance in TUGc performance (46%) for the older age group (mean age=81) than for the younger age group (mean age=69; TUGc 18%).	f	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	f	\N
20920531	Obesity and drug addiction, both a result of aberrant motivated behavior, are growing problems in western society. Increased dopamine neurotransmission occurs with both drug-seeking and ingestive behaviors and has been linked to effort related functions. Hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt/ox) neurons have long been known to mediate arousal and feeding. Over the last 5 years, hcrt/ox has been demonstrated to play a novel role in mediating a variety of reward-seeking behaviors and can modulate the activity and output of dopamine neurons. Here, we propose that hcrt/ox action on mesolimbic dopamine circuitry serves to promote effort to obtain highly salient natural or drug rewards.	f	\N
20934190	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by the presence of disturbances in emotional processing. However, the neural correlates of these alterations, and how they may be affected by therapeutic interventions, remain unclear. The present study addressed these issues in a preliminary investigation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses to positive, negative, and neutral pictures in unmedicated MDD patients (N = 22) versus controls (N = 14). After this initial scan, MDD patients were treated with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and scanned again after treatment. Within regions that showed pre-treatment differences between patients and controls, we tested the association between pre-treatment activity and subsequent treatment response as well as activity changes from pre- to post-treatment. This study yielded three main findings. First, prior to treatment and relative to controls, patients exhibited overall reduced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), diminished discrimination between emotional and neutral items in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and enhanced responses to negative versus positive stimuli in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral PFC. Second, CBT-related symptom improvement in MDD patients was predicted by increased activity at baseline in ventromedial PFC as well as the valence effects in the ATL and dorsolateral PFC. Third, from pre- to post-treatment, MDD patients exhibited overall increases in ventromedial PFC activation, enhanced arousal responses in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and a reversal of valence effects in the ATL. The study was limited by the relatively small sample that was able to complete both scan sessions, as well as an inability to determine the influence of comorbid disorders within the current sample. Nevertheless, components of the neural networks corresponding to emotion processing disturbances in MDD appear to resolve following treatment and are predictive of treatment response, possibly reflecting improvements in emotion regulation processes in response to CBT.	f	\N
20969453	We conducted a study of the relationships between Internet self-efficacy, sensation seeking, the need for cognition, and problematic use of the Internet. The study was based on a randomly selected sample of 979 adult Internet users. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis of these subjects' responses on a questionnaire consisting of relevant items indicated that Internet self-efficacy and sensation seeking positively predicted problematic Internet use. Contrastingly, the need for cognition was significantly negatively associated with problematic Internet use.	f	\N
20977513	There is profound knowledge that sleep restriction increases tonic (event-unrelated) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. In the present study we focused on time-locked activity by means of phasic (event-related) EEG analysis during a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) over the course of sleep deprivation. Twenty healthy subjects (10 male; mean age ± SD: 23.45 ± 1.97 years) underwent sleep deprivation for 24 h. Subjects had to rate their sleepiness hourly (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale) and to perform a PVT while EEG was recorded simultaneously. Tonic EEG changes in the δ (1-4 Hz), θ (4-8 Hz) and α (8-12 Hz) frequency range were investigated by power spectral analyses. Single-trial (phase-locking index, PLI) and event-related potential (ERP) analyses (P1, N1) were used to examine event-related changes in EEG activity. Subjective sleepiness, PVT reaction times and tonic EEG activity (delta and theta spectral power) significantly increased over the night. In contrast, event-related EEG parameters decreased throughout sleep deprivation. Specifically, the ERP component P1 diminished in amplitude, and delta and theta PLI estimates decreased progressively over the night. It is suggested that event-related EEG measures (such as the amplitude of the P1 and especially delta/theta phase-locking) serve as a complimentary method to track the deterioration of attention and performance during sleep loss. As these measures actually reflect the impaired response to specific events rather than tonic changes during sleep deprivation they are a promising tool for future sleep research.	f	\N
21035107	The aim of this work is to determine the influence of multisensory (visual-haptic) integration and the level of interaction (seeing photographs, seeing the actual product, touching it and using it) on the perception of products, including perceived ergonomics. The product selected for the experiment was the hammer, as this will help to establish whether emotional design studies can also apply to 'commercial' products. Subjective opinions of users were evaluated through semantic differential tests. A factor analysis identified six semantic factors or axes (Quality/Robustness, Ergonomics/Appearance, Innovation, Lightness, Dynamic Effects, and Efficacy). Results show that Lightness and Dynamic Effects are quite sensitive to the level of interaction, while Ergonomics/Appearance is partially affected. However, the perceptions of Innovation, Quality/Robustness and Efficacy are not so affected and they could be detected through a lower level of interaction (i.e. seeing photographs). This suggests that commercial products seem sensitive to emotional design studies and that multisensory integration enhances the perception of the factors that are clearly linked with physical interaction between users and tools, i.e. Ergonomics/Appearance, Lightness and Dynamic Effects. Additionally, it should be highlighted that some aspects related with the ergonomics and ease of use of products are also perceived at different stages of interaction.	f	\N
21035195	Although false memories and confabulation have been linked to both executive dysfunction and greater suggestibility, similar associations with the emergence of delusional thinking remain unexamined. We therefore compared healthy individuals who scored high and low on the Peters Delusional Inventory (PDI: Peters et al., 1999) on measures of set-shifting (the intra-extradimensional set shift task: IED) planning (the Stockings of Cambridge Task: SOC). Additionally, we examined whether high delusion-prone individuals show greater suggestibility on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2: Gudjonsson, 1987). On the IED task, the high group made more pre-extradimensional shift errors than the low PDI group, and this was especially notable for reversal learning. By contrast, no differences emerged on any aspect of the SOC. Finally, and intriguingly, the high PDI group was less likely than the low PDI group to change their responses after receiving suggestive negative feedback. We propose that delusional-style thinking may be underpinned by an orbitofrontal-based reversal learning difficulty affecting the flexibility to adapt responses to changing contingencies and external pressure.	f	\N
21056046	The brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a member of the neurotrophin family, is involved in nerve growth and survival. Especially, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the BDNF gene, Val66Met, has gained a lot of attention, because of its effect on activity-dependent BDNF secretion and its link to impaired memory processes. We hypothesize that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism may have modulatory effects on the visual sensory (iconic) memory performance. Two hundred and eleven healthy German students (106 female and 105 male) were included in the data analysis. Since BDNF is also discussed to be involved in the pathogenesis of depression, we additionally tested for possible interactions with depressive mood. The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism significantly influenced iconic-memory performance, with the combined Val/Met-Met/Met genotype group revealing less time stability of information stored in iconic memory than the Val/Val group. Furthermore, this stability was positively correlated with depressive mood exclusively in the Val/Val genotype group. Thus, these results show that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism has an effect on pre-attentive visual sensory memory processes.	f	\N
21062120	Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy improved not only apnea-hypopnea during sleep and sleep structure but also sleep-related deglutition, especially respiratory phase patterns associated with deglutition. Sleep-related deglutition and related respiratory phase patterns in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) under CPAP therapy were investigated. Deglutition during sleep was examined in 10 patients who had severe OSAHS under CPAP therapy via time-matched recordings of polysomnography and surface electromyography. The mean number of swallows per hour during the total sleep time was 1.6 ± 1.3. The mean period of the longest absence of deglutition was 66.4 ± 19.6 min. Deglutition was related to the sleep stage. The mean number of swallows per hour was 6.8 ± 8.4 during stage 1 sleep, 1.1 ± 0.8 during stage 2 sleep, 0.1 ± 0.4 during stage 3 sleep, and 0 during stage 4 sleep. The deeper the sleep stage, the lower the mean deglutition frequency. The mean number of swallows per hour was 0.8 ± 0.5 during REM sleep. Most deglutition occurred in association with spontaneous electroencephalographic arousal. Swallows followed by inspiration were markedly reduced. Under CPAP therapy, sleep-related deglutition and its respiratory phase pattern had normalized.	f	\N
21062948	One hundred thirty child sexual abusers were diagnosed using each of following four methods: (a) phallometric testing, (b) strict application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision [DSM-IV-TR]) criteria, (c) Rapid Risk Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism (RRASOR) scores, and (d) "expert" diagnoses rendered by a seasoned clinician. Comparative utility and intermethod consistency of these methods are reported, along with recidivism data indicating predictive validity for risk management. Results suggest that inconsistency exists in diagnosing pedophilia, leading to diminished accuracy in risk assessment. Although the RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR methods were significantly correlated with expert ratings, RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR were unrelated to each other. Deviant arousal was not associated with any of the other methods. Only the expert ratings and RRASOR scores were predictive of sexual recidivism. Logistic regression analyses showed that expert diagnosis did not add to prediction of sexual offence recidivism over and above RRASOR alone. Findings are discussed within a context of encouragement of clinical consistency and evidence-based practice regarding treatment and risk management of those who sexually abuse children.	f	\N
21071267	Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to examine neural responses to face stimuli in a masking paradigm. Images of faces (neutral or fearful) and objects were presented in subthreshold, threshold, and suprathreshold conditions (exposure durations of approximately 20, 30 and 300 ms, respectively), followed by a 1000-ms pattern mask. We recorded ERP responses at Oz, T5, T6, Cz and Pz. The effects of physical stimulus features were examined by inverted stimuli. The occipital N1 amplitude (approximately 160 ms) was significantly smaller in response to faces than objects when presented at a subthreshold duration. In contrast, the occipitotemporal N170 amplitude was significantly greater in the threshold and suprathreshold conditions compared with the subthreshold condition for faces, but not for objects. The P1 amplitude (approximately 120 ms) elicited by upright faces in the subthreshold condition was significantly larger than for inverted faces. P1 and N1 components at Oz were sensitive to subthreshold faces, which suggests the presence of fast face-specific process(es) prior to face-encoding. The N170 reflects the robustness of the face selective response in the occipitotemporal area. Even when presented for a subthreshold duration, faces were processed differently to images of objects at an early stage of visual processing.	f	\N
21073480	To study defensive mobilization elicited by the exposure to interoceptive arousal sensations, we exposed highly anxiety sensitive students to a symptom provocation task. Symptom reports, autonomic arousal, and the startle eyeblink response were monitored during guided hyperventilation and a recovery period in 26 highly anxiety sensitive persons and 22 controls. Normoventilation was used as a non-provocative comparison condition. Hyperventilation led to autonomic arousal and a marked increase in somatic symptoms. While high and low anxiety sensitive persons did not differ in their defensive activation during hyperventilation, group differences were detected during early recovery. Highly anxiety sensitive students exhibited a potentiation of startle response magnitudes and increased autonomic arousal after hyper- as compared to after normoventilation, indicating defensive mobilization evoked by the prolonged presence of feared somatic sensations.	f	\N
21077720	Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower and more error prone than to unrepeated stimuli. In a typical NP experiment, each probe target is accompanied by a distractor. It is an accepted, albeit puzzling, finding that the NP effect depends on the presence of these probe distractors; for, without probe distractors, NP diminishes. This phenomenon causes severe problems for the majority of theoretical accounts of NP. In the present study, we follow a simple argument, namely that without probe distractors, the difficulty of responding to the probe is so low that NP becomes irrelevant. Hence, by increasing perceptual processing difficulty, as well as by increasing conceptual processing difficulty, significant NP effects with constantly absent probe distractors can be reliably observed. In addition, our results also show that NP without probe distractors can be found by exclusively manipulating probe display processing. This finding furthers our understanding of the processes causing NP.	f	\N
21094573	Learning movement sequences is thought to develop from an initial controlled attentive phase to a more automatic inattentive phase. Furthermore, execution of sequences becomes faster with practice, which may result from changes at a general motor processing level rather than at an effector specific motor processing level. In the current study, we examined whether these changes are already present during preparation. Fixed series of six keypresses, either familiar or unfamiliar, had to be prepared and executed/withheld after a go/nogo signal. Reaction time results confirmed that familiar sequences were executed faster than unfamiliar sequences. Results derived from the electroencephalogram showed a decreased demand on general motor preparation and visual-working memory before familiar sequences as compared to unfamiliar sequences. We propose that with familiar sequences the presetting segments of responses is less demanding than with unfamiliar sequences, as familiar sequences can be regarded as less complex than unfamiliar sequences. Finally, the decreasing demand on visual-working memory before familiar sequences suggests that sequence learning indeed develops from an attentive to an automatic phase.	f	\N
21106695	To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.	f	\N
21108940	Previous research has demonstrated that cross-language activation is present even when proficient bilinguals perform a task only in one language. The present study investigated the time-course of cross-language activation during word production in a second language (L2) by using a picture-word interference paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs). Spanish-English bilinguals living in an L2 environment named pictures in their L2 English while ignoring L2 English distractor words that were visually presented with the pictures. Participants named pictures more slowly when distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the English name of the picture or the Spanish name of the picture than when picture and distractor word were unrelated. Interference was also detectable in the mean amplitude of the N2 peak (200-260 ms) and the N3 range (350-400 ms). The results suggest that lexical alternatives from both languages compete for selection in the process of L2 speech planning in a predominantly L2 context.	f	\N
21112093	There is substantial evidence that cognitive deficits and brain structural abnormalities are present in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and in their first-degree relatives. Previous studies have demonstrated associations between cognition and functional outcome in BD patients but have not examined the role of brain morphological changes. Similarly, the functional impact of either cognition or brain morphology in relatives remains unknown. Therefore we focused on delineating the relationship between psychosocial functioning, cognition and brain structure, in relation to disease expression and genetic risk for BD. Clinical, cognitive and brain structural measures were obtained from 41 euthymic BD patients and 50 of their unaffected first-degree relatives. Psychosocial function was evaluated using the General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. We examined the relationship between level of functioning and general intellectual ability (IQ), memory, attention, executive functioning, symptomatology, illness course and total gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Cross-sectional design. Multiple regression analyses revealed that IQ, total white matter volume and a predominantly depressive illness course were independently associated with functional outcome in BD patients, but not in their relatives, and accounted for a substantial proportion (53%) of the variance in patients' GAF scores. There were no significant domain-specific associations between cognition and outcome after consideration of IQ. Our results emphasise the role of IQ and white matter integrity in relation to outcome in BD and carry significant implications for treatment interventions.	f	\N
21147519	Numerous investigations into schizophrenia have reported impairment in self-other source monitoring, and studies on healthy subjects have suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a critical region underlying self-monitoring abilities. In the current study, we examined the mPFC-related modulation of other brain regions in schizophrenia during self-other monitoring using a psychophysiological interaction approach. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls performed a self-other source monitoring task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Independent component analysis was used to identify the mPFC region of interest, and the averaged mPFC time course was extracted and entered into a general linear regression model for use with the psychophysiological interaction analysis, with Self vs. Other monitoring being the psychological condition of interest. Results suggested that connectivity between the mPFC and the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) was greater in the Other than the Self condition for the healthy subjects, but this was reversed for the schizophrenia patients, such that mPFC-LSTG connectivity was greater during Self than the Other condition. The modified functional connectivity associated with the performance of recollection of self-source information suggests that schizophrenia patients invoke circuits normally involved in retrieving other-generated information when processing self-generated information, thereby providing a possible biological basis for the self-other confusion characteristic of schizophrenia.	f	\N
21147857	The presence of distracting stimuli during eating increases the meal size and could thereby contribute to overeating and obesity. However, the effects of within-meal distraction on later food intake are less clear. We sought to test the hypothesis that distraction inhibits memory encoding for a meal, which, in turn, increases later food intake. The current study assessed the effects of playing solitaire (a computerized card-sorting game) during a fixed lunch, which was eaten at a fixed rate, on memory for lunch and food intake in a taste test 30 min later. A between-subjects design was used with 44 participants. Participants in the no-distraction group ate the same lunch in the absence of any distracting stimuli. Distracted individuals were less full after lunch, and they ate significantly more biscuits in the taste test than did nondistracted participants (mean intake: 52.1 compared with 27.1 g; P = 0.017). Furthermore, serial-order memory for the presentation of the 9 lunch items was less accurate in participants who had been distracted during lunch. These findings provide further evidence that distraction during one meal has the capacity to influence subsequent eating. They may also help to explain the well-documented association between sedentary screen-time activities and overweight.	f	\N
21148667	The aim of this study was to explore if the divergent results regarding attentional functions in patients with mood disorders are due to selective impairments in higher level or more basic and distinctive attentional subcomponents. We compared outpatients with current major depressive disorders (MDD; n = 37) and MDD with comorbid anxiety disorder (MDDA; n = 24) with healthy controls (n = 92) on Stroop and Attentional Network Test (ANT). The current data indicate that significant impairment in attentional functions corresponds to the presence of MDD and MDDA. MDDA displayed significantly lower performance on the Stroop variables, and MDD were significantly impaired in the alerting function in ANT. These results show impairments on different levels of attention in mood disorders. MDDA show impairments on higher level executive attention functions, whereas MDD display deficits at the basic attentional level. These findings suggest that including comorbid anxiety disorder in MDD is important for future research.	f	\N
21159327	Worry-prone individuals have less residual working memory capacity during worry compared to low-worriers (Hayes, Hirsch, & Mathews, 2008). People typically worry in verbal form, and the present study investigated whether verbal worry depletes working memory capacity more than worry in imagery-based form. High and low-worriers performed a working memory task, random interval generation, whilst thinking about a worry in verbal or imagery form. High (but not low) worriers had less available working memory capacity when worrying in verbal compared to imagery-based form. The findings could not be accounted for by general attentional control, amount of negatively-valenced thought, or appraisals participants made about worry topics. The findings indicate that the verbal nature of worry is implicated in the depletion of working memory resources during worry among high-worriers, and point to the potential value of imagery-based techniques in cognitive-behavioural treatments for problematic worry.	f	\N
21176782	A recent physiologically based model of human sleep is extended to incorporate the effects of caffeine on sleep-wake timing and fatigue. The model includes the sleep-active neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO), the wake-active monoaminergic brainstem populations (MA), their interactions with cholinergic/orexinergic (ACh/Orx) input to MA, and circadian and homeostatic drives. We model two effects of caffeine on the brain due to competitive antagonism of adenosine (Ad): (i) a reduction in the homeostatic drive and (ii) an increase in cholinergic activity. By comparing the model output to experimental data, constraints are determined on the parameters that describe the action of caffeine on the brain. In accord with experiment, the ranges of these parameters imply significant variability in caffeine sensitivity between individuals, with caffeine's effectiveness in reducing fatigue being highly dependent on an individual's tolerance, and past caffeine and sleep history. Although there are wide individual differences in caffeine sensitivity and thus in parameter values, once the model is calibrated for an individual it can be used to make quantitative predictions for that individual. A number of applications of the model are examined, using exemplar parameter values, including: (i) quantitative estimation of the sleep loss and the delay to sleep onset after taking caffeine for various doses and times; (ii) an analysis of the system's stable states showing that the wake state during sleep deprivation is stabilized after taking caffeine; and (iii) comparing model output successfully to experimental values of subjective fatigue reported in a total sleep deprivation study examining the reduction of fatigue with caffeine. This model provides a framework for quantitatively assessing optimal strategies for using caffeine, on an individual basis, to maintain performance during sleep deprivation.	f	\N
21213194	This study examined whether the process of temporal preparation for a target stimulus is the same regardless of the task required by the target stimulus. To this end, the same variable-foreperiod design was used in a temporal discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a reaction time task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration increased as a function of foreperiod, whereas in Experiment 2, foreperiod did not influence reaction time. Furthermore, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration revealed an asymmetric sequential effect of foreperiod, but the pattern of this effect was opposite to the pattern observed in the reaction time task. Together these dissociative patterns of foreperiod effects suggest that the mechanism of temporal preparation depends on the task required by the target stimulus.	f	\N
21215298	The N2pc component of the event-related potentials is assumed to indicate attentional filtering processes during visual search tasks. In this study, we investigated the effects of physical disparity between a target stimulus and distracter stimuli and discrimination difficulty of the target item, on N2pc component by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects completed a visual search task. In the visual search task, we presented a round array of stimuli and manipulated the color disparity between the target and distracters and the discriminative difficulty of the target's form. The results showed that higher amplitude of N2pc was elicited in the high color disparity condition compared to the low disparity condition. However, no significant effect was found for the discriminative difficulty. The results suggested that the N2pc component could be modulated by the physical disparity between the target item and the distracters in the searching processes, which most likely reflects allocation of attention to select an object based on the perceptual saliency of that object.	f	\N
21221825	Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), a novel marker of vulnerable plaque to prone rupture, is a predictor of both cardiovascular event and cerebrovascular event, and highly sensitive-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is an acute-phase response protein implicated in a broad range of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to examine the association between periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMs) with circulating Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with PLMs. Seventy patients with newly diagnosed PLM with polysomnography were enrolled this study. Patients were divided into two groups according to PLM index (normal PLM index, <15; elevated PLM index, ≥15). Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP concentrations were measured in serum samples by turbidimetric and nephelometric methods, respectively. The concentrations of these parameters were compared between two groups and correlation analysis was performed between PLMs and Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels. Lp-PLA2 levels and hs-CRP were significantly increased in elevated PLM index group compared with the control group (206.8 ± 78.1 vs 157.8 ± 56.7, p = 0.003, and 4.2 ± 3.5 vs 2.4 ± 2.1, p = 0.02, respectively). PLM index was positively correlated with Lp-PLA2 levels (r = 0.40, p = 0.001) and hs-CRP (r = 0.24, p = 0.05). In the linear regression model, Lp-PLA2 was an independent predictor of PLM index (R(2) = 0.36, p = 0.005). This study demonstrated an independent linear relation between PLM index and Lp-PLA2. In addition, it was seen increased Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with elevated PLM index. Based on these results, we can suggest that risk of vascular events may be increased in patients with PLMs and with increased PLM index.	f	\N
21232884	The iris regulates the intensity of light that stimulates the retina. The pupils dilate also in response to mental activities as sign of attention. We hypothesized that the response of the foetal pupil to vibro-acoustic stimulation (VAS) reflects foetal attention. To determine whether the changes in the foetal pupil produced by vibroacoustic stimulation is a sign of foetal attention. We studied sonographically the pupils and iris of 151 foetuses between 27 and 41 weeks of gestation, using maximum ultrasonic zoom. 160 human foetuses between the 27th and the 41st week of gestation. The diameters of the pupil and iris were compared before and after VAS. At baseline, the pupils were miotic. We observed a response to VAS, manifest as a prominent pupillary dilatation in all foetuses. At all gestational ages, the percent increase in pupillary diameter was ≥57% (mean 87%; range: 57-135%). VAS dilated the foetal pupil. Sonographic assessment of the foetal pupil provided important insights in the development of foetal neurological functions.	f	\N
21249517	This study examined two potential developmental pathways through which the temperament risk factor of negative emotionality (NE) leads to prospective increases in depressive symptoms through the mediating role of stressors and anxious symptoms in a sample of early to middle adolescents (N = 350, 6th-10th graders). The primary hypothesized model was that baseline NE leads to increased stressors, which results in increases in anxious arousal, which culminates with elevated depressive symptoms. An alternate model hypothesized that baseline NE leads to increased anxious arousal, which results in increases in stressors, and this culminates in elevated depressive symptoms. Youth completed self-report measures of NE, stressors, anxious arousal, and depressive symptoms at four time-points. Path analysis supported the primary model and showed that the mediating influence of stressors and anxious arousal explained 78% of the association between NE and prospective elevations in depressive symptoms. The alternate model was not supported. Neither gender nor age were moderators.	f	\N
21264619	Traditional "activation" views of masked priming explain the identity priming effect in terms of facilitation due to 'pre-activation' of stored representations. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming instead explains priming in terms of the evidence that the prime contributes towards the decision required to the target. In support of the Bayesian Reader account, Norris and Kinoshita showed that the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task and for targets requiring a Different decision in the same-different match task can be explained based on a single principle. Against this, Bowers (2010) argued that the absence of priming should be explained instead by a combination of sublexical priming and "familiarity bias". As evidence, Bowers cited Bodner and Masson's (1997) finding that nonword priming did emerge with targets presented in visually unfamiliar cAsE-AlTeRnAtEd format. We present evidence that this finding was due to the use of an ambiguous letter in case-alternated format; when using unambiguous letters, we consistently failed to find priming of case-alternated nonwords. We suggest that the Bayesian Reader, rather than the familiarity bias hypothesis, explains the absence of priming.	f	\N
21264645	Studies of electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring, such as the error-related negativity (ERN), posterror positivity (Pe), and N2 components of the event-related potential (ERP), suggest that increased ERN and Pe amplitudes and decreased N2 amplitudes are associated with better cognitive flexibility and cognitive control abilities; however, few studies have directly examined the relationship between cognitive performance and ERP indices of performance monitoring. We examined the neuropsychological profile of 89 healthy individuals who performed a modified flanker task. The neuropsychological domains tested included memory, verbal fluency, and attention/executive functioning. Pearson's correlations and multiple regression analyses showed a significant relationship between measures of attention/executive functioning and ERN amplitude, even when negative affect, reaction time interference, and posterror slowing were controlled. N2 amplitude related only to posterror slowing. The amplitude of the Pe was not significantly related to any cognitive domains. These findings are consistent with recent work indicating that performance monitoring requires attention skills and cognitive flexibility. Implications for the conflict-monitoring and reinforcement-learning theories are discussed.	f	\N
21264726	This study demonstrates that when people attempt to identify a facial expression of emotion (FEE) by haptically exploring a 3D facemask, they are affected by viewing a simultaneous, task-irrelevant visual FEE portrayed by another person. In comparison to a control condition, where visual noise was presented, the visual FEE facilitated haptic identification when congruent (visual and haptic FEEs same category). When the visual and haptic FEEs were incongruent, haptic identification was impaired, and error responses shifted toward the visually depicted emotion. In contrast, visual emotion labels that matched or mismatched the haptic FEE category produced no such effects. The findings indicate that vision and touch interact in FEE recognition at a level where featural invariants of the emotional category (cf. precise facial geometry or general concepts) are processed, even when the visual and haptic FEEs are not attributable to a common source. Processing mechanisms behind these effects are considered.	f	\N
21266181	Dynamic stimuli are ubiquitous in natural viewing conditions implying that grouping operations need to operate, not only in space, but also jointly in space and time. Moreover, in natural viewing, attention plays an important role in controlling how resources are allocated. We investigated how attention interacts with spatio-temporal perceptual grouping by using a bistable stimulus, called the Ternus-Pikler display. Ternus-Pikler displays can give rise to two different motion percepts, called Element Motion (EM) and Group Motion (GM), the former dominating at short Inter-Stimulus Intervals (ISIs) and the latter at long ISIs. Our results indicate that GM grouping requires more attentional resources than EM grouping. Different theoretical accounts of perceptual grouping and attention are discussed and evaluated in the light of the current results.	f	\N
21267599	Nocturnal polyuria, nocturnal detrusor overactivity and high arousal thresholds are central in the pathogenesis of enuresis. An underlying mechanism on the brainstem level is probably common to these mechanisms. Enuretic children have an increased risk for psychosocial comorbidity. The primary evaluation of the enuretic child is usually straightforward, with no radiology or invasive procedures required, and can be carried out by any adequately educated nurse or physician. The first-line treatment, once the few cases with underlying disorders, such as diabetes, kidney disease or urogenital malformations, have been ruled out, is the enuresis alarm, which has a definite curative potential but requires much work and motivation. For families not able to comply with the alarm, desmopressin should be the treatment of choice. In therapy-resistant cases, occult constipation needs to be ruled out, and then anticholinergic treatment-often combined with desmopressin-can be tried. In situations when all other treatments have failed, imipramine treatment is warranted, provided the cardiac risks are taken into account.	f	\N
21272839	Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In Experiments 2 and 3 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.	f	\N
21276839	This study characterized preferential choice in binary trials and investigated intra-session variations in response time (RT). In Experiment 1, participants (N=77) were asked to choose the preferred of two images of body wash; all unique combinations of 19 images were presented. The results showed: (a) marked and consistent individual preferences for specific stimuli; (b) RT decreased monotonically with increasing exposure to each stimulus; (c) RT decreased exponentially as a function of relative preference ranking of the 2 images in a trial; and (d) a regression model efficiently predicted trial RT as a function of exposure and relative preference. Experiment 2 (N=112) explored the effect of amount of exposure on RT, and relative preference as a function of the type of choice task (a previously completed vs. a new choice task). The results showed that: (a) within a single choice task, amount of exposure and relative preference between the stimuli predicted the systematic changes in RT observed in Exp. 1; and (b) when the choice task changed, the effects of previous amount of exposure, and relative stimulus preference did not transfer to the new task.	f	\N
21282341	Visual salience maps are assumed to mediate target selection decisions in a motor-unspecific manner; accordingly, modulations of salience influence yes/no target detection or left/right localization responses in manual key-press search tasks, as well as ocular or skeletal movements to the target. Although widely accepted, this core assumption is based on little psychophysical evidence. At least four modulations of salience are known to influence the speed of visual search for feature singletons: (i) feature contrast, (ii) cross-trial dimension sequence and (iii) semantic pre-cueing of the target dimension, and (iv) dimensional target redundancy. If salience guides also manual pointing movements, their initiation latencies (and durations) should be affected by the same four manipulations of salience. Four experiments, each examining one of these manipulations, revealed this to be the case. Thus, these effects are seen independently of the motor response required to signal the perceptual decision (e.g., directed manual pointing as well as simple yes/no detection responses). This supports the notion of a motor-unspecific salience map, which guides covert attention as well as overt eye and hand movements.	f	\N
21285440	Frequency-of-occurrence effects (e.g., effects of word frequency or familiarity) are widely thought to arise through differences in resting levels of activation in localist input-output modules. A different account posits that these effects at least partially reflect the strength of connections between various localist modules. Given that Arabic numerals appear more frequently than their alphabetic counterparts, we contrasted reaction times to stimuli in both formats in a naming/reading-aloud task and a parity-judgment task. The script effect (the difference between reaction times to Arabic and to alphabetic formats) was large in the parity-judgment task but absent in the naming/reading-aloud task. This script-by-task interaction follows naturally from the idea that at least part of the effect of frequency of occurrence of a printed word or digit (and other instances of familiarity) resides in the strength of connections between specialized localist input-output modules and a localist semantic module. This conclusion is likely applicable across a variety of domains.	f	\N
21286495	To explore the time of day effects of alcohol on sleep, we examined sleep following alcohol administered at four times of day and three homeostatic loads during a 20-hr forced desynchrony (FD) protocol. Twenty-six healthy young adults (21-25 yrs) were studied. Participants were dosed at 4 clock times: 0400 (n = 6; 2 females), 1600 (n = 7; 4 females), 1000 (n = 6; 1 female) or 2200 (n = 7; 2 females). Participants slept 2300 to 0800 for at least 12 nights before the in-lab FD study. Double blind placebo and alcohol (vodka tonic targeting 0.05g% concentration) beverages were each administered three times during FD at different homeostatic loads: low (4.25 or 2.24 hrs awake), medium (8.25 or 6.25 hrs awake), high (12.25 or 10.25 hrs awake) in the 0400 and 1600 or 1000 and 2200 groups, respectively. Sleep was staged and subjected to spectral analysis. Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) confirmed targeted maximal levels. At bedtime, BrAC was 0 in the low and medium homeostatic load conditions; however, at high homeostatic load, BrAC was still measurable. Spectral characteristics of sleep were unaffected with alcohol at any time of day. Few alcohol related changes were seen for sleep stages; however, with alcohol given at 0400 at a high homeostatic load there was an increase in wake. These data lend support to the idea that alcohol may be disruptive to sleep; however, our findings are inconsistent with the idea that a low dose of alcohol is a useful sleep aid when attempting to sleep at an adverse circadian phase.	f	\N
21286898	In this study, we examined a source-monitoring phenomenon that arises from reactivated related information from the study phase. Three experiments showed that source attributions for target events were influenced not only by the target item itself, but also by studied information about related items. In Experiment 1, source memory for target items that have a high forward association value to a single related study item (e.g., credit) were affected by the source of the associated information (e.g., card), so that memory performance was better when associated items were presented in the same source rather than a different source. A similar effect occurred with bidirectional associates (Exp. 2), as well as with synonymous pairs of words (Exp. 3). We argue that the source information of the reactivated material can be commingled with information about a candidate during a source judgment at retrieval and thereby can affect performance.	f	\N
21288505	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mental disorder characterized by depressed mood and inability to experience pleasure. Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been established as a correlate of preattentive change detection. In this study, preattentive processing of visual information in MDD patients was investigated using visual MMN (vMMN), and an abnormal vMMN was predicted in depressed patients relative to healthy participants because of dysfunction at the preattentive level. The processes underlying vMMN in MDD patients were also explored, and memory-based comparison preattentive processing was hypothesized to be impaired in MDD patients. Subjects included 14 medication-free patients (41.4 ± 12.6 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD and 14 age-matched healthy volunteers (41.7 ± 17.5 years). vMMN was investigated using event-related potentials. The protocol used both an equiprobable sequence and a traditional oddball sequence, and three kinds of difference waves (i.e., deviant-minus-standard, deviant-minus-control, and control-minus-standard) were investigated. Mean amplitudes and peak latencies were subjected to repeated-measures analysis of variance. Although MDD patients showed no reduction in the oddball-vMMN (deviant-minus-standard), they showed a significantly decreased deviant-minus-control difference waves and a trend for an increased control-minus-standard difference waves compared with healthy participants. These data provide evidence for anomalous preattentive information processing in MDD patients. In particular, the abnormality may be due to an attenuated memory-based comparison process and an enhanced refractory process.	f	\N
21289533	Atypical sensory-based behaviors are a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this article, we review the neural underpinnings of sensory processing in autism by reviewing the literature on neurophysiological responses to auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli in autistic individuals. We review studies of unimodal sensory processing and multisensory integration that use a variety of neuroimaging techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional MRI. We then explore the impact of covert and overt attention on sensory processing. With additional characterization, neurophysiologic profiles of sensory processing in ASD may serve as valuable biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic interventions for autism and reveal potential strategies and target brain regions for therapeutic interventions.	f	\N
21293871	Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2I (LGMD2I) is a neuromuscular disorder with a heterogeneous phenotype. It is caused by mutations in the Fukutin Related Protein (FKRP) gene, which is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues. FKRP functions in CNS are largely unknown. To investigate possible cognitive impairment in LGMD2I and to describe brain MRI features. Ten LGMD2I patients (four males and six females, mean age 44 years, age range 19-69 years) were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery, psychopathological tests and neuromuscular specific quality-of-life questionnaire. Adults were compared with ten matched healthy controls. All patients underwent complete neurological examination, and nine underwent brain MRI scanning. Patients showed a fairly specific cognitive profile with mild impairment in executive functions and visuo-spatial planning without substantial impairment in global and logic IQ. MRI findings were heterogeneous: four patients showed non-specific white matter abnormalities; two patients showed moderate ventriculomegaly; three patients showed mild enlargement of subarachnoid spaces, without a specific pattern. Cerebellar atrophy was marked in one patient. Abnormal glycosylation of α-dystroglycan in LGMD2I may interfere with brain development and cognitive performances involving the frontal and posterior parietal regions, but does not result in specific brain MRI abnormalities.	f	\N
21296417	Growing evidence indicates that neuromedin U (NmU) neuropeptide system plays an integral role in mediating the stress response through the corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) pathways. Stress is often associated with alteration in sleep-wake architecture both in human and laboratory animals. Here, we investigated whether activation of the NmU₂ receptor, a major high affinity receptor for NmU predominantly expressed in the brain, affects sleep behavior in rats. Effects of single (acute) intracebroventricular (icv) infusion of 2.5 nmol of the full agonists porcine NmU8 and rat NmU23 were assessed on sleep-wake architecture in freely moving rats, which were chronically implanted with EEG and EMG electrodes. In addition, repeated once daily administration of NmU8 at 2.5 nmol during 8 consecutive days (sub-chronic) was studied. Acute icv infusion of NmU23 elicited a robust alteration in sleep-wake architecture, namely enhanced wakefulness and suppressed sleep during the first 4h after administration. Acute infusion NmU8 had no effect on spontaneous sleep-wake architecture. However, sub-chronic icv infusion of NmU8 increased the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and intermediate stage (IS), while decreased light sleep. Additionally, NmU8 increased transitions from sleep states towards wakefulness suggesting a disruption in sleep continuity. The present results show that central-activation of NmU₂ receptor markedly reduced sleep duration and disrupted the mechanisms underlying NREM-REM sleep transitions. Given that sleep-wakefulness cycle is strongly influenced by stress and the role of NmU/NmU₂ receptor signaling in stress response, the disruption in sleep pattern associated with peptides species may support at least some signs of stress.	f	\N
21298569	Affective stimuli are increasingly used in emotion research. Typically, stimuli are selected from databases providing affective norms. The validity of these norms is a critical factor with regard to the applicability of the stimuli for emotion research. We therefore probed the validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG) by correlating valence and arousal ratings across different sensory modalities. A sample of 120 words was selected from the LANG database, and auditory recordings of these words were obtained from two professional actors. The auditory stimuli were then rated again for valence and arousal. This cross-modal validation approach yielded very high correlations between auditory and visual ratings (>.95). These data confirm the strong validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German and encourage their use in emotion research.	f	\N
21315746	Recent neuropsychological studies have attempted to distinguish between different types of anxiety by contrasting patterns of brain organisation or activation; however, lateralisation for processing emotional stimuli has received relatively little attention. This study examines the relationship between strength of lateralisation for the processing of facial expressions of emotion and three measures of anxiety: state anxiety, trait anxiety and social anxiety. Across all six of the basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) the same patterns of association were found. Participants with high levels of trait anxiety were more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for processing facial emotion. In contrast, participants with high levels of self-reported physiological arousal in response to social anxiety were more weakly lateralised to the right hemisphere, or even lateralised to the left hemisphere, for the processing of facial emotion. There were also sex differences in these associations: the relationships were evident for males only. The finding of distinct patterns of lateralisation for trait anxiety and self-reported physiological arousal suggests different neural circuitry for trait and social anxiety.	f	\N
21319930	The serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) is associated with neural response to negative images in brain regions involved in the experience of emotion. However, the behavioral implications of this sensitivity have been studied far less extensively. The current study used eye-tracking methodology to examine how individuals genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR, including the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531, allocated attention during prolonged (30-s) exposure to face stimuli depicting positive and negative emotion. Short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers and carriers of the long allele with guanine at the sixth nucleotide (S/LG) displayed a stronger gaze bias (total fixation time, number of fixations, mean fixation length) for positive than for sad, threat, or neutral stimuli. In contrast, those homozygous for the long 5-HTTLPR allele with adenine at the sixth nucleotide (LA) viewed the emotion stimuli in an unbiased fashion. Time course analyses indicated no initial 5-HTTLPR group differences; however, S/LG 5-HTTLPR allele carriers were more likely than LA 5-HTTLPR homozygotes to direct gaze toward happy than toward sad stimuli over time. This bias toward positive stimuli during the later stages of information processing likely reflects a strategic effort to downregulate heightened reactivity to negative stimuli among 5-HTTLPR S/LG allele carriers.	f	\N
21325507	During coordinated eye-hand movements, saccade reaction times (SRTs) and reach reaction times (RRTs) are correlated in humans and monkeys. Reaction times (RTs) measure the degree of movement preparation and can correlate with movement speed and accuracy. However, RTs can also reflect effector nonspecific influences, such as motivation and arousal. We use a combination of behavioral psychophysics and computational modeling to identify plausible mechanisms for correlations in SRTs and RRTs. To disambiguate nonspecific mechanisms from mechanisms specific to movement coordination, we introduce a dual-task paradigm in which a reach and a saccade are cued with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). We then develop several variants of integrate-to-threshold models of RT, which postulate that responses are initiated when the neural activity encoding effector-specific movement preparation reaches a threshold. The integrator models formalize hypotheses about RT correlations and make predictions for how each RT should vary with SOA. To test these hypotheses, we trained three monkeys to perform the eye-hand SOA task and analyzed their SRTs and RRTs. In all three subjects, RT correlations decreased with increasing SOA duration. Additionally, mean SRT decreased with decreasing SOA, revealing facilitation of saccades with simultaneous reaches, as predicted by the model. These results are not consistent with the predictions of the models with common modulation or common input but are compatible with the predictions of a model with mutual excitation between two effector-specific integrators. We propose that RT correlations are not simply attributable to motivation and arousal and are a signature of coordination.	f	\N
21327341	The placebo effect is an important phenomenon whereby real changes occur in response to an otherwise inert intervention. Despite increasing research attention, it remains unclear exactly which processes are amenable to placebo effects. The current study tested whether an instructional manipulation could produce placebo effects on a nonconscious cognitive task, namely implicit learning. Four hundred and sixty-four university students completed a visual search task while smelling an odor or no odor, in alternating blocks. Unknown to them, the task contained a contingency whereby on half the trials the target's location was cued by the pattern of distractors, which was achieved by repeating some configurations of targets and distractors. Prior to the task, participants received positive, negative, or no information about the odor's possible effects on performance. Those given positive information demonstrated faster reaction times on cued trials than other participants. Those given negative information showed slower reaction times on cued trials compared with participants given no information. Further, the cuing effect appeared to be nonconscious, with participants' ability to recognize the repeated configurations equivalent to chance and no evidence that performance on a recognition test was related to the magnitude of the cuing effect. This suggests that instructional manipulations can produce placebo effects on some nonconscious processes.	f	\N
21327350	Many theories of contingency learning assume (either explicitly or implicitly) that predicting whether an outcome will occur should be easier than making a causal judgment. Previous research suggests that outcome predictions would depart from normative standards less often than causal judgments, which is consistent with the idea that the latter are based on more numerous and complex processes. However, only indirect evidence exists for this view. The experiment presented here specifically addresses this issue by allowing for a fair comparison of causal judgments and outcome predictions, both collected at the same stage with identical rating scales. Cue density, a parameter known to affect judgments, is manipulated in a contingency learning paradigm. The results show that, if anything, the cue-density bias is stronger in outcome predictions than in causal judgments. These results contradict key assumptions of many influential theories of contingency learning.	f	\N
21327356	A picture-word interference experiment examined the origin of the distractor frequency effect, the effect that pictures are named slower in the context of low-frequency than high-frequency words (Miozzo & Caramazza, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 132, 228-252, 2003). We compared two accounts of the effect: an early, input-related account and a late, response-related account. Participants named high and low-frequency pictures with low and high-frequency distractors in two conditions. In the immediate naming condition, picture and distractor were presented simultaneously. In the delayed naming condition, the distractor was presented 1,000 ms after the picture; pictures had to be named upon distractor presentation. There was a distractor frequency effect in both conditions, but an effect of picture frequency only in the immediate naming condition (showing that in the delayed naming condition, lexical selection had been completed). These results support a late origin of the distractor frequency effect.	f	\N
21333960	When the interval between a warning signal (WS) and an imperative signal (IS), termed the foreperiod (FP), is variable across trials, reaction time (RT) to the IS typically decreases with increasing FP length. Here we examined the auditory filled-FP effect, which refers to a performance decrement after FPs filled with irrelevant auditory stimulation compared to FPs without additional stimulation. According to one account, irrelevant stimulation distracts individuals from processing time and probability information during the FP (distraction-during-FP hypothesis). This should predominantly affect long-FP trials. Alternatively, the filled-FP effect may arise from a failure to shift attention from FP modality to IS modality (attention-to-modality hypothesis). The first hypothesis focuses on preparatory processing, predicting a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, whereas the second hypothesis focuses on target processing, only predicting a global RT increase irrespective of FP length. Across four experiments, a filled-FP (compared to a blank-FP) condition consistently yielded a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, irrespective of FP-IS modality pairing. This pattern of results contradicts the attention-to-modality hypothesis but corroborates the distraction-during-FP hypothesis. More generally, these data have theoretical implications by supporting a multi-process view of temporal preparation under time uncertainty.	f	\N
21347239	Few finance theories consider the influence of "skewness" (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles--including skewness--can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice.	f	\N
21357280	Obesity has been associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness, but the effect on sleep-related sympathetic modulation is not known. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fat gain on cardiac autonomic control during wakefulness and sleep in humans. We performed a randomized, controlled study to assess the effects of fat gain on heart rate variability. We recruited 36 healthy volunteers, who were randomized to either a standardized diet to gain ≈4 kg over 8 weeks followed by an 8-week weight loss period (n=20) or to serve as a weight-maintainer control (n=16). An overnight polysomnogram with power spectral analysis of heart rate variability was performed at baseline, after weight gain, and after weight loss to determine the ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency power and to examine the relationship between changes in heart rate variability and changes in insulin, leptin, and adiponectin levels. Mean weight gain was 3.9 kg in the fat gain group versus 0.1 kg in the maintainer group. Low frequency/high frequency increased both during wakefulness and sleep after fat gain and returned to baseline after fat loss in the fat gain group and did not change in the control group. Insulin, leptin, and adiponectin also increased after fat gain and fell after fat loss, but no clear pattern of changes was seen that correlated consistently with changes in heart rate variability. Short-term fat gain in healthy subjects is associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness and sleep, but the mechanisms remain unclear.	f	\N
21371485	Patients with lesions in rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) often experience problems in everyday-life situations requiring multitasking. A key cognitive component that is critical in multitasking situations is prospective memory, defined as the ability to carry out an intended action after a delay period filled with unrelated activity. The few functional imaging studies investigating prospective memory have shown consistent activation in both medial and lateral rostral PFC but also in more posterior prefrontal regions and non-frontal regions. The aim of this study was to determine regions that are necessary for prospective memory performance, using the human lesion approach. We designed an experimental paradigm allowing us to assess time-based (remembering to do something at a particular time) and event-based (remembering to do something in a particular situation) prospective memory, using two types of material, words and pictures. Time estimation tasks and tasks controlling for basic attention, inhibition and multiple instructions processing were also administered. We examined brain-behaviour relationships with a voxelwise lesion method in 45 patients with focal brain lesions and 107 control subjects using this paradigm. The results showed that lesions in the right polar prefrontal region (in Brodmann area 10) were specifically associated with a deficit in time-based prospective memory tasks for both words and pictures. This deficit could not be explained by impairments in basic attention, detection, inhibition or multiple instruction processing, and there was also no deficit in event-based prospective memory conditions. In addition to their prospective memory difficulties, these polar prefrontal patients were significantly impaired in time estimation ability compared to other patients. The same region was found to be involved using both words and pictures, suggesting that right rostral PFC plays a material nonspecific role in prospective memory. This is the first lesion study showing that rostral PFC is crucial for time-based prospective memory. The findings suggest that time-based and event-based prospective memory might be supported at least in part by distinct brain regions. Two particularly plausible explanations for the deficit rest upon a possible role for polar prefrontal structures in supporting in time estimation, and/or in retrieving an intention to act. More broadly, the results are consistent with the view that the deficit of rostral patients in multitasking situations might at least in part be explained by a deficit in prospective memory.	f	\N
21371916	To report on minor modification of laparoscopic Vecchietti vaginoplasty and to examine the quality of sexual life after the operation. A retrospective study to examine the role of minor modification during laparoscopic Vecchietti operation to prevent injuries and to evaluate the sexual function of patients with neovagina. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Pécs, Faculty of Medicine, a tertiary supply center in Hungary. PATICIPANTS: Twenty-three adolescents or young adults, ages 16 to 26 with vaginal agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome) were operated. Twenty-five sexually active patients with matched age served as controls. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation was modified with the use of endovaginal ultrasound transducer to visualize the narrow vesico-rectal space. The quality of sexual life 2-11 years after the operation was measured by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Complications occurring during operations; desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, lubrication, and pain during sexual intercourse. The technical modification of the operation, with endovaginal transducer, improved the method. Serious injuries of the bladder or rectum could be avoided. Anatomic and functional results shown by the total FSFI scores did not differ from that of the control group. Desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction of the operated patients were similar to controls; however, patients with neovagina tended to have less lubrication and more pain during sexual intercourse. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation modified by the use of endovaginal transducer is a safe procedure to create a neovagina, which guarantees good quality of sexual life with high satisfaction for patients.	f	\N
21372116	The impact of lesion location on cognitive functioning was assessed in a group of 97 patients with a clinically isolated syndrome. Using the Brief Repeatable Battery, we evidenced that 24% of patients showed at least one abnormal test, 20% at least two and 15% at least three. Verbal learning performances were inversely associated with presence of lesions in Broca's area, in the right frontal lobe and in the splenium while spatial learning performances were inversely correlated to the presence of lesions in the deep white matter. No associations were evidenced between lesion location and performance of tasks exploring attention and executive functions.	f	\N
21373192	The ability to coordinate with others' head and eye orientation to look in the same direction is considered a key step towards an understanding of others mental states like attention and intention. Here, we investigated the ontogeny and habituation patterns of gaze following into distant space and behind barriers in nine hand-raised wolves. We found that these wolves could use conspecific as well as human gaze cues even in the barrier task, which is thought to be more cognitively advanced than gazing into distant space. Moreover, while gaze following into distant space was already present at the age of 14 weeks and subjects did not habituate to repeated cues, gazing around a barrier developed considerably later and animals quickly habituated, supporting the hypothesis that different cognitive mechanisms may underlie the two gaze following modalities. More importantly, this study demonstrated that following another individuals' gaze around a barrier is not restricted to primates and corvids but is also present in canines, with remarkable between-group similarities in the ontogeny of this behaviour. This sheds new light on the evolutionary origins of and selective pressures on gaze following abilities as well as on the sensitivity of domestic dogs towards human communicative cues.	f	\N
21382218	High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. Participants (n = 59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.	f	\N
21389102	Recent studies have shown that a variety of aftereffects occurs in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. These findings have been taken as strong evidence that remapping of visual information occurs in a hierarchic manner in the human cortex with an increasing magnitude from early to higher levels. Other studies, however, failed to find non-retinotopic aftereffects. These experiments all relied on paradigms involving eye movements. Recently, we have developed a new paradigm, based on the Ternus-Pikler display, which tests retinotopic vs. non-retinotopic processing without the involvement of eye movements. Using this paradigm, we found strong evidence that attention, form, and motion processing can occur in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. Here, we show that motion and tilt aftereffects are largely retinotopic.	f	\N
21392554	Research has shown that during emotional imagery, valence and arousal each modulate the startle reflex. Here, two imagery-startle experiments required participants to attend to the startle probe as a simple reaction time cue. In experiment 1, four emotional conditions differing in valence and arousal were examined. Experiment 2, to accentuate potential valence effects, included two negative high arousal, a positive high arousal and a negative low arousal condition. Imagery effectively manipulated emotional valence and arousal, as indicated by heart rate and subjective ratings. Compared to baseline, imagery facilitated startle responses. However, valence and arousal failed to significantly affect startle magnitude in both experiments and startle latency in Experiment 1. Results suggest that emotional startle modulation is eclipsed when the probe is significant for task completion and/or cues a motor response. Findings suggest that an active, rather than defensive, response set may interfere with affective startle modulation, warranting further investigation.	f	\N
21398561	Dependent on criteria used, between 35% and 53% of the participants with cerebral palsy fulfilled the criteria of clinically relevant executive function problems as defined by Conners' (1994) Continuous Performance Test. Executive function problems were noticed mainly in participants with bilateral brain lesions and who had been born preterm. Findings highlight the need to check for attention problems in children with cerebral palsy.	f	\N
21401233	In two experiments, we examined the effects of emotional valence and arousal on associative binding. Participants studied negative, positive, and neutral word pairs, followed by an associative recognition test. In Experiment 1, with a short-delayed test, accuracy for intact pairs was equivalent across valences, whereas accuracy for rearranged pairs was lower for negative than for positive and neutral pairs. In Experiment 2, we tested participants after a one-week delay and found that accuracy was greater for intact negative than for intact neutral pairs, whereas rearranged pair accuracy was equivalent across valences. These results suggest that, although negative emotional valence impairs associative binding after a short delay, it may improve binding after a longer delay. The results also suggest that valence, as well as arousal, needs to be considered when examining the effects of emotion on associative memory.	f	\N
21404129	An influential account of how cognitive control deals with conflicting sources of information holds that conflict is monitored by a module that automatically recruits attention to resolve the conflict. This leads to reduced effects of conflict on the subsequent trial, a phenomenon termed conflict adaptation. A prominent question is whether control processes are domain specific--that is, recruited only by the particular type of conflict they resolve. Previous studies that have examined this question used two-choice tasks in which feature repetition effects could be responsible for domain-specific adaptation effects. We report two experiments using four-choice (Experiment 1) and five-choice (Experiment 2) tasks that contain two types of irrelevant sources of potentially conflicting information: stimulus location (Simon conflict) and distractors (flanker conflict). In both experiments, we found within-type conflict adaptation for both types of conflict after eliminating trials on which stimulus features were repeated from one trial to the next. Across-type conflict adaptation, however, was not significant. Thus, conflict adaptation was due to domain-specific recruitment of cognitive control. Our results add converging evidence to the idea that multiple independent control processes are involved in reactive cognitive control, although whether control is always local remains to be determined.	f	\N
21407245	Inter-individual variability in perception, thought and action is frequently treated as a source of 'noise' in scientific investigations of the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes, and discarded by averaging data from a group of participants. However, recent MRI studies in the human brain show that inter-individual variability in a wide range of basic and higher cognitive functions - including perception, motor control, memory, aspects of consciousness and the ability to introspect - can be predicted from the local structure of grey and white matter as assessed by voxel-based morphometry or diffusion tensor imaging. We propose that inter-individual differences can be used as a source of information to link human behaviour and cognition to brain anatomy.	f	\N
21420518	We present recent empirical and theoretical advances in conflict and error monitoring in the Simon task. On the basis of the adaptation by binding account for conflict adaptation and the orienting account for post-error slowing, we predict a dissociation between conflict and error monitoring. This prediction is tested and confirmed as conflict adaptation is task-specific while post-error slowing is not.	f	\N
21426626	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex genetic aetiology. The identification of candidate intermediate phenotypes may facilitate the detection of susceptibility genes and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an ideal neuroscientific approach, providing a direct measurement of neural activity that demonstrates reliability, developmental stability and high heritability. This systematic review evaluates the utility of a subset of electrophysiological measures as potential intermediate phenotypes for ADHD: quantitative EEG indices of arousal and intraindividual variability, and functional investigations of attention, inhibition and performance monitoring using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Each measure demonstrates consistent and meaningful associations with ADHD, a degree of genetic overlap with ADHD and potential links to specific genetic variants. Investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to EEG/ERP and shared genetic overlap with ADHD might enhance molecular genetic studies and provide novel insights into aetiology. Such research will aid in the precise characterisation of the clinical deficits seen in ADHD and guide the development of novel intervention and prevention strategies for those at risk.	f	\N
21429025	Although the treatment of early gastric cancer with endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has been widely carried out, a standardized method of sedation for ESD has not been established. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of sedation with dexmedetomidine (DEX). We conducted a randomized study involving 90 patients with gastric tumors who were intended to be treated with ESD. The patients were sedated either with DEX (i.v. infusion of 3.0 µg/kg per h over 5 min followed by continuous infusion at 0.4 µg/kg per h [n = 30]), propofol (PF [n = 30]), or midazolam (MDZ [n = 30]). In all groups, 1 mg MDZ was added i.v. as needed. En bloc resection of the gastric tumor was achieved in 88 (98%) patients. None of the DEX-sedated patients showed a significant reduction of the oxygen saturation level. The percentage of patients who showed body movement in the DEX group was significantly lower than those in the PF and MDZ groups, and the mean dose of additional MDZ in the DEX group was significantly smaller than that in the MDZ group. The rate of effective sedation was significantly higher in the DEX group compared with the MDZ or PF group. The mean length of ESD in the DEX group was 65 min, which was significantly shorter than in the other two groups. No DEX-sedated patient developed major surgical complications. Sedation with DEX is effective and safe for patients with gastric tumors who are undergoing ESD.	f	\N
21429736	We consider the potential role of oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in mediating attention, working memory and memory consolidation. Activity in the theta, beta, and gamma bands is related to communication between PFC and different brain areas. While gamma/beta oscillations mediate bottom-up and top-down interactions between PFC and visual cortices, related to attention, theta rhythms are engaged by hippocampal/PFC interplay. These interactions are dynamic, depending on the nature and relevance of the information currently being processed. The profound modifications of the PFC neuronal network associated with changes in oscillatory coherence are controlled by neuromodulators such as dopamine, which thereby allow or prevent the formation of cell assemblies for information encoding and storage.	f	\N
21432617	We established a neuropsychological testing profile among Turkish adults presenting with ADHD controlling for general intelligence and comorbid psychiatric conditions. Adults with ADHD frequently present with comorbid conditions (e.g., mood and substance use/abuse disorders) that may have a detrimental impact on neurocognitive function. Hence, we excluded patients with ADHD meeting criteria for comorbid psychiatric syndromes. A comprehensive neuropsychological test battery was administered to adults with ADHD attending a general psychiatry clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, and healthy control participants. Adults with ADHD demonstrated performance deficits on tests of attention, information processing speed, and general and working memory. Patients with ADHD also reported a significantly greater number of symptoms associated with frontal lobe syndromes (i.e., dysexecutive symptoms and disinhibition). Patients with ADHD demonstrated rather striking deficits on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory. Once information was encoded, however, patients with ADHD do not demonstrate significant information loss. Patients with ADHD and healthy controls did not differ on tests of alternation learning, inhibitory control (error rates), and ToM skills. Findings support the contention that dorsal-prefrontal (rather than ventral-prefrontal) dysfunction is associated with adult ADHD. Unexpectedly, groups did not differ on executive control and fluency tasks. Yet patients with ADHD obtained substantially higher scores on a self-report measure of executive dysfunction. This suggests that dysexecutive symptoms among patients with ADHD in the current study do not reflect set-shifting or organizational deficits. Rather, symptoms may reflect attentional and working memory deficits as well as diminished information processing speed.	f	\N
21435770	The experiments conducted aimed to investigate whether reduced accuracy when counting stimuli presented in rapid temporal sequence in adults with dyslexia could be explained by a sensory processing deficit, a general slowing in processing speed or difficulties shifting attention between stimuli. To achieve these aims, the influence of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), stimulus duration, and sequence length were evaluated in two experiments. In the first that used skilled readers only, significantly more errors were found with presentation of long sequences when the ISI or stimulus durations were short. Experiment 2 used a wider range of ISIs and stimulus durations. Compared to skilled readers, a group with dyslexia had reduced accuracy on two-stimulus sequences when the ISI was short, but not when the ISI was long. Although reduced accuracy was found on all short and long sequences by the group with dyslexia, when performance on two-stimulus sequences was used as an index of sensory processing efficiency and controlled, group differences were found with presentation of stimuli of short duration only. We concluded that continuous, repetitive stimulation to the same visual area can produce a capacity limitation on rapid counting tasks in all readers when the ISIs or stimulus durations are short. While reduced accuracy on rapid sequential counting tasks can be explained by a sensory processing deficit when the stimulus duration is long, slower processing speed in the group with dyslexia explains the greater inaccuracy found as sequence length is increased when the stimulus duration is short.	f	\N
21437989	Kava (Piper methysticum) elicits dose-dependent psychotropic effects and thus may potentially deleteriously affect cognitive performance. Clinical trials have assessed the effects of kava on cognition, however, to our knowledge no systematic review has been conducted in this area. To systematically review the effects of kava on cognition, providing an analysis of the individual study's methodological quality, results and effect sizes. A systematic review was conducted of publications up to June 15th 2010, using the electronic databases MEDLINE, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library. The search criteria involved kava and cognition related terms, e.g. memory and attention. Ten human clinical trials met inclusion criteria (acute n = 7, chronic n = 3). One acute study found that kava significantly improved visual attention and working memory processes while another found that kava increased body sway. One chronic study found that kava significantly impaired visual attention during high-cognitive demand. Potential enhanced cognition may be attributed to the ability of kava to inhibit re-uptake of noradrenaline in the pre-frontal cortex, while increased body sway may be due to GABA pathway modulation. The majority of evidence suggests that kava has no replicated significant negative effects on cognition.	f	\N
21440073	According to the default-mode interference hypothesis, suboptimal performance in tasks requiring selective attention occurs when off-task processing (e.g., mind wandering) supported by default-mode regions interferes with on-task processing (e.g., attention) enabled by task-positive regions. In the present functional MRI study, we therefore investigated whether suboptimal performance in a selective attention task was linked to heightened interactions between a key default-mode region (the posterior cingulate cortex; PCC) and a key task-positive region (the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DLPFC). We also investigated whether heightened interactions between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to enhanced future performance, consistent with prior data suggesting that such interactions index adaptive changes to the cognitive system. In line with both of these predictions, increases of current-trial functional connectivity between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to increases of response time in the current trial (i.e., suboptimal performance), but to decreases of response time in the next trial (i.e., enhanced performance). This double dissociation provides novel support for the default-mode interference hypothesis. Moreover, it suggests the possibility that, in at least some cases, default-mode interference indexes processes that optimize future performance.	f	\N
21441920	Selective attention filters information to limit what is encoded and maintained in working memory. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to both selective attention and working memory, the underlying neural processes that link these cognitive abilities remain elusive. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to guide repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalographic recordings in humans, we perturbed PFC function at the inferior frontal junction in participants before they performed a selective-attention, delayed-recognition task. This resulted in diminished top-down modulation of activity in posterior cortex during early encoding stages, which predicted a subsequent decrement in working memory accuracy. Participants with stronger fronto-posterior functional connectivity displayed greater disruptive effects. Our data further suggests that broad alpha-band (7-14 Hz) phase coherence subserved this long-distance top-down modulation. These results suggest that top-down modulation mediated by the prefrontal cortex is a causal link between early attentional processes and subsequent memory performance.	f	\N
21444327	to determine if there are age-related differences in locomotor targeting (LT) performance and step length (SL) regulatory behaviour under structural interference. forty older (n = 20, mean age = 77.9) and younger (n = 20, mean age = 25.2) participants walked 11.6 m while stepping on a target positioned at the 9.5 m point. Participants completed seven trials under each of three conditions, including the control (C) (no structural interference), low structural interference (L) and high structural interference (H). The structural interference conditions required participants to engage in LT while simultaneously verbally identifying letters that were visually presented on one of two monitors. One monitor was located near the target (low interference), while the other monitor was elevated to require participants to direct their gaze further away from the target to identify a letter (high interference). Outcome measures included LT error, SL, SL variability and the distribution of SL adjustment. structural interference had a detrimental effect on the LT accuracy of the older group (2.75 cm mean increase in absolute error) but not on the younger group (1.05 cm mean increase in absolute error), even though the interference caused the older group alone to adopt a more conservative gait pattern involving shorter SLs. The older participants exhibited shorter mean SL with each increase in structural interference (conditions C vs. L, P = 0.004; conditions L vs. H, P = 0.050), whereas the younger participants' mean SL did not differ across conditions. The manner in which older and younger participants distributed SL adjustment across the steps in advance of the target did not differ. the results confirmed that LT demands more attention from older adults than it does from younger adults, and revealed that a consequence of this age difference is a decline in LT accuracy among older adults. The study implicates age-related impaired visual attention switching as a potential source of impaired walking performance among older adults.	f	\N
21452076	As a rule, the discriminability of multiple symmetries from random patterns increases with the number of symmetry axes, but this number does not seem to be the only determinant. In particular, multiple symmetries with orthogonal axes seem better discriminable than multiple symmetries with nonorthogonal axes. In six experiments on imperfect two-fold symmetry, we investigated whether this is due to extra structure in the form of so-called correlation rectangles, which arise only in the case of orthogonal axes, or to the relative orientation of the axes as such. The results suggest that correlation rectangles are not perceptually relevant and that the percept of a multiple symmetry results from an orientation-dependent interaction between the constituent single symmetries. The results can be accounted for by a model involving the analysis of symmetry at all orientations, smoothing (averaging over neighboring orientations), and extraction of peaks.	f	\N
21452088	Stressful life events can result into declined memory performance at later age. One hypothesis suggests that stress affects the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory functioning. This study explored a potential relationship between the number of negative stressful life events and hippocampus-dependent declarative but not hippocampus-independent procedural memory performance in a community sample of 255 children, aged 6-12 years. The findings revealed that negative stressful life events were negatively related to verbal declarative memory, but not to nonverbal declarative and procedural memory. The memory impairments could not be accounted for by attention and sleep disturbances, and parenting characteristics as perceived by the child did not influence the vulnerability for the stress-related memory impairments. These findings provide further insight into the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events on learning in school-aged children.	f	\N
21455862	Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete upper airway collapse and obstruction during sleep, associated with intermittent oxygen desaturation, sleep fragmentation, and symptoms of disruptive snoring and daytime sleepiness. Increasing focus is being placed on the relationship between OSAS and all-cause and cardiovascular disease-related mortality, but it still largely unclear whether this association is causative or simply speculative and epidemiological. Basically, reliable clinical evidence supports the hypothesis that OSAS might be associated with essential and resistant hypertension, as well as with an incremental risk of developing stroke, cardiac rhythm perturbations (e.g., atrial fibrillation, bradyarrhythmias, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias), coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, and heart failure. Although it is still unclear whether OSAS might represent an independent risk factor for several acute or chronic conditions, or rather might trigger cardiovascular disease in the presence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, diabetes, and dyslipidemia), there is a plausible biological background underlying this association, in that most of the mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of OSAS (i.e., hypoxia, hypercapnia, negative intrathoracic pressure, micro-arousal, sympathetic hyperactivity, metabolic and hormonal changes, oxidative stress, phlogosis, endothelial dysfunction, hypercoagulability, and genetic predisposition) might also be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. In this article we discuss the different aspects of the relationship between OSAS and pathogenically different conditions such as systemic hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, metabolic abnormalities, arrhythmias, and heart failure, and we also discuss the kaleidoscope of phenomena implicated in the pathogenesis of this challenging disease.	f	\N
21457759	When multiple objects are present in a visual scene, salient and behaviorally relevant objects are attentionally selected and receive enhanced processing at the expense of less salient or less relevant objects. Here we examined three lateralized components of the event-related potential (ERP) - the N2pc, Ptc, and SPCN - as indices of target and distractor processing in a visual search paradigm. Participants responded to the orientation of a target while ignoring an attentionally salient distractor and ERPs elicited by the target and the distractor were obtained. Results indicate that both the target and the distractor elicit an N2pc component which may index the initial attentional selection of both objects. In contrast, only the distractor elicited a significant Ptc, which may reflect the subsequent suppression of distracting or irrelevant information. Thus, the Ptc component appears to be similar to another ERP component - the Pd - which is also thought to reflect distractor suppression. Furthermore, only the target elicited an SPCN component which likely reflects the representation of the target in visual short term memory.	f	\N
21458476	We investigated the organization of eye-movement classes in a natural and dynamical setup. To mimic the goals and objectives of the natural world in a controlled environment, we studied eye-movements while participants played Breakout, an old Atari game which remains surprisingly entertaining, often addictive, in spite of its graphic and structural simplicity. Our results show that eye-movement dynamics can be explained in terms of simple principles of moments of prediction and urgency of action. We observed a consistent anticipatory behavior (gaze was directed ahead of ball trajectory) except during the moment in which the ball bounced either in the walls, or in the paddle. At these moments, we observed a refractory period during which there are no blinks and saccades. Saccade delay caused the gaze to fall behind the ball. This pattern is consistent with a model by which participants postpone saccades at the bounces while predicting the ball trajectory and subsequently make a catch-up saccade directed to a position which anticipates ball trajectory. During bounces, trajectories were smooth and curved interpolating the V-shape function of the ball with minimal acceleration. These results pave the path to understand the taxonomy of eye-movements on natural configurations in which stimuli and goals switch dynamically in time.	f	\N
21459622	People can maintain accurate representations of visual changes without necessarily being aware of them. Here, we investigate whether a similar phenomenon (implicit change detection) also exists in touch. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants detected the presence of a change between two consecutively-presented tactile displays. Tactile change blindness was observed, with participants failing to report the presence of tactile change. Critically, however, when participants had to make a forced choice response regarding the number of stimuli presented in the two displays, their performance was significantly better than chance (i.e., implicit change detection was observed). Experiment 3 demonstrated that tactile change detection does not necessarily involve a shift of spatial attention toward the location of change, regardless of whether the change is explicitly detected. We conclude that tactile change detection likely results from comparing representations of the two displays, rather than by directing spatial attention to the location of the change.	f	\N
21466088	An internal clock model has often been used to explain disruptions in timing production that occur when temporal and nontemporal tasks are performed simultaneously. In this study, participants' ability to walk 8 m in 8 sec. while executing various secondary concurrent nontemporal tasks was assessed for 16 children enrolled in sports at school. Children participated in six trials under five randomized task conditions involving different coordinative and cognitive workloads. The duration of timing production increased as the attention requirements or cognitive demands placed upon the completion of the task increased. However, participants also showed learning of timing over the six trials. Significant differences were found between the timing task and the concurrent nontemporal tasks depending on the difficulty and cognitive load of the secondary tasks. Results are discussed using attention models of time estimation and production.	f	\N
21470571	The purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in cognitive control as measured by the stimulus-locked N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP). High-density ERPs were obtained from 114 healthy individuals (60 females, 54 males) who completed a modified Eriksen Flanker Task. Behavioral measures (i.e., error rates, reaction times) and N2 amplitudes were analyzed. On the flanker task, females responded significantly slower and committed more errors than males. For N2 amplitude, there was a significant main effect of congruency, with increased amplitude to incongruent trials. Importantly, sexes differed as a function of congruency, with males showing significantly larger incongruent N2 amplitudes than females. Sex differences in N2 amplitude remained in a subgroup of participants that did not differ for behavioral, demographic, and affective variables. No sex differences were shown for electrophysiological or behavioral indices of conflict adaptation. Results indicate sex differences in brain activation associated with conflict monitoring. Findings may be explained by two contradictory possibilities: (1) females more effectively monitor conflict as indicated by less neural activation than males for similar behavioral performance in a matched subsample, or, (2) females less effectively monitor conflict than males.	f	\N
21474638	There is a lack of studies related to virtual reality (VR)-augmented balance training on postural control in people with Parkinson disease (PD). The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine the effects of VR-augmented balance training on the sensory integration of postural control under varying attentional demands and (2) to compare the results with those of a conventional balance training (CB) group and an untrained control group. A longitudinal, randomized controlled trial was used. The intervention was conducted in the clinic, and the assessment was performed in a research laboratory. Forty-two people with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages II-III) were recruited. The VR and CB groups received a 6-week balance training program. The sensory organization tests (SOTs) of computerized posturography with single- and dual-task conditions were conducted prior to training, after training, and at follow-up. Equilibrium scores, sensory ratios, and verbal reaction times (VRTs) were recorded. There were no significant differences in equilibrium scores or VRTs between the VR and CB groups. However, the equilibrium scores in SOT-6 (ie, unreliable vision and somatosensation) of the VR group increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The equilibrium scores in SOT-5 (ie, unreliable somatosensation with eyes closed) of the CB group also increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The functional significance of the improvements in equilibrium scores in the SOTs was not known, and the sample size was small. Both VR and CB training improved sensory integration for postural control in people with PD, especially when they were deprived of sensory redundancy. However, the attentional demand for postural control was not changed after either VR or CB training.	f	\N
21476025	This study examined the relationship between the developmental trajectories of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology in a longitudinal sample of children ages 9 to 14. Participants and measures were derived from the Multimodal Treatment Study for ADHD including 534MTA participants and 254 normal controls. Despite improvement over time, MTA participants continued to receive higher ratings of ADHD symptomatology and exhibit greater difficulties across the majority of neuropsychological outcomes. No relations were found between improvements in neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology over time. Findings provide support for the persistence of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology. Findings did not support the hypothesized relation between improvements in frontally-mediated neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology possibly due to the brief 1-year lag and limited assessment battery. Findings are discussed in relation to neuropsychological development including recommendations for future research.	f	\N
21480683	The immediate emotional and situational antecedents of ad-libitum smoking are still not well understood. We reanalyzed data from ecological momentary assessment using novel point process analyses to assess how craving, mood, and social setting influence smoking rate, as well as to assess the moderating effects of gender and nicotine dependence. Smokers (N = 304) recorded craving, mood, and social setting using electronic diaries when smoking and at random nonsmoking times over 16 days of smoking. Point process analysis, which makes use of the known random sampling scheme for momentary variables, examined main effects of setting and interactions with gender and dependence. Increased craving was associated with higher rates of smoking, particularly among women. Negative affect was not associated with smoking rate, even in interaction with arousal, but restlessness was associated with substantially higher smoking rates. Women's smoking tended to be less affected by negative affect. Nicotine dependence had little moderating effect on situational influences. Smoking rates were higher when smokers were alone or with others who were smoking, and smoking restrictions reduced smoking rates. However, the presence of others who are smoking undermined the effects of restrictions. The more sensitive point process analyses confirmed earlier findings, including the surprising conclusion that negative affect by itself was not related to smoking rates. Contrary to hypothesis, men's and not women's smoking was influenced by negative affect. Both smoking restrictions and the presence of others who are not smoking suppress smoking, but the presence of others who are not smoking undermines the effects of restrictions. Point process analyses of ecological momentary assessment data can bring out even small influences on smoking rate.	f	\N
21487761	Low-grade gliomas are slow-growing tumors invading eloquent areas and white matter pathways. For many decades these tumors were considered inoperable because of their high tropism for eloquent areas. However, the young age of the patients and the inescapable anaplastic transformation have recently suggested more aggressive treatments. We analyzed the neurological and neuro-oncological outcome of 12 patients who underwent surgery fully awake for the resection of LGG, harboring eloquent areas. 10 right- and 2 left-handed patients underwent pre-operative assessment: Karnofsky Performance Status, Edinburgh Handedness Inventory Score; neuropsychological and neurophysiological evaluations, according to the tumor location. During surgery we performed: sensory-motor-evoked potentials, continuous electro-corticography and bipolar/monopolar cortico-subcortical mapping during neuropsychological tests. The resection rate was calculated with neuro-imaging elaboration software. No permanent post-operative deficits were reported; 2 patients improved after surgery. No impairment of cognitive functions was reported. The KPS improved in 8 patients and was steady in the others. The mean resection rate was 78.3%. The resection allowed the control of pre-operative seizures without increasing the drug intake. Awake surgery allowed a good resection rate despite the eloquent location of the tumors, without post-operative deficit. The neuropsychological outcome was unchanged after surgery. The resection seems to improve seizure control. All the patients came back to normal life and work. In conclusion, awake surgery is reliable and feasible in removal of LGG, even if invading the main eloquent areas and networks. All the patients experienced a normal life after surgery, without permanent deficits.	f	\N
21489866	Studies indicate that the change from closed to open eyes in a resting condition results in an increase in skin conductance level (SCL) and a global decrease in EEG alpha activity, both indicative of increased arousal. Other studies show that ingestion of caffeine also produces SCL increase and alpha reduction. This study investigated the additivity of the effects of these two independent arousing variables. EEG activity and SCL were recorded from 22 university students during both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions, under the action of both caffeine and placebo, in a counterbalanced randomised double-blind study. SCL increased significantly from eyes-closed to eyes-open conditions, and from placebo to caffeine, with no interaction. Global reductions in EEG alpha amplitude were apparent with opening of the eyes and caffeine ingestion; again, there was no interaction. Caffeine had a larger effect than opening the eyes on SCL, but their relative effect sizes were reversed in alpha. The two dependent measures showed the predicted negative correlation in both eyes-closed placebo and eyes-open caffeine conditions, with the latter substantially reduced relative to the former. Caffeine and opening the eyes have additive effects on two measures of arousal, increasing SCL and reducing global EEG alpha. However, the independent variable effects are not equivalent, suggesting that one or both measures reflect additional non-arousal processes. As caffeine is widely used by both children and adults, knowledge of the additivity of arousal effects of caffeine and opening the eyes is important in controlling participant state in EEG studies. The current results confirm the use of mean global alpha amplitude as a measure of resting-state arousal, but also point to non-arousal effects of visual input.	f	\N
21493707	Object-based attention facilitates the processing of features that form the object. Two hypotheses are conceivable for how object-based attention is deployed to an object's features: first, the object is attended by selecting its features; alternatively, a configuration of features as such is attended by selecting the object representation they form. Only for the latter alternative, the perception of a feature configuration as entity ("objecthood") is a necessary condition for object-based attention. Disentangling the two alternatives requires the comparison of identical feature configurations that induce the perception of an object in one condition ("bound") and do not do so in another condition ("unbound"). We used an ambiguous stimulus, whose percept spontaneously switches between bound and unbound, while the stimulus itself remains unchanged. We tested discrimination on the boundary of the diamond as well as detection of probes inside and outside the diamond. We found discrimination performance to be increased if features were perceptually bound into an object. Furthermore, detection performance was higher within and lower outside the bound object as compared to the unbound configuration. Consequently, the facilitation of processing by object-based attention requires objecthood, that is, a unified internal representation of an "object"-not a mere collection of features.	f	\N
21497444	Psychological stress prompts activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in increased release of cortisol. Long-term HPA aberrations have been observed for stress-related affective disorders but research into acute effects of cortisol on affect-regulation has only recently begun. Previous studies reported that exogenous cortisol acutely attenuated automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening information. This has been taken to suggest that cortisol may have acute anxiolytic properties, possibly through facilitating inhibition of threatening information. However, the role of cortisol in attentional inhibition of non-threatening arousing stimuli remained unclear. Therefore acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on performance of a masked and unmasked emotional Stroop task (EST) were assessed. Results for only the unmasked task demonstrated EST interference (interpreted as increased automatic attention) for erotic stimuli which was abolished by cortisol administration. This implies that effects of cortisol may not be restricted to attenuation of specifically anxiogenic information processing, as previously suggested.	f	\N
21500047	In order to truly empathise with another, we need to recognise and understand how they feel. Perception-action models of empathy predict that attending to another's emotion will spontaneously activate the observer's own conceptual knowledge for the state, but it is unclear how this activation is related to facial mimicry, trait empathy, or attention to emotion more generally. In the current study, participants did spontaneously encode background facial expressions at a conceptual level even though they were irrelevant to the task (the Emostroop effect; Preston & Stansfield, 2008), but this encoding was not associated with mimicry of the faces, trait empathy, the ability to resolve competing semantic representations (Colour-naming Stroop task), or the tendency to be distracted by emotional information more generally (Intrusive Cognitions task). Our results suggest that trait empathy increases attention to emotional information, but conceptual encoding occurs across individuals as a natural consequence of attended perception.	f	\N
21500317	Recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) were combined with structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the timing and localization of stimulus selection processes during visual-spatial attention to pattern-reversing gratings. Pattern reversals were presented in random order to the left and right visual fields at a rapid rate, while subjects attended to the reversals in one field at a time. On separate runs, stimuli were presented in the upper and lower visual quadrants. The earliest ERP component (C1, peaking at around 80 ms), which inverted in polarity for upper versus lower field stimuli and was localized in or near visual area V1, was not modulated by attention. In the latency range 80-250 ms, multiple components were elicited that were increased in amplitude by attention and were colocalized with fMRI activations in specific visual cortical areas. The principal anatomical sources of these attention-sensitive components were localized by fMRI-seeded dipole modeling as follows: P1 (ca. 100 ms-source in motion-sensitive area MT+), C2 (ca. 130 ms-same source as C1), N1a (ca. 145 ms-source in horizontal intraparietal sulcus), N1b (ca. 165 ms-source in fusiform gyrus, area V4/V8), N1c (ca. 180 ms-source in posterior intraparietal sulcus, area V3A), and P2 (ca. 220 ms-multiple sources, including parieto-occipital sulcus, area V6). These results support the hypothesis that spatial attention acts to amplify both feed-forward and feedback signals in multiple visual areas of both the dorsal and ventral streams of processing.	f	\N
21500944	Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones. The reported time of action shifted closer to the tone when the tone was used to indicate the winner of a race (Exp.2) compared to when the tone was meaningless and did not indicate winning (Exp.1). This suggests that reported time of an unintended action could shift toward the effect in some contexts. Furthermore, the results from Exp.2 and Exp.3 (tones were substituted with verbal feedback) showed that a presumed winning action was judged to occur earlier whereas a presumed losing action was judged to be later. These findings therefore support the view that the reported time of action is reconstructed from known temporal information rather than determined by intentionality.	f	\N
21504670	The principal goal of this study was to verify whether it was possible to obtain both aversive and appetitive electrodermal classical conditioning, using pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS), and unconditioned stimuli (US). Additionally, we tried to verify whether, as a consequence of such conditioning, diminution of the unconditioned response (UR) was observed. With this aim, IAPS («International Affective Picture System») pictures were selected as stimuli. A picture showing a burnt face was used as the aversive US (USav), and a picture showing a scene with erotic content was used as the appetitive US (USap). As the aversive CS (CSav), and appetitive CS (CSap), two images with intermediate values of valence and arousal showing male faces were selected. In the experimental group, 10 CSav/USav and 10 CSap/USap trials were presented. In the control group 10 CSav, CSap, USav, and USap trials were presented in pseudorandom order. Skin conductance response (SCR) elicited by both the CSs and the USs was scored. Results showed aversive conditioning, but neither appetitive conditioning nor UR diminution. Problems to obtain conditioning using pictures as stimuli and possible options to overcome them in future research are discussed.	f	\N
21507423	We investigated the associations of appraisal and coping styles with emotion regulation in a community sample of preadolescents (N=196, 9-12 years of age), with appraisal, coping styles, and emotion regulation measured at a single time point. In a previous study, we identified five frustration and four anxiety emotion regulation profiles based on children's physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. In this study, preadolescents' self-reported appraisal and coping styles were associated with those emotion regulation profiles. Overall, findings revealed that children who were more effective at regulating their emotions during the emotion-eliciting tasks had higher levels of positive appraisal and active coping when dealing with their own problems. Conversely, children who regulated their emotions less effectively had higher levels of threat appraisal and avoidant coping.	f	\N
21518064	This was a realistic military-type exercise assessing unexpected, abrupt early-morning awakening effects on immediate 'executive function' and the ability to comprehend and deal with a sudden emergency under a changing situation. Twenty (average age 21years) healthy, highly motivated junior officer reservists were assigned randomly to two equal, independent groups, unforewarned as to what would happen. The experimental group was woken abruptly at 03:00h (<3h sleep) and confronted immediately with a 'paper exercise' of an enemy attack, requiring a feasible plan of engagement with minimal loss of resources, to be completed within 15min. A control group slept until 07:30h; they were then presented with the identical emergency 1h later. Participants worked individually, under time pressure, receiving written information, map and other details, all containing relevant, irrelevant and misleading information. Halfway through, they were given (unexpectedly) a critical update necessitating a change of tactics. Performance was scored blind by instructors, under five categories. Eight of the experimental group versus three controls failed overall, with significant group differences on three specific categories relying on flexible decision-making: 'identification of available cover', 'use of available assets' and 'extraction of relevant from irrelevant information'. Other, logical and highly trained skills were unimpaired. Ours was a 'worst case scenario', combining short sleep, circadian 'trough' and sleep inertia, all of which differentiated the two groups, unlike typical laboratory studies. Nevertheless, it was relevant to real-life situations involving highly motivated, trained individuals making critical innovative decisions in the early morning versus the normal waking day.	f	\N
21518701	Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.	f	\N
21526441	The aim of the present study is to investigate visual orientation in hospitalized boys with severe early onset conduct disorder and borderline intellectual functioning. It is tested whether boys with the dual diagnosis have a stronger action-oriented response style to visual-cued go signals than the norm. To this end, boys with the dual diagnosis were compared with a peer control group on Posner's (1980) visual-spatial detection test. Here, on each trial, a visual cue points either in the direction of the location of a subsequent go signal (valid cue), or points in the opposite direction away from the location of the subsequent go signal (invalid cue). Findings indicated superior orientation (a strong action-oriented response style) of children with the dual diagnosis in valid-cued trials as well as in invalid-cued trials in both the left and the right visual hemifield. Findings were controlled for attention scores on the Child Behavior Checklist -Teacher Form and IQ scores.	f	\N
21534030	Eight participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were trained to recall names of countries using the spaced-retrieval memory intervention. Six training sessions were administered on alternate days over a 2-week period. Half of the participants studied a target country alone and the other half studied a target country along with eight distractor countries. Training stimuli appeared in text-only format in half of the sessions and text with a color photograph of the country in the other sessions. On each trial, participants selected the target at increasingly longer retention intervals, contingent upon successful recall. Results indicated that the mean proportion of correct trials and longest duration achieved increased across training sessions, confirming the success of the spaced-retrieval intervention. Pictorial illustrations enhanced explicit memory for target country names. Implications of these data for current views on memory remediation in cognitively impaired older adults are discussed.	f	\N
21534031	In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.	f	\N
21534706	We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a 6-sided die and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upward when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the sides of each die. In 2 experiments (N₁ = 66, N₂ = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional's antecedent and consequent: Participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: Conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference = 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning.	f	\N
21534986	Schizophrenia (SZ) patients showed increased volitional saccade latencies, suggesting deficient volitional initiation of action. Yet increased volitional saccade latencies may also result from deficits in attention shifts. To dissociate attention shifting and saccade initiation, we asked 25 SZ patients and 25 healthy subjects to make saccades toward newly appearing (onset) targets and toward the loci of disappearing (offset) targets. Similar onsets and offsets were also used as attention cues in a Posner-type manual task. As expected, onsets and offsets had similar effects on attention. In contrast, saccade latencies were considerably longer with offset compared to onset targets, reflecting additional time for volitional saccade initiation. Unexpectedly, SZ patients had normal saccade latencies. Presumably, the expected deficit was compensated by decreased fixation-related neural activity, which was induced by the disappearance of fixation stimuli.	f	\N
21545293	Wearable medical devices have enabled unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs and emerging biofeedback services in a pervasive manner. This article describes a wearable respiratory biofeedback system based on a generalized body sensor network (BSN) platform. The compact BSN platform was tailored for the strong requirements of overall system optimizations. A waist-worn biofeedback device was designed using the BSN. Extensive bench tests have shown that the generalized BSN worked as intended. In-situ experiments with 22 subjects indicated that the biofeedback device was discreet, easy to wear, and capable of offering wearable respiratory trainings. Pilot studies on wearable training patterns and resultant heart rate variability suggested that paced respirations at abdominal level and with identical inhaling/exhaling ratio were more appropriate for decreasing sympathetic arousal and increasing parasympathetic activities.	f	\N
21545978	Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings-regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.	f	\N
21547070	We aimed to investigate whether novel stimulus relations would emerge from stimulus correlations when those relations explicitly conflicted with reinforced relations. In a symbolic matching-to-sample task using kanji characters as stimuli, we arranged class-specific incorrect comparison stimuli in each of three classes. After presenting either Ax or Cx stimuli as samples, choices of Bx were reinforced and choices of Gx or Hx were not. Tests for symmetry, and combined symmetry and transitivity, showed the emergence of three 3-member (AxBxCx) stimulus classes in 5 of 5 human participants. Subsequent tests for all possible emergent relations between Ax, Bx, Cx and the class-specific incorrect comparisons Gx and Hx showed that these relations emerged for 4 of 5 the participants after extended overtraining of the baseline relations. These emergent relations must have been based on stimulus-stimulus correlations, and were not properties of the trained discriminated operants, because they required control by relations explicitly extinguished during training. This result supports theoretical accounts of emergent relations that emphasize stimulus correlation over operant contingencies.	f	\N
21547759	According to the Proust phenomenon, olfactory memory triggers are more evocative than other-modality triggers resulting in more emotional and detailed memories. An experimental paradigm was used to investigate this in aversive memories, similar to those experienced by patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Seventy healthy participants watched an aversive film, while simultaneously being exposed to olfactory, auditory and visual triggers, which were matched on intensity, valence, arousal and salience. During a second session one week later, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three triggers, and asked to think back about the film and to rate the resulting memory. Results revealed that odour-evoked memories of aversive events were more detailed, unpleasant and arousing than memories evoked by auditory, but not visual, triggers.	f	\N
21547763	Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.	f	\N
21555734	Previous studies have estimated that wake-up strokes comprise 8%to 28% of all ischemic strokes, but these studies were either small or not population-based. We sought to establish the proportion and event rate of wake-up strokes in a large population-based study and to compare patients who awoke with stroke symptoms with those who were awake at time of onset. First-time and recurrent ischemic strokes among residents of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region (population 1.3 million) in 2005 were identified using International Classification of Diseases-9 codes 430-436 and verified via study physician review. Ischemic strokes in patients aged 18 years and older presenting to an emergency department were included. Baseline characteristics were ascertained, along with discharge modified Rankin Scale scores and 90-day mortality. We identified 1,854 ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department, of which 273 (14.3%) were wake-up strokes. There were no differences between wake-up strokes and all other strokes with regard to clinical features or outcomes except for minor differences in age and baseline retrospective NIH Stroke Scale score. The adjusted wake-up stroke event rate was 26.0/100,000. Of the wake-up strokes, at least 98 (35.9%) would have been eligible for thrombolysis if arrival time were not a factor. Within our population, approximately 14% of ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department were wake-up strokes. Wake-up strokes cannot be distinguished from other strokes by clinical features or outcome. We estimate that approximately 58,000 patients with wake-up strokes presented to an emergency department in the United States in 2005.	f	\N
21555787	The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) is commonly used to evaluate an individual's switching attention and processing speed. However, its test-retest reliability and practice effect are not well known in patients with stroke, limiting its utility in both clinical and research settings. The present study examined the two aforementioned psychometric properties of the oral-format SDMT on a group of 30 outpatients with stroke. The oral-format SDMT demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.89) and a small practice effect (Cohen's d = 0.26) within a 1-week interval. A practice effect-corrected reliable change index [-5.29, 10.89] was also provided to help clinicians and researchers interpret their clients' test results. Patients' characteristics and the test-retest interval should be considered before applying the findings of the present study to clinical settings.	f	\N
21564270	Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation.	f	\N
21568633	The specific role of different parietal regions to episodic retrieval is a topic of intense debate. According to the Attention to Memory (AtoM) model, dorsal parietal cortex (DPC) mediates top-down attention processes guided by retrieval goals, whereas ventral parietal cortex (VPC) mediates bottom-up attention processes captured by the retrieval output or the retrieval cue. This model also hypothesizes that the attentional functions of DPC and VPC are similar for memory and perception. To investigate this last hypothesis, we scanned participants with event-related fMRI whereas they performed memory and perception tasks, each comprising an orienting phase (top-down attention) and a detection phase (bottom-up attention). The study yielded two main findings. First, consistent with the AtoM model, orienting-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in DPC, whereas detection-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in VPC. The DPC overlap was greater in the left intraparietal sulcus, and the VPC overlap in the left TPJ. Around overlapping areas, there were differences in the spatial distribution of memory and perception activations, which were consistent with trends reported in the literature. Second, both DPC and VPC showed stronger connectivity with medial-temporal lobe during the memory task and with visual cortex during the perception task. These findings suggest that, during memory tasks, some parietal regions mediate similar attentional control processes to those involved in perception tasks (orienting in DPC vs. detection in VPC), although on different types of information (mnemonic vs. sensory).	f	\N
21570431	Research has shown that standard chewing gum can affect aspects of both attention and memory. The present study examined the effects of Think Gum®, a caffeinated-herbal chewing gum, on both concentration and memory using a series of paper-based and online testing. Compared to standard chewing gum and a no-gum control, chewing caffeinated-herbal gum during testing improved aspects of memory, but did not affect concentration. The findings suggest that caffeinated-herbal chewing gum is an effective memory aid.	f	\N
21593013	Evidence suggests that gait is influenced by higher order cognitive and cortical control mechanisms. However, less is known about the functional correlates of cortical control of gait. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, the current study was designed to evaluate whether increased activations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were detected in walking while talking (WWT) compared with normal pace walking (NW) in 11 young and 11 old participants. Specifically, the following two hypotheses were evaluated: (a) Activation in the PFC would be increased in WWT compared with NW. (b) The increase in activation in the PFC during WWT as compared with NW would be greater in young than in old participants. Separate linear mixed effects models with age as the two-level between-subject factor, walking condition (NW vs WWT) as the two-level repeated within-subject factor, and HbO2 levels in each of the 16 functional near-infrared spectroscopy channels as the dependent measure revealed significant task effects in 14 channels, indicating a robust bilateral increased activation in the PFC in WWT compared with NW. Furthermore, the group-by-task interaction was significant in 11 channels with young participants showing greater WWT-related increase in HbO2 levels compared with the old participants. This study provided the first evidence that oxygenation levels are increased in the PFC during WWT compared with NW in young and old individuals. This effect was modified by age suggesting that older adults may under-utilize the PFC in attention-demanding locomotion tasks.	f	\N
21607816	The present study investigated working memory consolidation in focused and distributed attention tasks by examining the time course of the consolidation process (Experiment 1) and its dependence on capacity-limited central resources (Experiment 2) in both tasks. In a match-to-sample design using masks at various intervals to vary consolidation rates, the participants performed either an identification task (focused attention) or a mean estimation task (distributed attention) with (Experiment 1) or without (Experiment 2) prior knowledge of what task they were to perform. We found that consolidation in the distributed attention task was more efficient and was about twice as fast as in the focused attention task. In addition, both tasks suffered interference when they had to be performed together, indicating that both types of attention rely on a common set of control processes. These findings can be attributed to differences in the resolution of object representations and in the scope of attention associated with focused and distributed attention.	f	\N
21611188	Visual search tasks have been used to understand how, where and when attention influences visual processing. Current theories suggest the involvement of a high-level "saliency map" that selects a candidate location to focus attentional resources. For a parallel (or "pop-out") task, the first chosen location is systematically the target, but for a serial (or "difficult") task, the system may cycle on a few distractors before finally focusing on the target. This implies that attentional effects upon early visual areas, involving feedback from higher areas, should be visible at longer latencies during serial search. A previous study from Juan & Walsh (2003) had used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to support this conclusion; however, only a few post-stimulus delays were compared, and no control TMS location was used. Here we applied TMS double-pulses (sub-threshold) to induce a transient inhibition of area V1 at every post-stimulus delay between 100 ms and 500 ms (50 ms steps). The search array was presented either at the location affected by the TMS pulses (previously identified by applying several pulses at supra-threshold intensity to induce phosphene perception), or in the opposite hemifield, which served as a retinotopically-defined control location. Two search tasks were used: a parallel (+ among Ls) and a serial one (T among Ls). TMS specifically impaired the serial, but not the parallel search. We highlight an involvement of V1 in serial search 300 ms after the onset; conversely, V1 did not contribute to parallel search at delays beyond 100 ms. This study supports the idea that serial search differs from parallel search by the presence of additional cycles of a select-and-focus iterative loop between V1 and higher-level areas.	f	\N
21614702	The present study explored the nature of attention control problems associated with ruminative traits. Experiment 1 aimed to establish the validity of a modified mental counting task that assesses individuals' ability to switch attention between internal mental representations. Reaction time and brain activity (event related potential; ERP) measures were examined, and results showed that the task was sensitive to internal attention switching effects. Experiment 2 assessed how the relationship between ruminative tendencies and switching performance differs when participants attend to neutral versus affective materials under different mood states. Although reaction-time analysis suggested that both mood condition and stimulus affectivity were not significant in altering this association, ERP analysis suggested otherwise. A significant task type×trait rumination × mood condition effect was found for switch-related ERP responses, whereby high ruminators were found to deploy more neuronal resources when switching affective materials in sad mood state.	f	\N
21616989	The purpose of this study was to determine if sound-field amplification (SFA) devices affected student performance in 3 different types of classrooms. The classroom performance of 147 children (77 males, 70 females, ages 8;2 [years;months] ± 5 months) was measured at the beginning and end of the second semester of their third year in 1 of 4 primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Each school contained 2 participating classrooms, 1 with and 1 without an SFA device. The SFA devices contributed to small but significant improvements in student listening (p < .01) and auditory analysis (p < .05) skills, but only in the school where the participating classrooms were in a brick building (vs. a demountable building) with neighboring classrooms separated by solid walls (vs. open spaces). The classrooms in this school showed the lowest background noise measures (47-50 dB 1 hr, A weighted) and the second lowest reverberation times (0.87-0.91 s) overall, although these values still exceeded the maximums recommended by American National Standards Institute S12.60-2002 (2002). These results suggest that any potential benefits of SFA devices are more likely to be realized in classrooms with better acoustics.	f	\N
21621179	To test whether cueing by color can affect orienting without first computing the location of the cued color, the impact of reorienting on the validity effect was examined. In Experiment 1 subjects were asked to detect a black dot target presented at random on either of two colored forms. The forms started being presented 750 ms before the onset of a central cue (either an arrow or a colored square). In some proportion of the trials the colors switched locations 150 ms after cue onset, simultaneously with target onset. The color switch was not found to retard responses following a color cue more than following a location cue. Furthermore, it did not reduce the validity effect of the color cue: Though the validity effect of the location cue was quite larger than the validity effect of the color cue, both effects were additive with the presence/absence of a color switch. In Experiment 2, subjects were rather asked to detect a change in shape of one of the colored forms. In this case, color switch was found to affect performance even less following a color cue. The fact that across experiments, color switch did not retard neither responding nor orienting selectively in the color cue condition, indicates that when attention is set to a certain color, reorienting to a new object following color switch does not require re-computing the address of the cued color. That finding is argued to embarrass a strong space-based view of visual attention.	f	\N
21621549	Sleep plays a role in the consolidation of declarative memories. Although this influence has attracted much attention at the level of behavioural performance, few reports have searched for neural correlates. Here, we studied the impact of sleep upon memory for the context in which stimuli were learned at both behavioural and neural levels. Participants retrieved the association between a presented foreground object and its encoding context following a 12-h retention interval including either wake only or wake plus a night of sleep. Since sleep has been shown to selectively enhance some forms of emotional memory, we examined both neutral and emotionally valenced contexts. Behaviourally, less forgetting was observed across retention intervals containing sleep than retention intervals containing only wakefulness, and this benefit was accompanied by stronger responses in hippocampus and superior parietal cortex. This sleep-related reduction in forgetting did not differ between neutral and negative contexts, but there was a clear interaction between sleep and context valence at the functional level, with left amygdala, right parahippocampus, and other components of the episodic memory system all responding more strongly during correct memory for emotional contexts post-sleep. Connectivity between right parahippocampus and bilateral amygdala/periamygdala was also enhanced during correct post-sleep attribution of emotional contexts. Because there was no interaction between sleep and valence in terms of context memory performance these functional results may be associated with memory for details about the emotional encoding context rather than for the link between that context and the foreground object. Overall, our data show that while context memory decays less across sleep than across an equivalent period of wake, the sleep-related protection of such associations is not influenced by context emotionality in the same way as direct recollection of emotional information.	f	\N
21632030	The three experiments reported here test whether object-modulated attentional spreading can be obtained when the target location is 100% certain. Experiment 1 uses the reaction time (RT)-based flanker task similar to Shomstein and Yantis (2002), and replicates the null result of the object-modulated attentional spreading. RT and accuracy (ACC) have been shown to reflect different processes: postperceptual decision vs. perceptual process (Santee & Egeth, 1982). Experiment 2 adopts the data-limited ACC-based measure and reports that attention could spread within the attended object. To avoid ceiling effects, Experiment 3 adjusts the presentation time based on the trials where the target and flankers were compatible and on the same objects, and provides the convergent evidence supporting the object-modulated attentional spreading. These results suggest that because the RT-based measure is less sensitive in reflecting the quality of perceptual representations, it is not sufficiently a strong evidence to distinguish between sensory enhancement and scanning prioritization accounts.	f	\N
21639611	We continue the process of investigating the probabilistic paired associate paradigm in an effort to understand the memory access control processes involved and to determine whether the memory structure produced is in transition between episodic and semantic memory. In this paradigm two targets are probabilistically paired with a cue across a large number of short lists. Participants can recall the target paired with the cue in the most recent list (list specific test), produce the first of the two targets that have been paired with that cue to come to mind (generalised test), and produce a free association response (semantic test). Switching between a generalised test and a list specific test did not produce a switching cost indicating a general similarity in the control processes involved. In addition, there was evidence for a dissociation between two different strength manipulations (amount of study time and number of cue-target pairings) such that number of pairings influenced the list specific, generalised and the semantic test but amount of study time only influenced the list specific and generalised test.	f	\N
21639619	Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.	f	\N
21641942	A variety of event-related potential (ERP) based studies have shown differences in neuronal processes underlying attention, inhibition and error processing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to controls. However, so far there are no studies that have compared children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children regarding effects in ERP components associated with the attention network test (ANT). The ANT allows to differentiate between three particular aspects of attention: alerting, orienting, conflict. Twenty-five children with ADHD and 19 TD children (comparable with respect to age, sex, and IQ) performed the ANT while ERPs were recorded. Based on DSM-IV, the group of children with ADHD was divided in an inattentive (ADHDin, n=10) and a combined (ADHDcom, n=15) subgroup. On the performance level, the ADHD group showed a significantly higher variability of reaction times. Concerning ERP measures, smaller cue-P3 amplitudes were found in the ADHD group indicating that children with ADHD allocate less attentional resources for cue processing. In addition, the target-P3 in ADHD showed smaller amplitudes. Subgroup analysis revealed reduced cue-P3 amplitudes in both subgroups and reduced target-P3 amplitudes in ADHDin compared to TD children. Except for a higher alerting score in ADHD after correction for cue-P3 group differences, performance data revealed no group differences specific for the three attention networks. No group differences related to the attention networks were observed at the ERP level. Our results suggest that deviant attentional processing in children with ADHD is only partly related to ANT-specific effects. Findings are compatible with the model of a suboptimal energetic state regulation in ADHD. Furthermore, our results suggest that deviant cue processing in ADHD and related differences in task modulations should be accounted for in data analysis.	f	\N
21643485	This case describes the clinical course of a cannabis-dependent individual entering a 12-week abstinence-based research program. The case illustrates the effects of chronic, heavy cannabis use on executive functions at three time points: 1) 24 hours of abstinence; 2) 4 weeks of abstinence; and 3) 12 weeks of abstinence. It is followed by discussions by two clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist. The findings described here have important clinical implications, as executive functions have a vital role in treatment participation and in sustaining recovery. It should be of particular interest to clinicians who work with people with cannabis use disorders.	f	\N
21646824	While neuropsychological impairment in bipolar disorder is well documented, the effect size of this impairment is rarely compared directly to that in other clinically familiar cognitive disorders. This study compares neuropsychological functioning of euthymic bipolar patients to those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as healthy controls. Following evaluation during regular follow-up in a mood disorders clinic, 58 euthymic adult bipolar subjects were administered a validated and fully computerized cognitive assessment (Mindstreams; NeuroTrax Corp., N.Y., USA). Study data were compared to existing data for MCI and cognitively healthy individuals tested with the same assessment. Final analyses were based on 51 bipolar patients, 162 MCI patients and 495 healthy comparison subjects. Significant (p < 0.001) group effects were found for every parameter. Post hoc analysis revealed that the bipolar and MCI groups showed statistically equivalent functioning in memory, executive function, verbal function, and information processing speed. In the domains of visual-spatial processing, attention, and motor skills, the MCI group outperformed the bipolar group. In every domain, the healthy control group outperformed both the bipolar and the MCI groups. The cognitive function of euthymic bipolar patients and those diagnosed with MCI was found to be similar in most but not all domains. Both groups performed significantly less well than the comparison group of healthy subjects. It may be helpful for clinicians to conceptualize the overall level of cognitive impairment in bipolar patients as similar to that in MCI.	f	\N
21649633	To test the main and interactive effects of activities derived from the Need-Driven Dementia-Compromised Behavior model for responding to behavioral symptoms in nursing home residents. Randomized double-blind clinical trial. Nine community-based nursing homes. One hundred twenty-eight cognitively impaired residents randomly assigned to activities adjusted to functional level (FL) (n=32), personality style of interest (PSI) (n=33), functional level and personality style of interest (FL+PSI) (n=31), or active control (AC) (n=32). Three weeks of activities provided twice daily. Agitation, passivity, engagement, affect, and mood assessed from video recordings and real-time observations during baseline, intervention, random times outside of intervention, and 1 week after intervention. All treatments improved outcomes during intervention except mood, which worsened under AC. During intervention the PSI group demonstrated greater engagement, alertness, and attention than the other groups; the FL+PSI group demonstrated greater pleasure. During random times, engagement returned to baseline levels except in the FL group in which it decreased. There was also less agitation and passivity in groups with a component adjusted to PSI. One week after the intervention, mood, anxiety, and passivity improved over baseline; significantly less pleasure was displayed after withdrawal of treatment. The hypothesis that activities adjusted to FL+PSI would improve behavioral outcomes to a greater extent than partially adjusted or nonadjusted activities was partially supported. PSI is a critical component of individualized activity prescription.	f	\N
21652032	It has been proposed that the most fundamental units of attentional selection are "objects" that are grouped according to Gestalt factors such as similarity or connectedness. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that object-based attention is associated with modulations of the visual-evoked N1 component, which reflects an early cortical mechanism that is shared with spatial attention. However, these studies only examined the case of perceptually continuous objects. The present study examined the case of separate objects that are grouped according to feature similarity (color, shape) by indexing lateralized potentials at posterior sites in a sustained-attention task that involved bilateral stimulus arrays. A behavioral object effect was found only for task-relevant shape similarity. Electrophysiological results indicated that attention was guided to the task-irrelevant side of the visual field due to achromatic-color similarity in N1 (155-205 ms post-stimulus) and early N2 (210-260 ms) and due to shape similarity in early N2 and late N2 (280-400 ms) latency ranges. These results are discussed in terms of selection mechanisms and object/group representations.	f	\N
21652777	In three experiments, we tested whether people can protect their ongoing goal pursuits from antagonistic priming effects by using if-then plans (i.e., implementation intentions). In Experiment 1, concept priming did not influence lexical decision time for a critical stimulus when participants had formed if-then plans to make fast responses to that stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants who were primed with a prosocial goal allowed a confederate who asked for help to interrupt their work on a focal task for a longer time if they had merely formed goal intentions to perform well than if they had also formed implementation intentions for concentrating on the task. In Experiment 3, priming the goal of being fast increased driving speed and errors for participants who had formed mere goal intentions to drive only as fast as safety allowed or who had formed no goal intentions, whereas the driving of participants who had formed such goal intentions as well as implementation intentions showed no such priming effects. Our findings indicate that implementation intentions are an effective self-regulatory tool for shielding actions from disruptive concept- or goal-priming effects.	f	\N
21660498	Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with sensory hypersensitivity. A recent study reported visual acuity (VA) in ASD in the region reported for birds of prey. The validity of the results was subsequently doubted. This study examined VA in 34 individuals with ASD, 16 with schizophrenia (SCH), and 26 typically developing (TYP). Participants with ASD did not show higher VA than those with SCH and TYP. There were no substantial correlations of VA with clinical severity in ASD or SCH. This study could not confirm the eagle-eyed acuity hypothesis of ASD, or find evidence for a connection of VA and clinical phenotypes. Research needs to further address the origins and circumstances associated with altered sensory or perceptual processing in ASD.	f	\N
21664936	The processing of successive targets requires that attention be engaged and disengaged. Whereas attentional engagement can be studied by means of the N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP), no ERP component has been linked to attentional disengagement. Here, we report the finding of such a component using an RSVP paradigm with multiple, successive targets and with a spatial-cuing paradigm. In both experiments, disengagement of attention was necessary to attend to subsequent targets. A distinct waveform following the N2pc, which we call the P4pc (Positivity 400 ms post-target posterior contralateral), was found. The P4pc was found when a lateralized cue indicated that attention would be needed for the processing of a target at either the same or a different location as the cue, but not when only the cue was to be responded to, indicating that the need to disengage attention is a prerequisite for the P4pc to occur. We expect the P4pc to provide a valuable addition to the set of electrophysiological measures used to study the dynamics and mechanisms of visual attention and visual search.	f	\N
21664952	Visual perception is influenced at early processing stages by geometric spatiotemporal context regularities (consistent with the "vision-as-inference" view) and by attention, yet little is known about the interaction between these two influences on visual processing. Here, we investigate the temporal dynamics of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in target detection using event-related potentials (ERP). Spatial attention was withdrawn from the context by a secondary task in Experiment 1, and the role of task-relevance was explored in Experiment 2 by including a passive viewing condition. The ERP correlates of spatiotemporal regularity reported in an earlier study were replicated in single task (Experiment 1) and active viewing (Experiment 2): P1 and N1 peak-latency was shorter when the target was preceded by a context. Latency first differentiated between the two context conditions at N1, where latency was shortest for targets preceded by a context with both spatial and temporal regularities (compared with temporal regularity only). In dual task and passive viewing, this N1 latency-shift was abolished. Comparisons of "low-attention" (dual task or passive viewing) with "high-attention" conditions (single task or active viewing) revealed that attention only shortened N1 peak-latency when the target was preceded by stimulus sequences with spatial and temporal regularity. P1 latency was unaffected by manipulation of top-down attention factors. Attentional factors are likely to modulate influences of spatiotemporal context through re-afferent projections at later stages of visual processing in regions of extrastriate cortex associated with the generators of the N1 waveform.	f	\N
21665985	Principles of saccadic eye movement control in the real world have been derived by the study of self-paced well-known tasks such as sandwich or tea making. Little is known whether these principles generalize to high-speed sensorimotor tasks and how they are affected by learning and automatization. In the present study, right-handers practiced the speed-stacking task in 14 consecutive daily training sessions, while their eye movements were recorded. Speed stacking is a high-speed sensorimotor task that requires grasping, moving, rotating, and placing of objects. The following main results emerged. Throughout practice, the eyes led the hands, displayed by a positive eye-hand time span. Moreover, visual information was gathered for the subsequent manual sub-action, displayed by a positive eye-hand unit span. With automatization, the eye-hand time span became shorter, yet it increased when corrected by the decreasing trial duration. In addition, fixations were mainly allocated to the goal positions of the right hand or objects in the right hand. The number of fixations decreased while the fixation rate remained constant. Importantly, all participants fixated on the same task-relevant locations in a similar scan path across training days, revealing a long-term memory-based mode of attention control after automatization of a high-speed sensorimotor task.	f	\N
21668095	Affective priming studies have shown that participants are faster to pronounce affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively congruent prime words than affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively incongruent prime words. We examined whether affective priming of naming responses depends on the valence proportion (i.e., the proportion of stimuli that are affectively polarized). In one group of participants, experimental trials were embedded in a context of filler trials that consisted of affectively polarized stimulus materials (i.e., high valence proportion condition). In a second group, the same set of experimental trials was embedded in a context of filler trials consisting of neutral stimuli (i.e., low valence proportion condition). Results showed that affective priming of naming responses was significantly stronger in the high valence proportion condition than in the low valence proportion condition. We conclude that (a) subtle aspects of the procedure can influence affective priming of naming responses, (b) finding affective priming of naming responses does not allow for the conclusion that affective stimulus processing is unconditional, and (c) affective stimulus processing depends on selective attention for affective stimulus information.	f	\N
21668098	In laboratory experiments, infants are sensitive to patterns of visual features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). Once infants learn the statistical regularities, however, what do they do with that knowledge? Moreover, which patterns do infants learn in the cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Across 4 experiments, we show that 9-month-olds use this sensitivity to make inferences about object properties. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants expected co-occurring visual features to remain fused (i.e., infants looked longer when co-occurring features split apart than when they stayed together). Forming such expectations can help identify integral object parts for object individuation, recognition, and categorization. In Experiment 2, we increased the task difficulty by presenting the test stimuli simultaneously with a different spatial layout from the familiarization trials to provide a more ecologically valid condition. Infants did not make similar inferences in this more distracting test condition. However, Experiment 3 showed that a social cue did allow inferences in this more difficult test condition, and Experiment 4 showed that social cues helped infants choose patterns among distractor patterns during learning as well as during test. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in distraction-filled environments.	f	\N
21676591	We present results from continuous intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) monitoring in 6 dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy, a disorder similar to the human condition in its clinical presentation, epidemiology, electrophysiology and response to therapy. Recordings were obtained using a novel implantable device wirelessly linked to an external, portable real-time processing unit. We demonstrate previously uncharacterized intracranial seizure onset patterns in these animals that are strikingly similar in appearance to human partial onset epilepsy. We propose: (1) canine epilepsy as an appropriate model for testing human antiepileptic devices and new approaches to epilepsy surgery, and (2) this new technology as a versatile platform for evaluating seizures and response to therapy in the natural, ambulatory setting.	f	\N
21677255	This study examined the influence of thyroid markers (TSH and FT4) on cognition in a sample of rural-dwelling women. Data were analyzed from 81 women who were enrolled in an ongoing study of rural health, Project FRONTIER. Cognition was assessed with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). TSH levels were significantly related to the RBANS Attention Index, and FT4 levels were significantly related to the RBANS Language Index. The current study found that TSH and FT4 were differentially related to neurocognitive domains, with TSH being related only to measures of attention and FT4 to measures of language.	f	\N
21679910	The fate of irrelevant and overtly presented stimuli that was temporally aligned with an attended target in a separate task was explored. Seitz and Watanabe (2003) demonstrated that if an irrelevant motion stimulus was implicit (i.e., subthreshold), a later facilitation for the same motion direction was observed if the previously presented implicit motion (of the same direction) was temporally aligned with the presence of an attended target. Later research, however, demonstrated that if the motion stimulus aligned with the attended target was explicit (i.e., suprathreshold), a later inhibition was observed (Tsushima, Seitz, & Watanabe, 2008). The current study expands on this by using more salient stimuli (words and pictures) in an inattentional blindness paradigm, and suggests that when attention is depleted, recognition for target-aligned task-irrelevant items is impaired in a subsequent recognition task. Participants were required to respond to either immediate picture, or word, repetitions in a stream of simultaneously presented line drawings and written words, and later given a surprise recognition test that measured recognition for the words or the pictures. When analyzing word recognition performance after attention had been directed to the pictures, words that had appeared simultaneously with a picture repetition in the repetition detection task were recognized at levels significantly below chance. The same inhibition was mirrored when testing for picture recognition after having attended to the words in the repetition detection task. These data suggest an inhibitory mechanism that is exhibited in later recognition tests for salient information that was previously unattended and had been simultaneously being presented with an attended target in a different task.	f	\N
21684179	Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to the targets that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one's own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding.	f	\N
21684618	The primary purpose of the present study was to examine kinematic characteristics and force control during a golf-putting task under a pressure condition. The secondary purpose was to provide an exploratory investigation of the relationship between changes in behavior (kinematics and force control) and performance on the one hand, and psychological (attention and affect) and physiological (arousal level) changes on the other hand. Twenty male novices performed 150 acquisition trials, followed by 10 test trials during a pressure condition induced by performance-contingent distracters: a cash reward or punishment. A three-dimensional motion analysis revealed that, during the pressure test, angular displacements of rotational movements at the horizontal plane and movement time of the arms and club during the backswing and downswing phases all decreased, while acceleration of the elbows during the downswing phase increased. Mean performance indices in all participants' were unchanged in spite of the kinematic changes under the pressure condition. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the decrement in performance, as well as increased variability of movement time and speed, were more likely to increase when participants shifted their attention to movements. Furthermore, changes in heart rate and negative affect were related to both the increase in movement acceleration and a decrease in grip force. These findings suggest that performance and behavioral changes during golf-putting under pressure can be associated with attentional changes, along with the influences of physiological-emotional responses.	f	\N
21688874	There is a wealth of evidence showing enhanced attention toward drug-related information (i.e., attentional bias) in substance abusers. However, little is known about attentional bias in deregulated behaviors without substance use such as abnormal gambling. This study examined whether problem gamblers (PrG, as assessed through self-reported gambling-related craving and gambling dependence severity) exhibit attentional bias for gambling-related cues. Forty PrG and 35 control participants performed a change detection task using the flicker paradigm, in which two images differing in only one aspect are repeatedly flashed on the screen until the participant is able to report the changing item. In our study, the changing item was either neutral or related to gambling. Eye movements were recorded, which made it possible to measure both initial orienting of attention as well as its maintenance on gambling information. Direct (eye-movements) and indirect (change in detection latency) measures of attention in individuals with problematic gambling behaviors suggested the occurrence of both engagement and of maintenance attentional biases toward gambling-related visual cues. Compared to nonproblematic gamblers, PrG exhibited (a) faster reaction times to gambling-cues as compared to neutral cues, (b) higher percentage of initial saccades directed toward gambling pictures, and (c) an increased fixation duration and fixation count on gambling pictures. In the PrG group, measures of gambling-related attentional bias were not associated with craving for gambling and gambling dependence severity. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.	f	\N
21691865	This study examined the hypothesis of an atypical interaction between attention and language in ASD. A dual-task experiment with three conditions was designed, in which sentences were presented that contained errors requiring attentional focus either at (a) low level, or (b) high level, or (c) both levels of language. Speed and accuracy for error detection were measured from 16 high-functioning adults with ASD, and 16 matched controls. For controls, there was an attentional cost of dual level processing for low level performance but not for high level performance. For participants with ASD, there was an attentional cost both for low level and for high level performance. These results suggest a compensatory strategic use of attention during language processing in ASD.	f	\N
21697709	To examine the relationship between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in Parkinson disease (PD) and controls. The reliable self-assessment of one's own cognitive skills and deficits is an important but difficult task, especially in a chronic neurological condition like PD. Theories point out that brain structures involved in a realistic self-appraisal might be affected in PD. No study directly examined the association between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in PD. We applied a case control design with 54 participants in the PD group and 54 healthy controls. PD patients and controls completed questionnaires on depression and self-assessed attention and were examined with computerized tests of attention. PD patients differed from controls in subjective and objective assessment of attention. Depression and self-assessed attention share a significant amount of variance, but are unrelated to objective measures of attention in both groups. In PD patients, there are no associations between functional outcome and objective and subjective measures of attention. Conscious reports in PD patients and controls are based on different processes rather than actual attentional performance. These processes are not differentially affected in PD. Nevertheless, patients' self-assessments are not an accurate indicator of their level of objective attentional functioning. Without a definite validity criterion, it cannot be decided whether the objective or subjective assessment of attention is more valid. Therefore, a multidimensional approach integrating different sources of information is most adequate in the assessment of attentional capacities and their meaning for everyday life in PD patients.	f	\N
21698055	The mechanisms of the increased cardiac and vascular events in patients with OSA are not well understood. Arousal which is an important component of OSA was associated with increased sympathetic activation and electrocardiographic changes which prone to arrhythmias. We planned to examine the association among arousal, circulating Lp-PLA2 and total antioxidant capacity in male patients with OSA. Fifty male patients with newly diagnosed OSA were enrolled the study. A full-night polysomnography was performed and arousal index was obtained. Lp-PLA2 concentrations were measured in serum samples with the PLAC Test. Total antioxidant capacity in patients was determined with Antioxidant Assay Kit. Arousal was positively correlated with LP-PLA2 levels (r=0.43, p=0.002) and was negatively correlated with total antioxidant capacity (r= -0.29, p=0.04). Elevated LP-PLA2 levels and decreased total antioxidant activities were found in the highest arousal quartile compared with the lowest and 2nd quartiles (p=0.02, p=0.05, respectively). LP-PLA2 was an independently predictor of arousal index in regression model (β=0.357, p=0.002) This study demonstrated a moderate linear relationship between arousal and LP-PLA2 levels. Also, total antioxidant capacities were decreased in the higher arousal index. Based on the study result, the patients with higher arousal index may be prone to vascular events.	f	\N
21707217	Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.	f	\N
21715631	Gamma-band (25-90 Hz) peaks in local field potential (LFP) power spectra are present throughout the cerebral cortex and have been related to perception, attention, memory, and disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and autism). It has been theorized that gamma oscillations provide a "clock" for precise temporal encoding and "binding" of signals about stimulus features across brain regions. For gamma to function as a clock, it must be autocoherent: phase and frequency conserved over a period of time. We computed phase and frequency trajectories of gamma-band bursts, using time-frequency analysis of LFPs recorded in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) during visual stimulation. The data were compared with simulations of random networks and clock signals in noise. Gamma-band bursts in LFP data were statistically indistinguishable from those found in filtered broadband noise. Therefore, V1 LFP data did not contain clock-like gamma-band signals. We consider possible functions for stochastic gamma-band activity, such as a synchronizing pulse signal.	f	\N
21722739	Both the size and location of injury in the brain influences the type and severity of cognitive or sensorimotor dysfunction. However, even with advances in MR imaging and analysis, the correspondence between lesion location and clinical deficit remains poorly understood. Here, structural and diffusion images from 14 healthy subjects are used to create spatially unbiased white matter connectivity importance maps that quantify the amount of disruption to the overall brain network that would be incurred if that region were compromised. Some regions in the white matter that were identified as highly important by such maps have been implicated in strategic infarct dementia and linked to various attention tasks in previous studies. Validation of the maps is performed by investigating the correlations of the importance maps' predicted cognitive deficits in a group of 15 traumatic brain injury patients with their cognitive test scores measuring attention and memory. While no correlation was found between amount of white matter injury and cognitive test scores, significant correlations (r>0.68, p<0.006) were found when including location information contained in the importance maps. These tools could be used by physicians to improve surgical planning, diagnosis, and assessment of disease severity in a variety of pathologies like multiple sclerosis, trauma, and stroke.	f	\N
21726855	Cognitive-behavioural models of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) suggest that mirrors can act as a trigger for individuals with BDD, resulting in a specific mode of cognitive processing, characterised by an increase in self-focussed attention and associated distress. The aim of the current study was to investigate these factors experimentally by exposing participants with BDD (n=25) and without BDD (n=25) to a mirror in a controlled setting. An additional aim was to ascertain the role of duration of mirror gazing in the maintenance of distress and self-consciousness by manipulating the length of gazing (short check vs. long gazing). Findings demonstrated that contrary to what was predicted, not only participants with BDD, but also those without BDD experienced an increase in distress and self-focused attention upon exposure to the mirror. In addition, people without BDD, unlike those with BDD, experienced more distress when looking in the mirror for a long period of time as opposed to a short period of time. This lends some support to the idea that, for people with BDD, gazing in a mirror, regardless of duration, might act as an immediate trigger for an abnormal mode of processing and associated distress, and that this association has developed from past excessive mirror gazing. Further theoretical implications of these findings, as well as subsidiary research questions relating to additional cognitive factors are discussed.	f	\N
21728402	Previous research has shown that the picture superiority effect (PSE) is seen in tests of associative recognition for random pairs of line drawings compared to pairs of concrete words (Hockley, 2008). In the present study we demonstrated that the PSE for associative recognition is still observed when subjects have correctly identified the individual items of each pair as old (Experiment 1), and that this effect is not due to rehearsal borrowing (Experiment 2). The PSE for associative recognition also is shown to be present but attenuated for mixed picture-word pairs (Experiment 3), and similar in magnitude for pairs of simple black and white line drawings and coloured photographs of detailed objects (Experiment 4). The results are consistent with the view that the semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words thereby affording subjects more time to generate and elaborate meaningful associations between items depicted in picture form.	f	\N
21729104	Phobic fear is accompanied by intense bodily responses modulated by the amygdala. An amygdala moderated psychophysiological measure related to arousal is electrodermal activity. We evaluated the contributions of electrodermal activity to amygdala-parahippocampal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during phobic memory encoding in subjects with spider or snake phobia. Recognition memory was increased for phobia-related slides and covaried with rCBF in the amygdala and the parahippocampal gyrus. The covariation between parahippocampal rCBF and recognition was related to electrodermal activity suggesting that parahippocampal memory processes were associated with sympathetic activity. Electrodermal activity further mediated the amygdala effect on parahippocampal activity. Memory encoding during phobic fear therefore seems contingent on amygdala's influence on arousal and parahippocampal activity.	f	\N
21742561	We examined whether anxiodepressive patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy could be differentiated from those with depression but without epilepsy on tasks that investigate attentional bias toward and explicit judgment of emotional stimuli. Eight depressive patients, eight anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy, and eight controls participated in the present study. Anxiodepressive with epilepsy and depressive patients had comparable depression scores and the same cognitive profile. Two distinct emotional tasks were used: the decision lexical task and the number comparison task. Three emotional connotations were presented: neutral, positive, and negative. The pattern of results showed an attentional bias toward negative words and pictures in depressive patients and only toward negative words in anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy. Moreover, depressive patients explicitly judged negative stimuli with lower intensity and anxiodepressive patients judged neutral stimuli with higher intensity. The present study specifies the emotional functioning in depression with or without left temporal lobe epilepsy.	f	\N
21744949	During the first half of the 2nd year of life, infants struggle to use phonemic distinctions in label-object association tasks. Prior experiments have demonstrated that exposure to the phonemes in distinct lexical forms (e.g., /d/ and /t/ in daddy and tiger, respectively) facilitates infants' use of phonemic contrasts but also that they struggle to generalize the use of phonemic contrasts to novel syllabic contexts (Thiessen, 2007; Thiessen & Yee, 2010). Further, in prior research, infants have been provided only with experience in lexical forms that refer to novel objects, while many lexical forms in the natural environment do not have easily identified visual referents. The experiments in this article show that even lexical forms without referents can facilitate use of phonemic contrasts. Additionally, the results indicate that when lexical forms provide infants with enough variability (for example, a consonant followed by multiple different vowels), infants are able to generalize to novel contexts.	f	\N
21749372	In two birth cohort studies with genetic, sensitive parenting, and attachment data of more than 1,000 infants in total, we tested main and interaction effects of candidate genes involved in the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin systems (DRD4, DRD2, COMT, 5-HTT, OXTR) on attachment security and disorganization. Parenting was assessed using observational rating scales for parental sensitivity (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974), and infant attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure. We found no consistent additive genetic associations for attachment security and attachment disorganization. However, specific tests revealed evidence for a codominant risk model for COMT Val158Met, consistent across both samples. Children with the Val/Met genotype showed higher disorganization scores (combined effect size d = .22, CI = .10-.34, p < .001). Gene-by-environment interaction effects were not replicable across the two samples. This unexpected finding might be explained by a broader range of plasticity in heterozygotes, which may increase susceptibility to environmental influences or to dysregulation of emotional arousal. This study is unique in combining the two largest attachment cohorts with molecular genetic and observed rearing environment data to date.	f	\N
21751991	In the typical visual search experiment, participants search for targets that are present on half of the trials and absent on the other half. However, many real-world tasks involve targets that are present only occasionally. Given this, it is important to know how people deal with the problem of finding targets they have little experience with. One possibility is that they develop an awareness of the degree to which they have effectively completed a search through complex target-absent scenes. To test this hypothesis, we had participants complete two relatively long search tasks in which only a minority of trials included targets. Stimuli were cluttered real-world scenes, and targets were defined by category. We examined participants' ability to terminate search on the target-absent scenes based on an accurate assessment of scene difficulty. Scene difficulty was estimated by computing the mean correct-trial response time (RT) for each of the target-absent scenes across all participants. These group RTs were then correlated with each participants' individual correct-trial RTs for the same stimuli to assess the degree to which a given participant's search-termination times were correlated with those of the group. These correlations successfully predicted participants' target-detection success in both experiments. These experiments suggest that an integral part of visual search is the need to calibrate search behaviour to scenes of varying levels of complexity even when no targets are present.	f	\N
21757505	We asked how visual similarity relationships affect search guidance to categorically defined targets (no visual preview). Experiment 1 used a web-based task to collect visual similarity rankings between two target categories, teddy bears and butterflies, and random-category objects, from which we created search displays in Experiment 2 having either high-similarity distractors, low-similarity distractors, or "mixed" displays with high-, medium-, and low-similarity distractors. Analysis of target-absent trials revealed faster manual responses and fewer fixated distractors on low-similarity displays compared to high-similarity displays. On mixed displays, first fixations were more frequent on high-similarity distractors (bear = 49%; butterfly = 58%) than on low-similarity distractors (bear = 9%; butterfly = 12%). Experiment 3 used the same high/low/mixed conditions, but now these conditions were created using similarity estimates from a computer vision model that ranked objects in terms of color, texture, and shape similarity. The same patterns were found, suggesting that categorical search can indeed be guided by purely visual similarity. Experiment 4 compared cases where the model and human rankings differed and when they agreed. We found that similarity effects were best predicted by cases where the two sets of rankings agreed, suggesting that both human visual similarity rankings and the computer vision model captured features important for guiding search to categorical targets.	f	\N
21767062	The ability to detect a change, to accurately assess the magnitude of the change, and to react to that change in a commensurate fashion are of critical importance in many decision domains. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that systematically affect people's reactions to change. In this article we document a novel effect: decision makers' reactions to a change (e.g., a visual change, a technology change) were systematically affected by the type of categorizations they encountered in an unrelated prior task (e.g., the response categories associated with a survey question). We found that prior exposure to narrow, as opposed to broad, categorizations improved decision makers' ability to detect change and led to stronger reactions to a given change. These differential reactions occurred because the prior categorizations, even though unrelated, altered the extent to which the subsequently presented change was perceived as either a relatively large change or a relatively small one.	f	\N
21787078	It has been suggested that downward pointing triangles convey negative valence, perhaps because they mimic an underlying primitive feature present in negative facial expressions (Larson, Aronoff, and Stearns, 2007). Here, we test this proposition using a flanker interference paradigm in which participants indicated the valence of a central face target, presented between two adjacent distracters. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with face flankers, downward pointing triangles had little influence on responses to face targets. However, in Experiment 2, when attentional competition was increased between target and flankers, downward pointing triangles slowed responses to positively valenced face targets, and speeded them to negatively valenced targets, consistent with valence-based flanker compatibility effects. These findings provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional valence.	f	\N
21787101	Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.	f	\N
21791293	An interocular conflict arises when different images are presented to each eye at the same spatial location. The visual system resolves this conflict through binocular rivalry: observers consciously perceive spontaneous alternations between the two images. Visual attention is generally important for resolving competition between neural representations. However, given the seemingly spontaneous and automatic nature of binocular rivalry, the role of attention in resolving interocular competition remains unclear. Here we test whether visual attention is necessary to produce rivalry. Using an EEG frequency-tagging method to track cortical representations of the conflicting images, we show that when attention was diverted away, rivalry stopped. The EEG data further suggested that the neural representations of the dichoptic images combined without attention. Thus, attention is necessary for dichoptic images to be engaged in sustained rivalry and may be generally required for resolving conflicting, potentially ambiguous input and giving a single interpretation access to consciousness.	f	\N
21804667	Pulse transit time (PPT) has been introduced as a useful screening tool to diagnose sleep disordered breathing (SDB). Since the prevalence of SDB increases with age, the question is whether PTT could be used to diagnose SDB in the elderly. We assess the effectiveness of PTT for SDB screening in a large healthy elderly population. Community-based sample in home and research clinical settings. N/A. Seven hundred eighty volunteers, free of cardiac and neurologic disease, aged 68.6 ± 1.0 years, underwent ambulatory polygraphy to measure the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The presence of SDB was defined as an AHI of 15 or greater. The PTT was continuously monitored during the nocturnal study, and the overall autonomic arousal index (AAI) was calculated. SDB was diagnosed in 447 (57.3%) subjects. In these subjects, the Bland-Altman plot for AAI revealed an underestimation with a bias of -8.04 ± 16.55 events per hour (mean ± 95% confidence interval). Receiver operating characteristic curves constructed for an AHI of 15 or greater defined an area under the curve of 0.67 and a cutoff point to AAI 32.3 events per hour, giving a sensitivity of 70.5% and a specificity of 54.7%. For prediction of an AHI of at least 30, the area under the curve was equal to 0.74 for a cutoff point of 56.3 events per hour, giving a better specificity (94.7%) but a lower sensitivity (32.2%). In a healthy older population, the AAI showed moderate sensitivity for predicting SDB. This data does not allow us to use PTT as a screening tool for the diagnosis of SDB in the elderly. NCT 00759304 and NCT 00766584.	f	\N
21811130	The primary aim of the present study was to test diazepam (DZ) effect, a benzodiazepine (BDZ) usually prescribed to reduce anxiety and to induce sleep, on EEG activity while performing a visual sustained attention task. The EEG activity was recorded in a double-blind placebo experiment, and prestimulus spectral power and inter- and intrahemispheric temporal coupling were assessed during visual sustained attention task performance. A single DZ dose (5 mg) was enough to increase reaction times during visual sustained attention task responses. DZ decreased prestimulus EEG power in the 1- to 6-, 8- to 12-, and 19- to 35-Hz bands and disrupted right intrahemispheric temporal coupling in the α-frequency range (8-12 Hz). The combined reduction in power and temporal coupling suggests both local and interregional DZ-induced disruption of neuronal synchronicity especially in the right hemisphere in agreement with the prominent attention-related networks in this hemisphere. These data support the notion that the influence of DZ on behavior goes beyond sedative effects and can potentially compromise higher cognitive functions with negative consequences to daily life situations.	f	\N
21812567	The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse-cheese) or not (e.g., crown-mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.	f	\N
21812705	The repetition-lag training procedure developed by Jennings and Jacoby (2003 , Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 14, 417) has been shown to improve older adults' performance in the recognition memory task used for training, and to improve performance in a variety of other memory and executive function tasks ( Jennings, Webster, Kleykamp, & Dagenbach, 2005 , Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 12, 278). The present study examined the effects of concurrent interference tasks during the study or test phases of training to localize the source of gains. Overall, the results suggest that training is resilient and resistant to interference, but also that the processes used during the test phases of training are more important to the gains seen in the primary task and in the transfer tasks than those used in the study phases.	f	\N
21819388	Circadian rhythms in mammals are regulated by a system of endogenous circadian oscillators (clock cells) in the brain and in most peripheral organs and tissues. One group of clock cells in the hypothalamic SCN (suprachiasmatic nuclei) functions as a pacemaker for co-ordinating the timing of oscillators elsewhere in the brain and body. This master clock can be reset and entrained by daily LD (light-dark) cycles and thereby also serves to interface internal with external time, ensuring an appropriate alignment of behavioural and physiological rhythms with the solar day. Two features of the mammalian circadian system provide flexibility in circadian programming to exploit temporal regularities of social stimuli or food availability. One feature is the sensitivity of the SCN pacemaker to behavioural arousal stimulated during the usual sleep period, which can reset its phase and modulate its response to LD stimuli. Neural pathways from the brainstem and thalamus mediate these effects by releasing neurochemicals that inhibit retinal inputs to the SCN clock or that alter clock-gene expression in SCN clock cells. A second feature is the sensitivity of circadian oscillators outside of the SCN to stimuli associated with food intake, which enables animals to uncouple rhythms of behaviour and physiology from LD cycles and align these with predictable daily mealtimes. The location of oscillators necessary for food-entrained behavioural rhythms is not yet certain. Persistence of these rhythms in mice with clock-gene mutations that disable the SCN pacemaker suggests diversity in the molecular basis of light- and food-entrainable clocks.	f	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	f	\N
21828324	Sleep-disordered breathing (characterized by recurrent arousals from sleep and intermittent hypoxemia) is common among older adults. Cross-sectional studies have linked sleep-disordered breathing to poor cognition; however, it remains unclear whether sleep-disordered breathing precedes cognitive impairment in older adults. To determine the prospective relationship between sleep-disordered breathing and cognitive impairment and to investigate potential mechanisms of this association. Prospective sleep and cognition study of 298 women without dementia (mean [SD] age: 82.3 [3.2] years) who had overnight polysomnography measured between January 2002 and April 2004 in a substudy of the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Sleep-disordered breathing was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index of 15 or more events per hour of sleep. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the independent association of sleep-disordered breathing with risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia, adjusting for age, race, body mass index, education level, smoking status, presence of diabetes, presence of hypertension, medication use (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, or nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytics), and baseline cognitive scores. Measures of hypoxia, sleep fragmentation, and sleep duration were investigated as underlying mechanisms for this relationship. Adjudicated cognitive status (normal, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment) based on data collected between November 2006 and September 2008. Compared with the 193 women without sleep-disordered breathing, the 105 women (35.2%) with sleep-disordered breathing were more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or dementia (31.1% [n = 60] vs 44.8% [n = 47]; adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-3.08). Elevated oxygen desaturation index (≥15 events/hour) and high percentage of sleep time (>7%) in apnea or hypopnea (both measures of disordered breathing) were associated with risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia (AOR, 1.71 [95% CI, 1.04-2.83] and AOR, 2.04 [95% CI, 1.10-3.78], respectively). Measures of sleep fragmentation (arousal index and wake after sleep onset) or sleep duration (total sleep time) were not associated with risk of cognitive impairment. Among older women, those with sleep-disordered breathing compared with those without sleep-disordered breathing had an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment.	f	\N
21839179	Top-down attention enhances neural processing, but its effect on metabolic activity in primary visual cortex (V1) is unclear. Combined blood flow and oxygenation measurements provide the best tool for investigating modulations of oxidative metabolism. We measured the human V1 response to a peripheral low contrast stimulus using fMRI and found a larger fractional modulation of blood flow with attention compared to the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response, thus indicating a much larger modulation of oxygen metabolism than was previously thought. These findings point to different aspects of neural activity driving flow and metabolic changes to different degrees. We propose that V1 flow is driven strongly but not exclusively by the initial sensory-driven neural activity, which dominates the response in the unattended condition, while V1 oxygen metabolism is driven strongly by the overall neural activity, which is modulated by top-down signals related to attention.	f	\N
21839675	This study sought to better characterize the contributions of deficits in attention allocation and distracter inhibition to the poor performance on attention tasks often seen in children with ADHD. Electrophysiological (Nd, P3b) and behavioral measures (speed and accuracy) were examined during an auditory selective attention task in children with ADHD, children with typical development (TD), and adults. Thirty children (15 ADHD; 13 females) between the ages of 7 and 13 and 16 adults (8 females) participated. Nd waveforms were elicited from adults and children with TD, but not from children with ADHD. Further, those with ADHD exhibited significantly smaller auditory responses at 100 ms (Ta). P3bs were elicited in all three groups by targets but not by unattended deviants. Performance was significantly poorer in children with ADHD than TD and RTs were more variable. Children with ADHD evidenced poorer attention allocation, as measured by Nd and hits, but were not more distracted by unattended deviants, as measured by P3b and false alarms, than children with TD. Findings for Nd, P3b, and Ta considered together suggest that deficits in auditory selective attention in children with ADHD may be attributable to reduced information early in the processing stream.	f	\N
21853782	Attention plays an important role in the design of human-machine interfaces. However, current knowledge about attention is largely based on data obtained when using devices of moderate display size. With advancement in display technology comes the need for understanding attention behavior over a wider range of viewing sizes. The effect of display size on test participants' visual search performance was studied. The participants (N = 12) performed two types of visual search tasks, that is, parallel and serial search, under three display-size conditions (16 degrees, 32 degrees, and 60 degrees). Serial, but not parallel, search was affected by display size. In the serial task, mean reaction time for detecting a target increased with the display size.	f	\N
21854681	Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p<0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment.	f	\N
21861678	Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates that visual consciousness of objects is reflected by the activation in the lateral occipital cortex as well as in the frontal and parietal cortex. However, most previous studies used behavioral paradigms in which attention raised or enhanced visual consciousness (visibility or recognition performance). This co-occurrence made it difficult to reveal whether an observed cortical activation is related to visual consciousness or attention. The present fMRI study investigated the dissociability of neural activations underlying these two cognitive phenomena. Toward this aim, we used a visual backward masking paradigm in which directing attention could either enhance or reduce the object visibility. The participants' task was to report the level of subjective visibility for a briefly presented target object. The target was presented in the center with four flankers, which was followed by the same number of masks. Behavioral results showed that attention to the flankers enhanced the target visibility, whereas attention to the masks attenuated it. The fMRI results showed that the occipito-temporal sulcus increased activation in the attend flankers condition compared with the attend masks condition, and occipito-temporal sulcus activation levels positively correlated with the target visibility in both attentional conditions. On the other hand, the inferior frontal gyrus and the intraparietal sulcus increased activation in both the attend flankers and attend masks compared with an attend neither condition, and these activation levels were independent of target visibility. Taken together, present results showed a clear dissociation in neural activities between conscious visibility and attention.	f	\N
21870308	Anxiety sensitivity refers to the extent of beliefs that anxiety symptoms or arousal can have harmful consequences. There is growing evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Anxiety sensitivity is elevated in panic disorder as well as other anxiety disorders. It is thought to contribute to the maintenance and severity of anxiety symptoms. Studies have shown that anxiety sensitivity more specifically predicts the future occurrence of panic attacks. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), which measures the construct of anxiety sensitivity, has three subscales, namely, the ASI-Physical subscale, ASI-Social subscale and ASI-Mental Incapacitation Concerns subscale. The dimension reflecting "fear of physical sensations" of anxiety sensitivity is the most predictive one of panic attacks and panic disorder. Research on the ASI has demonstrated that persons diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder all had ASI scores higher than normal controls. Depression was speculated to hold a positive correlation to high anxiety sensitivity scores. The relationships between anxiety sensitivity, alcohol and substance use disorders are still unknown. There is evidence that anxiety sensitivity is related with "drinking used as a way of coping". Since anxiety sensitivity is a cognitive construct, it should be taken into consideration when evaluating patients with anxiety and psychotherapeutic formulations.	f	\N
21871503	In the current study, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task combined with event related potentials (ERP) was used to investigate attention biases toward body-related words in a nonclinical sample of body dissatisfied females. Consistent with the hypotheses, the amplitudes of N100, N170 and P3 are sensitive to different body-related words in the RSVP paradigm only among body weight dissatisfied women (WD group), while control group did not show this difference. The early anterior N100 and bi-lateral parietal and occipital N170 amplitudes elicited by fatness-related words were larger than those elicited by thinness-related and neutral words among WD group, a finding which is consistent with the presence of a 'negativity bias'. Also, WD group women showed significantly different amplitudes in response to three categories of stimuli with thin words eliciting the largest P3 amplitudes, followed by fat words and the least neutral words. The current findings indicated that attention biases toward body weight related words were evident during both sensory and cognitive stages of information processing. Findings are also consistent with hypotheses of cognitive-behavioral accounts of body weight dissatisfaction which propose, in part, that individual differences on cognitive tasks reveal underlying psychopathology; attentional biases reflect disordered body schema, not disordered eating, and can therefore be seen in non-clinical samples.	f	\N
21872853	Brain regions simultaneously activated during any cognitive process are functionally connected, forming large-scale networks. These functional networks can be examined during active conditions [i.e., task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] and also in passive states (resting-fMRI), where the default mode network (DMN) is the most widely investigated system. The role of the DMN remains unclear, although it is known to be responsible for the shift between resting and focused attention processing. There is also some evidence for its malleability in relation to previous experience. Here we investigated brain connectivity patterns in 16 healthy young subjects by using an n-back task with increasing levels of memory load within the fMRI context. Prior to this working memory (WM) task, participants were trained outside fMRI with a shortened test version. Immediately after, they underwent a resting-state fMRI acquisition followed by the full fMRI n-back test. We observed that the degree of intrinsic correlation within DMN and WM networks was maximal during the most demanding n-back condition (3-back). Furthermore, individuals showing a stronger negative correlation between the two networks under both conditions exhibited better behavioural performance. Interestingly, and despite the fact that we considered eight different resting-state fMRI networks previously identified in humans, only the connectivity within the posteromedial parts of the DMN (precuneus) prior to the fMRI n-back task predicted WM execution. Our results using a data-driven probabilistic approach for fMRI analysis provide the first evidence of a direct relationship between behavioural performance and the degree of negative correlation between the DMN and WM networks. They further suggest that in the context of expectancy for an imminent cognitive challenge, higher resting-state activity in the posteromedial parietal cortex may be related to increased attentional preparatory resources.	f	\N
21875215	Dissociable prototype learning systems have been demonstrated behaviorally and with neuroimaging in younger adults as well as with patient populations. In A/not-A (AN) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or are not in category A. Research suggests that AN learning is mediated by a perceptual learning system. In A/B (AB) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A and B during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or category B. In contrast to AN, research suggests that AB learning is mediated by a declarative memory system. The current study examined the effects of normal aging on AN and AB prototype learning. We observed an age-related deficit in AB learning, but an age-related advantage in AN learning. Computational modeling supports one possible interpretation based on narrower selective attentional focus in older adults in the AB task and broader selective attention in the AN task. Neuropsychological testing in older participants suggested that executive functioning and attentional control were associated with better performance in both tasks. However, nonverbal memory was associated with better AN performance, while visual attention was associated with worse AB performance. The results support an interactive memory systems approach and suggest that age-related declines in one memory system can lead to deficits in some tasks, but to enhanced performance in others.	f	\N
21875701	Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450-650 ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn't necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact.	f	\N
21879613	This study investigated the effects of stimulus modality, standard duration, sex, and laterality in duration discrimination by musicians and nonmusicians. Seventeen musicians (M age = 24.1 yr.) and 22 nonmusicians (M age = 26.8 yr.) participated. Auditory (1,000 Hz) and tactile (250 Hz) sinusoidal suprathreshold stimuli with varying durations were used. The standard durations tested were 0.5 and 3.0 sec. Participants discriminated comparison stimuli which had durations slightly longer and shorter than the standard durations. Difference limens were found by the method of limits and converted to Weber fractions based on the standard durations. Musicians had lower, i.e., better, Weber fractions than nonmusicians in the auditory modality, but there was no significant difference between musicians and nonmusicians in the tactile modality. Auditory discrimination was better than tactile discrimination. Discrimination improved when the standard duration was increased both for musicians and nonmusicians. These results support previous findings of superior auditory processing by musicians. Significant differences between discrimination in the millisecond and second ranges may be due to a deviation from Weber's law and the discontinuity of timing in different duration ranges reported in the literature.	f	\N
21883941	Recent nationally representative studies documenting event-level sexual behavior have included samples that are predominantly heterosexual, resulting in limited information on the sexual repertoire of gay and bisexually identified men. This study sought to document the sexual behaviors that gay and bisexually identified men report during their most recent male-partnered sexual event and to describe the situational characteristics and participants' evaluation of these events. Via an internet-based survey, data were collected from 24,787 gay and bisexually identified men (ages 18-87 years) from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Measures included items related to sociodemographics, recent sexual behavior history, situational characteristics, orgasm, and ratings of arousal and pleasure. Participants' mean age was 39.2 years; ethnicities included white (84.6%), Latino (6.4%), and African American (3.6%); and most men (79.9%) identified as homosexual. The most commonly reported behavior was kissing a partner on the mouth (74.5%), followed by oral sex (72.7%), and partnered masturbation (68.4%). Anal intercourse occurred among less than half of participants (37.2%) and was most common among men ages 18-24 (42.7%). Sex was most likely to occur in the participant's home (46.8%), with less frequently reported locations including hotels (7.4%) and public spaces (3.1%). The number of behaviors engaged in during last sexual event varied with most (63.2%) including 5-9 different sexual behaviors. These data provide one of the first examinations of sexual behaviors during the most recent male-partnered sexual event among gay and bisexually identified men in the United States. Findings from this study suggest that gay and bisexually identified men have a diverse sexual repertoire and that partnered sexual behaviors are not limited solely to acts of penile insertion.	f	\N
21887382	Successful integration of various simultaneously perceived perceptual signals is crucial for social behavior. Recent findings indicate that this multisensory integration (MSI) can be modulated by attention. Theories of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) suggest that MSI is affected in this population while it remains unclear to what extent this is related to impairments in attentional capacity. In the present study Event-related potentials (ERPs) following emotionally congruent and incongruent face-voice pairs were measured in 23 high-functioning, adult ASD individuals and 24 age- and IQ-matched controls. MSI was studied while the attention of the participants was manipulated. ERPs were measured at typical auditory and visual processing peaks, namely, P2 and N170. While controls showed MSI during divided attention and easy selective attention tasks, individuals with ASD showed MSI during easy selective attention tasks only. It was concluded that individuals with ASD are able to process multisensory emotional stimuli, but this is differently modulated by attention mechanisms in these participants, especially those associated with divided attention. This atypical interaction between attention and MSI is also relevant to treatment strategies, with training of multisensory attentional control possibly being more beneficial than conventional sensory integration therapy.	f	\N
21899000	In this paper, we reviewed the brain imaging studies of male sexual function in recent years from three aspects: the brain mechanism of normal sexual function, the brain mechanism of sexual dysfunction, and the mechanism of drug therapy for sexual dysfunction. Studies show that the development stages of male sexual activities, such as the excitement phase, plateau phase and orgasm phase, are controlled by different neural networks. The mesodiencephalic transition zone may play an important role in the start up of male ejaculation. There are significant differences between sexual dysfunction males and normal males in activation patterns of the brain in sexual arousal. The medial orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus in the abnormal activation pattern are correlated with sexual dysfunction males in sexual arousal. Serum testosterone and morphine are commonly used drugs for male sexual dysfunction, whose mechanisms are to alter the activating levels of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, insula, claustrum and inferior temporal gyrus.	f	\N
21903462	Studies on brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have been mainly concerned with algorithm improvement for better signal classification. Fewer studies, however, have addressed to date the role of cognitive mechanisms underlying the elicitation of brain-signals in BCIs. We tested the effect of visuospatial attention orienting on a P300-guided BCI, by comparing the effectiveness of three visual interfaces, which elicited different modalities of visuospatial attention orienting (exogenous vs. endogenous). Twelve healthy participants performed 20 sessions, using the abovementioned P300-guided BCI interfaces to control a cursor. Brain waves were recorded on each trial and were subsequently classified on-line using an ad hoc algorithm. Each time the P300 was correctly classified, the cursor moved towards the target position. The "endogenous" interface was associated with significantly higher performance than the other two interfaces during the testing sessions, but not in the follow-up sessions. Endogenous visuospatial attention orienting can be effectively implemented to increase the performance of P300-guided BCIs. The study of visuospatial attention underlying participants' performance is essential for implementing efficient visual BCIs.	f	\N
21903593	Visual search for feature singletons is slowed when a task-irrelevant, but more salient distracter singleton is concurrently presented. While there is a consensus that this distracter interference effect can be influenced by internal system settings, it remains controversial at what stage of processing this influence starts to affect visual coding. Advocates of the "stimulus-driven" view maintain that the initial sweep of visual processing is entirely driven by physical stimulus attributes and that top-down settings can bias visual processing only after selection of the most salient item. By contrast, opponents argue that top-down expectancies can alter the initial selection priority, so that focal attention is "not automatically" shifted to the location exhibiting the highest feature contrast. To precisely trace the allocation of focal attention, we analyzed the Posterior-Contralateral-Negativity (PCN) in a task in which the likelihood (expectancy) with which a distracter occurred was systematically varied. Our results show that both high (vs. low) distracter expectancy and experiencing a distracter on the previous trial speed up the timing of the target-elicited PCN. Importantly, there was no distracter-elicited PCN, indicating that participants did not shift attention to the distracter before selecting the target. This pattern unambiguously demonstrates that preattentive vision is top-down modifiable.	f	\N
21905997	Neuroimaging studies have found that alcohol dependent patients display dopaminergic dysfunction in the ventral striatum, which is associated with alcohol craving. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was introduced as a promising new treatment option for depression, and among other neurobiological mechanisms, it is able to stimulate the striatal dopaminergic system. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of high frequency rTMS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to sham stimulation on craving and mood in alcohol dependent women. Furthermore, the impact on an attentional blink (AB) paradigm to pictures with neutral, emotional and alcohol-related contents was proofed. Nineteen female detoxified patients were randomized either to a high frequency rTMS (20 Hz) over the left DLPFC (n = 10) or a sham stimulations (n = 9) at 10 days. Alcohol craving was determined with the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale, depressive symptoms were registered by means of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Beck' Depression Inventory. For the AB paradigm an age-matched control group was investigated. There were no significantly differences between both groups regarding alcohol craving or mood. In the AB paradigm, real stimulated patients detected alcohol related T2 targets incorrectly in comparison to the sham stimulated and control subjects. Although there were no differences in clinical parameters such as craving or mood after real high frequency rTMS compared to sham stimulation, we found an interesting difference between the real and the sham stimulated group and controls in the AB paradigm indicating an increase of the AB effect to alcohol-related pictures after real stimulation. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and correlate them to clinical and neurophysiological data.	f	\N
21910776	Central nervous system (CNS) histamine is low in individuals with narcolepsy, a disease characterized by severe fragmentation of both sleep and wake. We have developed a primate model, the squirrel monkey, with which we can examine the role of the CNS in the wake-consolidation process, as these primates are day-active, have consolidated wake and sleep and have cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that is readily accessible. Using this model and three distinct protocols, we report herein on the role of CNS histamine in the wake consolidation process. CSF histamine has a robust daily rhythm, with a mean of 24.9 ± 3.29 pg mL(-1) , amplitude of 31.7 ± 6.46 pg mL(-1) and a peak at 17:49 ± 70.3 min (lights on 07:00-19:00 hours). These levels are not significantly affected by increases (up to 161 ± 40.4% of baseline) or decreases (up to 17.2 ± 2.50% of baseline) in locomotion. In direct contrast to the effects of sleep deprivation in non-wake-consolidating mammals, in whom CSF histamine increases, pharmacologically induced sleep (γ-hydroxybutyrate) and wake (modafinil) have no direct effects on CSF histamine concentrations. These data indicate that the time-course of histamine in CSF in the wake-consolidated squirrel monkey is robust against variation in activity and sleep and wake-promoting pharmacological compounds, and may indicate that histamine physiology plays a role in wake-consolidation such as is present in the squirrel monkey and humans.	f	\N
21923791	Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).	f	\N
21931715	Successful completion of many everyday tasks depends on interactions between voluntary attention, which acts to maintain current goals, and reflexive attention, which enables responding to unexpected events by interrupting the current focus of attention. Past studies, which have mostly examined each attentional mechanism in isolation, indicate that volitional and reflexive orienting depend on two functionally specialized cortical networks in the human brain. Here we investigated how the interplay between these two cortical networks affects sensory processing and the resulting overt behavior. By combining measurements of human performance and electrocortical recordings with a novel analytical technique for estimating spatiotemporal activity in the human cortex, we found that the subregions that comprise the reflexive ventrolateral attention network dissociate both spatially and temporally as a function of the nature of the sensory information and current task demands. Moreover, we found that together with the magnitude of the early sensory gain, the spatiotemporal neural dynamics accounted for the high amount of the variance in the behavioral data. Collectively these data support the conclusion that the ventrolateral attention network is recruited flexibly to support complex behaviors.	f	\N
21948954	The influence of personality on the neural correlates of emotional processing is still not well characterized. We investigated the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and emotional perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of 23 young, healthy women. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal varied with the participants' ratings of arousal and valence, and whether levels of extraversion and neuroticism were related to these modulations. In particular, we wished to test Eysenck's biological theory of personality, which links high extraversion to lower levels of reticulothalamic-cortical arousal, and neuroticism to increased reactivity of the limbic system and stronger reactions to emotional arousal. Individuals high in neuroticism demonstrated reduced sustained activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and attenuated valence processing in the right temporal lobe while viewing emotional images, but an increased BOLD response to emotional arousal in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These results support Eysenck's theory, as well as our hypothesis that high levels of neuroticism are associated with attenuated reward processing. Extraversion was inversely related to arousal processing in the right cerebellum, but positively associated with arousal processing in the right insula, indicating that the relationship between extraversion and arousal is not as simple as that proposed by Eysenck.	f	\N
21957705	The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.	f	\N
21963321	Age-related cognitive impairments have been attributed to deficits in inhibitory processes that mediate both motor restraint and sensory filtering. However, behavioral studies have failed to show an association between tasks that measure these distinct types of inhibition. In the present study, we hypothesized neural markers reflecting each type of inhibition may reveal a relationship across inhibitory domains in older adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioral measures were used to explore whether there was an across-participant correlation between sensory suppression and motor inhibition. Sixteen healthy older adult participants (65-80 years) engaged in two separate experimental paradigms: a selective attention, delayed-recognition task and a stop-signal task. Findings revealed no significant relationship existed between neural markers of sensory suppression (P1 amplitude; N170 latency) and markers of motor inhibition (N2 and P3 amplitude and latency) in older adults. These distinct inhibitory domains are differentially impacted in normal aging, as evidenced by previous behavioral work and the current neural findings. Thus a generalized inhibitory deficit may not be a common impairment in cognitive aging. Given that some theories of cognitive aging suggest age-related failure of inhibitory mechanisms may span different modalities, the present findings contribute to an alternative view where age-related declines within each inhibitory modality are unrelated.	f	\N
21963529	The last decade underwent a revival of interest in the perception of time and duration. The present short essay does not compete with the many other recent reviews and books on this topic. Instead, it is meant to emphasize the notion that humans (and most likely other animals) have at their disposal more than one time measuring device and to propose that they use these devices jointly to appraise the passage of time. One possible consequence of this conjecture is that the same physical duration can be judged differently depending on the reference 'clock' used in any such judgment. As this view has not yet been tested empirically, several experimental manipulations susceptible to directly test it are suggested. Before, are summarized a number of its latent precursors, namely the relativity of perceived duration, current trends in modeling time perception and its neural and pharmacological substrate, the experimental literature supporting the existence of multiple 'clocks' and a selected number of experimental manipulations known to induce time perception illusions which together with many others are putatively accountable in terms of alternative clock readings.	f	\N
21965547	Cortisol concentration in both serum and saliva sharply increases and reaches a peak within the first hour after waking in the morning. This phenomenon is known as the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and is used as an index of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. We examined whether ovarian steroid concentrations increased after awakening as with the CAR in the HPA axis. To do this, cortisol, estradiol-17β (E(2)), and progesterone (P(4)) concentrations were determined in saliva samples collected immediately upon awakening and 30 and 60 min after awakening in women with regular menstrual cycles and postmenopausal women. We found that both E(2) and P(4) concentrations increased during the post-awakening period in women with regular menstrual cycles, but these phenomena were not seen in any postmenopausal women. The area under the E(2) and P(4) curve from the time interval immediately after awakening to 60 min after awakening (i.e. E(2)auc and P(4)auc) in women with regular menstrual cycles were greater than those in the postmenopausal women. E(2) and P(4) secretory activity during the post-awakening period was influenced by the phase of the menstrual cycle. E(2)auc in the peri-ovulatory phase and P(4)auc in the early to mid-luteal phase were greater than in the menstrual phase. Meanwhile, cortisol secretory activity during the post-awakening period was not influenced by menstrual status or the phase of menstrual cycle. These findings indicate that, as with the CAR in the HPA axis function, ovarian steroidogenic activity increased after awakening and is closely associated with menstrual status and phase of menstrual cycle.	f	\N
21965551	Both visual attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM) have been shown to have capacity limits of 4 ± 1 objects, driving the hypothesis that they share a visual processing buffer. However, these capacity limitations also show strong individual differences, making the degree to which these capacities are related unclear. Moreover, other research has suggested a distinction between attention and VSTM buffers. To explore the degree to which capacity limitations reflect the use of a shared visual processing buffer, we compared individual subject's capacities on attentional and VSTM tasks completed in the same testing session. We used a multiple object tracking (MOT) and a VSTM change detection task, with varying levels of distractors, to measure capacity. Significant correlations in capacity were not observed between the MOT and VSTM tasks when distractor filtering demands differed between the tasks. Instead, significant correlations were seen when the tasks shared spatial filtering demands. Moreover, these filtering demands impacted capacity similarly in both attention and VSTM tasks. These observations fail to support the view that visual attention and VSTM capacity limits result from a shared buffer but instead highlight the role of the resource demands of underlying processes in limiting capacity.	f	\N
21969076	Stimulus over-selectivity occurs when one aspect of the environment controls behavior at the expense of other equally salient aspects. Participants were trained on a match-to-sample (MTS) discrimination task. Levels of over-selectivity in a group of children (4-18 years) with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were compared with a mental-aged matched typically-developing group. There was more over-selectivity in the ASD group. When retention intervals were added between the sample and comparisons in the MTS task, both groups showed an increased level of over-selectivity, with the ASD group showing a more pronounced effect.	f	\N
21981900	Previous studies demonstrate that attentional selection can be object-based, in which the object is defined in terms of Gestalt principles or lexical organizations. Here we investigate how attentional selection functions when the two types of objects are manipulated jointly. Experiment 1 replicated Li and Logan (2008) by showing that attentional shift between two Chinese characters is more efficient when they form a compound word than when they form a nonword. Experiment 2A presented characters either alone or within rectangles (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994) and the characters in a rectangle formed either a word or a nonword. Experiment 2B differed from Experiment 2A in that the two characters forming a word were in different rectangles. Experiment 3A presented the two characters of a word either within a rectangle or in different rectangles. Experiment 3B used the same design as Experiment 3A but presented stimuli of different types in random orders, rather than in blocks as in Experiments 2A, 2B and 3A. In blocked presentation, detection responses to the target color on a character were faster when this character and the cue character formed a word than when they did not, and the size of this lexical-based object effect did not vary according to whether the two characters were presented alone or within or between rectangles. In random presentation, however, the lexical-based object effect was diminished when the two characters of a word were presented in different rectangles. Overall, these findings suggest that the processes that constrain attention deployment over conjoined objects can be strategically adjusted.	f	\N
21982581	Even when focused on an effortful task we retain the ability to detect salient environmental information, and even irrelevant visual stimuli can be automatically detected. However, to which extent unattended information affects attentional control is not fully understood. Here we provide evidences of how the brain spontaneously organizes its cognitive resources by shifting attention between a selective-attending and a stimulus-driven modality within a single task. Using a spatial cueing paradigm we investigated the effect of cue-target asynchronies as a function of their probabilities of occurrence (i.e., relative frequency). Results show that this accessory information modulates attentional shifts. A valid spatial cue improved participants' performance as compared to an invalid one only in trials in which target onset was highly predictable because of its more robust occurrence. Conversely, cuing proved ineffective when spatial cue and target were associated according to a less frequent asynchrony. These patterns of response depended on asynchronies' probability and not on their duration. Our findings clearly demonstrate that through a fine decision-making, performed trial-by-trial, the brain utilizes implicit information to decide whether or not voluntarily shifting spatial attention. As if according to a cost-planning strategy, the cognitive effort of shifting attention depending on the cue is performed only when the expected advantages are higher. In a trade-off competition for cognitive resources, voluntary/automatic attending may thus be a more complex process than expected.	f	\N
21986189	Changes in blood glucose are hypothesized to influence cognitive performance and these changes can be affected by certain nutrients. This double-blind 4-period cross-over study evaluated the effects of a slow-release modified sucrose (isomaltulose) in combination with a high concentration of lactose on cognitive performance of 5-6 year old children. Thirty children received a standard growing upmilk (Std GUM), reformulated growing up milk (Reform GUM), standard growing up milk with lactose-isomaltulose (Iso GUM), and a standard glucose drink (Glucose). The CDR System, a computerised cognitive assessment system, was used to assess various measures of attention and memory of the children at baseline (T=0), 60 (T=1), 120 (T=2), and 180 (T=3) minutes following the intake of test products. Overall, there was a decline in performance over the morning on almost every cognitive task. Children showed better attention following consumption of Iso GUM compared to Std GUM but attention was not significantly different than Reform GUM and glucose. Also, Iso GUM conferred a beneficial effect over both Reform GUM and glucose on sensitivity index of numeric working memory with no difference observed between Iso GUM and Std GUM. Surprisingly, glucose group showed lowest decline in the sensitivity index of spatial working memory and highest speed in picture recognition, although the latter was significantly better than Reform GUM only. For speed of spatial working memory, Reform GUM had the lowest decline but was significantly different only with Std GUM. There was, however, no significant difference among conditions for continuity of attention, speed of numeric working memory and picture recognition sensitivity. Despite the small sample size, the findings are intriguing as carbohydrate composition seems to influence some aspects of cognitive performance such as attention and memory. However, further studies are needed to confirm these findings.	f	\N
21988891	Doing two things at once is difficult. When two tasks have to be performed within a short interval, the second is sharply delayed, an effect called the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP). Similarly, when two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to detect the second target (Attentional Blink or AB). Although AB and PRP are typically studied in very different paradigms, a recent detailed neuromimetic model suggests that both might arise from the same serial stage during which stimuli gain access to consciousness and, as a result, can be arbitrarily routed to any other appropriate processor. Here, in agreement with this model, we demonstrate that AB and PRP can be obtained on alternate trials of the same cross-modal paradigm and result from limitations in the same brain mechanisms. We asked participants to respond as fast as possible to an auditory target T1 and then to a visual target T2 embedded in a series of distractors, while brain activity was recorded with magneto-encephalography (MEG). For identical stimuli, we observed a mixture of blinked trials, where T2 was entirely missed, and PRP trials, where T2 processing was delayed. MEG recordings showed that PRP and blinked trials underwent identical sensory processing in visual occipito-temporal cortices, even including the non-conscious separation of targets from distractors. However, late activations in frontal cortex (>350 ms), strongly influenced by the speed of task-1 execution, were delayed in PRP trials and absent in blinked trials. Our findings suggest that PRP and AB arise from similar cortical stages, can occur with the same exact stimuli, and are merely distinguished by trial-by-trial fluctuations in task processing.	f	\N
21992968	The review of literature in sociology and distributed artificial intelligence reveals that the occurrence of conflict is a remarkable precursor to the disruption of multi-agent systems. The study of this concept could be applied to human factors concerns, as man-system conflict appears to provoke perseveration behavior and to degrade attentional abilities with a trend to excessive focus. Once entangled in such conflicts, the human operator will do anything to succeed in his current goal even if it jeopardizes the mission. In order to confirm these findings, an experimental setup, composed of a real unmanned ground vehicle, a ground station is developed. A scenario involving an authority conflict between the participants and the robot is proposed. Analysis of the effects of the conflict on the participants' cognition and arousal is assessed through heart-rate measurement (reflecting stress level) and eye-tracking techniques (index of attentional focus). Our results clearly show that the occurrence of the conflict leads to perseveration behavior and can induce higher heart rate as well as excessive attentional focus. These results are discussed in terms of task commitment issues and increased arousal. Moreover, our results suggest that individual differences may predict susceptibility to perseveration behavior.	f	\N
22001768	Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.	f	\N
22004198	The differential effects of task and response conflict in priming paradigms where associations are strengthened between a stimulus, a task, and a response have been demonstrated in recent years with neuroimaging methods. However, such effects are not easily disentangled with only measurements of behavior, such as reaction times (RTs). Here, we report the application of ex-Gaussian distribution analysis on task-switching RT data and show that conflict related to stimulus-response associations retrieved after a switch of tasks is reflected in the Gaussian component. By contrast, conflict related to the retrieval of stimulus-task associations is reflected in the exponential component. Our data confirm that the retrieval of stimulus-task and -response associations affects behavior differently. Ex-Gaussian distribution analysis is a useful tool for pulling apart these different levels of associative priming that are not distinguishable in analyses of RT means.	f	\N
22004518	Eye tracking has indicated that older and young adults process distracters similarly when reading single sentences. The present study extended this approach by presenting short paragraphs, sentence by sentence. Eye tracking measures included reading times per word, and the duration of the first fixation and total fixations to the distracters and target words. Comprehension was tested following each paragraph, and recognition of distracters and target words was assessed. The results indicated that young adults were able to learn to ignore the distracters as they read through the paragraphs, whereas older adults were less successful at learning to ignore the distracters.	f	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	f	\N
22006528	In visual search tasks, the relative proportions of target-present and -absent trials have important effects on behavior. Miss error rates rise as target prevalence decreases (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, Nature 435, 439-440, 2005). At the same time, search termination times on target-absent trials become shorter (Wolfe & Van Wert, Current Biology 20, 121-124, 2010). These effects must depend on some implicit or explicit knowledge of the current prevalence. What is the nature of that knowledge? In Experiment 1, we conducted visual search tasks at three levels of prevalence (6%, 50%, and 94%) and analyzed performance as a function of "local prevalence," the prevalence over the last n trials. The results replicated the usual effects of overall prevalence but revealed only weak or absent effects of local prevalence. In Experiment 2, the overall prevalence in a block of trials was 20%, 50%, or 80%. However, a 100%-valid cue informed observers of the prevalence on the next trial. These explicit cues had a modest effect on target-absent RTs, but explicit expectation could not explain the full prevalence effect. We conclude that observers predict prevalence on the basis of an assessment of a relatively long prior history. Each trial contributes a small amount to that assessment, and this can be modulated but not overruled by explicit instruction.	f	\N
22007628	Stroke patients are at a higher risk of falling than the community-dwelling elderly, and many falls are due to contact with an obstacle. This study compared the effects of the simultaneous addition of a cognitive task during obstacle crossing between stroke patients and community-dwelling older adults (control subjects). Participants comprised 20 stroke patients who could walk with or without supervision and 20 control subjects matched for age and height with the stroke patients. Participants were asked to cross a 4-cm-high obstacle while walking at a self-selected speed. The number of failures and the spatial and temporal parameters were compared between a single-task condition (i.e., crossing task only) and a dual-task condition (i.e., verbal fluency task: listing vegetables or animals). Under the dual-task condition, six stroke patients (30%) and three community-dwelling elderly individuals (15%) failed to complete the motor task. Task failure was only due to heel-obstacle contact after toe clearance. In both groups, obstacle-heel distance after clearance was reduced, and the time from heel contact to toe clearance and stride time were significantly increased under dual-task condition versus single-task condition. In addition, group-task interaction for the time from heel contact to toe clearance of the obstacle was significant; this increase in time was significantly greater under dual-task condition in stroke patients than in control subjects. Obstacle crossing in stroke patients involved an increase in crossing performance time and a risk of heel-obstacle contact after crossing. These tendencies appeared stronger under the dual-task condition.	f	\N
22021081	Previous studies have indicated that increasing working memory (WM) load can affect the attentional selection of signals originating from one object/location. Here we assessed whether WM load affects also the selection of multiple objects/locations (divided attention). Participants monitored either two object-categories (vs. one category; object-based divided attention) or two locations (vs. one location; space-based divided attention) while maintaining in WM either a variable number of objects (object-based WM load) or locations (space-based WM load). Behavioural results showed that WM load affected attentional performance irrespective of divided or focused attention. However, fMRI results showed that the activity associated with object-based divided attention increased linearly with increasing object-based WM load in the left and right intraparietal sulcus (IPS); while, in the same areas, activity associated with space-based divided attention was not affected by any type of WM load. These findings support the hypothesis that WM contributes to the maintenance of resource-demanding attentional sets in a domain-specific manner. Moreover, the dissociable impact of WM load on performance and brain activity suggests that increased IPS activation reflects a recruitment of additional, domain-specific processing resources that enable dual-task performance under conditions of high WM load and high attentional demand.	f	\N
22022989	Child maltreatment is associated with heightened risk for depression; however, not all individuals who experience maltreatment develop depression. Previous research indicates that maltreatment contributes to an attention bias for emotional cues, and that depressed individuals show attention bias for sad cues. The present study examined attention patterns for sad, depression-relevant cues in children with and without experience of maltreatment. We also explored whether individual differences in physiological reactivity and emotion regulation in response to a sad emotional state predict heightened attention to sad cues associated with depression. Children who experienced high levels of maltreatment showed an increase in attention bias for sad faces throughout the course of the study, such that they showed biased attention for sad faces following the initiation of a sad emotional state. Maltreated children who had high levels of trait rumination showed an attention bias toward sad faces across all time points. These data suggest that maltreated children show heightened attention for depression-relevant cues in certain contexts (e.g. after experience of a sad emotional state). Additionally, maltreated children who tend to engage in rumination show a relatively stable pattern of heightened attention for depression-relevant cues. These patterns may identify which maltreated children are most likely to exhibit biased attention for sad cues and be at heightened risk for depression.	f	\N
22024021	Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is a rare condition in women that causes a lot of suffering. The pathophysiology is not well understood and an approach promising effective treatment has not been established so far. This study aims to make colleagues aware of two treatment options, which proved to be successful in one case each and which might be worth further investigation. Subjective distress from unwanted sexual arousal, unwanted orgasms, and pain in the genital area. Treatment of two women--36 and 41 years old--suffering from PGAD with duloxetine and pregabalin, respectively. In both women, the treatment proved to be very successful over a long period of time. One of them experienced full remission (duloxetine) and the other one experienced substantial improvement (pregabalin), over a period now lasting for more than a year. Pregabalin and duloxetine, in particular, should be further investigated as possible medication for the treatment of PGAD.	f	\N
22033363	The human 'pain network' includes cortical areas that are activated during the response to painful stimuli (termed category 1) or during psychological processes that modulate pain, for example, distraction (termed category 2). These categories include parts of the parasylvian (PS), medial frontal (MF), and paracentral cortex (S1&M1). Here we test the hypothesis that causal interactions both within and between category 1 and category 2 modules occur during attention to a painful stimulus. Event-related causality (ERC) was calculated from local field potentials recorded directly from these cortical areas during the response to a painful cutaneous laser stimulus in patients being monitored for epilepsy. The number of electrodes involved in pairs with significant ERC in category 1 was greater for pre-stimulus vs post-stimulus and for attention vs distraction. This is consistent with our prior evidence that the category 1 'pain network' changes rapidly with time intervals and tasks. In contrast, the interaction between categories was often unchanged or stable across intervals and tasks, particularly in MF. The proportion of contacts involved in interactions with PS was greater during distraction vs attention while activation was less, which suggests that distraction involves an inhibitory process in PS. Functional interactions between categories were overwhelmingly in the direction from category 2>1, particularly for contacts in MF which often had a driver role. These results demonstrate that MF is densely interconnected throughout the 'pain network' so that stimulation of MF might be used to disrupt the 'pain network' as a therapy for pain.	f	\N
22035945	It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participants responded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.	f	\N
22039917	Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding.	f	\N
22041529	The objective of this study was to clarify the relationship between feeling upon awakening (FA) and time spent using information technology (IT) devices by children in kindergartens, elementary schools, and junior high schools in Shimane, Japan. In October 2008, a self-report survey was distributed to 2075 children in kindergartens (n = 261), elementary schools (n = 1162), and junior high schools (n = 652) in Shimane, Japan. The questionnaire gathered data on sex, school year, feeling upon awakening, and time spent using IT devices after school (television, videos on television, video games, personal computers, and cellular phones). After adjusting for sex and school year, data were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 2030 children completed this survey (response rate, 97.8%). Negative FA was associated with watching television more than 2 hours/day (OR = 1.51, 95% CI = 1.23-1.85), playing video games more than 30 minutes/day (1.50, 1.20-1.87), and using personal computers more than 30 minutes/day (1.35, 1.04-1.75). Time spent using IT devices affected the FA of children in kindergarten through junior high school. We propose the development of guidelines regarding the appropriate amount of time this population should spend using IT devices.	f	\N
22043127	Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women in different stages of menopause. Sleep EEG was recorded in the participants' homes with ambulatory recorders. A multi-ethnic cohort of premenopausal and early perimenopausal (n = 189), late perimenopausal (n = 73), and postmenopausal (n = 59) women. EEG power in the delta and beta frequency bands was calculated for all night NREM and all night REM sleep. Physical, medical, psychological, and socioeconomic data were collected from questionnaires and diaries. Beta EEG power in NREM and REM sleep in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women exceeded that in pre- and early perimenopausal women. Neither all night delta power nor the trend in delta power across the night differed by menopausal status. In a multivariate model that controlled for the physical, demographic, behavioral, psychological, and health-related changes that accompany menopause, beta power in both NREM and REM sleep EEG was significantly related to menopausal status. The frequency of hot flashes explained part but not all of the relation of beta power to menopausal status. Elevated beta EEG power in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women provides an objective measure of disturbed sleep quality in these women. Elevated beta EEG activity suggests that arousal level during sleep is higher in these women.	f	\N
22048563	The regulation of sleep and wakefulness is well modeled with two underlying processes: a circadian and a homeostatic one. So far, the parameters and mechanisms of additional sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions have been largely overlooked. The present overview focuses on one of these conditions: the effect of skin temperature on the onset and maintenance of sleep, and alertness. Skin temperature is quite well suited to provide the brain with information on sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions because it changes with most if not all of them. Skin temperature changes with environmental heat and cold, but also with posture, environmental light, danger, nutritional status, pain, and stress. Its effect on the brain may thus moderate the efficacy by which the clock and homeostat manage to initiate or maintain sleep or wakefulness. The review provides a brief overview of the neuroanatomical pathways and physiological mechanisms by which skin temperature can affect the regulation of sleep and vigilance. In addition, current pitfalls and possibilities of practical applications for sleep enhancement are discussed, including the recent finding of impaired thermal comfort perception in insomniacs.	f	\N
22048613	Typical measures of the useful field of view (UFOV) involve many components of attention. The objective of the current research was to examine the attentional operations that might underlie declines in the UFOV. We used 2 basic attention tasks to characterize the profile of visual attention in UFOV-impaired and -unimpaired observers. Our results suggested that declines in the UFOV result from a deficit in attentional disengagement, not a decrease in attentional breadth or scope. The results suggested that UFOV decline in normal aging can be associated with a specific attentional operation, namely attentional disengagement. These results suggest that the underlying cause of UFOV decline may not be a restriction in the breadth or scope of attention. Because the UFOV is a reliable predictor of driving safety, our results point to attentional components that are critical for the visual behavior of older adults.	f	\N
22048839	Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms. Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being. Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05). Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.	f	\N
22051208	Individuals who are methamphetamine dependent exhibit higher rates of cognitive dysfunction than healthy people who do not use methamphetamine, and this dysfunction may have a negative effect on the success of behavioral treatments for the disorder. Therefore, a medication that improves cognition, such as modafinil (Provigil), may serve as a useful adjunct to behavioral treatments for methamphetamine dependence. Although cognitive-enhancing effects of modafinil have been reported in several populations, little is known about the effects of modafinil in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. We thus sought to evaluate the effects of modafinil on the cognitive performance of methamphetamine-dependent and healthy individuals. Seventeen healthy subjects and 24 methamphetamine- dependent subjects participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Effects of modafinil (200 mg, single oral dose) were assessed on participants' performance on tests of inhibitory control, working memory, and processing speed/attention. Across subjects, modafinil improved performance on a test of sustained attention, with no significant improvement on any other cognitive tests. However, within the methamphetamine-dependent group only, participants with a high baseline frequency of methamphetamine use demonstrated a greater effect of modafinil on tests of inhibitory control and processing speed than those participants with low baseline use of methamphetamine. Although modafinil produced limited effects across all participants, methamphetamine-dependent participants with a high baseline use of methamphetamine demonstrated significant cognitive improvement on modafinil relative to those with low baseline methamphetamine use. These results add to the findings from a clinical trial that suggested that modafinil may be particularly useful in methamphetamine-dependent subjects who use the drug frequently.	f	\N
22059332	Contingent negative variation (CNV) topography, hemispheric asymmetry and time-course were investigated in healthy subjects and non-medicated paranoid schizophrenic patients in two antisaccade paradigms with the short (800-1000 ms) and long (1200-1400 ms) durations of the fixation period. EEG and electrooculogram (EOG) were recorded. Saccade characteristics and mean amplitudes of slow cortical potentials time-locked to peripheral target were analyzed in 23 healthy volunteers and 19 schizophrenic patients. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenic patients had significantly slower antisaccades and committed significantly more erroneous saccades in the both antisaccade tasks. The prolongation of the fixation period resulted in noticeable decrease of error percent in patients group. The analysis of CNV time-course has revealed two distinct stages in both groups. The early CNV stage was represented by a negative wave with the maximal amplitude over midline fronto-central area, and the late stage was characterized by increased CNV amplitude at the midline and left parietal electrode sites. In healthy subjects the simultaneous activation of frontal and parietal areas was observed in the paradigm with the shorter fixation interval; the increase of the fixation period produced consecutive activation of these areas. Schizophrenic patients' CNV amplitude was generally smaller than that of healthy subjects. The most pronounced between-group differences of the negative shift amplitude were revealed at frontal electrode sites during the early CNV stage in both modifications of the antisaccade task. The deficit of frontal activation revealed in patients at the early stage of antisaccade preparatory set in both antisaccadic paradigms may be related to pathogenesis of paranoid schizophrenia.	f	\N
22060144	In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching processes take place in successive phases as postulated by multiple-components models of task switching (e.g., Mayr & Kliegl, 2003; Ruthruff, Remington, & Johnston, 2001). At an earlier phase, task-set reconfiguration (Rogers & Monsell, 1995) or cue-encoding (Schneider & Logan, 2005) takes place, at a later phase, the response is selected in accord with constraints set in the first phase. Inertia effects (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994; Allport & Wylie, 2000) were shown to affect this later stage. Additionally, findings support the notion that response caution contributes to both global as well as to local switching costs when task switches are predictable.	f	\N
22069145	Hypothesis-testing performance on Wason's (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12:129-140, 1960) 2-4-6 task is typically poor, with only around 20% of participants announcing the to-be-discovered "ascending numbers" rule on their first attempt. Enhanced solution rates can, however, readily be observed with dual-goal (DG) task variants requiring the discovery of two complementary rules, one labeled "DAX" (the standard "ascending numbers" rule) and the other labeled "MED" ("any other number triples"). Two DG experiments are reported in which we manipulated the usefulness of a presented MED exemplar, where usefulness denotes cues that can establish a helpful "contrast class" that can stand in opposition to the presented 2-4-6 DAX exemplar. The usefulness of MED exemplars had a striking facilitatory effect on DAX rule discovery, which supports the importance of contrast-class information in hypothesis testing. A third experiment ruled out the possibility that the useful MED triple seeded the correct rule from the outset and obviated any need for hypothesis testing. We propose that an extension of Oaksford and Chater's (European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 6:149-169, 1994) iterative counterfactual model can neatly capture the mechanisms by which DG facilitation arises.	f	\N
22080448	The flash-drag (FDE) effect refers to the phenomenon in which the position of a stationary flashed object in one location appears shifted in the direction of nearby motion. Over the past decade, it has been debated how bottom-up and top-down processes contribute to this illusion. In this study, we demonstrate that randomly phase-shifting gratings can produce the FDE. In the random motion sequence we used, the FDE inducer (a sinusoidal grating) jumped to a random phase every 125 ms and stood still until the next jump. Because this random sequence could not be tracked attentively, it was impossible for the observer to discern the jump direction at the time of the flash. By sorting the data based on the flash's onset time relative to each jump time in the random motion sequence, we found that a large FDE with a broad temporal tuning occurred around 50 to 150 ms before the jump and that this effect was not correlated with any other jumps in the past or future. These results suggest that as few as two frames of unpredictable apparent motion can preattentively cause the FDE with a broad temporal tuning.	f	\N
22086650	The effects of bilingual proficiency on recognition memory were examined in an experiment with Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in English and Spanish under shallow- and deep-encoding conditions. Overall, hit rates were higher, discrimination greater, and response times shorter in the nondominant language, consistent with effects previously observed for lower frequency words. Levels-of-processing effects in hit rates, discrimination, and response time were stronger in the dominant language. Specifically, with shallow encoding, the advantage for the nondominant language was larger than with deep encoding. The results support the idea that memory performance in the nondominant language is impacted by both the greater demand for cognitive resources and the lower familiarity of the words.	f	\N
22088577	Depression and anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly co-morbid, but the reason for this co-morbidity is unclear. One possibility is that they predispose one another. An informative way to examine interactions between disorders without the confounds present in patient populations is to manipulate the psychological processes thought to underlie the pathological states in healthy individuals. In this study we therefore asked whether a model of the sad mood in depression can enhance psychophysiological responses (startle) to a model of the anxiety in ADs. We predicted that sad mood would increase anxious anxiety-potentiated startle responses. In a between-subjects design, participants (n=36) completed either a sad mood induction procedure (MIP; n=18) or a neutral MIP (n=18). Startle responses were assessed during short-duration predictable electric shock conditions (fear-potentiated startle) or long-duration unpredictable threat of shock conditions (anxiety-potentiated startle). Induced sadness enhanced anxiety- but not fear-potentiated startle. This study provides support for the hypothesis that sadness can increase anxious responding measured by the affective startle response. This, taken together with prior evidence that ADs can contribute to depression, provides initial experimental support for the proposition that ADs and depression are frequently co-morbid because they may be mutually reinforcing.	f	\N
22090187	In three experiments, we tested whether sequentially coding two visual stimuli can create a spatial misperception of a visual moving stimulus. In Experiment 1, we showed that a spatial misperception, the flash-lag effect, is accompanied by a similar temporal misperception of first perceiving the flash and only then a change of the moving stimulus, when in fact the two events were exactly simultaneous. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that when the spatial misperception of a flash-lag effect is absent, the temporal misperception is also absent. In Experiment 3, we extended these findings and showed that if the stimulus conditions require coding first a flash and subsequently a nearby moving stimulus, a spatial flash-lag effect is found, with the position of the moving stimulus being misperceived as shifted in the direction of its motion, whereas this spatial misperception is reversed so that the moving stimulus is misperceived as shifted in a direction opposite to its motion when the conditions require coding first the moving stimulus and then the flash. Together, the results demonstrate that sequential coding of two stimuli can lead to a spatial misperception whose direction can be predicted from the order of coding the moving object versus the flash. We propose an attentional sequential-coding explanation for the flash-lag effect and discuss its explanatory power with respect to related illusions (e.g., the Fröhlich effect) and other explanations.	f	\N
22090272	Prenatal deficit of androgens or androgen action results in atypical genitalia in individuals with XY disorders of sex development (XY,DSD). XY,DSD include mainly disorders of gonadal development and testosterone synthesis and action. Previously, most XY,DSD individuals were assigned to the female sex. Constructive genital surgery allowing heterosexual intercourse, gonadectomy, and hormone therapy for feminization were often performed. However, outcome studies are scarce. Our objective was evaluation of satisfaction with genital surgery and sexual life in adults with XY,DSD. We evaluated 57 individuals with XY,DSD from the German multicenter clinical evaluation study with a condition-specific questionnaire. The individuals were divided into subgroups reflecting the absence/presence of partial androgen effect or genital constructive surgery. Dissatisfaction with function of the surgical result (47.1%) and clitoral arousal (47.4%) was high in XY,DSD partially androgenized females after feminization surgery. Dissatisfaction with overall sex life (37.5%) and sexual anxieties (44.2%) were substantial in all XY,DSD individuals. Problems with desire (70.6%), arousal (52.9%), and dyspareunia (56.3%) were significant in XY,DSD complete females. 46,XY partially androgenized females reported significantly more often partners of female (9.1%) or both sexes (18.2%) and dyspareunia (56.5%) compared with controls. Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome stated significant problems with desire (81.8%), arousal (63.6%), and dyspareunia (70%). Care should be improved in XY,DSD patients. Constructive genital surgery should be minimized and performed mainly in adolescence or adulthood with the patients' consent. Individuals with DSD and their families should be informed with sensibility about the condition. Multidisciplinary care with psychological and nonprofessional support (parents, peers, and patients' support groups) is mandatory from child to adulthood.	f	\N
22091581	Much has been learned about the age-related cognitive declines associated with the attentional processes that utilize perceptual features during visual search. However, questions remain regarding the ability of older adults to use scene information to guide search processes, perhaps as a compensatory mechanism for declines in perceptual processes. The authors had younger and older adults search pseudorealistic scenes for targets with strong or no spatial associations. Both younger and older adults exhibited reaction time benefits when searching for a target that was associated with a specific scene region. Eye movement analyses revealed that all observers dedicated most of their time to scanning target-consistent display regions and that guidance to these regions was often evident on the initial saccade of a trial. Both the benefits and costs related to contextual information were larger for older adults, suggesting that this information was relied on heavily to guide search processes towards the target.	f	\N
22093142	To assess whether an intensive multifactorial treatment can reduce cognitive decrements and cognitive decline in screen-detected type 2 diabetes. The multinational ADDITION-study, a cluster-randomized parallel group trial in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes, compared the effectiveness of intensive multifactorial treatment (IT; lifestyle advice and strict regulation of metabolic parameters) with routine care (RC) on cardiovascular outcome. In The Netherlands randomization was stratified according to practice organization. Allocation was concealed from patients. The present study assessed the effect of IT on cognition through two neuropsychological assessments (NPA) on two occasions. The assessments took place three and six years after the start of the intervention. Non-diabetic controls served as reference group. The first NPA was performed in 183 patients (IT: 97; RC: 86) and 69 controls. The second NPA was performed in 135 patients (IT: 71; RC: 64) and 55 controls. Primary outcome was a composite score, including the domains memory, information-processing speed and attention and executive function. Comparisons between the treatment groups were performed with multi-level analyses. The first NPA showed no differences between the treatment groups (mean difference composite z-score: 0.00; 95%-CI -0.16 to 0.16; IT vs RC). Over the next three years cognitive decline in the diabetic groups was within the range of the reference group and did not differ between the treatment arms (difference decline between diabetic groups -0.12; -0.24 to 0.01; IT vs RC). Six years of IT in screen-detected type 2 diabetes had no benefit on cognitive functioning over RC.	f	\N
22095256	We used a probe-dot procedure to examine the roles of excitatory attentional guidance and distractor suppression in search for movement-form conjunctions. Participants in Experiment 1 completed a conjunction (moving X amongst moving Os and static Xs) and two single-feature (moving X amongst moving Os, and static X amongst static Os) conditions. "Active" participants searched for the target, whereas "passive" participants viewed the displays without responding. Subsequently, both groups located (left or right) a probe dot appearing in either an occupied or an unoccupied location. In the conjunction condition, the active group located probes presented on static distractors more slowly than probes presented on moving distractors, reversing the direction of the difference found within the passive group. This disadvantage for probes on static items was much stronger in conjunction than in single-feature search. The same pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2, which used a go/no-go procedure. Experiment 3 extended the go/no-go procedure to the case of search for a static target and revealed increased probe localisation times as a consequence of active search, primarily for probes on moving distractor items. The results demonstrated attentional guidance by inhibition of distractors in conjunction search.	f	\N
22098127	The sustained attention to response task comprises withholding key presses to one in nine of 225 target stimuli; it proved to be a sensitive measure of vigilance in a small group of narcoleptics. We studied sustained attention to response task results in 96 patients from a tertiary narcolepsy referral centre. Diagnoses according to ICSD-2 criteria were narcolepsy with (n=42) and without cataplexy (n=5), idiopathic hypersomnia without long sleep time (n=37), and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (n=12). The sustained attention to response task was administered prior to each of five multiple sleep latency test sessions. Analysis concerned error rates, mean reaction time, reaction time variability and post-error slowing, as well as the correlation of sustained attention to response task results with mean latency of the multiple sleep latency test and possible time of day influences. Median sustained attention to response task error scores ranged from 8.4 to 11.1, and mean reaction times from 332 to 366ms. Sustained attention to response task error score and mean reaction time did not differ significantly between patient groups. Sustained attention to response task error score did not correlate with multiple sleep latency test sleep latency. Reaction time was more variable as the error score was higher. Sustained attention to response task error score was highest for the first session. We conclude that a high sustained attention to response task error rate reflects vigilance impairment in excessive daytime sleepiness irrespective of its cause. The sustained attention to response task and the multiple sleep latency test reflect different aspects of sleep/wakefulness and are complementary.	f	\N
22098265	The concept of the "mnemonic scotoma," a spatially circumscribed region of working memory impairment produced by unilateral lesions of the PFC, is central to the view that PFC is critical for the short-term retention of information. Presented here, however, are previously unpublished data that offer an alternative, nonmnemonic interpretation of this pattern of deficit. In their study, Wajima and Sawaguchi [Wajima, K., & Sawaguchi, T. The role of GABAergic inhibiton in suppressing perseverative responses in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience Research, 50(Suppl. 1), P3-P317, 2004] applied the GABA(A) antagonist bicuculline methiodide unilaterally to the PFC of two monkeys while they performed an oculomotor delayed-response task. Consistent with previous studies, errors for the initial memory-guided saccade were markedly higher when the cued location fell into the region of the visual field affected by the infusion. These erroneous saccades tended to select an alternative target location (out of a possible 16) that had not been cued on that trial. By extending the analysis window, however, it was observed that the second, "corrective" saccade often acquired the location that had been cued on that trial. Further analysis of the erroneous initial saccades indicated that they tended to be directed to a location that had been relevant on the previous trial. Thus, the deficit was not one of "forgetting" the cued location. Rather, it was one of selecting between currently and previously relevant locations. These findings suggest a need for a reconsideration of the concept of the mnemonic scotoma, which in turn invites a reconsideration of functional interpretations of sustained neuronal activity in PFC.	f	\N
22099868	Neurophysiological studies to evaluate spatial attention in children with primary headache are lacking. Tactile spatial attention modulates the N140 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) amplitude. The aims of the study are: (1) to investigate the effect of spatial attention on the N140 amplitude in children with migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) and in healthy children, and (2) to correlate the neurophysiological results with a neuropsychological test for spatial attention. We studied 16 patients with migraine without aura (MoA), 12 TTH children and 10 healthy subjects. "Deux Barrage" test for spatial attention was administered. SEPs were recorded in a neutral condition (NC) and in a spatial attention condition (SAC). No significant differences in neuropsychological measures were found between MoA, TTH and healthy subjects. The N140 amplitude increase during SAC, as compared to NC, was significantly higher in patients than in healthy controls. Migraineurs showed a positive correlation between the N140 amplitude increase during SAC and their neuropsychological performance. Although spatial attention performances in children with headache are as good as in controls, the N140 amplitude increase during SAC in headache patients suggests that the psychophysiological mechanisms subtending spatial attention are different from those in healthy children.	f	\N
22100147	Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is typically associated with long-term memory dysfunction. The frontal lobes support high-level cognition comprising executive skills and working memory that is vital for daily life functioning. Deficits in these functions have been increasingly reported in TLE. Evidence from both the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature suggests both executive function and working memory are compromised in the presence of TLE. In relation to executive impairment, particular focus has been paid to set shifting as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Other discrete executive functions such as decision-making and theory of mind also appear vulnerable but have received little attention. With regard to working memory, the medial temporal lobe structures appear have a more critical role, but with emerging evidence of hippocampal dependent and independent processes. The relative role of underlying pathology and seizure spread is likely to have considerable bearing upon the cognitive phenotype and trajectory in TLE. The identification of the nature of frontal lobe dysfunction in TLE thus has important clinical implications for prognosis and surgical management. Longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies assessing frontal lobe function in TLE patients pre- and postoperatively will improve our understanding further.	f	\N
22100380	Self harm is a serious public health problem worldwide. Implicit attitude measures offer a novel method of exploring associations with self harm (SH). Here we used implicit measures in order to (i) examine implicit evaluative and arousal associations with SH (ii) compare the discriminatory power of implicit and explicit attitude measures in a non-clinical sample at high risk of SH. Two experiments using Go No-Go Association (GNAT) tasks designed to tap implicit attitudes toward SH in an undergraduate sample. In Study One logistic regression analysis demonstrated that explicit, rather than implicit measures successfully discriminated between SH cases and controls which contrasts with previous research. Faster reaction times were observed for negative implicit associations (SH and 'I dislike') compared to positive implicit associations (SH and 'I like') for both SH cases and controls. The SH group were faster to respond to arousal implicit associations compared to implicit sedation associations. Study Two extended this finding to demonstrate associations between evaluative/arousal GNATs and self-reported functions of SH. Internal motivations for self harmful behaviour were significantly related to an implicit sedation association with SH, whereas interpersonal motivations were associated with an implicit arousal association with SH. These findings are consonant with existing functional accounts of SH. Longitudinal data is necessary to identify whether the attitudes assessed could predict future SH. The findings provide novel experimental support for the hypothesised role of automatic/affect regulation and social/interpersonal functions of SH. Implications for intervention are discussed.	f	\N
22104981	This study examined the effect of armodafinil on late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and overall functioning of patients with shift work disorder. Patients with clinically diagnosed shift work disorder received armodafinil or placebo on nights worked for 6 weeks. Patients included in the study experienced late-in-shift sleepiness between 4 AM and 8 AM (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale ≥6) and were functionally impaired (Global Assessment of Functioning <70). Efficacy was determined by improvements in clinical condition (Clinical Global Impression-Change), late-in-the-shift Karolinska Sleepiness Scale score, and overall Global Assessment of Functioning score. Tolerability was assessed. Patients receiving armodafinil showed significant improvements in late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and global functioning, compared to placebo at final visit. Armodafinil was generally well tolerated. Armodafinil improved clinical condition and wakefulness late in the night shift of patients with shift work disorder. Overall patient functioning was also improved.	f	\N
22114879	Contemporary research indicates that brain development occurs during childhood and into early adulthood, particularly in certain regions. A critical question is whether premature or atypical hormone exposures impact brain development (e.g., structure) or function (e.g., neuropsychological functioning). The current study enrolled 40 girls (aged 6-8 years) diagnosed with premature adrenarche (PA) and a comparison group of 36 girls with on-time maturation. It was hypothesized that girls with PA would demonstrate lower IQ and performance on several neuropsychological tasks. The potential for a sexually dimorphic neuropsychological profile in PA was also explored. No significant univariate or multivariate group differences emerged for any neuropsychological instrument. However, effect size confidence intervals contained medium-sized group differences at the subscale level. On-time girls performed better on verbal, working memory, and visuospatial tasks. Girls with PA showed improved attention, but not a sexually dimorphic profile. These results, though preliminary, suggest that premature maturation may influence neuropsychological functioning.	f	\N
22114988	The present study describes the development and validation of an instrument designed to examine athletes' selective attention returning to competition following a musculoskeletal injury--the attention questionnaire of rehabilitated athletes returning to competition (AQ-RARC). Using a sample of 186 rehabilitated athletes, exploratory factor analysis revealed a 10-item model that examines functional attention and distraction attention. Confirmatory factor analysis further supported the factorial validity of the AQ-RARC with another sample of 184 rehabilitated athletes. The two subscales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the new instrument were confirmed by examining correlations between the AQ-RARC with other constructs. It is concluded that the AQ-RARC is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used for clinical and research purposes.	f	\N
22115281	To explore the idea of a perceptual distortion of space in spatial neglect, neglect patients, age-matched healthy controls and right hemisphere control patients judged the vanishing point of horizontally and vertically-moving stimuli. Hemifield of presentation and movement direction of the stimulus presentation was manipulated. The results suggest that neglect patients show a stronger response bias in the direction of the moving stimuli ("representational momentum") than healthy and right hemisphere controls. Furthermore, neglect patients, but not the control groups, showed a direction-specific response whereby the presence of neglect was associated with a larger representational momentum for leftward-moving stimuli. The one left-hemisphere patient with right-sided neglect showed the opposite effect. Thus, neglect patients showed a relative overextension into their neglected side of space. While these findings are in line with the idea of an extension in the representation of contralesional space, other explanations such as deficient spatial remapping, impairments in smooth pursuit and distortions in memorized visuo-motor movements are considered.	f	\N
22121850	Previous research has shown that social drinkers continue to show attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli even after consuming a moderate dose of alcohol. In contrast, little is known about how alcohol acutely affects attentional bias in groups at risk to develop alcohol-related problems, such as adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Such individuals may show increased attentional bias following alcohol relative to nonclinical controls. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining acute alcohol effects on attentional bias in 20 social drinkers with ADHD and 20 social drinkers with no history of ADHD. Participants performed a visual-probe task after receiving the following doses of alcohol: 0.64 g/kg, 0.32 g/kg, and 0.0 g/kg (placebo). Those in the ADHD group showed increased attentional bias under active alcohol doses, whereas attentional bias was similar across doses in the control group. Attentional bias predicted ad libitum alcohol consumption during a taste-rating session. This relation was observed only in the ADHD group. These findings indicate that an acute alcohol dose increases attentional bias in adults with ADHD. Further, attentional bias appears to be a predictor of ad libitum consumption in this group.	f	\N
22131446	Has evolution optimized visual selective attention to make the best possible use of all information available? If so, then Bayesian optimal performance in a localization task is achieved by optimally weighting the visual evidence with one's prior spatial expectations. In 2 psychophysical experiments, participants conducted covert target localization where both visual cues and prior expectations were available. The amount of information conveyed by the visual evidence was held constant, while the degree of belief was manipulated via peripheral cuing (Experiment 1) and spatial probabilities (Experiment 2). A number of findings result: (1) People appear to optimally combine slightly biased prior beliefs with sensory evidence. (2) These biases are directly comparable to those descriptively accounted for by the Prospect Theory. (3) Probabilistic information about a target's upcoming location is integrated identically, irrespective of whether endogenous or exogenous cuing is used. (4) In localization tasks, spatial attention can be understood and quantitatively modeled as a set of prior expectations over space that modulate incoming noisy sensory evidence.	f	\N
22133872	A randomized control trial comparing two social communication treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder examined the effect of treatment on object interest. Thirty-two children, 18-60 months, were randomly assigned to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) or Responsive Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) condition. Assessment of object interest was conducted in an unstructured play session with different toys, activities, adult, and location than experienced in treatment. Results indicated children in the RPMT condition showed greater increases in object interest as compared to children in the PECS condition. Because child characteristics such as interest in objects may influence response to interventions using object play as contexts for treatment, it is important to improve our understanding of whether intervention can affect object interest.	f	\N
22139023	A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screenshots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screenshot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently, they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 and 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.	f	\N
22141746	It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.	f	\N
22142207	Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic or perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events.	f	\N
22145814	We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate functional activity in the brain of adolescents with spina bifida when performing selective attention and response inhibition tasks. We then compared the results to that of age-matched controls. Our results showed that adolescents with spina bifida had decreased frontal and superior parietal activation and more apparently low involvement of left brain hemisphere during these tasks. Our results indicated activation deficits and possibly abnormal functional organization in adolescents with spina bifida and associated pathologies such as hydrocephalus.	f	\N
22150963	The present study addresses the suitability of electrodermal lability as an indicator of individual vulnerability to the effects of total sleep deprivation. During two complete circadian cycles, the effects of 48h of total sleep deprivation on physiological measures (electrodermal activity and body temperature), subjective sleepiness (measured by visual analogue scale and tiredness symptom scale) and task performance (reaction time and errors in a go/no go task) were investigated. Analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed substantial decreases of the number of skin conductance responses, body temperature, and increases for subjective sleepiness, reaction time and error rates. For all changes, strong circadian oscillations could be observed as well. The electrodermal more labile subgroup reported higher subjective sleepiness compared with electrodermal more stable participants, but showed no differences in the time courses of body temperature and task performance. Therefore, electrodermal lability seems to be a specific indicator for the changes in subjective sleepiness due to total sleep deprivation and circadian oscillations, but not a suitable indicator for vulnerability to the effects of sleep deprivation per se.	f	\N
22152279	In healthy individuals and those with insomnia, poor sleep quality is associated with decrements in performance on tests of cognition, especially executive function. Sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits are both prevalent in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sleep problems occur in over 75% of patients, with sleep fragmentation and decreased sleep efficiency being the most common sleep complaints, but their relation to cognition is unknown. We examined the association between sleep quality and cognition in PD. In 35 non-demented individuals with PD and 18 normal control adults (NC), sleep was measured using 24-hr wrist actigraphy over 7 days. Cognitive domains tested included attention and executive function, memory and psychomotor function. In both groups, poor sleep was associated with worse performance on tests of attention/executive function but not memory or psychomotor function. In the PD group, attention/executive function was predicted by sleep efficiency, whereas memory and psychomotor function were not predicted by sleep quality. Psychomotor and memory function were predicted by motor symptom severity. This study is the first to demonstrate that sleep quality in PD is significantly correlated with cognition and that it differentially impacts attention and executive function, thereby furthering our understanding of the link between sleep and cognition.	f	\N
22154736	The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD (n=32), traumatized individuals without PTSD (n=30), and non-traumatized controls (n=30). The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories.	f	\N
22160371	The adaptive threat-detection advantage takes the form of a preferential orienting of attention to threatening scenes. In this study, we compared attention to social scenes in 15 high-functioning individuals with autism (ASD) and matched typically developing (TD) individuals. Eye-tracking was recorded while participants were presented with pairs of scenes, either emotional positive-neutral, emotional negative-neutral or neutral-neutral scenes. Early allocation of attention, the first image fixated in each pair, differed between groups: contrary to TD individuals who showed the typical threat-detection advantage towards negative images, the ASD group failed to show a bias toward threat-related scenes. Later processing of stimuli, indicated by the total fixation to the images during the 3-s presentation, was found unaffected in the ASD group. These results support the hypothesis of an early atypical allocation of attention towards natural social scenes in ASD, that is compensated in later stages of visual processing.	f	\N
22171909	Insulin resistance (IR) and disorders of glucose metabolism (DGM) are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. There are different reasons for development of DGM in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and this association is controversial. We investigated the frequency of DGM and IR in patients with OSAS and determining factors for these disorders. One hundred and twelve untreated patients with OSAS and 19 non-apnoeic snoring subjects upon polysomnography were included in this study. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed in all subjects who had fasting blood glucose < 125 mg/dl. IR method was analysed using homeostasis assessment model (HOMA-IR). Diabetes mellitus (DM), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and impaired fasting glucose (IFG) were defined according to values of OGTT. DGM was defined as having one of the diagnoses of DM, IGT or IFG. Subjective sleepiness of all subjects was assessed with Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) was described as ESS score ≥ 10. Fasting glucose and the rate of DGM in patients with OSAS were higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects. DGM were shown in % 15.7 of non-apnoeic snoring subjects, 29.6% of mild sleep apnoea, 50% of moderate sleep apnoea and 61.8% of severe sleep apnoea. The rate of DGM in patients with moderate and severe OSAS was higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects and in patients with severe OSAS higher than in patients with mild OSAS. DGM are associated with body mass index (BMI), severity of OSAS, arousal index and EDS. In addition, IR is associated with apnoea hypopnoea index, BMI, arousal index and ESS score. Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome is associated with high frequency of DGM. In addition, the progression of disease from simple snoring and mild OSAS to severe OSAS increases the rate of DGM. Thus, DGM especially in patients with severe OSAS should be examined in regular periods.	f	\N
22182346	Little is known about the neurobiological foundations of psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior studies have shown that PTSD is associated with altered processing of threatening and aversive stimuli. It remains unclear whether this functional abnormality can be changed by psychotherapy. This is the first randomized controlled treatment trial that examines whether narrative exposure therapy (NET) causes changes in affective stimulus processing in patients with chronic PTSD. 34 refugees with PTSD were randomly assigned to a NET group or to a waitlist control (WLC) group. At pre-test and at four-months follow-up, the diagnostics included the assessment of clinical variables and measurements of neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity (steady-state visual evoked fields, ssVEF) resulting from exposure to aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures. PTSD as well as depressive symptom severity scores declined in the NET group, whereas symptoms persisted in the WLC group. Only in the NET group, parietal and occipital activity towards threatening pictures increased significantly after therapy. Our results indicate that NET causes an increase of activity associated with cortical top-down regulation of attention towards aversive pictures. The increase of attention allocation to potential threat cues might allow treated patients to re-appraise the actual danger of the current situation and, thereby, reducing PTSD symptoms. REGISTRATION OF THE CLINICAL TRIAL: Number: NCT00563888Name: "Change of Neural Network Indicators Through Narrative Treatment of PTSD in Torture Victims" ULR: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00563888.	f	\N
22185491	The topic of spatial attention is of great relevance for researchers in various fields, including neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, as well as for clinical practice. Deficits of spatial attentional arising from parietal brain damage remain largely confined to the left visual field. The mechanisms underlying this hemispheric asymmetry are still elusive. We mimicked the neuropsychological syndrome of contralesional extinction by temporarily inducing a spatial attentional bias in healthy volunteers with TMS. We investigated whether directing covert spatial attention could enhance or, more importantly, counteract the resulting behavioral deficits. Although both the left and right parietal TMS induced contralateral extinction, only left hemifield extinction following right parietal TMS was severely aggravated by a competing stimulus in the ipsilesional (right) hemifield. We put forward the hypothesis that an asymmetry with respect to the ability of detaching attention from a distractor is contributing to the right hemispheric lateralization with regard to extinction. On a broader level, we suggest that "virtual patients" might be used for evaluating neuropsychological treatment in an early stage of development, reducing the burden on actual patients.	f	\N
22197881	Temporal orienting enhances early (N1) and late (P3) stages of auditory processing. However, the functional significance of these effects has not been settled yet. The present study tested a motor inhibition account on the temporal orienting P3 effect to non-target stimuli. A temporal cuing paradigm was used, where the level of motor preparation (high vs. low) was varied: If motor preparation is higher, more inhibition is necessary to withhold a response when a non-target is presented at the attended time point. Consequently, if the enhanced P3 to temporally attended non-targets reflected increased motor inhibition, higher motor preparation should further enhance the P3. Overall, temporal orienting enhanced both the N1 and the P3, thus replicating earlier findings. Moreover, the temporal orienting P3 effect was larger when motor preparation was higher. Inconsistent with the motor-inhibition account, however, the P3 to temporally attended non-targets did not differ as a function of motor preparation.	f	\N
22201462	Human actions are guided either by endogenous action plans or by external stimuli in the environment. These two types of action control seem to be mediated by neurophysiologically and functionally distinct systems that interfere if an endogenously planned action suddenly has to be performed in response to an exogenous stimulus. In this case, the endogenous representation has to be deactivated first to give way to the exogenous system. Here we show that interference of endogenous and exogenous action control is not limited to motor-related aspects but also affects the perception of action-related stimuli. Participants associated two actions with contingent sensory effects in learning blocks. In subsequent test blocks, preparing one of these actions specifically impaired responding to the associated effect in an exogenous speeded detection task, yielding a blindness-like effect for arbitrary, learned action effects. In accordance with the theory of event coding, this finding suggests that action planning influences perception even in the absence of any physical similarities between action and to-be-perceived stimuli.	f	\N
22201464	The attention literature distinguishes two general mechanisms by which attention can benefit performance: gain (or resource) models and orienting (or switching) models. In gain models, processing efficiency is a function of a spatial distribution of capacity or resources; in orienting models, an attentional spotlight must be aligned with the stimulus location, and processing efficiency is a function of when this occurs. Although they involve different processing mechanisms, these models are difficult to distinguish empirically. We compared performance with abrupt-onset and no-onset Gabor patch stimuli in a cued detection task in which we obtained distributions of reaction time (RT) and accuracy as a function of stimulus contrast. In comparison to abrupt-onset stimuli, RTs to miscued no-onset stimuli were increased and accuracy was reduced. Modeling the data with the integrated system model of Philip L. Smith and Roger Ratcliff (2009) provided evidence for reallocation of processing resources during the course of a trial, consistent with an orienting account. Our results support a view of attention in which processing efficiency depends on a dynamic spatiotemporal distribution of resources that has both gain and orienting properties.	f	\N
22205494	Attention plays a crucial role in the Stroop task, which requires attending to less automatically processed task-relevant attributes of stimuli and the suppression of involuntary processing of task-irrelevant attributes. The experiment assessed the allocation of attention by monitoring eye movements throughout congruent and incongruent trials. Participants viewed two stimulus arrays that differed regarding the amount of items and their numerical value and judged by manual response which of the arrays contained more items, while disregarding their value. Different viewing patterns were observed between congruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with higher value) and incongruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with lower value) trials. The direction of first saccades was guided by task-relevant information but in the incongruent condition directed more frequently towards task-irrelevant information. The data further suggest that the difference in the deployment of attention between conditions changes throughout a trial, likely reflecting the impact and resolution of the conflict. For instance, stimulus arrays in line with the correct response were attended for longer and fixations were longer for incongruent trials, with the second fixation and considering all fixations. By the time of the correct response, this latter difference between conditions was absent. Possible mechanisms underlying eye movement patterns are discussed.	f	\N
22207631	Previous findings suggest that women are more likely than men to take on the submissive role during sexual activities (e.g., waiting for their partner to initiate and orchestrate sexual activities), often to the detriment of their sexual satisfaction. Extending previous research on gender role motivation, the authors recruited 181 heterosexual couples to examine scripted sexual behavior, motivation for such behavior, and relationship outcomes (sexual satisfaction, perceptions of closeness, and relationship satisfaction) for both women and their partners. Using the actor-partner interdependence model, path analyses revealed that women's submissive behavior had negative links to personal sexual satisfaction and their partner's sexual satisfaction but only when their submission was inconsistent with their sexual preferences. Moreover, the authors show there are negative downstream consequences of diminished sexual satisfaction on perceptions of closeness and overall relationship satisfaction for both partners in the relationship.	f	\N
22209816	Visual search, a vital task for humans and animals, has also become a common and important tool for studying many topics central to active vision and cognition ranging from spatial vision, attention, and oculomotor control to memory, decision making, and rewards. While visual search often seems effortless to humans, trying to recreate human visual search abilities in machines has represented an incredible challenge for computer scientists and engineers. What are the brain computations that ensure successful search? This review article draws on efforts from various subfields and discusses the mechanisms and strategies the brain uses to optimize visual search: the psychophysical evidence, their neural correlates, and if unknown, possible loci of the neural computations. Mechanisms and strategies include use of knowledge about the target, distractor, background statistical properties, location probabilities, contextual cues, scene context, rewards, target prevalence, and also the role of saliency, center-surround organization of search templates, and eye movement plans. I provide overviews of classic and contemporary theories of covert attention and eye movements during search explaining their differences and similarities. To allow the reader to anchor some of the laboratory findings to real-world tasks, the article includes interviews with three expert searchers: a radiologist, a fisherman, and a satellite image analyst.	f	\N
22215929	To evaluate reliability of single objective tests in assessing sleepiness. Subjects who completed polysomnography underwent a 4-nap multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) the following day. Prior to each nap opportunity on MSLT, subjects performed the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) and divided attention driving task (DADT). Results of single versus multiple test administrations were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and adjusted for test administration order effects to explore time of day effects. Measures were explored as continuous and binary (i.e., impaired or not impaired). Community-based sample evaluated at a tertiary, university-based sleep center. 372 adult commercial vehicle operators oversampled for increased obstructive sleep apnea risk. N/A. AS CONTINUOUS MEASURES, ICC WERE AS FOLLOWS: MSLT 0.45, PVT median response time 0.69, PVT number of lapses 0.51, 10-min DADT tracking error 0.87, 20-min DADT tracking error 0.90. Based on binary outcomes, ICC were: MSLT 0.63, PVT number of lapses 0.85, 10-min DADT 0.95, 20-min DADT 0.96. Statistically significant time of day effects were seen in both the MSLT and PVT but not the DADT. Correlation between ESS and different objective tests was strongest for MSLT, range [-0.270 to -0.195] and persisted across all time points. Single DADT and PVT administrations are reliable measures of sleepiness. A single MSLT administration can reasonably discriminate individuals with MSL < 8 minutes. These results support the use of a single administration of some objective tests of sleepiness when performed under controlled conditions in routine clinical care.	f	\N
22216305	Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.	f	\N
22226937	Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior. Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. At baseline, thirty-three participants visually located a target 8m ahead; then vision was occluded and they were instructed to walk to the remembered target. One week later participants were assigned to either walk, walk while talking on a cell phone, or walk while texting on a cell phone toward the target with vision occluded. Duration and final location of the heel were noted. Linear distance traveled, lateral angular deviation from the start line, and gait velocity were derived. Changes from baseline to testing were analyzed with paired t-tests. Participants engaged in cell phone use presented with significant reductions in gait velocity (texting: 33% reduction, p=0.01; talking: 16% reduction, p=0.02). Moreover, participants who were texting while walking demonstrated a 61% increase in lateral deviation (p=0.04) and 13% increase in linear distance traveled (p=0.03). These results suggest that the dual-task of walking while using a cell phone impacts executive function and working memory and influences gait to such a degree that it may compromise safety. Importantly, comparison of the two cell phone conditions demonstrates texting creates a significantly greater interference effect on walking than talking on a cell phone.	f	\N
22238632	Human morning and evening chronotypes differ in their preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness, as well as in optimal daytime periods to cope with cognitive challenges. Recent evidence suggests that these preferences are not a simple by-product of socio-professional timing constraints, but can be driven by inter-individual differences in the expression of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake promoting signals. Chronotypes thus constitute a unique tool to access the interplay between those processes under normally entrained day-night conditions, and to investigate how they impinge onto higher cognitive control processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on conflict processing-related cerebral activity throughout a normal waking day. Sixteen morning and 15 evening types were recorded at two individually adapted time points (1.5 versus 10.5 hours spent awake) while performing the Stroop paradigm. Results show that interference-related hemodynamic responses are maintained or even increased in evening types from the subjective morning to the subjective evening in a set of brain areas playing a pivotal role in successful inhibitory functioning, whereas they decreased in morning types under the same conditions. Furthermore, during the evening hours, activity in a posterior hypothalamic region putatively involved in sleep-wake regulation correlated in a chronotype-specific manner with slow wave activity at the beginning of the night, an index of accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure. These results shed light into the cerebral mechanisms underlying inter-individual differences of higher-order cognitive state maintenance under normally entrained day-night conditions.	f	\N
22238852	An analysis of psychological well-being (self-esteem and subjective vitality) of 639 Spanish university students was performed, while accounting for the amount of leisure-time physical activity. The Spanish versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Subjective Vitality Scale were employed. Participants were divided into four groups (Low, Moderate, High, and Very high) depending on estimation of energy expenditure in leisure-time physical activity. Men and women having higher physical activity rated higher mean subjective vitality; however, differences in self-esteem were observed only in men, specifically between Very high and the other physical activity groups.	f	\N
22238854	Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.	f	\N
22239962	In a modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, when the cue and the target are at the same spatial location, processing of the target is faster when the cue and the target have different shapes compared to same (shape effect). Recent physiological findings suggest distinct population level encoding of shape in ventral versus dorsal cortical visual streams in monkeys. In human observers, we tested whether the effect of shape on reflexive spatial attention could be attributed to ventral and/or dorsal stream encoding of shape. In the modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, we varied the shapes of the cue and target. Based on data from monkey physiology (Lehky & Sereno, 2007), we selected four pairs of cue and target shapes. In some pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded (similar encoding distance) by a population of cells in the lateral intraparietal cortex, a dorsal stream area, but more dissimilarly encoded (having a greater encoding distance) by a population of cells in the anterior inferotemporal cortex (AIT), a ventral stream area. In other pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded in AIT and had greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding. We found that pairs of cue and target with greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding produced larger and more consistent shape effects up to a cue to target onset asynchrony (CTOA) of 450 ms. The shape effects for cue and target pairs with greater dissimilarity in AIT encoding were smaller and inconsistent, suggesting that shape effects in reflexive spatial attention are largely driven by the dorsal stream.	f	\N
22245090	In this paper, a rule-based automatic sleep staging method was proposed. Twelve features including temporal and spectrum analyses of the EEG, EOG, and EMG signals were utilized. Normalization was applied to each feature to eliminating individual differences. A hierarchical decision tree with fourteen rules was constructed for sleep stage classification. Finally, a smoothing process considering the temporal contextual information was applied for the continuity. The overall agreement and kappa coefficient of the proposed method applied to the all night polysomnography (PSG) of seventeen healthy subjects compared with the manual scorings by R&K rules can reach 86.68% and 0.79, respectively. This method can integrate with portable PSG system for sleep evaluation at-home in the near future.	f	\N
22250914	There is converging evidence that the feeling of conscious recollection is usually accompanied by the bound retrieval of context features of the encoding episode (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & Weiβer, 2008). Recently, however, important limiting conditions have been identified for the binding between context features in memory. For example, focusing on the semantics of the stimuli during encoding eliminates binding between perceptual context features (Meiser & Sattler, 2007). In the present research, we investigated the interplay of the focus of attention during encoding and stimulus characteristics in context-context binding. In particular, it has been suggested that context features differ in the degree to which they can be regarded as intrinsic or extrinsic to the items and that intrinsic features might be given more attentional processing during encoding than extrinsic features (e.g., Ecker, Zimmer, & Groh-Bordin, 2007a). In two experiments, we manipulated the "intrinsicality" of context features to investigate whether context-context binding might be limited to features that are in the focus of processing. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that while context-context binding was eliminated for incidentally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 1), it was preserved for intentionally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 2).	f	\N
22251291	Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6¼ months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants' ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non-sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action - but not those without this causal action experience - perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 4½-month-olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.	f	\N
22251308	Examine age group effects and sex differences by applying a comprehensive computerized battery of identical behavioral measures linked to brain systems in youths that were already genotyped. Such information is needed to incorporate behavioral data as neuropsychological "biomarkers" in large-scale genomic studies. We developed and applied a brief computerized neurocognitive battery that provides measures of performance accuracy and response time for executive-control, episodic memory, complex cognition, social cognition, and sensorimotor speed domains. We tested a population-based sample of 3,500 genotyped youths ages 8-21 years. Substantial improvement with age occurred for both accuracy and speed, but the rates varied by domain. The most pronounced improvement was noted in executive control functions, specifically attention, and in motor speed, with some effect sizes exceeding 1.8 standard deviation units. The least pronounced age group effect was in memory, where only face memory showed a large effect size on improved accuracy. Sex differences had much smaller effect sizes but were evident, with females outperforming males on attention, word and face memory, reasoning speed, and all social cognition tests and males outperforming females in spatial processing and sensorimotor and motor speed. These sex differences in most domains were seen already at the youngest age groups, and age group × sex interactions indicated divergence at the oldest groups with females becoming faster but less accurate than males. The results indicate that cognitive performance improves substantially in this age span, with large effect sizes that differ by domain. The more pronounced improvement for executive and reasoning domains than for memory suggests that memory capacities have reached their apex before age 8. Performance was sexually modulated and most sex differences were apparent by early adolescence.	f	\N
22256888	This study examined the test-retest reliability of executive function tasks in preschool children. Measures of working memory, response inhibition, attentional flexibility, and planning were administered to thirty three preschool children between the ages of 36 and 72 months (M = 54.75 months) on two testing occasions approximately three weeks apart (M interval = 21.64 days). Working memory tasks showed higher test-retest reliability than measures of response inhibition. There were significant practice effects on three measures of complex working memory. Implications of these findings for the assessment of executive function in preschool children are discussed.	f	\N
22259184	In two experiments, we examined the ability of task-irrelevant changes in luminance to capture attention in an irrelevant singleton search. By using uniform increment and decrement arrays, we were able to create changes of the same absolute magnitude, but resulting in a singleton with either higher or lower contrast magnitude, relative to other elements in the search array. A condition where a singleton changed contrast polarity without a concomitant change in the overall contrast magnitude was also included. It was found that only luminance changes resulting in a singleton having increased contrast (or saliency) were effective in capturing attention. In addition, no attentional capture was observed when the irrelevant singleton was characterized by the equivalent amount of static luminance differences, suggesting a unique attentional prioritization of luminance changes that increase singleton saliency.	f	\N
22264198	The discovery of mirror neurons-neurons that code specific actions both when executed and observed-in area F5 of the macaque provides a potential neural mechanism underlying action understanding. To date, neuroimaging evidence for similar coding of specific actions across the visual and motor modalities in human ventral premotor cortex (PMv)-the putative homologue of macaque F5-is limited to the case of actions observed from a first-person perspective. However, it is the third-person perspective that figures centrally in our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. To address this gap in the literature, we scanned participants with fMRI while they viewed two actions from either a first- or third-person perspective during some trials and executed the same actions during other trials. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found action-specific cross-modal visual-motor representations in PMv for the first-person but not for the third-person perspective. Additional analyses showed no evidence for spatial or attentional differences across the two perspective conditions. In contrast, more posterior areas in the parietal and occipitotemporal cortex did show cross-modal coding regardless of perspective. These findings point to a stronger role for these latter regions, relative to PMv, in supporting the understanding of others' actions with reference to one's own actions.	f	\N
22265727	We investigated response activation and suppression processes in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait (FOG). Fourteen freezers, 14 nonfreezers, and 14 matched healthy controls performed the attention network task (ANT) and the Stroop task. The former task has more stimulus-response overlap and is expected to elicit stronger irrelevant response activation, requiring more inhibition. Congruency effects were used as a general measure of conflict resolution. Supplementary reaction time (RT) distribution analyses were utilized to calculate conditional accuracy functions (CAFs) and delta plots to measure response activation and suppression processes. In agreement with previous research, freezers showed a general conflict resolution deficit compared with nonfreezers and healthy controls. Moreover, CAFs pointed to a strong initial incorrect response activation in FOG. As expected, conflict resolution impairment was only apparent in the ANT, and not in the Stroop task. These results suggest an imbalance between automatic and controlled processes in FOG, leading to a breakdown in both motor and cognitive response control.	f	\N
22266073	Cognitive theories of anxiety postulate that negative processing biases play a causal role in the pathogenesis of a disorder, while a normalisation of bias drives recovery. To test these assumptions it is essential to investigate whether biases seen in anxiety are treatment-sensitive, or whether they instead represent enduring vulnerability factors. Twenty-nine spider fearfuls were tested before and after brief cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), with half of them additionally being tested before a waiting period to control for retest effects. Using three cognitive bias tasks, we measured implicit threat evaluation (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task), avoidance tendency (Approach-Avoidance Task), and working memory for threat. CBT significantly enhanced negative implicit evaluation and avoidance. This indicates that these cognitive biases are no stable risk factors and provides further evidence for their potential key role in the development and remission of anxiety.	f	\N
22266110	A current controversy exists about the relationship between spatial attention and conscious perception. While some authors propose that these phenomena are intimately related (Bartolomeo, 2008; Chun & Marois, 2002; O'Regan & Noë, 2001; Posner, 1994), others report dissociations between them (Kentridge et al., 1999; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; Wyart & Tallon-Baudry, 2008). However, spatial attention is not a unitary mechanism, and it is possible that not all forms of attention dissociate from conscious perception. In the present study we used a paradigm in which endogenous and exogenous forms of attention are orthogonally manipulated in order to investigate their relation with conscious perception within the same design. By analyzing two different cue-related components, our results demonstrated that while endogenous attention was electrophysiologically dissociated from conscious perception, exogenous attention was not, consistent with the hypothesis that exogenous attention is an important antecedent of our conscious experience. Our results support previous claims of dissociations between some forms of spatial attention and conscious perception, but also highlight the importance of exogenous orienting on the selection of information for conscious access.	f	\N
22266172	We present a history of the concepts and developments that have led us to focus on the resting state as an object of study. We then discuss resting state research performed in our laboratory since 2005 with an emphasis on papers of particular interest.	f	\N
22267203	In vivo translational imaging techniques, such as positron emission tomography and single-photon emission-computed tomography, are the only ways to adequately determine that a drug engages its target. Unfortunately, there are far more experimental mechanisms being tested in the clinic than there are radioligands, impeding the use of this risk-mitigating approach in modern drug discovery and development. Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) offers an approach for developing new biomarkers with the potential to determine central activity and dose selection in animals and humans. Using phMRI, we characterized the effects of xanomeline on ketamine-induced activation on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. In the present studies, xanomeline alone dose-dependently increased the BOLD signal across several regions of interest, including association and motor and sensory cortical regions. It is noteworthy that xanomeline dose-dependently attenuated ketamine-induced brain activation patterns, effects that were antagonized by atropine. In conclusion, the muscarinic 1/4-preferring receptor agonist xanomeline suppressed the effects of the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel blocker ketamine in a number of brain regions, including the association cortex, motor cortex, and primary sensory cortices. The region-specific brain activation observed in this ketamine challenge phMRI study may provide a method of confirming central activity and dose selection for novel antipsychotic drugs in early clinical trials for schizophrenia, if the data obtained in animals can be recapitulated in humans.	f	\N
22268914	Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes with immediate digit recall. The effect on immediate digit recall may provide the missing converging evidence for the role of attention in memory. In the current study, 3 experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of attention capture and novelty in storage and forgetting. In addition to the previously established effects, the novelty of switching rehearsal between 2 pairs was found to impair both digit recall and memory for the first pair. The attentional effects we obtained were dependent upon participant expectation, and forgetting appears to be due to interference with consolidation rather than decay or traditional associative interference. Finally, the attentional effects we observed in associative recognition were primarily reflected in a lowering of the false alarm rate with increases in the strength of the parent pairs. Although dual-process models can accommodate this finding on the assumption that recollection is invoked at test alongside familiarity, we showed that the level of recall in this paradigm is so small that recollection can be ruled out. Accordingly, our results are challenging for the existing models of associative recognition to accommodate.	f	\N
22269546	Worldwide, both brake lamps and tail lamps on motor vehicles are required to be red. Previous studies have not examined the effect of this confound in a complex, high-traffic scenario in a driving simulator or on visuomotor behavior. In the first experiment, drivers detected brake lamps on nine lead vehicles and lane changes on two rear vehicles in a 15 min simulated night time highway drive. A second experiment was used to examine the findings in the context of pre-attentive visual processing research. A third experiment analyzed visuomotor behavior and subjective workload during a vigilance task to further evaluate this hypothesis. For all studies, tail lamp color was manipulated, resulting in two conditions: the currently mandated red tail lamps and red brake lamps vs. yellow tail lamps and red brake lamps. Compared to current rear lighting, employing yellow tail lamps with red brake lamps reduced RT, error, subjective workload, improved performance in detecting lane changes and also changed visuomotor behavior. It is suggested that the mechanism allowing better performance is pre-attentive, parallel visual processing.	f	\N
22276405	This experiment was designed to investigate whether and how decreasing the amount of attentional focus invested in postural control could affect bipedal postural control. Twelve participants were asked to stand upright as immobile as possible on a force platform in one control condition and one cognitive condition. In the latter condition, they performed a short-term digit-span memory task. Decreased center-of-gravity displacements and decreased center-of-foot-pressure displacements minus center-of-gravity displacements were observed in the cognitive condition relative to the control condition. These results suggest that shifting the attentional focus away from postural control by executing a concurrent attention-demanding task could increase postural performance and postural efficiency.	f	\N
22277309	A growing body of literature investigating the neural correlates of emotion word processing has emerged in recent years. Written words have been shown to represent a suitable means to study emotion processing and most importantly to address the distinct and interactive contributions of the two dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal. The aim of the present review is to integrate findings from electrophysiological (ERP) and hemodynamic neuroimaging (fMRI) studies in order to provide a better understanding of emotion word processing. It provides an up-to-date review of recent ERP studies since the review by Kissler et al. (2006) as well as the first review of hemodynamic brain imaging studies in the field. A discussion of theoretical and methodological issues is also presented, along with suggestions for future research.	f	\N
22278094	The intranasal application of oxytocin (OT) has been shown to influence behavioral and neural correlates of social processing. These effects are probably mediated by genetic variations within the OT system. One potential candidate could be the CD38 gene, which codes for a transmembrane protein engaged in OT secretion processes. A common variation in this gene (rs3796863) was recently found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Using an imaging genetics approach, we studied differential effects of an intranasal OT application on neural processing of social stimuli in 55 healthy young men depending on their CD38 gene variant in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Genotype had a significant influence on both behavioral and neuronal measures of social processing. Homozygotic risk allele carriers showed slower reaction times (RT) and higher activation of left fusiform gyrus during visual processing of social stimuli. Under OT activation differences between genotypes were more evident (though not statistically significantly increased) and RT were accelerated in homozygotic risk allele carriers. According to our data, rs3796863 mainly influences fusiform gyrus activation, an area which has been widely discussed in ASD research. OT seems to modulate this effect by enhancing activation differences between allele groups, which suggests an interaction between genetic makeup and OT availability on fusiform gyrus activation. These results support recent approaches to apply OT as a pharmacological treatment of ASD symptoms.	f	\N
22290697	ADHD has been linked to various constructs, yet there is a lack of focus on how its symptom clusters differentially associate with personality, which this study addresses. The current study examines the relationship between impulsive and inattentive ADHD traits and personality, indexed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III), in a sample of undergraduates. Impulsivity was associated with NEO-PI-R and MCMI-III traits characterized by emotional distress, interpersonal problems, and disruptive behavior, whereas inattention was associated only with focus-oriented constructs. ADHD-related inattention is a relatively modest predictor of personality traits, as compared with hyperactivity-impulsivity. These findings have implications regarding the distinctiveness and etiology of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR) ADHD types.	f	\N
22291031	Head movement imposes the additional burdens on the visual system of maintaining visual acuity and determining the origin of retinal image motion (i.e., self-motion vs. object-motion). Although maintaining visual acuity during self-motion is effected by minimizing retinal slip via the brainstem vestibular-ocular reflex, higher order visuovestibular mechanisms also contribute. Disambiguating self-motion versus object-motion also invokes higher order mechanisms, and a cortical visuovestibular reciprocal antagonism is propounded. Hence, one prediction is of a vestibular modulation of visual cortical excitability and indirect measures have variously suggested none, focal or global effects of activation or suppression in human visual cortex. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced phosphenes to probe cortical excitability, we observed decreased V5/MT excitability versus increased early visual cortex (EVC) excitability, during vestibular activation. In order to exclude nonspecific effects (e.g., arousal) on cortical excitability, response specificity was assessed using information theory, specifically response entropy. Vestibular activation significantly modulated phosphene response entropy for V5/MT but not EVC, implying a specific vestibular effect on V5/MT responses. This is the first demonstration that vestibular activation modulates human visual cortex excitability. Furthermore, using information theory, not previously used in phosphene response analysis, we could distinguish between a specific vestibular modulation of V5/MT excitability from a nonspecific effect at EVC.	f	\N
22292831	Auditory discrimination, memory, and attention-related functions were investigated in healthy 2-3-year-olds by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to changes in five auditory features and two types of novel sounds using the fast multifeature paradigm (MFP). ERP profiles consisting of the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and prominent late discriminative negativities (LDN) were obtained, for the first time, from this age group in a considerably shorter time compared to the traditional paradigms. Statistically significant responses from individual children were obtained mainly for the novel sounds. Thus, the MFP shows promise as a time-efficient paradigm for investigating central auditory functions in toddlers.	f	\N
22292917	The ability to make accurate judgments and execute effective skilled movements under severe temporal constraints are fundamental to elite performance in a number of domains including sport, military combat, law enforcement, and medicine. In two experiments, we examine the effect of stimulus strength on response time and accuracy in a temporally constrained, real-world, decision-making task. Specifically, we examine the effect of low stimulus intensity (black) and high stimulus intensity (sequin) uniform designs, worn by teammates, to determine the effect of stimulus strength on the ability of soccer players to make rapid and accurate responses. In both field- and laboratory-based scenarios, professional soccer players viewed developing patterns of play and were required to make a penetrative pass to an attacking player. Significant differences in response accuracy between uniform designs were reported in laboratory- and field-based experiments. Response accuracy was significantly higher in the sequin compared with the black uniform condition. Response times only differed between uniform designs in the laboratory-based experiment. These findings extend the literature into a real-world environment and have significant implications for the design of clothing wear in a number of domains.	f	\N
22293586	Hypothalamic orexin neurons are known to regulate sleep/wake stability, feeding behavior, emotions, autonomic nerve activity, and whole-body energy metabolism. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that orexin contributes to central regulation of glucose homeostasis. Intriguingly, central administration of orexin is reported to cause blood glucose-elevating effect or blood glucose-lowering effect in rodents, depending on the experimental conditions. Here we reviewed the recent reports regarding the mode and mechanism of actions of orexin on these two opposing effects, and discuss the functional significance for the maintenance of glucose homeostasis. The fact that orexin exhibits biphasic effects on autonomic nerve activity and lipolysis suggests that orexin dually regulates the glucose appearance. In fact, orexin neurons are activated not only depending on the demand for glucose but also according to a circadian rhythm in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The excited orexin neurons appear to alter the sympathetic or parasympathetic outflow to the periphery, and modulate the glucose production and utilization. Furthermore, deficiency of orexin action, particularly reduction of orexin 2 receptor-signaling, disrupts the mechanism for protection against insulin resistance associated with aging or induced by chronic high fat feeding in mice. Taken together, hypothalamic orexin system may manage multiple tasks to coordinate the interconnection among the arousal, feeding, circadian, and glucose homeostasis pathways.	f	\N
22294809	The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a widely used assay of behavioral alertness sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and circadian misalignment. The standard 10-minute duration of the PVT is often considered impractical for operational or clinical environments. Therefore, we developed and validated an adaptive-duration version of the PVT (PVT-A) that stops sampling once it has gathered enough information to correctly classify PVT performance. Repeated-measures experiments involving 10-minute PVT assessments every 2 hours across both acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) and 5 days of chronic partial sleep deprivation (PSD). Controlled laboratory environment. Seventy-four healthy subjects (34 women), aged 22 to 45 years. A TSD experiment involving 33 hours awake (n = 31 subjects), and a PSD experiment involving 5 nights of 4 hours time in bed (n = 43 subjects). The PVT-A algorithm was trained with 527 TSD test bouts and validated with 880 PSD test bouts. Based on our primary outcome measure "number of lapses (response times ≥ 500 ms) plus false starts (premature responses or response times < 100 ms)," 10-minute PVT performance was classified into high (≤ 5 lapses and false starts), medium (> 5 and ≤ 16 lapses and false starts), or low (> 16 lapses and false starts). The decision threshold for PVT-A termination was set so that at least 95% of training data-set tests were classified correctly and no test was classified incorrectly across 2 performance categories (i.e., high as low or low as high), resulting in an average test duration of 6.0 minutes (SD 2.4 min). In the validation data set, 95.7% of test bouts were correctly classified, and there were no incorrect classifications across 2 categories. Agreement corrected for chance was excellent (κ = 0.92). Across the 3 performance categories, sensitivity averaged 93.7% (range 87.2%-100%), and specificity averaged 96.8% (range 91.6%-99.9%). Test duration averaged 6.4 minutes (SD 1.7 min), with a minimum of 27 seconds. We developed and validated a highly accurate, sensitive, and specific adaptive-duration version of the 10-minute PVT. Test duration of the adaptive PVT averaged less than 6.5 minutes, with 60 tests (4.3%) terminating after less than 2 minutes, increasing the practicability of the test in operational and clinical settings. The adaptive-duration strategy may be superior to a simple reduction of PVT duration in which the fixed test duration may be too short to identify subjects with moderate impairment (showing deficits only later during the test) but unnecessarily long for those who are either fully alert or severely impaired.	f	\N
22306518	Spatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item.	f	\N
22307939	Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect inhibition of previously attended but irrelevant stimuli. Deficient IOR would increase the likelihood of revisiting previously searched locations or objects, thus leading to unproductive perseverations. Therefore, using a novel IOR task, we investigated whether high scoring checkers attentional biases to threat would result in dysfunctional inhibitory functioning compared to low checkers. In two tasks, we compared 53 subclinical high and 49 low checkers regarding IOR effects for stimuli that were concordant with the concerns of high but not of low checkers (electrical kitchen appliances: e.g., toaster, kettle). The difference between the two tasks was the cueing procedure. In one task, an appliance was switched "ON" and "OFF" as an unpredictive cue, drawing attention to the functionality of the stimulus. In this task, IOR was specifically attenuated in high checkers. In the other task, however, the cue was more abstract in form of a yellow outline that appeared around one of two appliances. Although the appliance was either "ON" or "OFF," this did not seem to matter and high checkers revealed a typical IOR pattern similar to low checkers. We conclude that IOR mechanisms might not be generally deficient in high checkers; rather only when attention is drawn to the threatening aspects of ecologically valid stimuli, then disengagement of attention is deficient in high checkers. We make suggestions on how our task-specific findings may inform cognitive interventions that target attentional control in the treatment of checking/obsessive-compulsive disorder.	f	\N
22309824	Maternal stress during pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with problematic child development. According to the fetal programming hypothesis adverse experiences during pregnancy increase maternal cortisol, which is then assumed to exert a negative effect on fetal development. Recent studies in non-pregnant women report significant associations between positive emotionality and low cortisol levels. We tested in a sample of 60 pregnant women whether both negative and positive life events independently predicted third-trimester baseline awakening cortisol levels. While the effect of negative life events proved unrelated positive life events significantly predicted lower cortisol levels. These findings suggest that positive experiences are of relevance regarding maternal morning cortisol levels in pregnancy reflecting a resource with potentially beneficial effects for the mother and the developing fetus. It might be promising for psychological intervention programs to focus on increasing positive experiences of the expecting mother rather than exclusively trying to reduce maternal stress during pregnancy.	f	\N
22311202	Emotion-eliciting films are commonly used to evoke subjective emotional responses in experimental settings. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether a set of film clips with discrete emotions were capable to elicit measurable objective physiological responses. The convergence between subjective and objective measures was evaluated. Finally, the effect of gender on emotional responses was investigated. A sample of 123 subjects participated in the study. Individuals were asked to view a set of emotional film clips capable to induce seven emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness and neutral state. Skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR) and subjective emotional responses were measured for each film clip. In comparison with neutral films, SCL was significantly increased after viewing fear films, and HR was also significantly incremented for anger and fear films. Physiological variations were associated with arousal measures indicating a convergence between subjective and objective reactions. Women appeared to display significantly greater SCL and HR responses for films inducing sadness. The findings suggest that physiological activation would be more easily induced by emotion-eliciting films that tap into emotions with higher subjective arousal such as anger and fear.	f	\N
22313064	There has been no research performed concerning the effects of the use of laptops and smartphones in the operating theatre on anaesthetist performance, yet these devices are now in frequent use. This article explores the implications of this phenomenon. The cognitive and environmental factors that support or detract from vigilance and multi-tasking are explored and core anaesthetic literature on the nature of anaesthetic work and operating theatre distractions is reviewed. Experienced anaesthetists are skilled at multi-tasking while maintaining situational awareness, but there are limits. Noise, interruptions and emotional arousal are detrimental to the cognitive performance of anaesthetists. While limited reading during periods of low task load may not reduce vigilance, computer use introduces text-based activities that are more interactive and potentially more distracting. All anaesthetists need to be mindful of the limits to the human attention span which requires observation and limiting distractions. Trainees have less experience and less 'attentional' safety margin, so should avoid adding additional distractions such as discretionary use of laptops or smartphones to their operating theatre work. We provide recommendations for future research on the specific advantages and disadvantages of pervasive computing in the operative theatre.	f	\N
22317652	This paper presents an analysis of cognitive-ergonomic aspects of e-learning courses, offered by an organism from Brazilian Public Administration. The Cognitive Ergonomic studies conductive and cognitive aspects concerning to the relation between human, physics elements and social elements of the work space. From that usability aspects were evaluated by these points: i) visualization; ii) text comprehension lecture; iii) memory; iv) interface; v) instructional design; and vi) attention and learning. That survey is characterized as having been applied using the following techniques: (1) bibliographic survey, (2) field survey and (3) analysis of the documents. It was chosen the semi-structured questionnaire as the main method of data collection. About the interacting with artifacts, the interface of the courses is classified as direct engagement, because it allows the user to get the feeling that acts directly on the objects. Although the courses are well-structured they have flaws that will be discussed below. Even with these problems, the courses have a good degree of usability.	f	\N
22318206	Several studies have demonstrated that one exercise session (ES) on a cycloergometer or ergometric treadmill causes a reduction in blood pressure (BP). However, there are few similar studies on walking, which is the exercise modality most available to the elderly. We investigated the immediate and 24-h effects of walking on BP in independent, community-living elderly individuals. Volunteers participated in a single ES and resting control session (CS). Before and after each session, BP was measured by auscultatory and oscillometric methods. After each session, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was conducted. An accelerometer was installed 48 h before the sessions and left in place for 5 days. The mean volunteer age was 67.7±3.5 years; 11 were hypertensive patients under treatment, and 12 were normotensive. In the total sample, there were immediate 14mm Hg and 12 mm Hg reductions in systolic BP (SBP) after the ES according to the auscultatory and oscillometric methods, respectively. Diastolic BP (DBP) was reduced by 4 mm Hg after the ES according to both methods. SBP during wakefulness and sleep and DBP during wakefulness were lower after the ES than after the CS (P<0.01), when wakefulness and sleep were determined individually (variable-time pattern) using data from the activity monitors and provided by the volunteers. The variable-time pattern was more effective in detecting reductions in BP than the fixed-time pattern.	f	\N
22332788	Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes.	f	\N
22348638	This commentary highlights some recent trends in sex research that have particular relevance for research on condom use, including studies investigating the meaning of sexual arousal, desire and pleasure; a focus on couple-level investigations; and the relevance of individual differences and personality characteristics to sexual risk-taking. Although historically, sexuality-related issues have received little systematic attention in the field of public health, researchers are now paying more attention to the role of pleasure and sexual arousal in condom use. It is argued that a better integration of findings from the area of sex research into the HIV and sexually transmissible infection (STI) field is needed to develop and improve programs to reduce the risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy.	f	\N
22354708	The main purpose of this eye tracking study was to map the correlates of gaze performance in a brief test of spontaneous gaze and point-gesture following in young children with autistic disorder (AD), Pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or typical development (TD). Gaze measures included the children's spontaneous tendency to look at the correct (attended) toy, and the latency of their correct responses. In addition to group differences (AD vs. TD), we found that in AD, accuracy of performance was specifically related to adaptive communication skills. The study also indicated that the latency of correct gaze shifts is related to verbal intelligence. These results have direct implications for our understanding of (responsive) joint attention impairments in AD.	f	\N
22360143	The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.	f	\N
22363538	Primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) is a common disorder in school-aged children. Previous studies have suggested that a developmental delay might play a role in the pathology of children with PMNE. However, microstructural abnormalities in the brains of these children have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we evaluated structural changes in the brains of children with PMNE using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Two groups consisting of 26 children with PMNE and 26 healthy controls were scanned using magnetic resonance DTI. The diffusion parameters of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were subjected to whole-brain, voxel-wise group comparisons using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). When compared to healthy subjects, children with PMNE showed both a decrease in FA and an increase in MD in the thalamus. MD also increased in the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula; these areas are all involved in controlling micturition. The significant changes seen in the thalamus could affect both urine storage and arousal from sleep. The microstructure abnormalities were observed in the thalamus, the medial frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, which are involved in micturition control network. This indicates developmental delay in these areas may be the cause of PMNE.	f	\N
22372566	This study examined the effect of the processing demands of to-be-remembered (TBR) words on item-method directed forgetting. Experiment 1 found that a standard memory group remembered fewer to-be-forgotten (TBF) words than a naming group, in which participants simply named the TBR words during the study phase, even though both groups were equally instructed to forget the TBF words. Experiment 2 manipulated the number of TBR words in the study list, keeping the number of TBF words constant, and found that TBF word forgetting was more difficult in the few TBR words condition than the more TBR words condition. The same pattern was found in the result of Experiment 3 when a cued recall test, instead of a free recall test, was used. In all the experiments, participants were asked to recall the TBF words before the TBR words. These findings are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis that it is easier to forget when there are fewer cognitive resources available during encoding.	f	\N
22380663	The tendency to express emotions non-verbally is positively related to perception of emotions in oneself. This study examined its relationship to perception of emotions in others. In 40 healthy adults, EEG theta synchronization was used to indicate emotion processing following presentation of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Both positive and negative expressiveness were associated with higher emotional sensitivity, as shown by cortical responses to facial expressions during the early, unconscious processing stage. At the late, conscious processing stage, positive expressiveness was associated with higher sensitivity to happy faces but lower sensitivity to angry faces. Thus, positive expressiveness predisposes people to allocate fewer attentional resources for conscious perception of angry faces. In contrast, negative expressiveness was consistently associated with higher sensitivity. The effects of positive expressiveness occurred in cortical areas that deal with emotions, but the effects of negative expressiveness occurred in areas engaged in self-referential processes in the context of social relationships.	f	\N
22390290	Voluntary shifts of attention are often motivated in experimental contexts by using well-known symbols that accurately predict the direction of targets. The authors report 3 experiments, which showed that the presentation of predictive spatial information does not provide sufficient incentive to elicit voluntary shifts of attention. For instance, when allowed to spontaneously choose between using a 100%-valid spatial word cue versus searching without the aid of the cue, observers consistently searched for a unique target without the aid of the cue. Another experiment showed that observers' choice to use spatial word cues could be biased by providing dedicated time to process the cue before the target display appeared (i.e., nonzero, cue-target SOAs). Although this dedicated processing time has routinely been included in spatial cuing experiments, its incentive-inducing role has never been acknowledged. Implications for theories of both voluntary and involuntary control are discussed.	f	\N
22390708	Although biased attention to emotional stimuli is considered a vulnerability factor for anxiety and dysphoria, research has infrequently related such attentional biases to dimensional models of vulnerability for anxiety and mood disorders. In two studies (Study 1, n = 64; Study 2, n = 168), we evaluate the differential associations of general negative affectivity, anxiety, and dysphoria with biases in selective attention among nonclinical participants selected to vary in both anxiety and dysphoria. Across both studies, preferential processing of angry faces at a 300-ms exposure duration was associated with a general tendency to experience a range of negative affect, rather than being specific to symptoms of either anxiety or dysphoria. In the second study, we found evidence of a suppressor relationship between anxiety and dysphoria in the prediction of delayed attentional biases (1,000 ms) for sad faces. In particular, dysphoria was specifically associated with biased attention toward sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for anxiety; by contrast, anxiety was specifically associated with attentional avoidance of sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for dysphoria. These results suggest that the specificity of relationships between components of negative affectivity and attention to emotional stimuli varies as a function of the time course at which attentional biases are assessed, highlighting the importance of evaluating both anxiety and dysphoria in research on attentional processing of emotional stimuli.	f	\N
22390710	This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3-5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3-5 days. SRCE-but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal-mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.	f	\N
22396120	The ability to estimate the time remaining until collision occurs with an approaching object (time-to-collision, TTC) is crucial for any mobile animal. In the present study, we report three experiments examining whether higher level cognitive factors, represented by affective value of approaching objects, could affect judgments of TTC. A theory of TTC estimates based purely on the optical variable tau does not predict an influence of the affective value of an approaching object. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared TTC estimates of threatening and neutral pictures that approached our participants on a screen and disappeared from view before a collision would have occurred. Images were taken from the International Affective Picture System. Threatening pictures-in particular, the picture of a frontal attack-were judged to collide earlier than neutral pictures. In Experiment 3, the approaching stimuli were faces with different emotional expressions. TTC tended to be underestimated for angry faces. We discuss these results, considering the roles of affective and cognitive mechanisms modulating TTC estimation and general time perception.	f	\N
22408336	Sexual activity is an important part of the human being's life but this instinct could be influenced by some factors such as diseases, drug using, aging, and menopause. But information about that is limited. The aim of this study is to determine the status of sexual activity among married menopausal women in Amol, Iran. This descriptive analytical study was conducted to describe the sexual activity and sexual dysfunction of women after menopause. Data were collected from health centers in Amol from 280 married women using a questionnaire (self-completed or by interview). Mean age of subjects were 55.9 ± 6.02 years. 23.4% of subjects reported that their sexual intercourse had been low. 70% of subjects reported a decrease in their sexual activities after menopause. Sexual dysfunctions includes sexual desire disorder 80% arousal dysfunction 80%, orgasmic dysfunction 25%, dyspareunia 55.6%, and lack of sexual satisfaction 43.2%. Findings revealed high percentage of sexual desire disorder and sexual arousal disorder in menopausal women. Therefore, we should have emphasis on counseling and education about sexual activities during the menopause period.	f	\N
22415562	The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between subjective memory complaints and objective cognitive performance in perimenopausal women. The specific aims were to determine (1) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to objective performance on memory tests, (2) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to other domains of cognitive function, and (3) if subjective memory complaints relate to other noncognitive factors, such as depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. Seventy-five perimenopausal women completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, which included measures of attention, working memory, verbal memory, verbal fluency, visuospatial skill, and fine motor dexterity; completed self-report inventories of their perceived memory and menopausal symptoms; and provided serum levels of estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone. Memory complaints were not associated with verbal learning or verbal memory but were associated with working memory and complex attention/vigilance. Memory complaints were also associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and sleep disturbance. Regression analyses revealed that memory complaints were best predicted by depressive symptoms, somatic complaints, and working memory performance. Memory complaints in the menopausal transition may reflect true difficulties with attentionally mediated cognitive processes. Memory complaints may also be associated with other menopausal-related symptoms.	f	\N
22417186	Inattention is among the most commonly referred problems for school-aged youth. Research suggests distinct mechanisms may contribute to attention problems in youth with anxiety disorders versus youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compared children (8-17 years) with anxiety disorders (n = 24) and children (8-16 years) with ADHD (n = 23) on neurocognitive tests of both general and emotion-based attention processes. As hypothesized, children with ADHD demonstrated poorer selective and sustained attention, whereas youth with anxiety disorders demonstrated greater attentional bias toward threatening faces on a visual probe task. Findings suggest the neuropsychological differentiation of attention problems in anxious and ADHD children, despite potentially similar phenotypes.	f	\N
22423353	While attention bias modification (ABM) is a promising novel treatment for anxiety disorders, clinical trial data remain restricted to adults. The authors examined whether ABM induces greater reductions in pediatric anxiety symptoms and symptom severity than multiple control training interventions. From a target sample of 186 treatment-seeking children at a hospital-based child anxiety clinic, 40 patients with an ongoing anxiety disorder who met all inclusion criteria were enrolled in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ABM designed to shift attention away from threat; placebo attention training using stimuli identical to those in the ABM condition; and placebo attention training using only neutral stimuli. All participants completed four weekly 480-trial sessions (1,920 total trials). Before and after the attention training sessions, children's clinical status was determined via semistructured interviews and questionnaires. Reduction in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity was compared across the three groups. Change in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity differed across the three conditions. This reflected significant reductions in the number of anxiety symptoms and symptom severity in the ABM condition but not in the placebo attention training or placebo-neutral condition. ABM, compared with two control conditions, reduces pediatric anxiety symptoms and severity. Further study of efficacy and underlying mechanisms is warranted.	f	\N
22424288	People with eating disorders (EDs) have difficulties with social functioning. One explanatory mechanism is a problem with over-sensitivity to rejection and/or low sensitivity to social reward. The aim of this study is to investigate attentional bias to facial stimuli in people with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs and healthy controls (HCs) and to test whether these attentional biases are linked to adverse early experiences. Forty-six participants with a current diagnosis of EDs (29 with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 17 with bulimia nervosa (BN)), 22 participants recovered from an eating disorder (13 with past AN and nine with past BN) and 50 HCs completed a dot-probe task with faces expressing rejection and acceptance. Participants reported on parental style and adverse early experiences. People with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs show an attentional bias to rejecting faces and a difficulty disengaging attention from these stimuli. Also, they had a sustained attentional avoidance of accepting faces. HCs demonstrated the opposite attentional pattern. The attentional bias to rejection was correlated with adverse childhood experiences. People with an EDs show vigilance to rejection and avoidance of social reward. This may contribute to the causation or maintenance of the illness.	f	\N
22425345	Most types of neuromuscular diseases are known to be associated with a high risk of sleep-disordered breathing. We performed a prospective study in a well individualized group of muscular disorders, congenital muscular dystrophies (CMD), to characterize the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing and thereby to determine the potential usefulness of sleep studies in such patients. Twenty CMD children (12 F, 8 M, aged 4-17 years) were included. Using overnight polysomnography, we determined the following parameters: sleep stages, sleep latency, sleep efficiency index, wake time duration, total sleep time (TST), apnea/hypopnea index (AHI), arterial blood oxygen saturation, and nocturnal paroxysmal EEG activity. As compared to healthy controls, we detected in our study group frequent awakenings, a decreased TST (mean 448 ± 44.4 min) and a decreased REM duration (mean 11.5 ± 3.5% of TST). Significant increase in wake time duration (28-90 min) and decrease in REM duration were observed in 12 patients. An apnea/hypopnea syndrome was detected in 13 patients (65%) with central apneas in 8, obstructive apneas in 2 and 3 mixed apneas in 3 patients. AHI was >10 in 3 cases, <10> 5 in 4 cases and were concomitant with blood oxygen de-saturation in four cases. NPA were detected in 10 patients ranging from 10 to 40% of TST. Our results confirm the high incidence of sleep disordered breathing in children with CMD, and thereby, the usefulness of overnight polysomnography recordings in such patients.	f	\N
22438275	Characterization of large-scale brain networks using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging is typically based on the assumption of network stationarity across the duration of scan. Recent studies in humans have questioned this assumption by showing that within-network functional connectivity fluctuates on the order of seconds to minutes. Time-varying profiles of resting-state networks (RSNs) may relate to spontaneously shifting, electrophysiological network states and are thus mechanistically of particular importance. However, because these studies acquired data from awake subjects, the fluctuating connectivity could reflect various forms of conscious brain processing such as passive mind wandering, active monitoring, memory formation, or changes in attention and arousal during image acquisition. Here, we characterize RSN dynamics of anesthetized macaques that control for these accounts, and compare them to awake human subjects. We find that functional connectivity among nodes comprising the "oculomotor (OCM) network" strongly fluctuated over time during awake as well as anaesthetized states. For time dependent analysis with short windows (<60 s), periods of positive functional correlations alternated with prominent anticorrelations that were missed when assessed with longer time windows. Similarly, the analysis identified network nodes that transiently link to the OCM network and did not emerge in average RSN analysis. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis reliably revealed transient states of large-scale synchronization that spanned all seeds. The results illustrate that resting-state functional connectivity is not static and that RSNs can exhibit nonstationary, spontaneous relationships irrespective of conscious, cognitive processing. The findings imply that mechanistically important network information can be missed when using average functional connectivity as the single network measure.	f	\N
22448903	The bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect (OD effect) are typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects. This study tested the simple attentional account or processing time hypothesis as a possible explanation of the bizarreness effect and the OD effect. In the bizarreness effect literature, this hypothesis gained support by some studies but was also discredited by other research. In light of these conflicting results, Experiment 1 was devised to test the processing time hypothesis in the bizarreness effect by using black-and-white concrete images and manipulating the time allotted for processing the stimuli (500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Concerning the OD effect, no research has directly investigated the impact of processing time by examining the effect under varying amounts of study time. Experiment 2 was thus devised to investigate this same hypothesis in the OD effect and time allotted for processing the stimuli was manipulated (250 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Results did not support the processing time hypothesis since the magnitude of the bizarreness effect and of the OD effect was not modulated by the amount of time allotted for processing the stimuli. We refer to alternative explanations to account for these two secondary-distinctiveness-based effects.	f	\N
22449132	The automatic processing of the place-value of digits in a multi-digit number was investigated in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 and two control experiments employed a numerical comparison task in which the place-value of a non-zero digit was varied in a string composed of zeros. Experiment 2 employed a physical comparison task in which strings of digits varied in their physical sizes. In both types of tasks, the place-value of the non-zero digit in the string was irrelevant to the task performed. Interference of the place-value information was found in both tasks. When the non-zero digit occupied a lower place-value, it was recognized slower as a larger digit or as written in a larger font size. We concluded that place-value in a multi-digit number is processed automatically. These results support the notion of a decomposed representation of multi-digit numbers in memory.	f	\N
22449135	In the 1st reported experiment, we demonstrate that auditory memory is robust over extended retention intervals (RIs) when listeners compare the timbre of complex tones, even when active or verbal rehearsal is difficult or impossible. Thus, our tones have an abstract timbre that resists verbal labeling, they differ across trials so that no "standard" comparison stimulus is built up, and the spectral change to be discriminated is very slight and therefore does not shift stimuli across verbal categories. Nonetheless, performance in this nonverbal immediate memory task was better at short (1-, 2-, or 4-s) than long (8-, 16-, or 32-s) RIs, an outcome predicted by temporal distinctiveness theory whereby at long RIs, tones are closer in time to tones on previous trials. We reject this account in the 2nd experiment, where we demonstrate that the ratio of RI to intertrial interval makes absolutely no difference to performance. We suggest that steady forgetting is consistent with a psychoacoustically derived conception of an auditory memory (the timbre memory model) that embodies time-based forgetting in the absence of feature-specific interference.	f	\N
22450570	In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.	f	\N
22455840	In order to execute a correct eye movement to a target in a search display, a saccade program toward the target element must be activated, while saccade programs toward distracting elements must be inhibited. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of the frontal eye fields (FEFs) in oculomotor competition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was administered over either the left FEF, the right FEF, or the vertex (control site) at 3 time intervals after target presentation, while subjects performed an oculomotor capture task. When TMS was applied over the FEF contralateral to the visual field where a target was presented, there was less interference of an ipsilateral distractor compared with FEF stimulation ipsilateral to the target's visual field or TMS over vertex. Furthermore, TMS over the FEFs decreased latencies of saccades to the contralateral visual field, irrespective of whether the saccade was directed to the target or to the distractor. These findings show that single-pulse TMS over the FEFs enhances the selection of a target in the contralateral visual field and decreases saccade latencies to the contralateral visual field.	f	\N
22456823	Amygdala dysfunction has been reported to exist in youths and adults with psychopathic traits. However, there has been disagreement as to whether this dysfunction reflects a primary emotional deficit or is secondary to atypical attentional control. The authors examined the validity of the contrasting predictions. Participants were 15 children and adolescents (ages 10–17 years) with both disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits and 17 healthy comparison youths. Functional MRI was used to assess the response of the amygdala and regions implicated in top-down attentional control (the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices) to emotional expression under conditions of high and low attentional load. Relative to youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits, healthy comparison subjects showed a significantly greater increase in the typical amygdala response to fearful expressions under low relative to high attentional load conditions. There was also a selective inverse relationship between the response to fearful expressions under low attentional load and the callous-unemotional component (but not the narcissism or impulsivity component) of psychopathic traits. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in the significant recruitment of the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices as a function of attentional load. Youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala responses to fearful expressions under low attentional load but no indications of increased recruitment of regions implicated in top-down attentional control. These findings suggest that the emotional deficit observed in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits is primary and not secondary to increased top-down attention to nonemotional stimulus features.	f	\N
22458959	This study investigated the effects of two very commonly used countermeasures against driver sleepiness, opening the window and listening to music, on subjective and physiological sleepiness measures during real road driving. In total, 24 individuals participated in the study. Sixteen participants received intermittent 10-min intervals of: (i) open window (2 cm opened); and (ii) listening to music, during both day and night driving on an open motorway. Both subjective sleepiness and physiological sleepiness (blink duration) was estimated to be significantly reduced when subjects listened to music, but the effect was only minor compared with the pronounced effects of night driving and driving duration. Open window had no attenuating effect on either sleepiness measure. No significant long-term effects beyond the actual countermeasure application intervals occurred, as shown by comparison to the control group (n = 8). Thus, despite their popularity, opening the window and listening to music cannot be recommended as sole countermeasures against driver sleepiness.	f	\N
22459732	The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of different strategies for regulating emotions associated with smoking on subjective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of smoking. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to reappraise (n = 32), accept (n = 31), or suppress (n = 31) their emotions associated with smoking. The dependent measures included subjective reports of craving, negative affect, and attentional biases, as measured by a modified dot-probe task, and persistence during a task to measure distress tolerance. Individuals who were encouraged to reappraise the consequences of smoking showed diminished craving, lower negative affect, had reduced attentional biases for smoking-related cues, and exhibited greater task persistence than those who were instructed to accept and suppress their urge to smoke. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more effective than acceptance or suppression strategies for targeting smoking-related problems.	f	\N
22465299	Mechanisms of attention are required to prioritise goal-relevant sensory events under conditions of stimulus competition. According to the perceptual load model of attention, the extent to which task-irrelevant inputs are processed is determined by the relative demands of discriminating the target: the more perceptually demanding the target task, the less unattended stimuli will be processed. Although much evidence supports the perceptual load model for competing stimuli within a single sensory modality, the effects of perceptual load in one modality on distractor processing in another is less clear. Here we used steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs) to measure neural responses to irrelevant visual checkerboard stimuli while participants performed either a visual or auditory task that varied in perceptual load. Consistent with perceptual load theory, increasing visual task load suppressed SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. In contrast, increasing auditory task load enhanced SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. This enhanced neural response to irrelevant visual stimuli under auditory load suggests that exhausting capacity within one modality selectively compromises inhibitory processes required for filtering stimuli in another.	f	\N
22468726	The current study focuses on the relationship between alerting and executive attention. Previous studies reported an increased flanker congruency effect following alerting cues. In the first two experiments, we found that the alertness-congruency interaction did not exist for all executive tasks (it appeared for a flanker task but not for a Stroop task). In Experiments 3 and 4, we show that alerting increases the congruency effect in a response selection task only when the relevant and irrelevant information is spatially separated. We suggest that alerting modulates the allocation of attention by prioritizing processing of spatial information presented in the visual field. This process can be adaptive under many circumstances, but it comes at a cost. Alerting could possibly compromise our performance when required to filter out irrelevant spatial information.	f	\N
22476609	Biased processing of drug-associated stimuli is believed to be a crucial feature of addiction. Particularly, an attentional bias seems to contribute to the disorder's maintenance. Recent studies suggest differential effects for stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) or the terminal stage of the smoking ritual (END-smoking-stimuli), with the former but not the later evoking high cue-reactivity. The current study investigated the neuronal network underlying an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli and END-smoking-stimuli in smokers and tested the hypothesis that the attentional bias is greater for BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Sixteen non-deprived smokers and 16 non-smoking controls participated in an fMRI study. Drug pictures (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli, END-smoking-stimuli) and control pictures were overlaid with geometrical figures and presented for 300 ms. Subjects had to identify picture content (identification-task) or figure orientation (distraction-task). The distraction-task was intended to demonstrate attentional bias. Behavioral data revealed an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli but not to END-smoking-stimuli in both groups. However, only smokers showed mesocorticolimbic deactivations in the distraction-task with BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Importantly, these deactivations were significantly stronger for BEGIN- than for END-smoking-stimuli and correlated with the attentional bias score. Several explanations may account for missing group differences in behavioral data. Brain data suggest smokers using regulatory strategies in response to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli to prevent the elicitation of motivational responses interfering with distraction-task performance. These strategies could be reflected in the observed deactivations and might lead to a performance level in smokers that is similar to that of non-smokers.	f	\N
22477056	Previous studies investigating transfer of perceptual learning between luminance-defined (LD) motion and texture-contrast-defined (CD) motion tasks have found little or no transfer from LD to CD motion tasks but nearly perfect transfer from CD to LD motion tasks. Here, we introduce a paradigm that yields a clean double dissociation: LD training yields no transfer to the CD task, but more interestingly, CD training yields no transfer to the LD task. Participants were trained in two variants of a global motion task. In one (LD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that differed from the background in mean luminance. In the other (CD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that had mean luminance equal to the background but differed from the background in texture contrast. The task was to judge whether the signal tokens were moving to the right or to the left. Task difficulty was varied by manipulating the proportion of tokens that moved coherently across the four frames of the stimulus display. Performance in each of the LD and CD variants of the task was measured as training proceeded. In each task, training produced substantial improvement in performance in the trained task; however, in neither case did this improvement show any significant transfer to the nontrained task.	f	\N
22480345	Although circadian and sleep research has made extraordinary progress in the recent years, one remaining challenge is the objective quantification of sleepiness in individuals suffering from sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and excessive somnolence. The major goal of the present study was to apply principal component analysis to the wake electroencephalographic (EEG) spectrum in order to establish an objective measure of sleepiness. The present analysis was led by the hypothesis that in sleep-deprived individuals, the time course of self-rated sleepiness correlates with the time course score on the 2nd principal component of the EEG spectrum. The resting EEG of 15 young subjects was recorded at 2-h intervals for 32-50 h. Principal component analysis was performed on the sets of 16 single-Hz log-transformed EEG powers (1-16 Hz frequency range). The time course of self-perceived sleepiness correlated strongly with the time course of the 2nd principal component score, irrespective of derivation (frontal or occipital) and of analyzed section of the 7-min EEG record (2-min section with eyes open or any of the five 1-min sections with eyes closed). This result indicates the possibility of deriving an objective index of physiological sleepiness by applying principal component analysis to the wake EEG spectrum.	f	\N
22484996	The purpose of this paper is to review the literature examining subjective and physiological arousal associated with an individual's preferred modes of gambling. Arousal is hypothesised to play a central role in the onset and maintenance of problem gambling. Most studies have failed to differentiate relevant patterns of arousal elicited by stimuli associated with preferred versus non-preferred modes of gambling on the assumption that similar processes motivate all gamblers. At the conceptual level, sub-typing theories of problem gambling propose differences in the motivation to gamble, and the associated role arousal plays in maintaining behaviours. A review of the existing literature reveals preliminary findings that indicate that gamblers respond differentially to preferred compared to non-preferred gambling stimuli, and that gamblers may display greater reactivity in arousal to gambling cues compared to non-gamblers. Understanding differences in such patterns of arousal can be used to inform clinical interventions by effectively targeting the nature and role of arousal associated with preferred modes of gambling, and determining the extent to which non-preferred modes act as secondary reinforces triggering by gambling urges.	f	\N
22487940	Motor overflow is extraneous movement in a limb not involved in a motor action. Typically, overflow is observed in people with neurological impairments and in healthy children and adults during strenuous and attention-demanding tasks. In the current study, we found that young infants produce vast amounts of motor overflow, corroborating claims of symmetry being the default state of the motor system. While manipulating an object with one hand, all 27 of the typically developing 4.5- to 7.5-month-old infants who we observed displayed overflow movements of the free hand (on 4/5 of unimanual actions). Mirror-image movements of the hands occurred on 1/8 of unimanual actions, and the hands and legs moved in synchrony on 1/3 of unimanual acts. Motor overflow was less frequent when infants were in a sitting posture and when infants watched their acting hand, suggesting that upright posture and visual examination may help to alleviate overflow and break obligatory symmetry in healthy infants.	f	\N
22502818	The present study highlights the utility of context-specific learning for different probe types in accounting for the commonly observed dependence of negative priming on probe selection. Using a Stroop priming procedure, Experiments 1a and 1b offered a demonstration that Stroop priming effects can differ qualitatively for selection and no-selection probes when probe selection is manipulated between subjects, but not when it is manipulated randomly from trial to trial within subject (see also Moore, 1994). In Experiments 2 and 3, selection and no-selection probes served as two contexts that varied randomly from trial to trial, but for which proportion repeated was manipulated separately. A context-specific proportion repeated effect was observed in Experiment 2, characterized by modest quantitative shifts in the repetition effects as a function of the context-specific proportion repeated manipulation. However, with a longer intertrial interval in Experiment 3, a context-specific proportion repeated manipulation that focused on the no-selection probes changed the repetition effect qualitatively, from negative priming when the proportion repeated was .25 to positive priming when the proportion repeated was .75. The results are discussed with reference to the role of rapid, context-specific learning processes in the integration of prior experiences with current perception and action.	f	\N
22504294	Recent findings suggest that, relative to negative feedback, positive feedback counteracts conflict processing and subsequent attentional adaptation. Here we hypothesize that this interaction may direct adjustments in perception and action via the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We recorded EEG while participants performed an arrow flanker task with monetary gain or loss as arbitrary reward feedback between trials. As predicted, we found a reduction in conflict-driven adaptation for trials in which conflict was followed by monetary gain (vs. monetary loss), a behavioral effect accompanied by a modulation in early visual processing related to the processing of the distracters. Moreover, time-frequency analyses showed that ongoing fronto-central theta oscillations induced by previous conflict sustained longer after loss than after gain, an interaction presumably reflecting ACC modulation. These data provide a first important step toward understanding the neural mechanism underlying the affective regulation of conflict-driven behavior.	f	\N
22507824	Previous studies have documented the positive effects of mindfulness meditation on executive control. What has been lacking, however, is an understanding of the mechanism underlying this effect. Some theorists have described mindfulness as embodying two facets-present moment awareness and emotional acceptance. Here, we examine how the effect of meditation practice on executive control manifests in the brain, suggesting that emotional acceptance and performance monitoring play important roles. We investigated the effect of meditation practice on executive control and measured the neural correlates of performance monitoring, specifically, the error-related negativity (ERN), a neurophysiological response that occurs within 100 ms of error commission. Meditators and controls completed a Stroop task, during which we recorded ERN amplitudes with electroencephalography. Meditators showed greater executive control (i.e. fewer errors), a higher ERN and more emotional acceptance than controls. Finally, mediation pathway models further revealed that meditation practice relates to greater executive control and that this effect can be accounted for by heightened emotional acceptance, and to a lesser extent, increased brain-based performance monitoring.	f	\N
22508639	In this article, we illustrate how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be adapted for the treatment of PTSD among traumatized refugees and ethnic minority populations, providing examples from our treatment, culturally adapted CBT, or CA-CBT. CA-CBT has a unique approach to exposure (typical exposure is poorly tolerated in these groups), emphasizes the treatment of somatic sensations (a particularly salient part of the presentation of PTSD in these groups), and addresses comorbid anxiety disorders and anger. To accomplish these treatment goals, CA-CBT emphasizes emotion exposure and emotion regulation techniques such as meditation and aims to promote emotional and psychological flexibility. We describe 12 key aspects of adapting CA-CBT that make it a culturally sensitive treatment of traumatized refugee and ethnic minority populations. We discuss three models that guide our treatment and that can be used to design culturally sensitive treatments: (a) the panic attack-PTSD model to illustrate the many processes that generate PTSD in these populations, highlighting the role of arousal and somatic symptoms; (b) the arousal triad to demonstrate how somatic symptoms are produced and the importance of targeting comorbid anxiety conditions and psychopathological processes; and (c) the multisystem network (MSN) model of emotional state to reveal how some of our therapeutic techniques (e.g., body-focused techniques: bodily stretching paired with self-statements) bring about psychological flexibility and improvement.	f	\N
22510246	Despite the interest for the brain correlates of male sexual arousal, few studies investigated neural mechanisms underlying psychogenic erectile dysfunction (ED). Although these studies showed several brain regions active in ED patients during visual erotic stimulation, the dynamics of inhibition of sexual response is still unclear. This study investigated the dynamics of brain regions involved in the psychogenic ED. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous penile tumescence (PT) were used to study brain activity evoked in 17 outpatients with psychogenic ED and 19 healthy controls during visual erotic stimulation. Patterns of brain activation related to different phases of sexual response in the two groups were compared. Simultaneous recording of blood oxygen level-dependent fMRI responses and PT during visual erotic stimulation. During visual erotic stimuli, a larger activation was observed for the patient group in the left superior parietal lobe, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas the control group showed larger activation in the right middle insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. Moreover, the left superior parietal lobe showed a larger activation in patients than controls especially during the later stage of sexual response. Our results suggest that, among regions more active in patient group, the left superior parietal lobe plays a crucial role in inhibition of sexual response. Previous studies showed that left superior parietal lobe is involved in monitoring of internal body representation. The larger activation of this region in patients during later stages of sexual response suggests a high monitoring of the internal body representation, possibly affecting the behavioral response. These findings provide insight on brain mechanisms involved in psychogenic ED.	f	\N
22524263	Memory-guided decision making is dynamic and context-dependent, even though many studies describe an enhancement of the P3 for recognized items in memory tasks ("old-new effect"). This study utilized a delay-dependent working memory task during which decision making could be optimized by focusing attention on detected changes instead of recognized similarities. Mean P3 amplitude and delta activity were analyzed from participants who classified probe stimuli as identical or modified. The P3 amplitudes were larger for modified than for identical probes, even when the probe occurred 4,000 ms after the primary stimulus. Enhanced single-trial amplitude, trial-by-trial consistency, and frontoparietal phase coherence of delta activity contributed to the larger P3 for the modified probe. Thus, context-dependent attentional resource allocation supporting memory-guided decisions might explain the enhancement of the P3 for specific probe types.	f	\N
22524337	This paper outlines the principal behavioral methods used to study music processing in infancy. The advantages of conditioning procedures are offset by high attrition rates and restrictions on the stimuli that can be used. The head-turn preference procedure is more user-friendly but poses greater interpretive challenges. In view of the multidimensional nature of infant attention, no single response measure, whether behavioral, physiological, or neural, can provide unambiguous information about music processing in infancy. Greater use of ecologically valid stimuli is likely to generate increased cooperation from infants and greater generality of the findings.	f	\N
22526718	Response priming refers to the finding that a prime stimulus preceding a target stimulus influences the response to the following target stimulus. Typically, responses are faster and more accurate if the prime calls for the same response as the target (i.e., compatible trials), as compared with the situation where primes and targets trigger different responses (i.e., incompatible trials). However, the effect depends on presentational and temporal parameters such as the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target, or prime duration. Until now, the special role of moving stimuli was largely ignored. In the present research, experiments were conducted using clearly visible moving dots as primes and static arrows as targets. Essentially, with short SOAs up to 200 ms, participants responded faster to compatible targets. In contrast, with SOAs above 200 ms, participants responded faster to incompatible targets. The results were compared with response priming with static primes. Here, a different pattern of results emerged, with faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets at a long SOA of 300 ms. Overall, the experiments provide evidence for the existence of an inhibitory mechanism in action control when (distracting) motion stimuli are present. Results could be explained with slight changes to different accounts of negative response priming effects, as well as theories of attention.	f	\N
22528785	In a category-learning experiment, we assessed whether participants were able to selectively attend to different components of a compound stimulus in two distinct contexts. The participants were presented with stimulus compounds for which they had to learn categorical labels. Each compound comprised one feature from each of two dimensions, and on different trials the compound was presented in two contexts, X and Y. In Context X, Dimension A was relevant to the solution of the categorization task and Dimension B was irrelevant, whereas in Context Y, Dimension A was irrelevant and Dimension B was relevant. The results of transfer tests to novel stimuli suggested that people learned to attend selectively to Dimension A in Context X and Dimension B in Context Y. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that people can learn to selectively attend to particular dimensions of stimuli dependent on the context in which the stimuli are presented. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that context-dependent changes in attention transfer to other categorization tasks involving novel stimuli.	f	\N
22532384	We have previously reported evidence that repetitions of letters, colors, sizes, and common motion paths are more rapidly detected when they are presented unilaterally (i.e., both in the same visual field) versus bilaterally (one element in each visual field; Butcher and Cavanagh (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 70:714-724, 2008). Here, we report evidence that this unilateral field advantage (UFA) for repetition detection does not depend on prior experience with the elements that comprise the repetition. In Experiment 1, native English, Persian, and Japanese speakers were tested on a repetition detection task involving characters from Western, Arabic, and Japanese character sets. The character sets were tested in blocks, in each of which subjects were presented with four characters for 16 ms and asked to report whether any two of the characters were identical. The subjects were faster detecting repetitions that were presented unilaterally rather than bilaterally, and there was no interaction with stimulus familiarity. A second experiment replicated this finding with native English speakers only, using a longer stimulus duration (150 ms). We had previously proposed that the UFA arises because the low-level processes that group physically identical items operate more efficiently within than across hemifields. Our data now indicate that this grouping process is insensitive to item familiarity, supporting the claim that the process is low-level.	f	\N
22537695	Deficits in cognitive functioning are associated with many safety concerns, including difficulties performing activities of daily living, medication errors, motor vehicle accidents, impaired awareness of deficits, decision-making capacity, falls, and travel away from home. Preventing adverse safety outcomes is particularly relevant in rehabilitation patients. Integration of information and recommendations stemming from allied disciplines, such as rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychology, is the most effective way to limit poor outcomes. Education and prevention counseling by health care professionals is an important approach in limiting adverse safety outcomes in patients with cognitive impairment.	f	\N
22545929	Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.	f	\N
22560111	Consciousness alterations can be experienced during unstructured, monotonous stimuli. These effects have not been linked to particular cognitive operations; individual differences in response to such stimulation remain poorly understood. We examined the role of hypnotizability and dissociative tendencies in mind-wandering (MW) during a sensory homogenization procedure (ganzfeld). We expected that the influence of ganzfeld on MW would be more pronounced among highly hypnotizable individuals (highs), particularly those high in dissociative tendencies. High and low hypnotizables, also stratified by dissociation, completed the sustained attention to response task during ganzfeld and control conditions. High dissociative highs made more commission errors during ganzfeld, suggesting increased MW, whereas the other groups displayed the opposite pattern. Increases in commission errors from the control condition to ganzfeld were associated with more alterations in consciousness and negative affect, but only among highs. Sensory homogenization had opposite effects on MW depending on the interaction of hypnotizability and dissociation.	f	\N
22563629	Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (deviant sounds among standard sounds) are known to capture attention and impact negatively on ongoing behavioral performance (behavioral oddball distraction). Traditional views consider such distraction as the ineluctable consequence of the deviant sounds' low probability of occurrence relative to that of the standard. Contrary to this contention, recent evidence demonstrates that distraction by deviant sounds is not obligatory and occurs only when sounds (standards and deviants), though to be ignored, act as useful warning cues by providing information as to whether and when a target stimulus is to be presented (Parmentier, Elsley, & Ljungberg, 2010). The present study aimed to extend this finding by disentangling the roles of event information (target's probability of occurrence) and temporal information (target's time of occurrence). Comparing performance in a cross-modal oddball task where standard and deviant sounds provided temporal information, event information, both, or none, we found that distraction by deviant sounds emerged when sounds conveyed event information. These results suggest that unexpected changes in a stream of sounds yield behavioral distraction to the extent that standards and deviants carry relevant goal-directed information, specifically, the likelihood of occurrence of an upcoming target.	f	\N
22563872	The search for predictors of schizophrenia has accelerated with a growing focus on early intervention and prevention of psychotic illness. Studying nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia enables identification of markers of vulnerability for the illness independent of confounds associated with psychosis. The goal of these studies was to develop new auditory continuous performance tests (ACPTs) and evaluate their effects in individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives. We carried out two studies of auditory vigilance with tasks involving working memory (WM) and interference control with increasing levels of cognitive load to discern the information-processing vulnerabilities in a sample of schizophrenia patients, and two samples of nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Study 1 assessed adults (mean age = 41), and Study 2 assessed teenagers and young adults age 13-25 (M = 19). Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on all five versions of the ACPTs, whereas relatives were impaired only on WM tasks, particularly the two interference tasks that maximize cognitive load. Across all groups, the interference tasks were more difficult to perform than the other tasks. Schizophrenia patients performed worse than relatives, who performed worse than controls. For patients, the effect sizes were large (Cohen's d = 1.5), whereas for relatives they were moderate (d = ~0.40-0.50). There was no age by group interaction in the relatives-control comparison except for participants <31 years of age. Novel WM tasks that manipulate cognitive load and interference control index an important component of the vulnerability to schizophrenia.	f	\N
22564396	A previous study reported a method for measuring the spectral transmittance of individual human eyelids. A prototype light mask using narrow-band "green" light (λmax = 527 nm) was used to deliver light through closed eyelids in two within-subjects studies. The first study investigated whether an individual-specific light dose could suppress melatonin by 40% through the closed eyelid without disrupting sleep. The light doses were delivered at three times during the night: 1) beginning (while subjects were awake), 2) middle (during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep), and 3) end (during non-REM sleep). The second study investigated whether two individual-specific light doses expected to suppress melatonin by 30% and 60% and delivered through subjects' closed eyelids before the time of their predicted minimum core body temperature would phase delay the timing of their dim light melatonin onset (DLMO). Compared to a dark control night, light delivered through eyelids suppressed melatonin by 36% (p = 0.01) after 60-minute light exposure at the beginning, 45% (p = 0.01) at the middle, and 56% (p < 0.0001) at the end of the night. In the second study, compared to a dark control night, melatonin was suppressed by 25% (p = 0.03) and by 45% (p = 0.009) and circadian phase, as measured by DLMO, was delayed by 17 minutes (p = 0.03) and 71 minutes (ns) after 60-minute exposures to light levels 1 and 2, respectively. These studies demonstrate that individual-specific doses of light delivered through closed eyelids can suppress melatonin and phase shift DLMO and may be used to treat circadian sleep disorders.	f	\N
22571890	The present study tested predictions derived from the Risk as Feelings hypothesis about the effects of prior patients' negative treatment outcomes on physicians' subsequent treatment decisions. Two experiments at The University of Chicago, U.S.A., utilized a computer simulation of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patient with enhanced realism to present participants with one of three experimental conditions: AAA rupture causing a watchful waiting death (WWD), perioperative death (PD), or a successful operation (SO), as well as the statistical treatment guidelines for AAA. Experiment 1 tested effects of these simulated outcomes on (n = 76) laboratory participants' (university student sample) self-reported emotions, and their ratings of valence and arousal of the AAA rupture simulation and other emotion-inducing picture stimuli. Experiment 2 tested two hypotheses: 1) that experiencing a patient WWD in the practice trial's experimental condition would lead physicians to choose surgery earlier, and 2) experiencing a patient PD would lead physicians to choose surgery later with the next patient. Experiment 2 presented (n = 132) physicians (surgeons and geriatricians) with the same experimental manipulation and a second simulated AAA patient. Physicians then chose to either go to surgery or continue watchful waiting. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the WWD experimental condition significantly increased anxiety, and was rated similarly to other negative and arousing pictures. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, after controlling for demographics, baseline anxiety, intolerance for uncertainty, risk attitudes, and the influence of simulation characteristics, the WWD experimental condition significantly expedited decisions to choose surgery for the next patient. The results support the Risk as Feelings hypothesis on physicians' treatment decisions in a realistic AAA patient computer simulation. Bad outcomes affected emotions and decisions, even with statistical AAA rupture risk guidance present. These results suggest that bad patient outcomes cause physicians to experience anxiety and regret that influences their subsequent treatment decision-making for the next patient.	f	\N
22574846	In a recent paper published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, we assessed the differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers ( Burton, Duty, & Leibowitz, 2011 ). We found that the sexually victimized group had more severe developmental antecedents (e.g., trauma and early exposure to pornography) and behavioral difficulties (sexual aggression, arousal, pornography use, and nonsexual offenses). The present study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized adolescent sexual abusers with a group of nonsexually victimized delinquent youth. Findings included that delinquent youth had fewer behavioral and developmental problems than the comparison groups. In addition, sexually victimized sexual abusers had the highest mean scores on trauma and personality measures. Implications for research and treatment are offered.	f	\N
22579705	Patients with multimodal semantic impairment following stroke (referred to here as 'semantic aphasia' or SA) fail to show the standard effects of frequency in comprehension tasks. Instead, they show absent or even reverse frequency effects: i.e., better understanding of less common words. In addition, SA is associated with poor regulatory control of semantic processing and executive deficits. We used a synonym judgement task to investigate the possibility that the normal processing advantage for high frequency (HF) words fails to emerge in these patients because HF items place greater demands on executive control. In the first part of this study, SA patients showed better performance on more imageable as opposed to abstract items, but minimal or reverse frequency effects in the same task, and these negative effects of word frequency on comprehension were related to the degree of executive impairment. Ratings from healthy subjects indicated that it was easier to establish potential semantic associations between probe and distracter words for HF trials, suggesting that reverse frequency effects might reflect a failure to suppress spurious associations between HF probes and distracters. In a subsequent experiment, the aphasic patients' performance improved when HF probes and targets were presented alongside low frequency distracters, supporting this hypothesis. An additional study with healthy participants used dual task methodology to examine the impact of divided attention on synonym judgement. Although frequently encountered words were processed more efficiently overall, the secondary task selectively disrupted performance for high but not low frequency trials. Taken together, these results show that positive effects of frequency are counteracted in SA by increases in semantic control requirements for HF words.	f	\N
22579968	Processing in one sensory modality may modulate processing in another. Here we investigate how simply viewing the hand can influence the sense of touch. Previous studies showed that non-informative vision of the hand enhances tactile acuity, relative to viewing an object at the same location. However, it remains unclear whether this Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET) involves a phasic enhancement of tactile processing circuits triggered by the visual event of seeing the hand, or more prolonged, tonic neuroplastic changes, such as recruitment of additional cortical areas for tactile processing. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) evoked by electrical stimulation of the right middle finger, both before and shortly after viewing either the right hand, or a neutral object presented via a mirror. Crucially, and unlike prior studies, our visual exposures were unpredictable and brief, in addition to being non-informative about touch. Viewing the hand, as opposed to viewing an object, enhanced tactile spatial discrimination measured using grating orientation judgements, and also the P50 SEP component, which has been linked to early somatosensory cortical processing. This was a trial-specific, phasic effect, occurring within a few seconds of each visual onset, rather than an accumulating, tonic effect. Thus, somatosensory cortical modulation can be triggered even by a brief, non-informative glimpse of one's hand. Such rapid multisensory modulation reveals novel aspects of the specialised brain systems for functionally representing the body.	f	\N
22580017	Covert spatial attention can increase contrast sensitivity either by changes in contrast gain or by changes in response gain, depending on the size of the attention field and the size of the stimulus (Herrmann et al., 2010), as predicted by the normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). For feature-based attention, unlike spatial attention, the model predicts only changes in response gain, regardless of whether the featural extent of the attention field is small or large. To test this prediction, we measured the contrast dependence of feature-based attention. Observers performed an orientation-discrimination task on a spatial array of grating patches. The spatial locations of the gratings were varied randomly so that observers could not attend to specific locations. Feature-based attention was manipulated with a 75% valid and 25% invalid pre-cue, and the featural extent of the attention field was manipulated by introducing uncertainty about the upcoming grating orientation. Performance accuracy was better for valid than for invalid pre-cues, consistent with a change in response gain, when the featural extent of the attention field was small (low uncertainty) or when it was large (high uncertainty) relative to the featural extent of the stimulus. These results for feature-based attention clearly differ from results of analogous experiments with spatial attention, yet both support key predictions of the normalization model of attention.	f	\N
22582689	Many sports require fine spatiotemporal resolution for optimal performance. Previous studies have compared anticipatory skills and the decision-making process in athletes; however, there is little information on visual skills of elite athletes, particularly hockey players. To assess visual skills of Olympic hockey players and analyze differences by playing position, and to analyze improvement of visual skills after training, 21 Olympic field hockey players were pre- and post-tested on 11 visual tasks following a 10-wk. visual training program consisting of computer-based visual exercises. There were no mean differences at pre-test between players of different positions, suggesting that performance on these visual skills was independent of playing position. However, after training, an improvement was seen in all players (when scores were averaged across all 11 visual tasks) with goalkeepers improving significantly more than any other position. This suggests the possibility of improving visual skills even in an elite population.	f	\N
22583090	QuikScan (QS) is an innovative design that aims to improve accessibility, comprehensibility, and subsequent recall of expository text by means of frequent within-document summaries that are formatted as numbered list items. The numbers in the QS summaries correspond to numbers placed in the body of the document where the summarized ideas are discussed in full. To examine the influence of QS summaries on participants' perceptions of text quality (i.e., comprehensibility, structure, and interest) and recall, an experimental - control group design compared the effects of a QS text with a structured abstract (SA) text. Forty psychology students participated voluntarily or received course credits. Students first read a control (SA) or experimental (QS) text on flashbulb memory (FBM). Next, their perceptions of text quality were measured through a questionnaire. Recall was assessed with an open answer test with items for facts, comprehension and higher order information. Perceptions of text quality did not vary across conditions. But QS did lead to significantly and substantially (d= 1.57) higher overall recall scores. Participants with the QS text performed significantly better on all item types than participants with the SA text. Studying a QS text led to a substantial improvement in recall compared to an SA text. Further research is needed to examine how readers study QS texts and whether a text model hypothesis or a repetition effect hypothesis accounts for the effectiveness. The first hypothesis posits that the QS summaries support the reader in constructing a text schema. The second attributes the effects of these summaries to their repetition of text topics.	f	\N
22612165	One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average person can maintain approximately 4 items in WM. The present study challenges this interpretation by demonstrating that performance on the visual arrays task is subject to time-related factors that are associated with retrieval from long-term memory. Experiment 1 demonstrates that memory for an array does not decay as a product of absolute time, which is consistent with both maintenance- and retrieval-based explanations of visual arrays performance. Experiment 2 introduced a manipulation of temporal discriminability by varying the relative spacing of trials in time. We found that memory for a target array was significantly influenced by its temporal compression with, or isolation from, a preceding trial. Subsequent experiments extend these effects to sub-capacity set sizes and demonstrate that changes in the size of k are meaningful to prediction of performance on other measures of WM capacity as well as general fluid intelligence. We conclude that performance on the visual arrays task does not reflect a multi-item storage system but instead measures a person's ability to accurately retrieve information in the face of proactive interference.	f	\N
22612769	Performing two cognitive tasks at the same time can degrade performance for either domain-general reasons (e.g., both tasks require attention) or domain-specific reasons (e.g., both tasks require visual working memory). We tested predictions of these two accounts of interference on the task of driving while using language, a naturally occurring dual task. Using language and driving a vehicle use different perceptual and motor skills. As a consequence, a domain-general explanation for interference in this dual task appears most plausible. However, recent evidence from the language processing literature suggests that when people use language with motor content (e.g., language about actions) or visual content (e.g., language about visible objects and events), they engage their motor and perceptual systems in ways specifically reflecting the actions and percepts that the language is about. This raises the possibility that language might interfere with driving for domain-specific reasons when the language has visual or motor content. To test this, we had participants drive a simulated vehicle while simultaneously answering true-false statements that had motor, visual, or abstract content. A domain-general explanation for interference would predict greater distraction in each of these three conditions compared with control, while a domain-specific explanation would predict greater interference in the motor and visual conditions. Both of these predictions were borne out but on different measures of distraction, suggesting that language-driven distraction during driving and dual tasks involving language in general may be the result not only of domain-general causes but also specific interference caused by linguistic content.	f	\N
22620487	We previously described dynamic, noncontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the female genitalia as a reproducible, nonintrusive, objective means of quantifying sexual arousal response in women without sexual difficulties. These studies showed an increase in clitoral engorgement ranging from 50 to 300% in healthy women during sexual arousal. This study sought to evaluate the genital arousal response in women with female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) after administration of sildenafil and placebo. We performed a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study to assess the clitoral engorgement response using dynamic MRI in women with FSAD after administering sildenafil and placebo followed by audiovisual sexual stimulation (AVSS). Nineteen premenopausal women with FSAD underwent two MRI sessions. Subjects were randomized to receive either (i) sildenafil 100 mg during the first session followed by placebo during the second session, or (ii) placebo followed by sildenafil. During each session, baseline MR images were obtained while subjects viewed a neutral video. Subjects then ingested sildenafil or placebo. After 30 minutes, a series of MRIs were obtained at 3-minute intervals for 10 time points while subjects viewed AVSS. A positive sexual arousal response was achieved if clitoral volume increased ≥50% from baseline. Thirteen of 19 (68%) subjects achieved a ≥50% increase in clitoral engorgement from baseline when administered sildenafil or placebo 30 minutes after dose administration. At 60 minutes after administration, 17/19 (89%) subjects receiving sildenafil and 16/19 (84%) subjects receiving placebo had responded (P value 0.3173). Sildenafil did not augment the genital response in women with FSAD. Secondarily, a majority of women in this study did not have impaired clitoral engorgement as measured by MRI, suggesting that FSAD is not predominantly a disorder of genital engorgement.	f	\N
22621354	Long-haul airline pilots often experience elevated levels of fatigue due to extended work hours and circadian misalignment of sleep and wake periods. During long-haul trips, pilots are typically given 1-3 d off between flights (i.e., layover) to recover from, and prepare for, duty. Anecdotally, some pilots prefer long layovers because it maximizes the time available for recovery and preparation, but others prefer short layovers because it minimizes both the length of the trip, and the degree to which the body clock changes from "home time" to the layover time zone. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of layover length on the sleep, subjective fatigue levels, and capacity to sustain attention of long-haul pilots. Participants were 19 male pilots (10 Captains, 9 First Officers) working for an international airline. Data were collected during an 11- or 12-d international trip. The trips involved (i) 4 d at home prior to the trip; (ii) an eastward flight of 13.5 h across seven time zones; (iii) a layover of either 39 h (i.e., short, n = 9) or 62 h (i.e., long, n = 10); (iv) a return westward flight of 14.3 h across seven time zones; and (v) 4 d off at home after the trip. Sleep was recorded using a self-report sleep diary and wrist activity monitor; subjective fatigue level was measured using the Samn-Perelli Fatigue Checklist; and sustained attention was assessed using the psychomotor vigilance task for a personal digital assistant (PalmPVT). Mixed-model regression analyses were used to determine the effects of layover length (short, long) on the amount of sleep that pilots obtained during the trip, and on the pilots' subjective fatigue levels and capacity to sustain attention. There was no main effect of layover length on ground-based sleep or in-flight sleep, but pilots who had a short layover at the midpoint of their trip had higher subjective fatigue levels and poorer sustained attention than pilots who had a long layover. The results of this study indicate that a short layover during a long-haul trip does not substantially disrupt pilots' sleep, but it may result in elevated levels of fatigue during and after the trip. If short layovers are used, pilots should have a minimum of 4 d off to recover prior to their next long-haul trip.	f	\N
22624007	The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.	f	\N
22628142	To explore treatment response to Osmotic Release Oral System(®) (OROS) methylphenidate in children with ADHD with and without comorbid learning disability (LD). Data were analyzed from two 6-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover studies evaluating individually determined doses of OROS methylphenidate versus placebo in 135 children (ages 9 to 12 years) with ADHD with or without an LD in reading, math, or both. The sample was demographically diverse, with 31% females and more than 40% minority, predominantly African American and Hispanic. On two laboratory school days, participants received either OROS methylphenidate or placebo and were given a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests. Treatment with OROS methylphenidate led to improvement in ADHD Rating Scale scores for participants with or without comorbid LD. Both groups performed better during treatment with OROS methylphenidate than placebo on measures of cognitive skills (i.e., Test of Variables of Attention, Finger Windows Backwards), academically related tasks (i.e., Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, Test of Handwriting Skills-Revised, Permanent Product Math Test), and observed classroom behavior (i.e., Swanson, Kotkin, Alger, M-Flynn, and Pelham Scale). In children with ADHD with or without comorbid LD, behavior and performance improved during treatment with OROS methylphenidate.	f	\N
22637710	Previous studies have shown independent attentional selection of targets in the left and right visual hemifields during attentional tracking (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2005) but not during a visual search (Luck, Hillyard, Mangun, & Gazzaniga, 1989). Here we tested whether multifocal spatial attention is the critical process that operates independently in the two hemifields. It is explicitly required in tracking (attend to a subset of object locations, suppress the others) but not in the standard visual search task (where all items are potential targets). We used a modified visual search task in which observers searched for a target within a subset of display items, where the subset was selected based on location (Experiments 1 and 3A) or based on a salient feature difference (Experiments 2 and 3B). The results show hemifield independence in this subset visual search task with location-based selection but not with feature-based selection; this effect cannot be explained by general difficulty (Experiment 4). Combined, these findings suggest that hemifield independence is a signature of multifocal spatial attention and highlight the need for cognitive and neural theories of attention to account for anatomical constraints on selection mechanisms.	f	\N
22648655	Perhaps the most common method of depicting data, in both scientific communication and popular media, is the bar graph. Bar graphs often depict measures of central tendency, but they do so asymmetrically: A mean, for example, is depicted not by a point, but by the edge of a bar that originates from a single axis. Here we show that this graphical asymmetry gives rise to a corresponding cognitive asymmetry. When viewers are shown a bar depicting a mean value and are then asked to judge the likelihood of a particular data point being part of its underlying distribution, viewers judge points that fall within the bar as being more likely than points equidistant from the mean, but outside the bar--as if the bar somehow "contained" the relevant data. This "within-the-bar bias" occurred (a) for graphs with and without error bars, (b) for bars that originated from both lower and upper axes, (c) for test points with equally extreme numeric labels, (d) both from memory (when the bar was no longer visible) and in online perception (while the bar was visible during the judgment), (e) both within and between subjects, and (f) in populations including college students, adults from the broader community, and online samples. We posit that this bias may arise due to principles of object perception, and we show how it has downstream implications for decision making.	f	\N
22652346	People with schizophrenia have neuro-cognitive deficits that are associated with poor functional outcome, yet their awareness of their cognitive deficiencies is variable. As new treatments for cognition are developed, it will be important that patients are receptive to the need for more therapy. Since insight into symptoms has been associated with treatment compliance, it may be of value to provide psycho-education to improve understanding about cognition in schizophrenia. We report a randomized controlled trial that enrolled 80 subjects in either a brief psycho-education intervention about cognition, or a control condition. Subjects in the two conditions did not differ at baseline in insight or receptiveness to treatment, or on demographic, cognitive, or psychiatric variables. Current cognitive impairment of subjects was evidenced by the indice of working memory, attention and executive functioning abilities, (X=77.45 intervention group; 82.50 control condition), that was significantly below both the normative mean and estimated average premorbid IQs (X=101.3 intervention group; X=104.57 control condition). Multivariate repeated measures ANOVAs indicated that subjects who received the psycho-education did not improve insight into their cognitive deficits or willingness to engage in treatment for cognitive dysfunction. While the failure to find a significant impact of this intervention on awareness of cognitive deficit and receptiveness to cognitive treatment raises questions about the malleability of insight into neuro-cognitive deficits, the intervention was briefer than most reported psycho-education programs and multi-session formats may prove to be more effective.	f	\N
22659025	Experts sometimes show higher working memory performance than novices but contrary to this finding, evidence for a positive effect of item-specific training is rare. This study provides evidence for item-specific training gains. We presented Chinese characters and artificial patterns (spotted figures) in a change detection task before and after training (varying set size from 1 to 3). A part of the Chinese characters were trained; others and the spotted figures were not trained. Memory capacity was between one and two items. For set size two, memory performance for trained characters was higher than for untrained characters and they were processed faster. Within superior intraparietal sulcus and middle occipital cortex (part of the putative posterior working memory network), the neural activity asymptotically increased with set size. Untrained items reached the activation maximum already at set size two. For this set size, the activity was significantly reduced for trained items so that a further increase from two to three items was observed. We interpret this difference as a correlate of a gain in neural efficiency. The size of this difference correlated with the training gain in memory. We assume that training causes a more efficient neural representation of trained items supported by long-term memory and this allows holding more items in working memory.	f	\N
22676077	Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.	f	\N
22683449	During covert shifts of tactile spatial attention both somatotopic and external reference frames are employed to encode hand location. When participants cross their hands these frames of references produce conflicting spatial codes which disrupt tactile attentional selectivity. Because attentional shifts are triggered not only in Attention tasks but also during covert movement preparation, the present study aimed at investigating the reference frame employed during such 'motor shifts of attention'. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Motor task where a visual cue (S1) indicated the relevant hand for a manual movement prior to a tactile Go/Nogo stimulus (S2). For comparison, we ran a tactile Attention task where the same cue (S1) now indicated the relevant hand for a tactile discrimination (S2). Both tasks were performed under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions. In both Attention and Motor tasks similar lateralized components were observed following S1 presentation. Anterior and posterior ERP components indicative of covert attention shifts were exclusively guided by an external reference frame, while a later central negativity operated according to a somatotopic reference frame in both tasks. In the Motor task, this negativity reflected selective activation of the motor cortex in preparation for movement execution. In the Attention task, this component might reflect activity in the somatosensory cortex in preparation for the subsequent tactile discrimination. The presence of multiple and conflicting spatial codes resulted in disruption of tactile attentional selection in the Attention task where attentional modulations of tactile processing were delayed and attenuated with crossed hands as indicated by the analysis of ERPs elicited by S2. In contrast, attentional modulations of S2 processing in the Motor task were largely unaffected by the hand posture manipulation, suggesting that motor attention employs primarily one spatial coordinate system.	f	\N
22683945	This study investigated whether trauma-related stimuli are preferentially processed at the expense of ongoing processing of neutral stimuli. Participants in the experimental group viewed negative pictures (Trauma) as an analogue trauma induction. Participants in the control group viewed visually similar neutral pictures (Neutral Match). In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task participants identified two target pictures. The first target (T1) was a neutral picture, whereas the second target (T2) was a familiar negative or neutral picture or a new neutral or negative picture. In line with hypotheses, only participants in the experimental group showed preferential processing of Trauma pictures. In the experimental group, negative T2 impaired the identification of (neutral) T1 if the T2 immediately followed the T1 in the RSVP stream. The results are consistent with a processing priority of trauma-related information, apparently at the expense of the ongoing processing of neutral information.	f	\N
22684039	Arousal from sleep is a major defense mechanism in infants against hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. Arousal failure may be an important contributor to SIDS. Areas of the brainstem that have been found to be abnormal in a majority of SIDS infants are involved in the arousal process. Arousal is sleep state dependent, being depressed during AS in most mammals, but depressed during QS in human infants. Repeated exposure to hypoxia causes a progressive blunting of arousal that may involve medullary raphe GABAergic mechanisms. Whereas CB chemoreceptors contribute heavily to arousal in response to hypoxia, serotonergic central chemoreceptors have been implicated in the arousal response to CO(2). Pulmonary or chest wall mechanoreceptors also contribute to arousal in proportion to the ventilatory response and decreases in their input may contribute to depressed arousal during AS. Little is known about specific arousal pathways beyond the NTS. Whether CB chemoreceptor stimulation directly stimulates arousal centers or whether this is done indirectly through respiratory networks remains unknown. This review will focus on arousal in response to hypoxia and CO(2) in the fetus and newborn and will outline what we know (and do not know) about the involvement of the carotid body in this process.	f	\N
22685575	The attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) has long been considered neuropsychological evidence of the involvement of meso-prefrontal and prefrontal-striatal circuits in cognitive flexibility. However, recent studies have suggested that non-dopaminergic, posterior cortical pathologies may also contribute to this deficit. Although several neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue, the results of these studies were confounded by the use of tasks that required other cognitive processes in addition to set-shifting, such as rule learning and working memory. In this study, we attempted to identify the neural correlates of the attentional set-shifting deficit in PD using a compound letter task and 18F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography during rest. Shift cost, which is a measure of attentional set-shifting ability, was significantly correlated with hypometabolism in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, including the putative human frontal eye field. Our results provide direct evidence that dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes a primary contribution to the attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in PD patients.	f	\N
22686406	Mind wandering occurs when a person's stream of thought moves from the primary task to task-unrelated matters. Some theories of mind wandering suggest that it is caused by decreased attentional control associated with lower working memory (WM) capacity. Others suggest that it is caused by attention being directed toward internally generated thoughts and that it is associated with higher WM capacity. These ideas were assessed testing older adults because they have been argued to have reduced attentional control and lower WM capacity. The first account predicts that mind wandering should increase in older adults, while the second account predicts the opposite. Two experiments show that older adults exhibited a lower rate of mind wandering than younger adults. However, when using text interest as a covariate, the age difference in mind wandering disappeared. These results are further addressed in light of participants' current concerns and preserved situation model processing in cognitive aging.	f	\N
22687333	A dynamic systems model was used to generate parameters describing a phenotype of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) behavior in a sample of 36 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and/or fibromyalgia (FM) and 36 case-matched healthy controls. Altered neuroendocrine function, particularly in relation to somatic symptoms and poor sleep quality, may contribute to the pathophysiology of these disorders. Blood plasma was assayed for cortisol and ACTH every 10 min for 24h. The dynamic model was specified with an ordinary differential equation using three parameters: (1) ACTH-adrenal signaling, (2) inhibitory feedback, and (3) non-ACTH influences. The model was "personalized" by estimating an individualized set of parameters from each participant's data. Day and nighttime parameters were assessed separately. Two nocturnal parameters (ACTH-adrenal signaling and inhibitory feedback) significantly differentiated the two patient subgroups ("fatigue-predominant" patients with CFS only versus "pain-predominant" patients with FM and comorbid chronic fatigue) from controls (all p's<.05), whereas daytime parameters and diurnal/nocturnal slopes did not. The same nocturnal parameters were significantly associated with somatic symptoms among patients (p's<.05). There was a significantly different pattern of association between nocturnal non-ACTH influences and sleep quality among patients versus controls (p<.05). Although speculative, the finding that patient somatic symptoms decreased when more cortisol was produced per unit ACTH, is consistent with cortisol's anti-inflammatory and sleep-modulatory effects. Patients' HPA systems may compensate by promoting more rapid or sustained cortisol production. Mapping "behavioral phenotypes" of stress-arousal systems onto symptom clusters may help disentangle the pathophysiology of complex disorders with frequent comorbidity.	f	\N
22691441	Recent data suggest that word valence modulates subsequent cognitive processing. However, the contribution of word arousal is less understood. In this study, behavioral and electrophysiological measures to neutral nouns and pseudowords that were preceded by either a high-arousal or a low-arousal word were recorded during a lexical decision task. Effects were found at an electrophysiological level. Target words and pseudowords elicited enhanced N100 amplitudes when they were preceded by high- compared to low-arousing words. This effect may reflect perceptual potentiation during the allocation of attentional resources when the new stimulus is processed. Enhanced amplitudes in a late positivity when target words and pseudowords followed high-arousal primes were also observed, which could be related to sustained attention during supplementary analyses at a post-lexical level.	f	\N
22694365	Dual-tasking probes divided attention and causes performance changes that are associated with an increased risk for falls in the elderly. There is no systematic review investigating the effect of task type and complexity on the prediction of elderly falls. This article synthesizes research evidence regarding this issue on the contents of dual-tasking walking. Relevant studies were systematically identified from electronic databases of Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL and PsycINFO, and the reference lists of identified articles. The selection criteria were defined a priori. Two independent reviewers classified task types based on properties for cognitive demand, assessed the methodological quality with a customized checklist, and calculated the odds ratio of fall prediction. There was one study of reaction time, one of discrimination and decision-making, 10 of mental tracking, three of verbal fluency and five of manual tasks. The methodological heterogeneity was manifested in the selection criteria, faller classification, tasks and measures, resulting in substantial heterogeneity (I(2) 87-92%). Meta-analyses resulted in a significant pooled odds ratio 1.33 (95% CI 1.18-1.50). The mental tracking task was the only type that yielded a significant odds ratio 3.30 (95% CI 2.00-5.44). Running meta-analyses separately for simple and difficult mental tracking task showed similar odds ratios. The mental tracking task yielded significant dual-task-related changes for fall prediction. Most studies successively used an appropriate level of task complexity specific to the specified population of interest. More research is required for definite conclusions regarding the effect of task type and complexity.	f	\N
22696535	It is well established that the prefrontal cortex is involved during memory-guided tasks whereas visually guided tasks are controlled in part by a frontal-parietal network. However, the nature of the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control is not as well established. As such, this study examines the spatiotemporal pattern of brain activity that occurs during the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control. We measured 128-channel scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy individuals while they performed a grip force task. After visual feedback was removed, the first significant change in event-related activity occurred in the left central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in prefrontal cortex by 400 ms. Low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to localize the strongest activity to the left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex. A second experiment altered visual feedback gain but did not require memory. In contrast to memory-guided force control, altering visual feedback gain did not lead to early changes in the left central and midline prefrontal regions. Decreasing the spatial amplitude of visual feedback did lead to changes in the midline central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in occipital activity by 400 ms. The findings show that subjects rely on sensorimotor memory processes involving left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex after the immediate transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control.	f	\N
22704744	The Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) legal authority to mandate graphic warning labels on cigarette advertising and packaging. The FDA requires that these graphic warning labels be embedded into cigarette advertising and packaging by September 2012. The aim of this study was to examine differences in recall and viewing patterns of text-only versus graphic cigarette warning labels and the association between viewing patterns and recall. Participants (current daily smokers; N=200) were randomized to view a cigarette advertisement with either text-only or graphic warning labels. Viewing patterns were measured using eye-tracking, and recall was later assessed. Sessions were conducted between November 2008 and November 2009. Data analysis was conducted between March 2011 and July 2011. There was a significant difference in percentage correct recall of the warning label between those in the text-only versus graphic warning label condition, 50% vs 83% (χ(2)=23.74, p=0.0001). Time to first viewing of the graphic warning label text and dwell time duration (i.e., time spent looking) on the graphic image were significantly associated with correct recall. Warning labels that drew attention more quickly and resulted in longer dwell times were associated with better recall. Graphic warning labels improve smokers' recall of warning and health risks; these labels do so by drawing and holding attention.	f	\N
22711264	Conceiving of development with reference to homology can help identify developmental continuity where surface form shows considerable variation across age. I argue that there is a homology of structure between the object-centred, or triadic, interactions that emerge in infancy and later language. The structure of triadic interaction in infancy is first described as involving joint attention and joint engagement about a shared topic, and then a case is made that this structure is maintained through three levels of complexity in language-single word utterances, multiword utterances, and finally complex constructions. A focus on the homological relation between these social interactive structures may be useful in revealing developmental continuities where these may be obscured by quite different surface forms.	f	\N
22712535	Attentional disengagement from negative affective information and engagement toward positive affective information appears to reflect an avoidant coping mechanism, one that may be associated with the belief that negative emotions are dangerous or undesirable (BNED). To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a dot-probe task measuring attentional preference among college undergraduates. In the first study, BNED was associated with an attentional preference for positive facial cues over negative facial cues, evident after 1000 ms of exposure. In the second study, we included three exposure-time conditions; BNED appeared to be associated with an early disengagement from negative facial cues between 500 and 750 ms post-exposure and a subsequent orientation toward positive facial cues between 750 and 1000 ms post-exposure. We discuss these results in relation to avoidant coping and the relationship between anxiety and attention to affective cues.	f	\N
22716195	We investigate the effects of exenatide on excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), driving performance and depression score in patients with type 2 diabetes with EDS. Eight obese patients with diabetes but without obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) participated in a placebo-controlled single-blind study during which multiple wakefulness and sleep latency test, Epworth score, driving performance, depression score, fasting glucose and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels were assessed at baseline, end of placebo and treatment phase at baseline and after 22 weeks of treatment. Mean (±standard error of the mean) age, body mass index (kg m(2) ) and HbA1c [mmol mol(-1) (%)] of patients at baseline were 50 ± 4.9 years, 37.6 ± 1.1 and 65 ± 19 (8.06 ± 0.41), respectively. When compared to placebo, exenatide treatment was associated with a decrease in both subjective and objective sleepiness, based on the Epworth score reduction and the sleep latency increase assessed by multiple objective sleepiness and sustained attention (OSLER) tests, respectively. Mean sleep latency time (adjusted for change in HbA1c and weight) were 32.1 ± 1.7, 29.1 ± 1.7 and 37.7 ± 1.7, respectively (P = 0.002). Modelling for covariates suggested that improvement in mean sleep latency time is predicted by changes in weight (P = 0.003), but not by changes in HbA1c (P = 0.054). Epworth sleepiness score was reduced significantly (values for placebo versus exenatide: 11.3 ± 1.2 versus 5.7 ± 1.3; P = 0.003). No significant change was noted in the depression score and driving performance. Exenatide is associated with a significant reduction in objective sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes without OSA, independent of HbA1c levels. These findings could form a basis for further studies to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.	f	\N
22732031	The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual facial primes (Experiment 3) in an (in)direct semantic priming paradigm, as well as brief facial feedback in a summative priming paradigm (Experiment 4), yielded increased priming effects under brief positive compared to negative affect. Furthermore, this modulation took place on the level of semantic spreading rather than on strategic mechanisms (Experiment 5). Alternative explanations such as distraction, motivation, arousal, and cognitive tuning could be ruled out. This phasic affective modulation constitutes a mechanism overlooked thus far that may contaminate priming effects in all priming paradigms that involve affective stimuli. Furthermore, this mechanism provides a novel explanation for the observation that priming effects are usually larger for positive than for negative stimuli. Finally, it has important implications for linguistic research, by suggesting that association norms may be biased for affective words.	f	\N
22732349	We studied the interaction between the control mechanisms subserving spatial attention and central attention using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. Two stimuli, a pure tone (T(1)) and a circular visual array (T(2)), including a salient target and a salient distractor, were presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies, each requiring a speeded response. Target-specific and distractor-specific lateralized event-related potentials were isolated by placing one of them at a lateral position and the other on the vertical midline. As SOA was decreased, a progressive reduction and postponement of a T(2)-locked N2pc component was observed with a lateral target and a central distractor. No lateralized potentials were associated with a lateral distractor and a central target. The sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) was observed independently of SOA modulation, only with a lateral target. We also observed an earlier positive deflection, the Ppc (positivity posterior contralateral), that was contralateral to both lateral targets and distractors, whose amplitude and latency were not affected by SOA variations. We conclude that central processing interferes specifically with target processing reflected by the N2pc and SPCN. We propose that the Ppc reflects an initial, bottom-up response to the presence of a salient stimulus, whereas the N2pc and SPCN reflect the controlled deployment of spatial attention to targets and maintenance of target information in visual short-term memory, respectively.	f	\N
22739547	This study was designed to assess sexual dysfunction in women suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus. Forty-five type 2 diabetic, non-menopausal married women, aged 20-55 years, who were referred to Shahid Labbafinejad Clinics from March 2008 to June 2009 were included in this study. They were compared to 91 non-diabetic volunteers. Sexual function was evaluated by the sexual function questionnaire. Genitourinary examination was performed in all subjects. Blood sample tests were requested for fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A(1c), 2-hour postprandial glucose and lipid profile measurements. Ophthalmologic and neurologic examinations (checking deep tendon reflexes) were done for cases. The mean age of cases and controls was 42.17± 5.91 and 34.96 ± 8.30 years, respectively (p < 0.001). The prevalence of a high probability of female sexual dysfunction in 6 domains including desire, arousal sensation, arousal lubrication, orgasm, pain and enjoyment was 71.1, 84.4, 55.6, 71.1, 8.9 and 66.7% in the diabetes mellitus women and 56.6, 67.0, 59.3, 57.1, 25.3 and 53.8% in the non-diabetic volunteers, respectively. Differences were statistically significant in the 3 domains of desire, arousal sensation and pain (p < 0.05). Deep tendon reflexes were normal in all and 12.5% showed diabetic retinopathy. Sexual dysfunction in cases as well as in controls was high; however, further studies with a higher number of patients are needed to confirm the results.	f	\N
22744778	The aim of this study was to identify the motor, cognitive, and behavioral determinants of driving status and risk factors for driving cessation in Huntington's disease (HD). Seventy-four patients with HD were evaluated for cognitive, motor, psychiatric, and functional status using a standardized battery (Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale [UHDRS] and supplemental neuropsychological testing) during a research clinic visit. Chart review was used to categorize patients into two driving status categories: (1) "currently driving" included those driving and driving but with clinician recommendation to restrict, and (2) "not driving" included those with clinician recommendation to cease driving and those not currently driving because of HD. Multi- and univariate logistic regression was used to identify significant clinical predictors of those driving versus not driving. Global cognitive performance and UHDRS Total Functional Capacity scores provided the best predictive model of driving cessation (Nagelkerke R(2) = 0.65; P < 0.0001). Measures of learning (P = 0.006) and psychomotor speed/attention (P = 0.003) accounted for the overall cognitive finding. In univariate analyses, numerous cognitive, motor, and daily functioning items were significantly associated with driving. Although driving status is associated with many aspects of the disease, results suggest that the strongest association is with cognitive performance. A detailed cognitive evaluation is an important component of multidisciplinary clinical assessment in patients with HD who are driving.	f	\N
22748562	Epidemiological, cross-sectional, and prospective studies suggest that insomnia, chronic pain, and depression frequently co-occur and are mutually interacting conditions. However, the mechanisms underlying these comorbid disorders have yet to be elucidated. Overlapping mechanisms in the central nervous system suggest a common neurobiological substrate(s) may underlie the development and interplay of these disorders. We propose that the mesolimbic dopamine system is an underappreciated and attractive venue for the examination of neurobiological processes involved in the interactions, development, exacerbation, and maintenance of this symptom complex. In the present article, studies from multiple disciplines are reviewed to highlight the role of altered dopaminergic function in the promotion of arousal, pain sensitivity, and mood disturbance. We argue that studies aiming to elucidate common factors accounting for the comorbidity of insomnia, chronic pain, and depression should evaluate functioning within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and its effect on common processes known to be dysregulated in all three disorders.	f	\N
22750676	To investigate which frames of reference guide shifts of attention triggered during eye and hand movement preparation and the specificity of their effects on somatosensory processing, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a Go/Nogo task where a cue indicated to prepare an eye movement toward--or a hand movement with--the left or right hand. Before the imperative stimulus, a tactile probe was presented to one hand. Spatially selective modulations of tactile processing were more sustained for hand than eye movements, indicating stronger attentional modulations for the modality of the effector's sensory organ. Importantly, attentional modulations of somatosensory processing as well as lateralized ERP components in the preparation interval were virtually identical under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions, suggesting that shifts of attention triggered during hand and eye movement preparation are guided by a common external reference frame.	f	\N
22752788	Cognitive functions may be altered in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and it has been proposed that vigilance and attention changes play a fundamental role in all aspects of cognitive deficits noted in this disease. The use of event-related potentials (ERPs) is a high-time resolution technique that can be used to explore the presence of cognitive dysfunction. We review 23 empirical articles on ERPs in OSAS in order to contribute to the clarification of the pattern of cognitive deficits that are specific to this disease and to see whether there might be an improvement of abnormal psychophysiological findings with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. We conclude that ERP studies have contributed to demonstrating changes in cognitive attentive processing in OSAS, mainly in association with altered functioning of the prefrontal cortex, and that CPAP treatment may improve vigilance and attention and generally improve cerebral information processing in these patients. The remaining deficits during sufficient CPAP therapy may, however, reflect irreversible hypoxic cerebral damage.	f	\N
22776904	Amphetamine-based medications robustly suppress symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. Recent hemodynamic imaging studies have suggested that amphetamines may modulate the prefrontal and anterior cingulate brain regions, although few studies have been published and the results have not been entirely consistent. Meanwhile, several electrophysiological studies have shown that abnormal fast oscillations (in the γ range) may be closely linked to inattention and other cardinal symptoms of ADHD. In this study, we utilized magnetoencephalography to examine how amphetamines modulate high-frequency brain activity in adults with ADHD. Participants performed an auditory attention task, which required sustained attention in one block and passive listening in a separate block. Participants completed the task twice in the on-medication and off-medication states. All data were analyzed using beamforming techniques to resolve cortical regions showing event-related synchronizations and desynchronizations. Our primary findings indicated that oral administration of amphetamine decreased γ-band event-related desynchronization activity significantly in the medial prefrontal area and decreased event-related synchronization in bilateral superior parietal areas, left inferior parietal, and the left inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that psychostimulants strongly modulate γ activity in frontal and parietal cortical areas, which are known to be central to the brain's core attentional networks.	f	\N
22782542	Heightened anticipation of future events has been characterized as a feature of certain anxiety disorders. In functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, anticipation of fearful/threatening images has been shown to robustly activate the insular cortex and amygdala in healthy subjects, in subjects with high trait anxiety, and in some with anxiety disorders. Blood oxygenation level dependent activation in response to negative image anticipation is also sensitive to anxiolytic treatment, suggesting that image anticipation probes anxiety systems. It is not clear, however, if behavioral responses to image anticipation are also sensitive to anxiolytics. This study tested the hypothesis that anxiety behaviors during anticipation of negative images are sensitive to anxiolytic treatment. This study examined the effects of alprazolam and pregabalin treatment on potentiated startle during affective image anticipation. There was an effect of anticipation type (negative versus neutral versus positive) on startle reactivity and subjective ratings, suggesting that the task was effective in assaying negative anticipatory arousal. Both treatments significantly reduced overall startle magnitude. However, neither treatment specifically affected potentiated startle during aversive anticipation. These data suggest that potentiated startle in response to anticipation of aversive images is not sensitive to anxiolytic treatments in a healthy population, limiting its use as a predictive model of anxiolytic activity. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.	f	\N
22796982	People suppressing their emotions while facing an emotional event typically remember it less well. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the impairing effect of emotion suppression on successful memory encoding are not well understood. Because successful memory encoding relies on the hippocampus and the amygdala, we hypothesized that memory impairments due to emotion suppression are associated with down-regulated activity in these brain areas. 59 healthy females were instructed either to simply watch the pictures or to down-regulate their emotions by using a response-focused emotion suppression strategy. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and free recall of pictures was tested afterwards. As expected, suppressing one's emotions resulted in impaired recall of the pictures. On the neural level, the memory impairments were associated with reduced activity in the right hippocampus during successful encoding. No significant effects were observed in the amygdala. In addition, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was strongly reduced during emotion suppression, and these reductions predicted free-recall performance. Our results indicate that emotion suppression interferes with memory encoding on the hippocampal level, possibly by decoupling hippocampal and prefrontal encoding processes, suggesting that response-focused emotion suppression might be an adaptive strategy for impairing hippocampal memory formation in highly arousing situations.	f	\N
22800656	The goal of the present study was to determine whether female restrained and unrestrained eaters demonstrated differential levels of attentional bias to high calorie foods when they were presented as distractors in a flanker task. This task consisted of four blocks of 68 trials in which three food pictures were briefly presented simultaneously on a computer screen. On each trial a high or low calorie target food was presented in the center of a pair of high or low calorie food flanker pictures and participants' reaction times to answer a basic question about whether they would consume the target food for breakfast were recorded. In Experiment 1, in which all participants were fed a snack prior to engaging in the flanker task, there was no evidence that restrained (n=29) or unrestrained (n=37) eaters had an attentional bias. However, in Experiment 2, when participants completed the flanker task while hungry, restrained eaters (n=27) experienced response conflict only when low calorie targets were flanked by high calorie distractors, whereas unrestrained eaters (n=46) were distracted by high calorie flankers regardless of the caloric content of the target cue. The results from this implicit task indicate that flankers interfere with hungry participants' responses to varying degrees depending on their cognitive restraint. Whether attentional bias to food cues subsequently affects food choices and eating behavior is a topic for further investigation.	f	\N
22806665	In this research work, we contribute with a behaviour learning process for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for multimodal active perception, devised to be emergent, scalable and adaptive. This framework is composed by models built upon a common spatial configuration for encoding perception and action that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors, using a Bayesian approach devised in previous work. The proposed learning process is shown to reproduce goal-dependent human-like active perception behaviours by learning model parameters (referred to as "attentional sets") for different free-viewing and active search tasks. Learning was performed by presenting several 3D audiovisual virtual scenarios using a head-mounted display, while logging the spatial distribution of fixations of the subject (in 2D, on left and right images, and in 3D space), data which are consequently used as the training set for the framework. As a consequence, the hierarchical Bayesian framework adequately implements high-level behaviour resulting from low-level interaction of simpler building blocks by using the attentional sets learned for each task, and is able to change these attentional sets "on the fly," allowing the implementation of goal-dependent behaviours (i.e., top-down influences).	f	\N
22808722	The accuracy and variability of a sustained low-level force contraction (2% of maximum voluntary contraction) was measured while participants viewed unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images during a feedback occluded force control task. Exposure to pleasant and unpleasant images led to a relative increase in force production but did not alter the variability of force production compared to conditions in which participants viewed neutral images. Findings are discussed with respect to prior work, emphasizing arousal specific changes that emerge at low target force levels.	f	\N
22815960	The ability to quickly detect changes in our surroundings has been crucial to human adaption and survival. In everyday life we often need to identify whether an object is new and if an object has changed its location. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the electrophysiological correlates and the time course in detecting different types of changes of an objecṫs location and identity. In a delayed match-to-sample task participants had to indicate whether two consecutive scenes containing a road, a house, and two objects, were either the same or different. In six randomly intermixed conditions the second scene was identical, one of the objects had changed its identity, one of the objects had changed its location, or the objects had switched locations. The results reveal different time courses for the processing of identity and location changes in spatial scenes. Whereas location changes elicited a posterior N2 effect, indicating early mismatch detection, followed by a P3 effect reflecting post-perceptual processing, identity changes elicited an anterior N3 effect, which was delayed and functionally distinct from the N2 effect found for the location changes. The condition in which two objects switched position elicited a late ERP effect, reflected by a P3 effect similar to that obtained for the location changes. In sum, this study is the first to cohesively show different time courses for the processing of location changes, identity changes, and object switches in spatial scenes, which manifest themselves in different electrophysiological correlates.	f	\N
22824198	Preterm infants are exposed to loud noises during their stay in the neonatal intensive care unit which can lead to physiologic and behavioral alterations and even hearing loss. The use of earmuffs can reduce sound level and these changes. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the earmuffs in preterm infants solely cared for in closed incubators. A comparative prospective study comprising 20 clinically stable preterm infants weighing less than 1500 g cared in closed incubator was conducted. Preterm infants acted as their own controls whereby they were observed without earmuffs (Group 1) for 2 days and with earmuffs (Group 2) on consecutive 2 days. The preterm infants' physiologic responses and Anderson Behavioral State Scoring System (ABSS) scores were assessed over 30s every 2h for 8h during daytime for 4 days. Out of 20 preterm infants, 6 were male and 14 female with a mean birth weight of 1220 ± 209 g, gestational age of 29.9 ± 2.1 weeks. The total number of measurements was 320. The mean ABSS scores of Group 1 and 2 were 3.07±1.1 and 1.34 ± 0.3, respectively. Statistically significant difference was noted between the means of ABSS scores (p<0.001). Preterm infants with earmuffs (87.5%) were more frequently observed in a quiet sleep state of ABSS compared with those without earmuffs (29.4%). Noise level reduction was associated with significant improvement in behavioral states of ABSS. We suggest that noise reduction in preterm infants with earmuffs is helpful by improving sleep efficiency and increasing time of quiet sleep.	f	\N
22834729	This review considers the challenges ahead for developing a generalizable strategy for the use of central thalamic deep brain stimulation (CT/DBS) to support arousal regulation mechanisms in the severely injured brain. Historical efforts to apply CT/DBS to patients with severe brain injuries and a proof-of-concept result from a single-subject study are discussed. Circuit and cellular mechanisms underlying the recovery of consciousness are considered for their relevance to the application of CT/DBS, to improve consciousness and cognition in nonprogressive brain injuries. Finally, directions for development, and testing of generalizable criteria for CT/DBS are suggested, which aim to identify neuronal substrates and behavioral profiles that may optimally benefit from support of arousal regulation mechanisms.	f	\N
22844142	This multiple-study experiment evaluated the utility of assessing and treating severe self-injurious behavior SIB based on the outcomes of a functional analysis of precursor behavior. In Study 1, a precursor to SIB was identified using descriptive assessment and conditional probability analyses. In Study 2, a functional analysis of precursor behavior was conducted. Finally, study 3 evaluated the effects of a treatment in which precursor behavior produced the maintaining variable identified in the precursor functional analysis. Studies 1 and 3 were conducted in two settings in the participants natural environment, where data collection was ongoing throughout the course of the study. Results showed that it was possible to identify a precursor to infrequent but severe SIB, that a functional analysis of precursor behavior suggested a clear operant function, and that treatment based on the results of the precursor functional analysis reduced SIB in the natural environment.	f	\N
22851806	Sleep is regulated by circadian and homeostatic processes and is highly organized temporally. Our study was designed to determine whether this organization is preserved in patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV) and intravenous sedation. Observational study. Academic medical intensive care unit. Critically ill patients receiving MV and intravenous sedation. Continuous polysomnography (PSG) was initiated an average of 2.0 (1.0, 3.0) days after ICU admission and continued ≥ 36 h or until the patient was extubated. Sleep staging and power spectral analysis were performed using standard approaches. We also calculated the electroencephalography spectral edge frequency 95% SEF₉₅, a parameter that is normally higher during wakefulness than during sleep. Circadian rhythmicity was assessed in 16 subjects through the measurement of aMT6s in urine samples collected hourly for 24-48 hours. Light intensity at the head of the bed was measured continuously. We analyzed 819.7 h of PSG recordings from 21 subjects. REM sleep was identified in only 2/21 subjects. Slow wave activity lacked the normal diurnal and ultradian periodicity and homeostatic decline found in healthy adults. In nearly all patients, SEF₉₅ was consistently low without evidence of diurnal rhythmicity (median 6.3 [5.3, 7.8] Hz, n = 18). A circadian rhythm of aMT6s excretion was present in most (13/16, 81.3%) patients, but only 4 subjects had normal timing. Comparison of the SEF₉₅ during the melatonin-based biological night and day revealed no difference between the 2 periods (P = 0.64). The circadian rhythms and PSG of patients receiving mechanical ventilation and intravenous sedation exhibit pronounced temporal disorganization. The finding that most subjects exhibited preserved, but phase delayed, excretion of aMT6s suggests that the circadian pacemaker of such patients may be free-running.	f	\N
22856389	The development of sustained attention in the preschool years is not yet fully understood. Delineating age-related changes of attentional proficiencies and deficiencies is important for understanding atypical developmental trajectories, specifically in neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by attentional difficulties. The objective of the current study was to develop preschool-appropriate measures for assessing sustained attention and to chart developmental changes in attention in early childhood. Using adapted computerized paradigms, the present study investigated age-related changes in visual and auditory sustained attention in seventy typically developing children aged 3 to 6 years. The results indicated that similar age-related gains in performance emerged across both visual and auditory attention tasks. The findings suggest that the adapted measures developed in this study are sensitive enough to capture developmental variations in attention performance.	f	\N
22871541	The causative mechanisms of type 2 diabetes (T2D) on cognitive dysfunction are still undergoing development. To explore the cognitive dysfunction profile and its relation to the potential role of arterial stiffness in later middle age T2D patients. We studied 37 patients with T2D (age range 45-65 years) and 22 normal controls. All participants underwent comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. The carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) measurements were taken with the PulsePen device. Our results showed significantly poorer performance on all tests assessing attention/executive functions and processing speed in patients with T2D. In addition to cognitive slowing T2D patients demonstrated significant deficits in almost all measures of verbal episodic memory after adjustment for age, education and blood pressure (BP) levels (p<0.05). Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) appeared significantly higher in T2D subjects than in normal controls after adjustment for age and BP level (p<0.001). Significant relationship was observed between CF-PWV and cognitive status. We revealed that arterial stiffness was increased and associated with cognitive impairment in T2D. The cognitive profile indicates hippocampal amnestic type mild cognitive impairment associated with a pronounced dysexecutive syndrome suggesting that diabetes may affect cognition through both vascular and neurodegenerative processes. However, neurodegenerative cognitive profile caused by hippocampal atrophy in a pure vascular process could not be excluded.	f	\N
22872509	We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.	f	\N
22875718	This study was conducted to test interpersonal, attitudinal, and sexual predictors of sexual assertiveness in a Spanish sample of 1,619 men and 1,755 women aged 18-87 years. Participants completed measures of sexual assertiveness, solitary and dyadic sexual desire, sexual arousal, erectile function, sexual attitudes, and frequency of partner abuse. In men, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, more positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies and erotophilia, higher dyadic desire, and higher sexual arousal. In women, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, less solitary sexual desire and higher dyadic sexual desire, arousal, erotophilia, and positive attitudes towards sexual fantasies. Results were discussed in the light of prevention and educational programs that include training in sexual assertiveness skills.	f	\N
22878512	The authors examined longitudinal associations between 2 categories of parent verbal responsiveness and language comprehension and production 1 year later in 40 toddlers and preschoolers with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parent-child play samples using a standard toy set were digitally captured and coded for child engagement with objects and communication acts and for parent verbal responses to play and communication. After controlling for parent education, child engagement, and initial language level, only parent directives for language that followed into the child's focus of attention accounted for unique variance in predicting both comprehension and production 1 year later. A series of exploratory analyses revealed that parent comments that followed into the child's focus of attention also accounted for unique variance in later comprehension and production for children who were minimally verbal at the initial time period. Child developmental level may warrant different types of linguistic input to facilitate language learning. Children with ASD who have minimal linguistic skills may benefit from parent language input that follows into the child's focus of attention. Children with ASD who are verbally fluent may need more advanced language input to facilitate language development.	f	\N
22878565	Affinity is a computerized assessment tool that combines viewing time and self-report measures of sexual interest. The present study was designed to assess the diagnostic properties of Affinity with respect to sexual interest in prepubescent children. Reliability of both self-report and viewing time components was estimated to be high. The group profile of a sample of pedophilic adult male child molesters (n = 42, all of whom admitted their offenses) differed from the group profiles of male community controls (n = 95) and male nonsexual offenders (n = 27), respectively. More specifically, both ratings and viewing times for images showing small children or prejuvenile children were significantly higher within the child molester sample than in either of the other two groups, attesting to the validity of the measures. Overall classification accuracy, however, was mediocre: A multivariate classification routine yielded 50% sensitivity for child molester status at the cost of 13% false positives. The implications for forensic use of Affinity are discussed.	f	\N
22882160	Recent studies propose that a mechanism termed "inhibitory tagging" acts upon the processing of the target at the attended location by temporarily blocking the stimulus-response mapping. Here we combined the cue-target paradigm with the Stroop task and measured event-related potential (ERP) responses to the color of a color word presented at the previously attended (cued) or unattended (uncued) location. We found that the conflict-related N450 effect emerged later and had a smaller size at the cued than the uncued location. The overall ERP responses to the target showed lower P1 and N1 amplitude at the cued than the uncued location. Although the P1/N1 effect may reflect deficient perceptual processing of the target, the delay of the N450 suggests that the link between perceptual processing and response activation is temporarily blocked at the previously attended location.	f	\N
22882736	Previous research with adults indicates that plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings in adult non-smokers and weekly smokers, but not daily smokers. The present research extends this study to adolescents aged 14-19 years. Mixed-model experimental design, with smoking status as a between-subjects factor and pack type (branded or plain pack) and eye gaze location (health warning or branding) as within-subjects factors. Three secondary schools in Bristol, UK. A convenience sample of adolescents comprising never-smokers (n = 26), experimenters (n = 34), weekly smokers (n = 13) and daily smokers (n = 14). Number of eye movements to health warnings and branding on plain and branded packs. Analysis of variance, irrespective of smoking status revealed more eye movements to health warnings than branding on plain packs, but an equal number of eye movements to both regions on branded packs (P = 0.033). This was observed among experimenters (P < 0.001) and weekly smokers (P = 0.047), but not among never-smokers or daily smokers. Among experimenters and weekly smokers, plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings and away from branding. Daily smokers, even relatively early in their smoking careers, seem to avoid the health warnings on cigarette packs. Adolescent never-smokers attend the health warnings preferentially on both types of packs, a finding which may reflect their decision not to smoke.	f	\N
22888795	This study addresses the relationship between trait impulsivity and inhibitory control, two features known to be impaired in a number of psychiatric conditions. While impulsivity is often measured using psychometric self-report questionnaires, the inhibition of inappropriate, impulsive motor responses is typically measured using experimental laboratory tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether psychometrically assessed impulsivity and experimentally operationalized inhibitory performance are related to each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between these two traits in a large sample using correlative and latent variable analysis. A total of 504 healthy individuals completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and a battery of four prepotent response inhibition paradigms: the antisaccade, Stroop, stop-signal, and go/no-go tasks. We found significant associations of BIS impulsivity with commission errors on the go/no-go task and directional errors on the antisaccade task, over and above effects of age, gender, and intelligence. Latent variable analysis (a) supported the idea that all four inhibitory measures load on the same underlying construct termed "prepotent response inhibition" and (b) revealed that 12% of variance of the prepotent response inhibition construct could be explained by BIS impulsivity. Overall, the magnitude of associations observed was small, indicating that while a portion of variance in prepotent response inhibition can be explained by psychometric trait impulsivity, the majority of variance remains unexplained. Thus, these findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition paradigms can account for psychometric trait impulsivity only to a limited extent. Implications for studies of patient populations with symptoms of impulsivity are discussed.	f	\N
22888823	The present study investigated parental attention and sensitivity to their child's pain and the moderating role of child's facial pain expressiveness and induced threat. Sixty-two parents (49 mothers; 13 fathers) of schoolchildren observed their child undergoing painful and nonpainful heat trials and were requested to rate the presence of pain after each trial. Painful versus nonpainful trials were signaled by the presence of either a yellow or blue circle; one color served as a cue for possible pain delivery (i.e., conditioned pain cue), whereas the other served as a cue for a nonpainful trial. A subsequent visual search task (VST) assessed attention to pain cues by asking parents to identify a target presented within the conditioned pain cue or one of several other colored circles. Parents were randomly assigned to a "high threat" or "low threat" group in which either threatening or neutral information about the child's pain was provided. Signal detection analyses indicated that parents' ability to detect pain (i.e., sensitivity) was enhanced for parents in the high-threat group and for parents whose children expressed high pain. Visual search analyses indicated attentional engagement to child pain only among parents in the high-threat group whose child showed high-pain expressiveness. In all other circumstances, a tendency to avoid pain cues was observed. These findings attest to the importance of pain-related threat in understanding parent attention to child pain. Theoretical and clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.	f	\N
22895881	Active exploration of the visual world depends on sequential shifts of gaze that bring prioritized regions of a scene into central vision. The efficiency of this system is commonly attributed to a mechanism of "inhibition of return" (IOR) that discourages re-examination of previously-visited locations. Such a process is fundamental to computational models of attentional selection and paralleled by neurophysiological observations of inhibition of target-related activity in visuomotor areas. However, studies examining eye movements in naturalistic visual scenes appear to contradict the hypothesis that IOR promotes exploration. Instead, these reports reveal a surprisingly strong tendency to shift gaze back to the previously fixated location, suggesting that refixations might even be facilitated under natural conditions. Here we resolve this apparent contradiction, based on a probabilistic analysis of gaze patterns recorded during both free-viewing and search of naturalistic scenes. By simulating saccadic selection based on instantaneous influences alone, we show that the observed frequency of return saccades is in fact substantially less than predicted for a memoryless system, demonstrating that refixation is actively inhibited under natural viewing conditions. Furthermore, these observations reveal that gaze history significantly influences the way in which natural scenes are explored, contrary to accounts that suggest visual search has no memory.	f	\N
22896722	Item-specific spatial information is essential for interacting with objects and for binding multiple features of an object together. Spatial relational information is necessary for implicit tasks such as recognizing objects or scenes from different views but also for explicit reasoning about space such as planning a route with a map and for other distinctively human traits such as tool construction. To better understand how the brain supports these two different kinds of information, we used functional MRI to directly contrast the neural encoding and maintenance of spatial relations with that for item locations in equivalent visual scenes. We found a double dissociation between the two: whereas item-specific processing implicates a frontoparietal attention network, including the superior frontal sulcus and intraparietal sulcus, relational processing preferentially recruits a cognitive control network, particularly lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and inferior parietal lobule. Moreover, pattern classification revealed that the actual meaning of the relation can be decoded within these same regions, most clearly in rostrolateral PFC, supporting a hierarchical, representational account of prefrontal organization.	f	\N
22900551	In this article the author argues that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach needs to be firmly grounded theoretically and technically in a practice that includes the notion of reverie or its equivalent. The author has argued previously that the analyst's theory is the essential 'third' of the two-person analytic situation. She now suggests that it is specifically the theories of temporality and the attitude of 'evenly suspended attention' or its more contemporary development, 'reverie', that are the crucial aspects of that theory. She refers to these essential aspects as the 'theory in practice' in so far as they are more than a technical approach or a theory of practice but reflect directly a particular analyst's internalisation of the whole psychoanalytic theoretical corpus. While she believes this to be an essential component in any true psychoanalysis, in developing her argument the author looks at situations in which the analyst is particularly prone to forgo this temporal aspect, as is the case when patients show an absence of symbolic thinking within the analytic situation. In fact, with those patients reverie and the visual images it produces within the analyst's mind offer perhaps the only hope of a meeting ground between the concrete and the symbolic and the possibility of avoiding an impasse. Impasse, she suggests, has at its root the absence of reverie as a third and temporal element, inevitably giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of patient and analyst and so to a situation that cannot evolve.	f	\N
22914520	Despite shorter duty hours, fatigue remains a problem among medical residents. The authors tested the effect of a short, mid-day nap on the cognitive functioning and alertness of first-year internal medicine (IM) residents during normal duty hours. This was a controlled, interventional study performed between July 2008 and April 2010. The authors recruited a nap group of 18 residents and a rest (control) group of 11 residents. Investigators connected all participants to an ambulatory sleep monitor before the beginning of their shifts in order to monitor rolling eye movements, a proxy for attention failures. At mid-day, both groups took Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) to evaluate their cognitive functioning and then were placed in a reclining chair designed for napping. The authors instructed nap group residents to nap for up to 20 minutes and chatted with control group residents to prevent them from napping. All residents took the CPT II again immediately after the intervention. Residents' attention failures were recorded until the end of the workday. The authors compared the mean outcome parameters of the two groups through analysis of variance, using effect-of-treatment and baseline covariates. Nap group participants slept a mean of 8.4±3.0 minutes. Compared with controls whose cognitive functioning and number of attention failures did not change from morning to afternoon, the nap group's cognitive functioning improved and their number of attention failures decreased. A short, mid-day nap can improve cognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents.	f	\N
22923230	Progressive asphyxia, produced by a prolonged voluntary breath hold (end-expiratory apnoea), evokes large bursts of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). These bursts increase in amplitude until the asphyxic break point is reached, at which point the bursts are inhibited. We tested the hypothesis that lung inflation, rather than relief from hypoxia and hypercapnia, is responsible for the inhibition of MSNA. Multiunit MSNA was recorded from motor fascicles of the common peroneal nerve in 11 subjects. Following a period of quiet breathing, subjects were instructed to behave as follows: (i) to hold their breath in expiration for as long as they could (mean duration 32.3 ± 1.9 s); (ii) to take a single breath of room air, 100% N(2) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) at the asphyxic break point; (iii) to exhale and continue the apnoea until the next break point; and then (iv) to resume breathing. All subjects reported relief during inhalation of any gas, and could continue holding their breath for a further 30.7 ± 2.8 s with room air, 18.6 ± 1.7 s with N(2) and 11.8 ± 1.8 s with 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2). Despite the exaggerated chemoreceptor drive in the latter two conditions (hence the significantly shorter latencies to the subsequent asphyxic break point), the inhibition still occurred; moreover, there was no significant difference in duration of the inhibition of MSNA following the single breath of room air (7.6 ± 0.7 s), N(2) (6.2 ± 0.6 s) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) (5.5 ± 0.4 s). Following the resumption of breathing, however, the duration of MSNA inhibition (11.0 ± 1.0 s) was significantly longer than that following a single breath. To investigate the involvement of chemoreceptors in the respiratory modulation of MSNA further, the same gases were used during an inspiratory-capacity apnoea, which causes a brief inhibition of MSNA during the inflation phase and a sustained increase during the hold phase. The duration of the apnoea was shortest after a breath of 10% O(2) + 90% N(2), but the latency until the bursts resumed after the inspiratory breath hold were similar for all gases, which suggests that there is no chemoreceptor involvement during the sympathetic silence seen during the inflation phase of inspiratory-capacity apnoeas. We conclude that neither peripheral nor central chemoreceptors are responsible for the inhibition of muscle vasoconstrictor drive following an end-expiratory apnoea or an end-inspiratory apnoea. Rather, we suggest that the inhibition is evoked by stretch receptors in the lungs and/or chest wall, which may also contribute to the longer inhibition associated with the hyperventilation following the subsequent resumption of rhythmic breathing.	f	\N
22934427	To investigate the behavior difference of allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy between study group and control group. One hundred and seventeen children diagnosed as allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy were enrolled in our study were divided into study group and control group. Forty-two children treated with local steroid nasal spray for two to three months and antihistamine were control group. Seventy-five children treated with endoscopic adenoidectomy and drug treatment were study group; All children' parents were inquired for their clinical presentation. No distinctive differences were found between the two groups (P > 0.05) in adenoid hypertrophy, accompanying nasal problems and clinical questionnaire scoring. Significant statistical distinction were found (P < 0.05) in snoring, sleep disturbance and frequent arousal, nasal obstructive moth-breathing, and recurrent respiratory tract infection between the two groups after three-month follow up. Endoscopic adenoidectomy should be taken into account for allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy in children. Adenoidectomy would be useful for the improvement of behavior symptoms.	f	\N
22934682	Theories of motor learning predict that training a movement reduces the amount of attention needed for its performance (i.e., more automatic). If training one movement transfers, then the amount of attention needed for performing a second movement should also be reduced, as measured under dual task conditions. The authors' purpose was to test whether dual task paradigms are feasible for detecting transfer of training between two naturalistic movements. Immediately following motor training, subjects improved performance of a second untrained movement under single and dual task conditions. Subjects with no training did not. Improved performance in the untrained movement was likely due to transfer, and suggests that dual tasks may be feasible for detecting transfer between naturalistic actions.	f	\N
22935330	We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the left-ear stimuli through instruction), or their combination. The results showed significant training-related effects for top-down training. These effects were evident as higher overall accuracy rates in the forced-left dichotic listening (DL) condition that sets demands on attentional control, as well as a response shift toward left-sided reports in the standard DL task. Moreover, a transfer effect was observed in an untrained auditory-spatial attention task involving bilateral stimulation where top-down training led to a relatively stronger focus on left-sided stimuli. Our results indicate that training of attentional control can modulate the allocation of attention in the auditory space in adults. Malleability of auditory attention in healthy adults raises the issue of potential training gains in individuals with attentional deficits.	f	\N
22936100	We conducted a series of experiments to determine whether negative priming is used in the process of target selection for a saccadic eye movement. The key questions addressed the circumstances in which the negative priming of an object takes place, and the distinction between spatial and object-based effects. Experiment 1 revealed that after fixating a target (cricket ball) amongst an array of semantically related distracters, saccadic eye movements in a subsequent display were faster to the target than to the distracters or new objects, irrespective of location. The main finding was that of the facilitation of a recent target, not the inhibition of a recent distracter or location. Experiment 2 replicated this finding by using silhouettes of objects for selection that is based on feature shape. Error rates were associated with distracters with high target-shape similarity; therefore, Experiment 3 presented silhouettes of animals using distracters with low target-shape similarity. The pattern of results was similar to that of Experiment 2, with clear evidence of target facilitation rather than the inhibition of distracters. Experiment 4 and 5 introduced a distracter together with the target into the probe display, to generate a level of competitive selection in the probe condition. In these circumstances, clear evidence of spatial inhibition at the location of the previous distracters emerged. We discuss the implications for our understanding of selective attention and consider why it is essential to supplement response time data with the analysis of eye movement behaviour in spatial negative priming paradigms.	f	\N
22937090	In this single case study, visuospatial neglect patient P1 demonstrated a dissociation between an intact ability to make appropriate reflexive eye movements to targets in the neglected field with latencies of <400 ms, while failing to report targets presented at such durations in a separate verbal detection task. In contrast, there was a failure to evoke the usually robust Remote Distractor Effect in P1, even though distractors in the neglected field were presented at above threshold durations. Together those data indicate that the tight coupling that is normally shown between attention and eye movements appears to be disrupted for low-level orienting in P1. A comparable disruption was also found for high-level cognitive processing tasks, namely reading and scene scanning. The findings are discussed in relation to sampling, attention and awareness in neglect.	f	\N
22939462	Left fronto-cortical hypoactivity, thought to reflect reduced activity in approach-related systems, and right parietal hypoactivity, associated with emotional under-arousal, have been noted in major depressive disorder (MDD). Altered theta activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has also been associated with the disorder. We assessed resting frontal and parietal alpha asymmetry and power in non-medicated MDD (N = 53; 29 females) and control (N = 43; 23 females) individuals. Theta activity was examined using standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) in the ACC [BA24ab and BA32 comprising the rostral ACC and BA25/subgenual (sg) ACC]. The MDD group, and particularly depressed males, displayed increased overall frontal and parietal alpha power and left midfrontal hypoactivity (alpha(2)-indexed). They also exhibited increased sgACC theta(2) activity. MDD females had increased right parietal activity, suggesting increased emotive arousal. Thus, unmedicated depressed adults were characterized by lower activity in regions implicated in approach/positive affective tendencies as well as diffuse cortical hypoarousal, though sex specific modulations emerged. Altered theta in the sgACC may reflect emotion regulation abnormalities in MDD.	f	\N
22948452	The aim of this study was to compare female sexual function after surgical treatment of anterior vaginal prolapse with either small intestine submucosa grafting or traditional colporrhaphy. Subjects were randomly assigned, preoperatively, to the small intestine submucosa graft (n = 29) or traditional colporrhaphy (n = 27) treatment group. Postoperative outcomes were analyzed at 12 months. The Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire was used to assess sexual function. Data were compared with independent samples or a paired Student's t-test. In the small intestine submucosa group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.5±7.2 to 24.4±7.5 (p<0.001). In the traditional colporrhaphy group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.3±6.8 to 24.2±7.0 (p<0.001). Improvements were noted in the domains of desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. There were no differences between the two groups at the 12-month follow-up. Small intestine submucosa repair and traditional colporrhaphy both improved sexual function postoperatively. However, no differences were observed between the two techniques.	f	\N
22948506	To evaluate the influence of climacteric symptoms on the sexual function in middle-aged women. A cross-sectional population study was conducted on a sample of 370 middle-aged women, aged 40 to 65 years-old, cared for at the Basic Health Units in Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. We used a questionnaire containing questions on sociodemographic, clinical, and behavioral characteristics. Sexual function was evaluated by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), while the menopause symptoms by the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). In the studied group, 67% of the women reported risk for sexual dysfunction (FSFI≤26.5). All FSFI domains (desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain) were lower in women with risk for sexual dysfunction (p<0.001). The arousal, orgasm, and pain domains were most likely to contribute to lower FSFI scores. All somatovegetative, urogenital, and psychological MRS symptoms were more elevated in women with risk for sexual dysfunction, being significant for all comparisons (p<0.001). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the likelihood of women with risks of sexual dysfunction to present hot flushes, depression, sexual problems, and vaginal dryness was, respectively, 2.1 (95%CI 1.2 - 3.5); 2.4 (95%CI 1.5 - 4.1); 2.3 (95%CI 1.4 - 3.8), and 2.2 (95%CI 1.3 - 3.6) times higher, respectively, compared to those without any risk. Climacteric symptoms seem to influence the sexual function in middle-aged women.	f	\N
22954837	Balance training to improve postural control in elderly can contribute to the prevention of falls. Video games that require body movements have the potential to improve balance. However, research about the effects of type of visual feedback (i.e. the exergame) on the quality of movement and experienced workout intensity is scarce. In this study twelve healthy older and younger subjects performed anterior-posterior or mediolateral oscillations on a wobble board, in three conditions: no feedback, real-time visual feedback, and real-time visual feedback with a competitive game element. The Elderly moved slower, less accurately and more irregularly than younger people. Both feedback conditions ensured a more controlled movement technique on the wobble-board and increased experienced workout intensity. The participants enjoyed the attention demanding competitive game element, but this game did not improve balance performance more than interacting with a game that incorporated visual feedback. These results show the potential of exergames with visual feedback to enhance postural control.	f	\N
22960269	The hyperarousal model of primary insomnia suggests that a deficit of attenuating arousal during sleep might cause the experience of non-restorative sleep. In the current study, we examined EEG spectral power values for standard frequency bands as indices of cortical arousal and sleep protecting mechanisms during sleep in 25 patients with primary insomnia and 29 good sleeper controls. Patients with primary insomnia demonstrated significantly elevated spectral power values in the EEG beta and sigma frequency band during NREM stage 2 sleep. No differences were observed in other frequency bands or during REM sleep. Based on prior studies suggesting that EEG beta activity represents a marker of cortical arousal and EEG sleep spindle (sigma) activity is an index of sleep protective mechanisms, our findings may provide further evidence for the concept that a simultaneous activation of wake-promoting and sleep-protecting neural activity patterns contributes to the experience of non-restorative sleep in primary insomnia.	f	\N
22963503	We previously found that Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) improves learning and performance in a task where subjects learn to detect potential threats indicated by small target objects hidden in a complex virtual environment. In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that these effects on learning and performance are related to changes in attention. The effects of tDCS were tested for three forms of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) using the Attention Network Task (ANT), which were compared with performance on the object-learning task. Participants received either 0.1 mA (N = 10) or 2.0 mA (N = 9) tDCS during training and were tested for performance in object-identification before training (baseline-test) and again immediately after training (immediate test). Participants next performed the Attention Networks Task (ANT), and were later tested for object-identification performance a final time (delayed test). Alerting, but not orienting or executive attention, was significantly higher for participants receiving 2.0 mA compared with 0.1 mA tDCS (p < 0.02). Furthermore, alerting scores were significantly correlated with the proportion of hits (p < 0.01) for participants receiving 2.0 mA. These results indicate that tDCS enhancement of performance in this task may be related in part to the enhancement of alerting attention, which may benefit the initial identification, learning and/or subsequent recognition of target objects indicating potential threats.	f	\N
22964544	Since the inception of the field of psychoneuroimmunolology research, there has been an appreciation that the physiological response to stressors includes modulation of immune function. Investigators initially focused on the effect of stress on cellular migration and immunosuppression and the resultant decreases in tumor surveillance, anti-viral T cell immunity and antigen-specific antibody responses. More recently, it has become clear that exposure to stressors also potentiate innate immune processes. Stressor exposure, for example, can change the activation status of myeloid lineage cells such as monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, and microglia, leading to a primed state. In addition, stressor exposure increases the synthesis and release of a vast cadre' of inflammatory proteins both in the blood and within tissues (i.e., spleen, liver, adipose, vasculature and brain). The mechanisms for stress-evoked innate immune 'arousal' remain unknown. The goals of this presidential address are the following: (1) offer a personalized, brief overview of stress and immunity with a focus on 'aroused' innate immunity; (2) describe sterile inflammatory processes and the role of the inflammasome; and (3) suggest that these same processes likely contribute to primed myeloid cells and inflammatory protein responses (systemic and tissue) produced by stress in the absence of pathogens.	f	\N
22965527	The aim of this study was to measure forces created by progressive mandibular advancement with an oral device, during natural sleep, in a sample of adult patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). A pressure transducer system was placed on the acrylic arms of a two-piece oral appliance (Herbst type) used by nine moderate to severe OSAS patients, in addition to all captors routinely used for polysomnography. Strains on the left and right sides were collected, during stable sleep stages without arousal, for each step of 1 mm advancement. The mean force in this sample was 1.18 N/mm and showed an almost linear evolution. Measurements showed intra- and inter-individual variability. The force values recorded in this study may explain the occlusal and skeletal side effects associated with long-term use of these oral appliances. They illustrate the influence of the extent of mandibular advancement, and indicate a possible dose-dependent effect.	f	\N
22971667	Guide dogs help visually impaired persons both physically and psychologically. More than half of all candidate dogs do not qualify, mainly for behavioral reasons. Improved training efficacy is desirable, and earlier prediction of qualification-related traits would be beneficial. In a previous study, we identified 'Distraction', assessed during the training period, as an important behavioral trait for judging the qualification of guide dogs at the Japan Guide Dog Association. As a second step, we aimed to develop an index that can predict during the puppy period. In this study, candidate guide dogs, 5-month-old Labrador retrievers, were assessed by puppy raisers using a newly developed questionnaire that consisted of 20 items. The same dogs were assessed later, at 15 months, by trainers to determine 'Distraction'. In principal components analysis, nine items, including excitability toward strangers, initiative while out for a walk, and exploration, composed the first principal component (PC1). When we compared PC1 points with 'Distraction' points, the two categories were positively correlated (n=110, r(s)=0.31, P=0.0009). Although the accuracy of the questionnaire should be increased, the results of the present study suggest that it may be possible to assess and predict 'Distraction', which is associated with disqualification for guide dogs, early in the puppy-raising period.	f	\N
22975896	This study reports an experiment investigating the relative effects of intramodal, crossmodal and bimodal cues on visual and auditory temporal order judgements. Pairs of visual or auditory targets, separated by varying stimulus onset asynchronies, were presented to either side of a central fixation (±45°), and participants were asked to identify the target that had occurred first. In some of the trials, one of the targets was preceded by a short, non-predictive visual, auditory or audiovisual cue stimulus. The cue and target stimuli were presented at the exact same locations in space. The point of subjective simultaneity revealed a consistent spatiotemporal bias towards targets at the cued location. For the visual targets, the intramodal cue elicited the largest, and the crossmodal cue the smallest, bias. The bias elicited by the bimodal cue fell between the intramodal and crossmodal cue biases, with significant differences between all cue types. The pattern for the auditory targets was similar apart from a scaling factor and greater variance, so the differences between the cue conditions did not reach significance. These results provide evidence for multisensory integration in exogenous attentional cueing. The magnitude of the bimodal cueing effect was equivalent to the average of the facilitation elicited by the intramodal and crossmodal cues. Under the assumption that the visual and auditory cues were equally informative, this is consistent with the notion that exogenous attention, like perception, integrates multimodal information in an optimal way.	f	\N
22993448	Non-motor symptoms are very common among patients with Parkinson's disease since the earliest stage, but little is known about their progression and their relationship with dopaminergic replacement therapy. We studied non-motor symptoms before and after 2 years from dopaminergic therapy introduction in ninety-one newly diagnosed previously untreated PD patients. At baseline, nearly all patients (97.8%) referred at least one non-motor symptom. At follow-up, only few non-motor symptoms significantly changed. Particularly, depression and concentration became less frequent, while weight change significantly increased after introduction of dopamine agonists. We reported for the first time a 2-year prospective study on non-motor symptoms before and after starting therapy in newly diagnosed PD patients. Even if non-motor symptoms are very frequent in early stage, they tend to remain stable during the early phase of disease, being only few non-motor symptoms affected from dopaminergic therapy and, specifically, by the use of dopamine agonists.	f	\N
22998058	Recent neuroimaging and surgical results support the crucial role of white matter in mediating motor and higher-level processing within the frontal lobe, while suggesting the limited compensatory capacity after damage to subcortical structures. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the anatomofunctional organization of the pathways running within this region is mandatory for planning safe and effective surgical approaches to different diseases. The aim of this dissection study was to improve the neurosurgeon's awareness of the subcortical anatomofunctional architecture for a lateral approach to the frontal region, to optimize both resection and postoperative outcome. Ten human hemispheres (5 left, 5 right) were dissected according to the Klingler technique. Proceeding lateromedially, the main association and projection tracts as well as the deeper basal structures were identified. The authors describe the anatomy and the relationships among the exposed structures in both a systematic and topographical surgical perspective. Structural results were also correlated to the functional responses obtained during resections of infiltrative frontal tumors guided by direct cortico-subcortical electrostimulation with patients in the awake condition. The eloquent boundaries crucial for a safe frontal lobectomy or an extensive lesionectomy are as follows: 1) the motor cortex; 2) the pyramidal tract and premotor fibers in the posterior and posteromedial part of the surgical field; 3) the inferior frontooccipital fascicle and the superior longitudinal fascicle posterolaterally; and 4) underneath the inferior frontal gyrus, the head of the caudate nucleus, and the tip of the frontal horn of the lateral ventricle in the depth. Optimization of results following brain surgery, especially within the frontal lobe, requires a perfect knowledge of functional anatomy, not only at the cortical level but also with regard to subcortical white matter connectivity.	f	\N
22999215	Optimized therapy in epilepsy should include individual care for cognitive functions. Here we introduce a computerized screening instrument, called "Computerized Cognitive Testing in Epilepsy" (CCTE), which allows for time-efficient repetitive assessment of the patient's cognitive profile regarding the domains of memory and attention, which are frequently impaired due to side effects of antiepileptic medication. The CCTE battery takes 30min and covers tasks of verbal and figural memory, cognitive speed, attention and working memory. The patient's results are displayed immediately in comparison to age-related normative data. For evaluation of psychometrics and clinical correlations, data from patients of a tertiary referral epilepsy center (n=240) and healthy subjects (n=83) were explored. CCTE subtests show good reliability and concurrent validity compared to standard neuropsychological tests (p<0.01). Adverse cognitive effects of antiepileptic medication can be detected (p<0.05), e.g. significant negative effects of increasing drug load. Specific epilepsy subgroups, e.g. focal versus primary generalized epilepsy or right versus left mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, showed different CCTE profiles. CCTE appears valuable for early detection of individual cognitive alterations related to medication. In addition, it displays interesting differences between epilepsy syndromes. The CCTE battery provides a standardized, time- and personnel-efficient assessment of cognitive functions open to a large number of patients and applicable for clinical and scientific use in epilepsy.	f	\N
22999984	To compare the frequency of airway complications during removal of the Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) in 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients. Prospective randomized study. Operating room at a university hospital. 92 ASA physical status 1 and 2 pediatric patients, aged 2 to 6 years. Participants were randomized to two groups: anesthesia state (anesthesia group) and awake state (awake group). Anesthesia was induced and maintained with sevoflurane. Patients were allowed to maintain spontaneous respiration. In the anesthesia group, the LMA was removed during anesthesia with 2.2% of sevoflurane. In the awake group, the LMA was removed when patients met the recovery criteria, including facial grimace, spontaneous eye opening, and purposeful arm movement. During and after removal of the LMA, the frequencies of airway-related complications including cough, severe salivation, LMA biting or teeth clenching, breath holding, laryngospasm, desaturation (SpO(2) < 95%), and vomiting, were recorded. The frequencies of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia also were compared. The frequency of airway-related complications was significantly less in the anesthesia group than the awake group (4.8% vs 37.2%, P = 0.001). Of the complications, cough, desaturation, excessive secretion, and LMA biting were less common in the anesthesia group. No differences between groups were noted in the frequency of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia. In 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients, an adequate anesthetic state is preferable to the awake state during LMA removal, producing fewer complications.	f	\N
23001075	Urinary and sexual dysfunctions are recognized complications of rectal cancer surgery. Their incidence after robotic surgery is as yet unknown. The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate the impact of robotic surgery for rectal cancer on sexual and urinary functions in male and female patients. From April 2008 to December 2010, 74 patients undergoing fully robotic resection for rectal cancer were prospectively included in the study. Urinary and sexual dysfunctions affecting quality of life were assessed with specific self-administered questionnaires in all patients undergoing robotic total mesorectal excision (RTME). Results were calculated with validated scoring systems and statistically analyzed. The analyses of the questionnaires completed by the 74 patients who underwent RTME showed that sexual function and general sexual satisfaction decreased significantly 1 month after intervention: 19.1 ± 8.7 versus 11.9 ± 10.2 (P < 0.05) for erectile function and 6.9 ± 2.4 versus 5.3 ± 2.5 (P < 0.05) for general satisfaction in men; 2.6 ± 3.3 versus 0.8 ± 1.4 (P < 0.05) and 2.4 ± 2.5 versus 0.7 ± 1.6 (P < 0.05) for arousal and general satisfaction, respectively, in women. Subsequently, both parameters increased progressively, and 1 year after surgery, the values were comparable to those measured before surgery. Concerning urinary function, the grade of incontinence measured 1 year after the intervention was unchanged for both sexes. RTME allows for preservation of urinary and sexual functions. This is probably due to the superior movements of the wristed instruments that facilitate fine dissection, coupled with a stable and magnified view that helps in recognizing the inferior hypogastric plexus.	f	\N
23010335	In a forward-masked intensity discrimination task, we manipulated the perceived lateralization of the masker via variation of the interaural time difference (ITD). The maskers and targets were 500 Hz pure tones with a duration of 30 ms. Standards of 30 and 60 dB SPL were combined with 60 or 90 dB SPL maskers. As expected, the presentation of a forward masker perceived as lateralized to the other side of the head as the target resulted in a significantly smaller elevation of the intensity difference limen than a masker lateralized ipsilaterally. This binaural release from masking in forward-masked intensity discrimination cannot be explained by peripheral mechanisms because varying the ITD leaves the neural representation in the monaural channels (i.e., in the auditory nerve) unaltered. Instead, our results are compatible with the assumption that lateralization differences between masker and target promote object segregation and therefore facilitate object-based selective attention to the target.	f	\N
23011860	Sleep homeostasis occurs during prolonged wakefulness. Drowsiness and sleep pressure are its behavioral manifestations and, when sleep is allowed, there is a sleep rebound of sufficient duration and intensity to compensate for the previous deprivation. Adenosine is one of the molecules involved in sleep homeostasic regulation. Caffeine and theophylline, stimulants widely consumed by the humans, are antagonists. It is an endogenous factor, resulting from ATP metabolism in neurons and glia. Adenosine accumulates in the extracellular space, where it can exert regulatory actions on the sleep-wakefulness cycle circuits. Adenosine acts through the purinergic receptors A1 and A2. This paper reviews: 1) the metabolic pathways of cerebral adenosine, and the mechanisms of its release by neurons and glia to the extracellular space; 2) the actions of adenosine and its antagonists in regions of the central nervous system related to wakefulness, non-REM sleep, and REM sleep, and 3) the synaptic mechanisms involved in these actions.	f	\N
23017595	It is widely reported that inverting a face dramatically affects its recognition. Previous studies have shown that face inversion increases the amplitude and delays the latency of the face-specific N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) and also enhances the amplitude of the occipital P1 component (latency 100-132 ms). The present study investigates whether these effects of face inversion can be modulated by visual spatial attention. Participants viewed two streams of visual stimuli, one to the left and one to the right of fixation. One stream consisted of a sequence of alphanumeric characters at 6.67 Hz, and the other stream consisted of a series of upright and inverted images of faces and houses presented in randomized order. The participants' task was to attend selectively to one or the other of the streams (during different blocks) in order to detect infrequent target stimuli. ERPs elicited by inverted faces showed larger P1 amplitudes compared to upright faces, but only when the faces were attended. In contrast, the N170 amplitude was larger to inverted than to upright faces only when the faces were not attended. The N170 peak latency was delayed to inverted faces regardless of attention condition. These inversion effects were face specific, as similar effects were absent for houses. These results suggest that early stages of face-specific processing can be enhanced by attention, but when faces are not attended the onset of face-specific processing is delayed until the latency range of the N170.	f	\N
23019004	Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is activated during detection of salient stimuli, including pain, in the sensory environment. Right TPJ damage more often produces spatial neglect than left TPJ damage. We recently reported a right lateralized system of white matter connectivity of the TPJ. However, lateralization in intrinsic TPJ functional connectivity during a task/stimuli-independent state has not been fully characterized. Here we used resting-state functional MRI in healthy humans to compare the functional connectivity of right and left TPJ with salience- and attention-related brain networks. Independent components analysis revealed that both right and left TPJ were functionally connected with a network that included the anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), and mid-cingulate cortex, considered to be the salience/ventral attention network. Dual regression revealed this network was more strongly connected with right TPJ than left TPJ. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis showed 1) negative connectivity the TPJ bilaterally with the "default mode network"; 2) positive connectivity of TPJ bilaterally with the salience/ventral attention network; 3) stronger connectivity between right TPJ compared with left TPJ with regions within the salience/ventral attention network and mid-insula, S2, and temporal/parietal opercula (implicated in pain); and 4) stronger connectivity of left TPJ compared with right TPJ with the "executive control network," including the dorsomedial/medial PFC, inferior frontal gyrus, and cerebellum (crus I/II). Our findings build on classic lesion and neuroimaging studies, demonstrating a complex spatial network organization of lateralization in TPJ functional connectivity in the absence of an overt stimulus.	f	\N
23022432	The effect of aging on functional network activation associated with task-switching was examined in 24 young (age=25.2±2.73 years) and 23 older adults (age=65.2±2.65 years) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study goals were to (1) identify a network shared by both young and older adults, (2) identify additional networks in each age group, and (3) examine the relationship between the networks identified and behavioral performance in task-switching. Ordinal trend covariance analysis was used to identify the networks, which takes advantage of increasing activation with greater task demand to isolate the network of regions recruited by task-switching. Two task-related networks were found: a shared network that was strongly expressed by both young and older adults and a second network identified in the young data that was residualized from the shared network. Both networks consisted of regions associated with task-switching in previous studies including the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, the anterior cingulate, and the superior parietal lobule. Not only was pattern expression of the shared network associated with reaction time in both age groups, the difference in the pattern expression across task conditions (task-switch minus single-task) was also correlated with the difference in RT across task conditions. On the contrary, expression of the young-residual network showed a large age effect such that older adults do not increase expression of the network with greater task demand as young adults do and correlation between expression and accuracy was significant only for young adults. Thus, while a network related to RT is preserved in older adults, a different network related to accuracy is disrupted.	f	\N
23030631	Accurate measurement of a child's executive functioning (EF) is important for diagnosis, description of functional impairment, and treatment planning. EF assessment typically consists of administration of a battery of performance-based tests involving abilities such as attention, inhibition, reasoning, planning, and mental flexibility. In recent years, observer (e.g., parent) rating scales have been added to the typical EF battery. However, research has revealed that performance-based tests and parent rating scales are not highly correlated. In other words, level of impairment indicated by one source of data often does not match level of impairment indicated by the other source of data. This disagreement places the clinician in a difficult situation when attempting to interpret evaluation results. The profession of pediatric neuropsychology needs to provide guidance about handling this disagreement. Using the current assessment tools, specific EF subdomains may need to be examined systematically to identify precisely where the disagreements lie. Perhaps the relative validity of the two data sources can be determined, and decisions can be made about what to emphasize and what/when to interpret cautiously. Alternatively, perhaps the goal should be to develop and/or refine measurement tools to increase agreement in order to improve accuracy and validity of test interpretation. At this time, the results of performance-based tests and rating scales of EF are being used together but are not being integrated. Evidence-based practice requires that more work be done to enhance the use of these two sources of data.	f	\N
23041338	Neuroimaging has demonstrated anatomical overlap between covert and overt attention systems, although behavioral and electrophysiological studies have suggested that the two systems do not rely on entirely identical circuits or mechanisms. In a parallel line of research, topographically-specific modulations of alpha-band power (~8-14 Hz) have been consistently correlated with anticipatory states during tasks requiring covert attention shifts. These tasks, however, typically employ cue-target-interval paradigms where attentional processes are examined across relatively protracted periods of time and not at the rapid timescales implicated during overt attention tasks. The anti-saccade task, where one must first covertly attend for a peripheral target, before executing a rapid overt attention shift (i.e. a saccade) to the opposite side of space, is particularly well-suited for examining the rapid dynamics of overt attentional deployments. Here, we asked whether alpha-band oscillatory mechanisms would also be associated with these very rapid overt shifts, potentially representing a common neural mechanism across overt and covert attention systems. High-density electroencephalography in conjunction with infra-red eye-tracking was recorded while participants engaged in both pro- and anti-saccade task blocks. Alpha power, time-locked to saccade onset, showed three distinct phases of significantly lateralized topographic shifts, all occurring within a period of less than 1s, closely reflecting the temporal dynamics of anti-saccade performance. Only two such phases were observed during the pro-saccade task. These data point to substantially more rapid temporal dynamics of alpha-band suppressive mechanisms than previously established, and implicate oscillatory alpha-band activity as a common mechanism across both overt and covert attentional deployments.	f	\N
23046905	Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard tones were presented at a regular 300 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI). One deviant, otherwise identical to the standard, was preceded by a 100 ms ISI. Two other deviants, presented with the standard ISI, differed from the standard in their spectral makeup. We found significant differences between ERP responses elicited by the standard and each of the deviant sounds. The results suggest that the ability to extract both temporal and spectral regularities from a sound sequence is already functional within the first few months of life. The scalp distribution of all three deviant-stimulus responses was influenced by the infants' state of alertness.	f	\N
23051899	Lifetime experiences shape people's attitudes toward sexual stimuli. Visual sexual stimulation (VSS), for instance, may be perceived as pleasurable by some, but as disgusting or ambiguous by others. VSS depicting explicit penile-vaginal penetration (PEN) is relevant in this respect, because the act of penetration is a core sexual activity. In this study, 20 women without sexual complaints participated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a single-target implicit association task to investigate how brain responses to PEN were modulated by the initial associations in memory (PEN-'hot' vs PEN-disgust) with such hardcore pornographic stimuli. Many brain areas responded to PEN in the same way they responded to disgust stimuli, and PEN-induced brain activity was prone to modulation by subjective disgust ratings toward PEN stimuli. The relative implicit PEN-disgust (relative to PEN-'hot') associations exclusively modulated PEN-induced brain responses: comparatively negative (PEN-disgust) implicit associations with pornography predicted the strongest PEN-related responses in the basal forebrain (including nucleus accumbens and bed nucleus of stria terminalis), midbrain and amygdala. Since these areas are often implicated in visual sexual processing, the present findings should be taken as a warning: apparently their involvement may also indicate a negative or ambivalent attitude toward sexual stimuli.	f	\N
23062452	Deficits in the communication and identifying of feelings are usually observed in substance abuse. Research in several countries has reported sensation seeking and alexithymia implication in addiction. According to a cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience proposed, alexithymia is a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotion that can be seen as an impairment in the ability to consciously experience feeling in the context of autonomic activation indicate of emotional arousal. The primary objective of this study was to identify certain personality dimensions linked with emotions' regulation, i.e. Zuckerman's sensation seeking, alexithymia, and emotional awareness in ecstasy and cocaine users at techno parties. Subjects were divided in two groups: 37 male ecstasy or cocaine abusers, and 37 male non-drug users. We hypothesized that ecstasy and cocaine users would exhibit high levels of sensation seeking (high level of sensation seeking,), and emotional dysregulation (high level of alexithymia and depression, low level of emotional awareness). The methodology comprised a questionnaire developed for the study, designed to record sociodemographic data and evaluate psychoactive substance use, the MlINI (mini international psychiatric interview), the Zuckerman 40-item Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-IV), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-13). Subjects were recruited during rave-parties. The results showed significantly higher sensation seeking scores for ecstasy and cocaine users for the score total and the disinhibition and experience seeking subdimensions. Ecstasy and cocaine abusers exhibited higher TAS-20 and BDI-13 scores and lower levels of emotional awareness than non-drug users. No correlation between the TAS-20 and depression symptomatology emerged. No significant correlations were found between LEAS and TAS-20. These results provide new elements concerning the profile of drug users at techno parties and illustrate the changing practices of ecstasy use. The LEAS and the TAS-20 were not intercorrelated; it seems plausible that they reflect two sides of the emotional states self-report. These results reinforce the suggestion of combining the use of self-reports with non self-report methods.	f	\N
23066810	Considerable evidence suggests that subliminal information can trigger cognitive and neural processes. Here, we examined whether elicitation of orienting response by personally significant (PS) verbal information requires conscious awareness of the input. Subjects were exposed to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), in which autonomic responses for autobiographical items are typically larger than for control items. These items were presented subliminally using two different masking protocols: single or multiple presentation of the masked item. An objective test was used to verify unawareness to the stimuli. As predicted, PS items elicited significantly stronger skin conductance responses than the control items in both exposure conditions. The results extend previous findings showing that autonomic responses can be elicited following subliminal exposure to aversive information, and also may have implications on the applied usage of the CIT.	f	\N
23074247	The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) can enhance the impact of positive social cues but may reduce that of negative ones by inhibiting amygdala activation, although it is unclear whether the latter causes blunted emotional and mnemonic responses. In two independent double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, each involving over 70 healthy male subjects, we investigated whether OXT affects modulation of startle reactivity by aversive social stimuli as well as subsequent memory for them. Intranasal OXT potentiated acoustic startle responses to negative stimuli, without affecting behavioral valence or arousal judgments, and biased subsequent memory toward negative rather than neutral items. A functional MRI analysis of this mnemonic effect revealed that, whereas OXT inhibited amygdala responses to negative stimuli, it facilitated left insula responses for subsequently remembered items and increased functional coupling between the left amygdala, left anterior insula, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Our results therefore show that OXT can potentiate the protective and mnemonic impact of aversive social information despite reducing amygdala activity, and suggest that the insula may play a role in emotional modulation of memory.	f	\N
23078760	The current study investigated the time course of the implicit processing of erotic stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs elicited by erotic pictures were compared with those by three other types of pictures: non-erotic positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We observed that erotic pictures evoked enhanced neural responses compared with other pictures at both early (P2/N2) and late (P3/positive slow wave) temporal stages. These results suggested that erotic pictures selectively captured individuals' attention at early stages and evoked deeper processing at late stages. More importantly, the amplitudes of P2, N2, and P3 only discriminated between erotic and non-erotic (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. That is, no difference was revealed among non-erotic pictures, although these pictures differed in both valence and arousal. Thus, our results suggest that the erotic picture processing is beyond the valence and arousal.	f	\N
23083097	The present study provides first evidence that attentional breadth responses can be influenced by proximity-distance goals in adult attachment relationships. In a sample of young couples, we measured attachment differences in the breadth of attentional focus in response to attachment-related cues. Results showed that priming with a negative attachment scenario broadens attention when confronted with pictures of the attachment figure in highly avoidant men. In women, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with a more narrow attentional focus on the attachment figure, yet only at an early stage of information processing. We also found that women showed a broader attentional focus around the attachment figure when their partner was more avoidantly attached. This pattern of results reflects the underlying action of attachment strategies and provides insight into the complex and dynamic influence of attachment on attentional processing in a dyadic context.	f	\N
23085239	We investigated the precision of orientation representations with two tasks, change detection and recall. Previously change detection has been measured only with relatively large orientation changes compared to psychophysical thresholds. In the first experiment, we measured the observers' ability (d') to detect small changes in orientation (5-30°) with 1-4 Gabor items. With one item even a 10° change was well detected (average d'=2.5). As the amount of change increased to 30°, the d' increased to 5.2. When the number of items was increased, the d's gradually decreased. In the second experiment, we used a recall task and the observers adjusted the orientation of a probe Gabor to match the orientation of a Gabor held in the memory. The standard deviation (s.d.) of errors was calculated from the Gaussian distribution fitted to the data. As the number of items increased from 1 to 6, the s.d. increased from 8.6° to 19.6°. Even with six items, the observers did not make any random adjustments. The results show a square root relation between the d'/s.d. and the number of items. The d' in change detection is directly proportional to the square root of (1/n) and the orientation change. The increase of the s.d. in recall task is inversely proportional to square root of (1/n). The results suggest that limited resources and precision of representations, without additional assumptions, determine the memory performance.	f	\N
23088575	Reviews of the effects of noise on performance carried out in the 1980s suggested that results depended on the type of noise, nature of the task, and characteristics of the person performing in noise. This general view has been confirmed in the recent meta-analysis and synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011). There are, however, some notable omissions from this review. For example, beneficial effects of noise in low alertness states receive no coverage, and yet these provide the strongest support for arousal theories. The importance of predictability and perceived control was also overlooked, yet relevant studies, especially those looking at aftereffects of noise, are crucial for explanations based on compensatory effort. Also neglected was research emphasizing the importance of examining the microstructure of responding and strategies of performance. Recent accounts emphasize the importance of considering the specific processes involved in carrying out a task and show that analyses based on gross characteristics present an inappropriate profile of effects. Laboratory studies of auditory distraction are now largely restricted to investigation of the effects of irrelevant speech. Noise and performance research has also moved toward field studies, including effects of chronic noise exposure on children. Future noise research is likely to focus on different noise parameters and performance outcomes, potentially leading to the investigation of different underlying mechanisms. This type of research will have clear implications for policy and practice.	f	\N
23095428	Several chronic health conditions of childhood, including pediatric cancers, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and sickle cell disease (SCD) are associated with significant neurocognitive impairments that can compromise educational attainment and future vocational opportunities. The prominence of attentional deficits as part of the neurocognitive sequelae associated with each of these conditions has led some researchers to draw parallels with another chronic condition that manifests in childhood, specifically the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because ADHD shares similar neurocognitive and symptomatological features with pediatric cancer, TBI, and SCD, stimulant medications may be indicated to treat associated deficits in each condition. However, relatively few studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of stimulant medications in treating neurocognitive sequelae in children with cancer, TBI, or SCD. Thus, clinicians have received little guidance regarding a potentially useful treatment modality for ameliorating the neurocognitive deficits that can profoundly impact the educational, psychosocial, and vocational development of youth with these chronic health conditions. We provide a review of the literature and synthesize current developments in research regarding treatment with stimulant medication for children with cancer, TBI, and SCD, as well as discuss special considerations for each condition.	f	\N
23104227	Research has shown that water supplementation positively affects cognitive performance in children and adults. The present study considered whether this could be a result of expectancies that individuals have about the effects of water on cognition. Forty-seven participants were recruited and told the study was examining the effects of repeated testing on cognitive performance. They were assigned either to a condition in which positive expectancies about the effects of drinking water were induced, or a control condition in which no expectancies were induced. Within these groups, approximately half were given a drink of water, while the remainder were not. Performance on a thirst scale, letter cancellation, digit span forwards and backwards and a simple reaction time task was assessed at baseline (before the drink) and 20 min and 40 min after water consumption. Effects of water, but not expectancy, were found on subjective thirst ratings and letter cancellation task performance, but not on digit span or reaction time. This suggests that water consumption effects on letter cancellation are due to the physiological effects of water, rather than expectancies about the effects of drinking water.	f	\N
23106374	In the present study, we tested whether subliminal abrupt-onset cues capture attention in a bottom-up or top-down controlled manner. For our tests, we varied the searched-for target-contrast polarity (i.e., dark or light targets against a gray background) over four experiments. In line with the bottom-up hypothesis, our results indicate that subliminal-onset cues capture attention independently of the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 1), and this effect is not stronger for targets that matched the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 2). In fact, even to-be-ignored cues associated with a no-go response captured attention in a salience-driven way (Experiment 3). For supraliminal cues, we found attentional capture only by cues with a matching contrast polarity, reflecting contingent capture (Experiment 4). The results point toward a specific role of subliminal abrupt onsets for attentional capture.	f	\N
23111150	Epidemiological studies have associated the negative effects of sedentary time and sedentary patterns on health indices. However, these studies have used methodologies that do not directly measure the sedentary state. Recent technological developments in the area of motion sensors have incorporated inclinometers, which can measure the inclination of the body directly, without relying on self-report or count thresholds. This paper aims to provide a detailed description of methodologies used to examine a range of relevant variables, including sedentary levels and patterns from an inclinometer-based motion sensor. The activPAL Professional physical activity logger provides an output which can be interpreted and used without the need for further processing and additional variables were derived using a custom designed MATLAB® computer program. The methodologies described have been implemented on a sample of 44 adolescent females, and the results of a range of daily physical activity and sedentary variables are described and presented. The results provide a range of objectively measured and objectively processed variables, including total time spent sitting/lying, standing and stepping, number and duration of daily sedentary bouts and both bed hours and non-bed hours, which may be of interest when making association between physical activity, sedentary behaviors and health indices.	f	\N
23117329	The present study examined whether the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning is mediated by psychological well-being in elderly persons working night shifts. The role of psychological well-being has been neglected so far in the relationship between bright light and cognitive performance. Sleepiness and mood were applied as indicators of psychological well-being. Cognitive functioning was examined in terms of concentration, working memory, and divided attention. A total of thirty-two test persons worked in three consecutive simulated night shifts, 16 under bright light (3,000 lux) and 16 under room light (300 lux). Concentration, working memory, and divided attention were measured by computerised tasks. The hypothesised mediators were recorded by questionnaires. Mediation analyses were conducted for estimating direct, total, and indirect effects in simple mediation models. Results indicate that sleepiness and mood did not function as mediators in the prediction of concentration, working memory, and/or divided attention by light exposure. Sleepiness led to an underestimation of the positive bright-light effect on concentration performance. Mood showed only a random effect due to the positive bright-light effect on working memory. Sleepiness and mood could completely be excluded as mediators in the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning. This study underlines that psychological well-being of elderly persons is not a critical component in the treatment of bright light on cognitive performance in the night shift workplace. In summary, it becomes evident that bright light has a strong direct and independent effect on cognitive performance, particularly on working memory and concentration.	f	\N
23121170	Interpersonal self-support is an indigenous Chinese personality concept. It represents the idealized notion of the kind of personality traits that help individuals deal with interpersonal problems and develop and maintain the harmonic and appropriate social relationships required in China's collectivistic and interdependent culture. It also was assumed to be a protective personality factor with regard to mental health and was found to be negatively related to psychosomatic symptoms. In the current study, cognitive processing of interpersonal information is assumed to be an underlying mechanism that connects interpersonal self-support with interpersonal relationships and mental health. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias on positive and negative interpersonal information was related to high and low interpersonal self-support. A spatial cueing task and the emotional Stroop task were administered to two samples of high and low interpersonal self-support Chinese undergraduate students to measure attentional bias. The results from both experiments suggested that high interpersonal self-support students had an attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information, while low interpersonal self-support students preferentially attended to negative interpersonal information. Study 1 indicated that attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information was easily engaged in the high interpersonal self-support group, while attentional bias toward negative interpersonal information was both easy to engage and difficult to disengage in the low interpersonal self-support students. These results support our hypotheses that high interpersonal self-support people engage in positive processing of interpersonal information, whereas low interpersonal self-support people engage in negative processing of interpersonal information. The differential balance between positive and negative processing on interpersonal information may explain why interpersonal self-support predicts both mental health and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the relational schema may explain why interpersonal self-support is associated with an attentional bias toward interpersonal information.	f	\N
23124137	Face processing is a neural mechanism that allows understanding social information and cues conveyed by faces, whose dysfunction has been postulated to underlie some of the behavioral impairments characterizing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A special region of the cortex, the fusiform gyrus (FG), is believed to be the specific area for processing face features and emotions. However, behavioral, fMRI and ERP studies addressed to investigate the role of FG dysfunction in ASD have led to conflicting results. Using a high-density EEG system, we recorded the face-sensitive ERP to neutral and emotional (happiness and fearful) faces, as a measure of early activity of the FG, in children with high functioning ASD. By controlling a number of experimental and clinical variables that could have biased previous research--such as gaze direction, attention to tasks, stimulus appearance and clinical profiles--we aimed to assess the effective role of the FG in the face emotion processing deficit hypothesized in ASD. No significant differences in early face-sensitive ERP components were found between ASD and neurotypical children. However, a systematic latency delay and amplitude reduction of all early potentials were observed in the ASD group, regardless of the stimulus, although more evident for emotions. Therefore, we can assume a diffuse dysfunction of neural mechanisms and networks in driving and integrating social information conveyed by faces, in particular when emotions are involved, rather than a specific impairment of the FG-related face processing circuit. Nevertheless, there is need of further investigation.	f	\N
23124187	Growing research literature has documented the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teaches a series of mindfulness meditation and yoga practices, delivered in a group format during eight weekly sessions plus one full-day session. This case report demonstrates how MBSR was associated with dramatic clinical improvement of an individual with symptoms of panic, generalized anxiety, and depression. Scores on clinical assessment measures suggested clinically severe levels of anxious arousal, generalized anxiety, worry, fear of negative evaluation, and depression at the beginning of the intervention. The scores on all these measures fell well within normal limits 7 weeks later at the end of the intervention, and no remaining symptoms were reported afterward. Increased life satisfaction and quality of life were documented as well. This case illustrates the potential benefit of MBSR as an alternative or adjunctive treatment for comorbid anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms.	f	\N
23127474	Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer- and inner-loop processes to the control of speed and accuracy in typewriting. Experiments 1 and 2 involved discontinuous typing of single words, and Experiments 3 and 4 involved continuous typing of paragraphs. Across experiments, typists were able to trade speed for accuracy but were unable to type at rates faster than 100 ms/keystroke, implying limits to the flexibility of the underlying processes. The analyses of the component latencies and errors indicated that the majority of the trade-offs were due to inner-loop processing. The contribution of outer-loop processing to the trade-offs was small, but it resulted in large costs in error rate. Implications for strategic control of automatic processes are discussed.	f	\N
23128366	New methods to enhance colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates are needed. The web offers novel possibilities to educate patients and to improve health behaviors, such as cancer screening. Evidence supports the efficacy of health communications that are targeted and tailored to improve the uptake of recommendations. We identified unscreened women at average risk for CRC from the scheduling databases of obstetrics and gynecology practices in 2 large health care systems. Participants consented to a randomized controlled trial that compared CRC screening uptake after receipt of CRC screening information delivered via the web or in print form. Participants could also be assigned to a control (usual care) group. Women in the interventional arms received tailored information in a high- or low-monitoring Cognitive Social Information Processing model-defined attentional style. The primary outcome was CRC screening participation at 4 months. A total of 904 women were randomized to the interventional or control group. At 4 months, CRC screening uptake was not significantly different in the web (12.2%), print (12.0%), or control (12.9%) group. Attentional style had no effect on screening uptake for any group. Some baseline participant factors were associated with greater screening, including higher income (P = .03), stage of change (P < .001), and physician recommendation to screen (P < .001). A web-based educational intervention was no more effective than a print-based one or control (no educational intervention) in increasing CRC screening rates in women at average risk of CRC. Risk messages tailored to attentional style had no effect on screening uptake. In average-risk populations, use of the Internet for health communication without additional enhancement is unlikely to improve screening participation. clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00459030.	f	\N
23130782	In three related manuscripts we describe our drug development program for the treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). In this first theoretical article we will defend the hypothesis that different causal mechanisms are responsible for the emergence of HSDD: low sexual desire in women (with HSDD) could be due to either a relative insensitive brain system for sexual cues or to enhanced activity of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. This distinction in etiological background was taken into account when designing and developing new pharmacotherapies for this disorder. Irrespective of circulating plasma levels of testosterone, administration of sublingual 0.5 mg testosterone increases the sensitivity of the brain to sexual cues. The effects of an increase in sexual sensitivity of the brain depend on the motivational state of an individual. It might activate sexual excitatory mechanisms in low sensitive women, while it could evoke (or strengthen) sexual inhibitory mechanisms in women prone to sexual inhibition. Sexual stimulation in the brain is necessary for phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i)-mediated increase in genital sexual response. Accordingly, a single dose of T+PDE5i might enhance sexual responsiveness, especially in women with low sensitivity to sexual cues. In other women sexual stimulation might elicit a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-mediated phasic increase in sexual inhibition, in which activity of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT, serotonin) is involved. We hypothesize that a single dose of 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor agonist (5-HT(1A)ra) will reduce the sexual-stimulation-induced PFC-mediated sexual inhibition during a short period after administration. Consequently, treatment with T+5-HT(1A)ra will be more effective, in particular in women exhibiting sexual inhibition. Based on the results of our efficacy studies described in parts 2 and 3 of the series, we conclude that tailoring on-demand therapeutics to different underlying etiologies might be a useful approach to treat common symptoms in subgroups of women with HSDD.	f	\N
23148868	In 3 human predictive learning experiments, we investigated whether the allocation of attention can come under the control of contextual stimuli. In each experiment, participants initially received a conditional discrimination for which one set of cues was trained as relevant in Context 1 and irrelevant in Context 2, and another set was relevant in Context 2 and irrelevant in Context 1. For Experiments 1 and 2, we observed that a second discrimination based on cues that had previously been trained as relevant in Context 1 during the conditional discrimination was acquired more rapidly in Context 1 than in Context 2. Experiment 3 revealed a similar outcome when new stimuli from the original dimensions were used in the test stage. Our results support the view that the associability of a stimulus can be controlled by the stimuli that accompany it.	f	\N
23151577	Biological clocks are genetically encoded oscillators that allow organisms to anticipate changes in the light-dark environment that are tied to the rotation of Earth. Clocks enhance fitness and growth in prokaryotes, and they are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral tissues of multicelled organisms in which they influence sleep, arousal, feeding and metabolism. Biological clocks capture the imagination because of their tie to geophysical time, and tools are now in hand to analyse their function in health and disease at the cellular and molecular level.	f	\N
23151960	Many theories of category learning incorporate mechanisms for selective attention, typically implemented as attention weights that change on a trial-by-trial basis. This is because there is relatively little data on within-trial changes in attention. We used eye tracking and mouse tracking as fine-grained measures of attention in three complex visual categorization tasks to investigate temporal patterns in overt attentional behavior within individual categorization decisions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we recorded participants' eye movements while they performed three different categorization tasks. We extended previous research by demonstrating that not only are participants less likely to fixate irrelevant features, but also, when they do, these fixations are shorter than fixations to relevant features. We also found that participants' fixation patterns show increasingly consistent temporal patterns. Participants were faster, although no more accurate, when their fixation sequences followed a consistent temporal structure. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings in a task where participants used mouse movements to uncover features. Overall, we showed that there are important temporal regularities in information sampling during category learning that cannot be accounted for by existing models. These can be used to supplement extant models for richer predictions of how information is attended to during the buildup to a categorization decision.	f	\N
23153115	Emerging evidence suggests that some individuals may be simultaneously more responsive to the effects from environmental adversity and enrichment (i.e., differential susceptibility). Given that parenting behavior and a variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the 3'untranslated region of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene are each independently associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), our goal was to evaluate the potential interactive effects of child DAT1 genotype with positive and negative parenting behaviors on childhood ADHD. We recruited an ethnically diverse sample of 150 six- to nine-year-old boys and girls with and without ADHD. Children were genotyped for a common polymorphism of the DAT1 gene, and objective counts of observed parenting behavior (i.e., negativity and praise) were obtained from a valid parent-child interaction task. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the interactive effects of DAT1 and observed parenting with a latent ADHD factor. We detected a significant interaction between observed praise and child DAT1 (coded additively), which suggested that praise was associated with increased ADHD, but only among youth with the 9/10 genotype. In addition, a marginally significant interaction between DAT1 (coded additively and recessively) and observed negativity emerged for ADHD, such that negativity was positively associated with ADHD but only for youth with the 9/9 genotype. Although differential susceptibility theory was not fully supported, these preliminary results suggest that interactive exchanges between parenting behavior and child genotype potentially contribute to the development of ADHD. Clinical implications for interactions between parenting behavior and child genotype are discussed.	f	\N
23154040	In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement - hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli - might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM). AM refers to impaired identification of the first of two sequentially presented masked objects (O1 and O2) in which the O1-O2 interval was manipulated. Lexical and grammatical comprehension abilities were also tested in both groups. Children with SLI showed a sluggish engagement of temporal attention, and individual differences in AM accounted for a significant percentage of unique variance in grammatical performance. Our results suggest that an attentional engagement deficit - probably linked to a dysfunction of the right fronto-parietal attentional network - might be a contributing factor in these children's language impairments.	f	\N
23156620	The study was designed to show how driver attention to the road scene and engagement of a choice of secondary tasks are affected by the level of automation provided to assist or take over the basic task of vehicle control. It was also designed to investigate the difference between support in longitudinal control and support in lateral control. There is comparatively little literature on the implications of automation for drivers' engagement in the driving task and for their willingness to engage in non-driving-related activities. A study was carried out on a high-level driving simulator in which drivers experienced three levels of automation: manual driving, semiautomated driving with either longitudinal or lateral control provided, and highly automated driving with both longitudinal and lateral control provided. Drivers were free to pay attention to the roadway and traffic or to engage in a range of entertainment and grooming tasks. Engagement in the nondriving tasks increased from manual to semiautomated driving and increased further with highly automated driving. There were substantial differences in attention to the road and traffic between the two types of semiautomated driving. The literature on automation and the various task analyses of driving do not currently help to explain the effects that were found. Lateral support and longitudinal support may be the same in terms of levels of automation but appear to be regarded rather differently by drivers.	f	\N
23156621	A driving simulator study compared the effect of changes in workload on performance in manual and highly automated driving. Changes in driver state were also observed by examining variations in blink patterns. With the addition of a greater number of advanced driver assistance systems in vehicles, the driver's role is likely to alter in the future from an operator in manual driving to a supervisor of highly automated cars. Understanding the implications of such advancements on drivers and road safety is important. A total of 50 participants were recruited for this study and drove the simulator in both manual and highly automated mode. As well as comparing the effect of adjustments in driving-related workload on performance, the effect of a secondary Twenty Questions Task was also investigated. In the absence of the secondary task, drivers' response to critical incidents was similar in manual and highly automated driving conditions. The worst performance was observed when drivers were required to regain control of driving in the automated mode while distracted by the secondary task. Blink frequency patterns were more consistent for manual than automated driving but were generally suppressed during conditions of high workload. Highly automated driving did not have a deleterious effect on driver performance, when attention was not diverted to the distracting secondary task. As the number of systems implemented in cars increases, an understanding of the implications of such automation on drivers' situation awareness, workload, and ability to remain engaged with the driving task is important.	f	\N
23160204	Do stimuli appear to be closer when they are more threatening? We tested people's perceptions of distance to stimuli that they felt were threatening relative to perceptions of stimuli they felt were disgusting or neutral. Two studies demonstrated that stimuli that emitted affective signals of threat (e.g., an aggressive male student) were seen as physically closer than stimuli that emitted affective signals of disgust (e.g., a repulsive male student) or no affective signal. Even after controlling for the direct effects of physiological arousal, object familiarity, and intensity of the negative emotional reaction, we found that threatening stimuli appeared to be physically closer than did disgusting ones (Study 2). These findings highlight the links among biased perception, action regulation, and successful navigation of the environment.	f	\N
23167479	Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a main cause of mortality and morbidity. Association studies between hospitalization variables and cognitive impairment after TBI are frequently retrospective, including non-consecutive patients showing variable degrees of TBI severity, and poor management of missing (drop out) cases. We assessed prospectively the demographic and hospitalization variables of 234 consecutive patients with severe TBI (admission Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] ≤8) and determined their independent association with cognitive performance in a representative sample (n = 46) of surviving patients (n = 172) evaluated 3 (±1.8) years after hospitalization. In all, 85% of patients were male and the mean age was 34 (SD ±13) years. The education level was 9 (±4.7) years. As expected, education and age showed a moderately to strong linear relationship with the cognitive performance in 14 of 15 neuropsychological tests (R coefficient = 0.6-0.8). The cognitive test scores were not independently associated with gender, admission GCS, associated trauma, and Marshal CT classification. Admission-elevated blood glucose levels and the presence of sub-arachnoid haemorrhage were independently associated with lower scores on Rey Auditory Verbal Learning retention and Logical Memory-I tests, respectively. After correction for education and age distribution, the variables that are commonly associated with mortality or Glasgow Outcome Scale including admission pupils' examination, Marshal CT Classification, GCS, and serum glucose showed a limited predictive power for long-term cognitive prognosis. Identification of clinical, radiological, and laboratory variables as well as new biomarkers independently associated with cognitive outcome remains an important challenge for further work involving severe TBI patients.	f	\N
23167664	Clozapine, a second generation antipsychotic which is relatively safe in overdose, has been used as an effective treatment alternative to traditional antipsychotics. The therapeutic use in children remains controversial. However, in accordance with the increasing prescription in adults, the accidental ingestion in childhood becomes more frequent. We report the youngest case of accidental clozapine ingestion. A 13-month-old girl presented with acute respiratory insufficiency and coma of unknown origin. The medical history, laboratory and radiological assessment did not link to aetiology until an almost spontaneous arousal after 22 h pointed towards intoxication. The initial standard drug screening using immunoassay had been negative. Hence, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed, and clozapine was detected with a serum concentration of 736 ng/mL. This case illustrates the diagnostic and forensic pitfalls in a coma of unknown origin due to the limits of toxicological screening immunoassays. LC-MS/MS analysis by an established method showed clozapine metabolites (norclozapine and clozapine-N-oxide) are detectable for longer period, especially in urine, when compared with clozapine. The clinical course is presented in unique correlation with plasma and urine concentrations of clozapine and its metabolites. The elimination pattern of clozapine in toddlers is similar to adults, and the toxic dose was found to be lower when compared with school-age children and adults.	f	\N
23179030	This article proposes a means for better understanding the self and consciousness. Data indicate that the basic "emotional brain" continually computes potential survival risk against reward to rank consequent "emotion scores" for all sensory inputs. These scores compete to yield winner-takes-all outcomes that determine the choice of attention or action. This mechanism prevails regardless of whether the competing options gain their emotion scores through a rational or an intuitive pathway. There is no need to postulate any homunculus or inner self in control of such choice; indeed, our belief in a first-person self in overall control is wrong. The self is a passive construct arising from each individual's social development, where language acquisition vastly heightens communication and awareness not only outwardly, but also inwardly, as if to a controlling "inner I." However, when society comes to hold the maturing being accountable for his or her actions, the brain must respond, and it does so in the only way it can, by deeming that this passive, inner self-construct act as if it were the active self in charge. Consciousness emerges when the language-based output of the higher brain is referred for ownership to this artificial self-construct.	f	\N
23181686	We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.	f	\N
23200451	Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons.	f	\N
23211268	We investigated motion extrapolation in object tracking in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a multiple-object-tracking task (MOT; three targets, three distractors) combined with a probe detection task to investigate the distribution of attention around a target object. We found anisotropic probe detection rates with increased probe detection at locations where a target is heading. In Experiment 2, we introduced a black line (wall) in the center of the screen and block-wise manipulated the object's motion: either objects bounced realistically against the wall or objects went through the wall. Just before a target coincided with the wall, a probe could appear either along the bounce path or along the straight path. In addition to MOT, we included a single-object-tracking task (SOT; one target, five distractors) to control for attentional load. We found that linear extrapolation is dominant (better probe detection along the straight path than bounce path) regardless of attentional load and the motion condition. Anticipation of bouncing behavior did occur but only when attentional load was low. We conclude that attention is not tightly bound to moving target objects but encompasses the object's current position and the area in front of it. Furthermore, under the present experimental conditions, the visuo-attentional system does not seem to anticipate object bounces in the MOT task.	f	\N
23212302	In brain surgery procedures, such as deep brain stimulation, drug-resistant epilepsy and tumour surgery, the patient is intentionally awakened to map functional neural bases via electrophysiological assessment. This assessment can involve patient's body movements; thus, increasing the mechanical load on the head-restraint systems used for keeping the skull still during the surgery. The loads exchanged between the head and the restraining device can potentially result into skin and bone damage. The aim of this work is to assess such loads for laying down the requirements of a surgical robotics system for dynamic head movements compensation by fast moving arms and by an active restraint able to damp such actions. A Mayfield(®) head clamp was tracked and instrumented with strain gages (SGs). SG locations were chosen according to finite element analyses. During an actual brain surgery, displacements and strains were measured and clustered according to events that generated them. Loads were inferred from strain data. The greatest force components were exerted vertically (median 5.5 N, maximum 151.87 N) with frequencies up to 1.5 Hz. Maximum measured displacement and velocity were 9 mm and 60 mm/s, with frequencies up to 2.8 Hz. The analysis of loads and displacements allowed to identify the surgery steps causing maximal loads on the head-restraint device.	f	\N
23216374	Studies on adults have revealed a disadvantageous effect of negative emotional stimuli on executive functions (EF), and it is suggested that this effect is amplified in children. The present study's aim was to assess how emotional facial expressions affected working memory in 9- to 12-year-olds, using a working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Additionally, we explored how degree of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing children was related to performance on the same task. Before employing the working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli, an independent sample of 9- to 12-year-olds was asked to recognize the facial expressions intended to serve as stimuli for the working memory task and to rate the facial expressions on the degree to which the emotion was expressed and for arousal to obtain a baseline for how children during this age recognize and react to facial expressions. The first study revealed that children rated the facial expressions with similar intensity and arousal across age. When employing the working memory task with facial expressions, results revealed that negatively valenced expressions impaired working memory more than neutral and positively valenced expressions. The ability to successfully complete the working memory task increased between 9 to 12 years of age. Children's total problems were associated with poorer performance on the working memory task with facial expressions. Results on the effect of emotion on working memory are discussed in light of recent models and empirical findings on how emotional information might interact and interfere with cognitive processes such as working memory.	f	\N
23216771	The unique role of the EEG alpha rhythm in different states of cortical activity is still debated. The main theories regarding alpha function posit either sensory processing or attention allocation as the main processes governing its modulation. Closing and opening eyes, a well-known manipulation of the alpha rhythm, could be regarded as attention allocation from inward to outward focus though during light is also accompanied by visual change. To disentangle the effects of attention allocation and sensory visual input on alpha modulation, 14 healthy subjects were asked to open and close their eyes during conditions of light and of complete darkness while simultaneous recordings of EEG and fMRI were acquired. Thus, during complete darkness the eyes-open condition is not related to visual input but only to attention allocation, allowing direct examination of its role in alpha modulation. A data-driven ridge regression classifier was applied to the EEG data in order to ascertain the contribution of the alpha rhythm to eyes-open/eyes-closed inference in both lighting conditions. Classifier results revealed significant alpha contribution during both light and dark conditions, suggesting that alpha rhythm modulation is closely linked to the change in the direction of attention regardless of the presence of visual sensory input. Furthermore, fMRI activation maps derived from an alpha modulation time-course during the complete darkness condition exhibited a right frontal cortical network associated with attention allocation. These findings support the importance of top-down processes such as attention allocation to alpha rhythm modulation, possibly as a prerequisite to its known bottom-up processing of sensory input.	f	\N
23217629	This study analyzes the effects of attention disruption factors, such as sending text messages (STM) and performing searching navigation (SN) on driving performance patterns while actively driving, centering on motion signals. To this end, it analyzes not only data on control of the vehicle including the Anterior-Posterior Coefficient of Variation (APCV), Medial-Lateral Coefficient of Variation (MLCV), and Deviation of Vehicle Speed but also motion data such as the Jerk-Cost function (JC). A total of 55 drivers including 28 males (age: 24.1 ± 1.5, driving experience: 1.8 years ± 1.7 years) and 27 females (age: 23.8 ± 2.6, driving experience: 1.5 ± 1.0) participated in this study. All subjects were instructed to drive at a constant speed (90 km/h) for 2 min while keeping a distance of 30 m from the front car also running at a speed of 90 km/h. They were requested to drive for the first 1 min and then drive only (Driving Only) or conduct tasks while driving for the subsequent 1 min (Driving + STM or Driving + SN). The information on APCV, MLCV, and deviation of speed were delivered by a driving simulator. Furthermore, the motion signal was measured using 4 high-speed infrared cameras and based on the measurement results, JCs in a total of 6 parts including left shoulder (L.shoulder), left elbow (L.elbow), left hand (L.hand), right knee (R.knee), right ankle (R.ankle), and right toe (R.toe) were calculated. Differences among the results of 3 conditions of experiment, Driving Only, Driving + STM, and Driving + SN, were compared and analyzed in terms of APCV, MLCV, Deviation of Vehicle Speed, and JC. APCV and Deviation of Vehicle Speed increased in Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. MLCV increased in Driving + STM and Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. In the case of most JCs except that of L.hand, the values increased in Driving + SN, compared to Driving Only. This study indicated that JC could be a reliable parameter for the evaluation of driving performance patterns. In addition, it was discovered that additional tasks under driving, such as STM and SN, impaired smoothness or proficiency in driving motion, thereby increasing anterior-posterior and medio-lateral variability and deviation of speed.	f	\N
23221862	The current state of knowledge suggests that disruption of neuronal information integration may be a common mechanism of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. A neural system critical for information integration is the thalamocortical system whose specific and nonspecific divisions may play the roles for representing and integrating information, respectively. How anesthetics affect the function of these systems individually is not completely understood. The authors studied the effect of propofol on thalamocortical functional connectivity in the specific and nonspecific systems, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eight healthy volunteers were instructed to listen to and encode 40 English words during wakeful baseline, light sedation, deep sedation, and recovery in the scanner. Functional connectivity was determined as the temporal correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signals with seed regions defined within the specific and nonspecific thalamic nuclei. Thalamocortical connectivity at baseline was dominantly medial and bilateral frontal and temporal for the specific system, and medial frontal and medial parietal for the nonspecific system. During deep sedation, propofol reduced functional connectivity by 43% (specific) and 79% (nonspecific), a significantly greater reduction in the nonspecific than in the specific system and in the left hemisphere than in the right. Upon regaining consciousness, functional connectivity increased by 58% (specific) and 123% (nonspecific) during recovery, exceeding their values at baseline. Propofol conferred differential changes in functional connectivity of the specific and nonspecific thalamocortical systems, particularly in left hemisphere, consistent with the verbal nature of stimuli and task. The changes in nonspecific thalamocortical connectivity may correlate with the loss and return of consciousness.	f	\N
23224515	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are both genetic disorders which present with similar cognitive-behavioral problems, but distinct social phenotypes. Despite these social differences both syndromes display poor social relations which may result from abnormal social processing. This study aimed to manipulate the location of socially salient information within scenes to investigate the visual attentional mechanisms of: capture, disengagement, and/or general engagement. Findings revealed that individuals with FXS avoid social information presented centrally, at least initially. The WS findings, on the other hand, provided some evidence that difficulties with attentional disengagement, rather than attentional capture, may play a role in the WS social phenotype. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinct social phenotypes of these two disorders.	f	\N
23228587	Prominent models of social phobia highlight the role played by attentional factors, such as self-focused attention, in the development and maintenance of social phobia. Elevated self-focused attention is associated with increases in self-rated anxiety. Treatments that aim to modify and change attentional processes, specifically self-focused attention, will have a direct effect on social phobia symptoms. Thus, Attention Training targets attentional focus. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Attention Training in comparison to an established treatment for social phobia, Cognitive Therapy. Participants (Intention-to-treat = 45; completers = 30) were allocated to either 6 weeks of Attention Training or Cognitive Therapy. It was hypothesized that both treatments would be effective in reducing social phobia symptoms, but that Attention Training would work primarily by reducing levels of self-focused attention. The results found an overall effectiveness of both treatment conditions in reducing social phobia symptoms. However, Attention Training significantly improved scores on the Self-Focused Attention questionnaire and the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation questionnaire compared to Cognitive Therapy. Attention Training seems to be a promising treatment for social phobia.	f	\N
23233157	Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide perceptual selective attention. It has more recently been observed, however, that the contents of WM can capture visual attention, even when such internally maintained representations are irrelevant, and often disruptive, to the immediate external task. Thus, the precise relationship between WM and attention remains unclear, but it appears that they may bidirectionally impact one another, whether or not internal representations are consistent with the external perceptual goals. This reciprocal relationship seems, further, to be constrained by limited cognitive resources to handle demands in either maintenance or selection. We propose here that the close relationship between WM and attention may be best described as a give-and-take interdependence between attention directed toward either actively maintained internal representations (traditionally considered WM) or external perceptual stimuli (traditionally considered selective attention), underpinned by their shared reliance on a common cognitive resource. Put simply, we argue that WM and attention should no longer be considered as separate systems or concepts, but as competing and influencing one another because they rely on the same limited resource. This framework can offer an explanation for the capture of visual attention by irrelevant WM contents, as well as a straightforward account of the underspecified relationship between WM and attention.	f	\N
23234490	People have significant psychological resources to improve their well-being and performance, but these resources often go unused and could be better harnessed. In the medical domain, it is well established that these resources can be mobilized under certain conditions, for example in the context of the placebo effect. Here we explored whether the placebo principle can be used to enhance cognitive performance. To do so, we employed a modified placebo induction--a bogus priming method that we told participants would unconsciously enhance their knowledge and that they should hence trust their skills in an upcoming knowledge test. Participant performance was indeed enhanced, compared to a group that did not think the priming process would improve their knowledge. The study documents the relevance of the placebo effect outside the medical and therapeutic setting.	f	\N
23237079	Previous theories about the etiology of cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) emphasized trait factors such as neurological impairment. State factors, other than mood symptoms, that may exacerbate functional deficits have not yet been considered. The purpose of this study was to examine autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal following cognitive challenge. The study compared patients with BD and healthy controls (HC) in physiological measures and neuropsychological test scores. Thirty euthymic patients with BD and 22 HC completed the study. Participants completed mood [Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS)], anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and substance abuse (Drug Abuse Screening Test-20 item and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) measures. They were connected to an electrogram, a sensitive thermometer for measuring finger temperature, and electrodes that measure galvanic skin response. After a five-min baseline measurement in a restful state, participants completed a computerized neuropsychological battery (CNS Vital Signs). The group with BD reported significantly more mood symptoms (BDI-II, t = 3.71, p < 0.001; YMRS, t = 6.73, p < 0.001) and scored higher on a measure of trait-anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, t = 2.91, p < 0.001) than HC. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed higher arousal on all physiological measures in the BD group relative to HC at baseline [F(3,48) = 13.1, p < 0.001] and during cognitive testing [F(3,48) = 11.3, p < 0.001]. The increase in physiological arousal from a restful state to the time of testing was higher for the BD group [F(3,37) = 8.06, p < 0.001]. With respect to cognitive data, HC scored higher than patients with BD across the measures of memory (F = 8.5, p < 0.001), sustained (F = 9.5, p < 0.001) and complex (F = 2.7, p < 0.04) attention, processing speed (F = 10.0, p < 0.001), reaction time (F = 7.8, p < 0.001), cognitive flexibility (F = 19.7, p < 0.001), working memory (F = 10.8, p < 0.001), and social acuity (F = 5.7, p < 0.01), with partial eta-squared from 0.18 to 0.62. Correlational analysis revealed significant associations between various cognitive test scores and changes in physiological arousal from baseline to testing (-0.59 ≤ r ≤ 0.22). Relative to HC, patients with BD experience larger changes in ANS arousal between a restful baseline and cognitive testing, and achieve lower cognitive test scores. Further research is needed to determine whether acute physiological symptoms of anxiety directly compromise cognitive functioning in BD.	f	\N
23237331	The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.	f	\N
23242199	Performance of unimanual movements is associated with bihemispheric activity in the motor cortex in old adults. However, the causal functional role of the ipsilateral MC (iMC) for motor control is still not completely known. Here, the behavioral consequences of interference of the iMC during training of a complex motor skill were tested. Healthy old (58-85 years) and young volunteers (22-35 years) were tested in a double-blind, cross-over, sham-controlled design. Participants attended 2 different study arms with either cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) or sham concurrent with training. Motor performance was evaluated before, during, 90 min, and 24 h after training. During training, a reduced slope of performance with ctDCS relative to sham was observed in old compared with young (F = 5.8, P = 0.02), with a decrease of correctly rehearsed sequences, an effect that was evident even after 2 consecutive retraining periods without intervention. Furthermore, the older the subject, the more prominent was the disruptive effect of ctDCS (R(2) = 0.50, P = 0.01). These data provide direct evidence for a causal functional link between the iMC and motor skill acquisition in old subjects pointing toward the concept that the recruitment of iMC in old is an adaptive process in response to age-related declines in motor functions.	f	\N
23244316	Rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about negative information, has been found to lead to serious maladaptive consequences, including longer and more severe episodes of major depression. In this review, we present and discuss research findings motivated by the formulation that individual differences in cognitive processes that control how information is processed influence the likelihood that thoughts will become repetitive and negative. Several studies have demonstrated that a tendency to ruminate (i.e., trait rumination) is related to difficulties updating working memory (WM) and disengaging from and forgetting no-longer-relevant information. Other investigators have documented that trait rumination is also associated with an enhanced ability to ignore distracting information and with more stable maintenance of task-relevant information. In contrast to trait rumination, a state of rumination has been found to be related to widespread deficits in cognitive control. In this article, we discuss how the current accounts of control functioning cannot explain this pattern of anomalous control functioning. To explain these findings, including unexpected and contradictory results, we present an attentional scope model of rumination that posits that a constricted array of thoughts, percepts, and actions that are activated in WM or available for selection from long-term memory affects the control functioning of trait ruminators. This model explains, at a cognitive level, why rumination is particularly likely to arise when individuals are in a negative mood state; it also accounts for a number of findings outside of the rumination-control literature and generates several novel predictions.	f	\N
23250122	Stroke thrombolysis is limited by the "last-seen well" principle, which defines stroke onset time. A significant minority of stroke patients (~15%) awake with their symptoms and are by definition ineligible for thrombolysis because they were "last-seen well" at the time they went to bed implying an interval that is most often greater than three hours. A single-centre prospective, safety study was designed to thrombolyse 20 subjects with stroke-on-awakening. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they were last seen well less than 12 hours previously, specifically including those who awoke from sleep with their stroke deficits. They had a baseline computed tomogram (CT) scan with an ASPECTS score greater than 5, no evidence of well-evolved infarction and a CT angiogram / Trans-cranial Doppler ultrasound study demonstrating an intracranial arterial occlusion. Patients fulfilled all other standard criteria for stroke thrombolysis. The primary outcome was safety defined by symptomatic ICH or death. Among 89 screened patients, 20 were treated with thrombolysis. Two patients (10%) died due to massive carotid territory stroke and two patients (10%) died of stroke complications. Two patients (10%) showed asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (petechial hemorrhage) and none symptomatic ICH. Reasons for exclusion were: (a) ASPECTS ≤ 5 (29); (b) well-evolved infarcts on CT (19); (c) historical mRS > 2 (17); (d) no demonstrable arterial occlusion or were too mild to warrant treatment (10). Patients who awake with their deficits can be safely treated with thrombolysis based upon a tissue window defined by NCCT and CTA/TCD.	f	\N
23252922	Attention deficit has been reported in both schizophrenia patients and patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to elucidate the deficits in sustained attention and associated neural network dysfunctions in schizophrenia patients and MDD patients, and to investigate the difference between the two patient groups. Twelve schizophrenia patients, 12 patients with non-psychotic MDD, and 12 healthy control subjects participated in this study. A sustained attention to response task (SART) was used to measure attention capacity. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) during attention tasks was measured using H(2) (15) O positron emission tomography. Statistical parametric mapping and analysis of covariance were performed to compare the behavioral performance and CBF changes during SART among three groups. Behavioral performances were not significantly different among the three groups except for an increased commission error rate in the schizophrenia group. Regional CBF during SART was significantly reduced in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left cuneus, and the right superior parietal lobule and increased in the right superior frontal gyrus and the right cuneus in the schizophrenia group compared to the healthy control group. In the MDD group, neither significant regional CBF difference nor behavioral deficit was found compared to the healthy control group. Behavioral performance deficit and perfusion changes in the prefrontal and parietal cortices during SART were observed only in the schizophrenia group. Prefrontal and parietal network dysfunction for sustained attention may be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.	f	\N
23261418	The memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) posits the importance of a short delay (the 'interruption lag') before an interrupting task to encode suspended goals for retrieval post-interruption. Two experiments used the theory of soft constraints (Gray, Simms, Fu & Schoelles, 2006) to investigate whether the efficacy of an interruption lag could be improved by increasing goal-state access cost to induce a more memory-based encoding strategy. Both experiments used a copying task with three access cost conditions (Low, Medium, and High) and a 5-s interruption lag with a no lag control condition. Experiment 1 found that the participants in the High access cost condition resumed more interrupted trials and executed more actions correctly from memory when coupled with an interruption lag. Experiment 2 used a prospective memory test post-interruption and an eyetracker recorded gaze activity during the interruption lag. The participants in the High access cost condition with an interruption lag were best at encoding target information during the interruption lag, evidenced by higher scores on the prospective memory measure and more gaze activity on the goal-state during the interruption lag. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of goal-state access cost and an interruption lag are discussed.	f	\N
23265305	To study the sexual activities and prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in midlife Chinese women and their correlations with demographic factors, sexual dissatisfaction and interpersonal difficulty. This is a cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of women aged 40-60, who requested gynecological checkup or attend social activities at Women's Club. Sexual activities, sexual dysfunctions, sexual dissatisfaction, demographic factors and interpersonal difficulty were assessed by self-administered questionnaire. Among 371 eligible subjects, 22.4% and 39.6% women had low intimacy and coitus frequency (0 to <12 acts in one year), respectively. The odds ratios for low coital frequency in the natural menopausal and surgical menopausal subgroups were 3.00 and 5.09, respectively (95% confidence interval: 1.73-5.19 and 1.77-14.69, respectively). Overall, 77.2% women had at least one type of sexual dysfunctions; this proportion was highest in the surgically menopausal subgroup (88.9%) followed by the naturally menopausal subgroup (79.3%), the perimenopausal subgroup (78.2%) and the premenopausal subgroup (72.2%) (p=0.003). No lubrication (42.9%) was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected naturally and surgically menopaused women (p=0.001). Sexual dysfunction was the major contributor to sexual dissatisfaction (0.80), followed by interpersonal difficulty (0.2). Arousal disorder was the pivot of interaction between sexual dissatisfaction, menopausal status and low coital frequency. Chinese women had fewer intimate contacts and less coitus when menopause progressed. No lubrication was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected menopaused women. Our model showed that sexual dysfunction is the main contributor to sexual dissatisfaction.	f	\N
23274853	Behavioral studies suggest that postural control requires increased cognitive control and visuospatial processing with aging. Consequently, performance can decline when concurrently performing a postural and a demanding cognitive task. We aimed to identify the neural substrate underlying this effect. A demanding cognitive task, requiring visuospatial transformations, was performed with varying postural loads. More specifically, old and young subjects performed mental rotations of abstract figures in a seated position and when standing on a force platform. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify brain regions associated with mental rotation performance. Old as compared to young subjects showed increased blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses in a frontoparietal network as well as activations in additional areas. Despite this overall increased activation, they could still modulate BOLD responses with increasing task complexity. Importantly, activity in left lingual gyrus was highly predictive (r = -0.83, adjusted R(2) = 0.65) of the older subjects' degree of success in mental rotation performance when shifting from a sitting to a standing position. More specifically, increased activation in this area was associated with better performance, once postural load increased.	f	\N
23275056	To assess for the increased risk of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in young children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure from the multicenter, longitudinal Infant Development, Environment, and Lifestyle (IDEAL) study. The IDEAL study enrolled 412 mother-infant pairs at 4 sites (Tulsa, OK; Des Moines, IA; Los Angeles, CA; and Honolulu, HI). Methamphetamine-exposed subjects (n = 204) were identified by self-report and/or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry confirmation of amphetamine and metabolites in infant meconium. Matched subjects (n = 208) denied methamphetamine use and had a negative meconium screen. This analysis included a subsample of 301 subjects who were administered the Conners' Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) at 5.5 years of age (153 exposed and 148 comparison). Hierarchical linear models adjusted for covariates tested exposure effects on K-CPT measures. Using the same covariates, logistic regression was used to determine the effect of exposure on the incidence of a positive ADHD confidence index score, defined as greater than 50%. There were no differences between the groups in omission or commission errors or reaction time for correct trials. However, methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in other outcomes predictive of ADHD, including increased slope of reaction time across blocks (p < .001), increased variability in reaction time with longer interstimulus intervals (p < .01), and increased likelihood of greater than 50% on the ADHD confidence index (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-7.8; p = .02). Prenatal methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in K-CPT scores at 5.5 years of age. Even at this relatively young age, these children exhibit indicators of risk for ADHD and warrant monitoring.	f	\N
23276727	Coordinated joint engagement (CJE) is a behavioral measure used in the infant-caregiver interaction paradigm to measure joint attention. To know how mothers scaffold infant attention to prompt joint engagement states, this study attempted to determine (a) which specific maternal attention-directing strategies facilitate CJE in mother-infant interactions and (b) how attention-directing strategies precede a range of infant engagement states. Free play in 33 low-SES dyads was analyzed sequentially, a method that reveals temporal relations between the behaviors involved in an interaction. Maintaining was the only strategy that preceded CJE, and Introducing and Redirecting preceded infant Engagement with Object, Onlooking, and Supported Joint Engagement. The results point to the scaffolding role of Maintaining and the mediating role of Introducing and Redirecting maternal strategies. To understand how low-SES infants attain CJE is important given the relation between joint attention and cognitive development. Implications of the results for interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequities in early cognitive development are discussed.	f	\N
23279174	Schizophrenia is a complex epigenetic puzzle, the antecedents of which are presumed to lie in neurodevelopmental dysmaturation. This dysmaturation has an impact on children and adolescents at genetic risk for schizophrenia. In this framework, normative mechanisms of brain development that are highly dynamic in adolescence are likely to be disrupted in the at-risk adolescent brain. It is likely that what is affected is the integrity of brain networks that sub-serve fundamental domains of function such as sustained attention. Notably, expansion in proficiency in sustained attention that is characteristic of typical development is likely to be compromised in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia. This confluence of at-risk adolescents and neuro-behavioral domains of inquiry is discussed. We outline the evidence for developmental antecedents of schizophrenia, and their bases in systems and molecular mechanisms in the brain. Then we juxtapose these results against neuro-behavioral evidence of attention deficits in high-risk populations, and fMRI evidence of dysfunctional responses in critical brain regions. We end by advocating the application of systems-based approaches toward understanding the progression of network dysfunction in the adolescent risk-state.	f	\N
23280545	Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has shown beneficial aphrodisiac effects in some animal and human studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the safety and efficacy of saffron on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced sexual dysfunction in women. This was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study. Thirty-eight women with major depression who were stabilized on fluoxetine 40 mg/day for a minimum of 6 weeks and had experienced subjective feeling of sexual dysfunction entered the study. The patients were randomly assigned to saffron (30 mg/daily) or placebo for 4 weeks. Measurement was performed at baseline, week 2, and week 4 using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Side effects were systematically recorded. Thirty-four women had at least one post-baseline measurement and completed the study. Two-factor repeated measure analysis of variance showed significant effect of time × treatment interaction [Greenhouse-Geisser's corrected: F(1.580, 50.567) = 5.366, p = 0.012] and treatment for FSFI total score [F(1, 32) = 4.243, p = 0.048]. At the end of the fourth week, patients in the saffron group had experienced significantly more improvement in total FSFI (p < 0.001), arousal (p = 0.028), lubrication (p = 0.035), and pain (p = 0.016) domains of FSFI but not in desire (p = 0.196), satisfaction (p = 0.206), and orgasm (p = 0.354) domains. Frequency of side effects was similar between the two groups. It seems saffron may safely and effectively improve some of the fluoxetine-induced sexual problems including arousal, lubrication, and pain.	f	\N
23288020	To verify the auditory selective attention in children with stroke. Dichotic tests of binaural separation (non-verbal and consonant-vowel) and binaural integration - digits and Staggered Spondaic Words Test (SSW) - were applied in 13 children (7 boys), from 7 to 16 years, with unilateral stroke confirmed by neurological examination and neuroimaging. The attention performance showed significant differences in comparison to the control group in both kinds of tests. In the non-verbal test, identifications the ear opposite the lesion in the free recall stage was diminished and, in the following stages, a difficulty in directing attention was detected. In the consonant- vowel test, a modification in perceptual asymmetry and difficulty in focusing in the attended stages was found. In the digits and SSW tests, ipsilateral, contralateral and bilateral deficits were detected, depending on the characteristics of the lesions and demand of the task. Stroke caused auditory attention deficits when dealing with simultaneous sources of auditory information.	f	\N
23297206	Language production and spatial attention are the most salient lateralized cerebral functions, and their complementary specialization has been observed in the majority of the population. To investigate whether the complementary specialization has a causal origin (the lateralization of one function causes the opposite lateralization of the other) or rather is a statistical phenomenon (different functions lateralize independently), we determined the lateralization for spatial attention in a group of individuals with known atypical right hemispheric (RH) lateralization for speech production, based on a previous large-scale screening of left-handers. We show that all 13 participants with RH language dominance have left-hemispheric dominance for spatial attention, and all but one of 16 participants with left-hemispheric language dominance are RH dominant for spatial attention. Activity was observed in the dorsal fronto-parietal pathway of attention, including the inferior parietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule, the frontal eye-movement field, and the inferior frontal sulcus/gyrus, and these regions functionally colateralized in the hemisphere dominant for attention, independently of the side of lateralization. Our results clearly support the Causal hypothesis about the complementary specialization, and we speculate that it derives from a longstanding evolutionary origin. We also suggest that the conclusions about lateralization based on an unselected sample of the population and laterality assessment using coarse functional transcranial Doppler sonography should be interpreted with more caution.	f	\N
23299718	The neuropeptide orexin is synthesized by neurons exclusively located in the hypothalamus. However, these neurons send axons over virtually the entire brain and spinal cord and therefore constitute a unique central orexinergic system. It is well known that central orexin plays a crucial role in the regulation of various basic non-somatic and somatic physiological functions, including feeding, energy homeostasis, the sleep/wake cycle, reward, addiction, and neuroendocrine, as well as motor control. Moreover, the absence of orexin results in narcolepsy-cataplexy, a simultaneous somatic and non-somatic dysfunction. In this review, we summarize these central functions of the orexinergic system and associated diseases, and suggest that this system may hold a key position in somatic-non-somatic integration.	f	\N
23300231	This paper focuses on an innovative intersection between education, health and arts. Taking a broad definition of health it examines some social and psychological well-being impacts of extended collaborations between a theatre company and children with communication difficulties. It seeks to test aspects of Fredrickson's(1) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in a primary school curriculum context. The researcher participated in a project called Speech Bubbles. The programme was devised by theatre practitioners and aimed at six- and seven-year-olds with difficulties in speech, language and communication. Sessions were observed, videoed and analysed for levels of child well-being using an established scale. In addition, responses regarding perceived improvements in speech, language and communication were gathered from school records and teachers, teaching assistants, practitioners and parents. Data were captured using still images and videos, children's recorded commentaries, conversations, written feedback and observation. Using grounded research methods, themes and categories arose directly from the collected data. Fluency, vocabulary, inventiveness and concentration were enhanced in the large majority of referred children. The research also found significant positive developments in motivation and confidence. Teachers and their assistants credited the drama intervention with notable improvements in attitude, behaviour and relationships over the year. Aspects of many children's psychological well-being also showed marked signs of progress when measured against original reasons for referral and normal expectations over a year. An unexpected outcome was evidence of heightened well-being of the teaching assistants involved. Findings compared well with expectations based upon Fredrickson's theory and also the theatre company's view that theatre-making promotes emotional awareness and empathy. Improvements in both children's well-being and communication were at least in part related to the sustained and playful emphases on the processes and practice of drama, clear values and an inclusive environment.	f	\N
23303907	Circadian rhythms occur in almost all species and control vital aspects of our physiology, from sleeping and waking to neurotransmitter secretion and cellular metabolism. Epidemiological studies from recent decades have supported a unique role for circadian rhythm in metabolism. As evidenced by individuals working night or rotating shifts, but also by rodent models of circadian arrhythmia, disruption of the circadian cycle is strongly associated with metabolic imbalance. Some genetically engineered mouse models of circadian rhythmicity are obese and show hallmark signs of the metabolic syndrome. Whether these phenotypes are due to the loss of distinct circadian clock genes within a specific tissue versus the disruption of rhythmic physiological activities (such as eating and sleeping) remains a cynosure within the fields of chronobiology and metabolism. Becoming more apparent is that from metabolites to transcription factors, the circadian clock interfaces with metabolism in numerous ways that are essential for maintaining metabolic homeostasis.	f	\N
23317941	Neonates with hypoplastic left heart syndrome have significant hemodynamic threats to cerebral perfusion and are at risk of reduced neurodevelopmental performance. We hypothesized that cerebral hypoxia, detectable by near-infrared spectroscopy in the early postoperative period, would be related to later neurodevelopmental performance. The study population was a sequential cohort of patients who had undergone stage 1 palliation of hypoplastic left heart syndrome under standard conditions, including neonatal perioperative monitoring with cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy, and who had undergone a neurodevelopmental assessment at age 4 to 5 years. The neonatal demographic and 48-hour perioperative hemodynamic parameters, including cerebral oxygen saturation, were tested for their relationship to 4 domains of neurodevelopmental performance, including visual-motor integration in childhood in univariate and multivariate models. The neurodevelopmental scores were classified as low if less than 85 (-1 standard deviation) and abnormal if less than 70 (-2 standard deviations). For the 51 patients in the surgical cohort, the early survival was 94%, the cumulative survival was 86%, and the neurodevelopmental assessment was completed by 21 (48%) of the survivors, without evidence of an ascertainment bias. At the test age of 56.3 ± 5.5 months, the composite neurodevelopmental index, constructed from equally weighted measures in 4 domains, was 97.6 ± 9.6, not different from the age-based norms, with 3 of 21 in the low range and none abnormal. The mean visual-motor integration was 93.4 ± 14, slightly less than the population norm (P < .05), with 2 of 21 having low scores and 1 abnormal scores. In patients with low to abnormal visual-motor integration, the perioperative stage 1 palliation cerebral oxygenation saturation was significantly lower (63.6 ± 8.1 vs 67.8 ± 8.1, P < .05). Two patients had discrete embolic strokes after their initial hospitalization; the occurrence of late stroke reduced the visual-motor integration performance but was not related to the early cerebral oxygen saturation. Nonlinear relationships of cerebral oxygen saturation to the neurodevelopmental measures found cerebral oxygen saturation thresholds of 49% to 62%. The hours at a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and 55% were related to low visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index scores in the univariate and multivariate models. A multivariate model of age and weight at stage 1 palliation, cerebral oxygen saturation, arterial oxygen saturation, cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest times, and later stroke predicted visual-motor integration to an important degree (R(2) = 0.53, P < .001). The actual and predicted visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index were normal when a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and other risk conditions were avoided. Neurodevelopmental performance was related to demographic, neonatal perioperative physiologic, and later factors. Perioperative cerebral oxygenation assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy can detect hypoxic-ischemic conditions associated with injury and reduced neurodevelopmental performance and was the most significant physiologic factor identified. These data suggest that efforts to avoid cerebral hypoxia are likely to improve the outcomes in this high-risk population.	f	\N
23328130	The aim of this study was to compare sleep pattern, tiredness sensation and quality of life between different chronotypes in train drivers from a Brazilian transportation company. Ninety-one train drivers, working a rotary work schedule including night shift, were divided into three groups according to their chronotype (morning types, intermediate or evening types) and were assessed for their sleep and quality of life, as characterized by a subjective questionnaire and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), applied before and immediately after the night shift. The pattern of activity and rest was measured for 10 days by actigraphy, and the chronotype was determined through the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Forty-one (45.1%) individuals were classified as morning type, 44 (48.4%) were classified as intermediate and 6 (6.6%) as evening type. The evening types had a tendency to remain awake for a longer period of time before the night shift (p = 0.05) and scored worse overall for quality of life compared to morning types (p = 0.11). There was no significant difference between the groups regarding variability in the PVT performance, even when covaried by the period of waking time before the test. There was no significant difference either in feelings of fatigue before and after starting the shift. Although the evening type number was small, evening type individuals scored worse relative to sleep and quality of life than morning type individuals.	f	\N
23328270	The antiepileptic drug ezogabine (EZG; US adopted name for retigabine [the international nonproprietary name]) reduces neuronal excitability by enhancing potassium channel activity. EZG has been approved as adjunctive treatment for adults with partial-onset seizures. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of coadministration of ethanol 1 g/kg on the safety and tolerability of EZG and the consequences of coadministration on pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) parameters in healthy volunteers. In a randomized, 4-way crossover, partially double-blind study, volunteers received 4 oral treatments (EZG 200 mg + ethanol placebo [light apple juice]; placebo + ethanol 1 g/kg; EZG 200 mg + ethanol 1 g/kg; or placebo + ethanol placebo) separated by 5 to 21 days. PK and PD parameters were evaluated in 17 healthy volunteers (19 to 55 years) who were currently moderate alcohol drinkers. Ethanol coadministration increased EZG AUC(0-∞) and C(max) by 36% and 23%, respectively. EZG had no impact on ethanol PK. Ethanol alone impaired balance, blurred vision, and increased intoxication and dizziness. Objective tests (reaction times, response accuracy, attention, and manual tracking) were also impaired by ethanol. EZG treatment alone had no impact on PD measures other than a variable, transient increase in blurred vision (vision clear-crisp visual analog scale scores). Treatments were generally tolerated, with no serious adverse events or discontinuations owing to adverse events. Ethanol increased EZG exposure, which did not seem to be clinically relevant. Except for an increase in blurred vision, impairment effects observed were related primarily to ethanol and were not exacerbated by the addition of EZG, which was generally tolerated with or without ethanol.	f	\N
23331374	Individual variation in serotonergic function is associated with reactivity, risk for affective disorders, as well as an altered response to disease. Our study used a nonhuman primate model to further investigate whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region for the serotonin transporter gene helps to explain differences in proinflammatory responses. Homology between the human and rhesus monkey polymorphisms provided the opportunity to determine how this genetic variation influences the relationship between a psychosocial stressor and immune responsiveness. Leukocyte numbers in blood and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses are sensitive to stressful challenges and are indicative of immune status. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and cellular IL-6 responses to in vitro lipopolysaccharide stimulation were assessed in 27 juvenile male rhesus monkeys while housed in stable social groups (NLL  = 16, NS  = 11) and also in 18 animals after relocation to novel housing (NLL  = 13, NS  = 5). Short allele monkeys had significantly higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios than homozygous Long allele carriers at baseline [t(25) = 2.18, P = 0.02], indicative of an aroused state even in the absence of disturbance. In addition, following the housing manipulation, IL-6 responses were more inhibited in short allele carriers (F1,16  = 8.59, P = 0.01). The findings confirm that the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism is a distinctive marker of reactivity and inflammatory bias, perhaps in a more consistent manner in monkeys than found in many human studies.	f	\N
23332428	Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to be more vulnerable to various forms of voiding dysfunction and nocturnal enuresis (NE). We attempt to compare the clinical manifestations and attentional performance between ADHD children with NE and those without NE. We consecutively enrolled children diagnosed with ADHD in child and adolescent psychiatric clinics. The questionnaires for evaluation of ADHD symptoms and voiding dysfunction symptoms were administered to all study participants. All participants also received the Test Battery for Attention Performance (TAP) for assessment of attentional function. A total of 53 children were enrolled in this study, comprising 47 boys and six girls. The prevalence rate of NE was 28.3%. Children in the NE group had statistically significant higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score (5.40 ± 3.66 vs.3.16 ± 2.74; p = 0.018) and two subscales of "When I wet myself, my underwear is soaked" (p < 0.001) and "I miss having a bowel movement every day" (p = 0.047). There were no significant differences with regard to all psychiatric evaluations between the NE and non-NE groups. In the TAP test, the NE group showed a significantly shorter reaction time in the domain of inhibitory control, working memory, and auditory sustained attention than the non-NE group. Children with ADHD have a high prevalence of NE. ADHD children with NE had a significantly higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score and shorter reaction time in most domains of the TAP test. Further study is needed to discern the impact of NE on the neuropsychological function of ADHD children.	f	\N
23332817	Inhibition of return (IOR) reflects a bias to preferentially attend to non-previously attended or inspected spatial locations. IOR is paramount to efficiently explore our environment, by avoiding repeated scanning of already visited locations. Patients with left visual neglect after right parietal damage or fronto-parietal disconnection demonstrated impaired manual, but not saccadic, IOR for right-sided targets (Bourgeois et al., 2012). Here we aimed at investigating in healthy participants the causal role of distinct cortical sites within the right hemisphere in manual and saccadic IOR, by evaluating the offline effects of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on the right intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) and the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Our results show that rTMS over both sites lastingly interfered with manual but not saccadic IOR for right-sided targets. This behavioral pattern closely mimicked the performance of neglect patients evaluated with the same paradigm. In contrast, for left-sided targets, rTMS over the right IPS impaired both manual and saccadic IOR, while rTMS over the right TPJ produced no modulation in either task. We concluded that distinct parietal nodes of the dorsal and ventral spatial attention networks of the right hemisphere make different contributions to exogenous orienting processes implicated in IOR, and that such effects are hemifield- and task-dependent.	f	\N
23336519	The present study addresses gaps in the literature on affect-biased health perceptions by (a) investigating health bias while considering both valence and arousal components of affect; (b) establishing the presence of, and variability in, affective health bias at the daily level; and (c) exploring daily health bias in a non-clinical, community sample of adults. Participants were 477 adults (aged 33-80 years) who reported daily health events, health satisfaction and affect for up to 56 days. Health bias was present when the effect of a given day's health events on that day's health satisfaction was significantly moderated by that day's affect. Multilevel modelling was used to investigate fixed and random within-day effects. Daily health satisfaction. Significant interaction effects indicated the presence of health bias on the daily level: positively valenced affect buffered the negative impact of health events on health satisfaction, whereas negatively valenced affect exacerbated this association; additionally, valence emerged as the most salient characteristic of positive affect, whereas arousal was a differentiating factor for negative affect. The results provide evidence that both valence and arousal components of affect are important to consider when investigating day-level health bias, and that these effects can be detected using a general population of adults.	f	\N
23337080	Memory tasks combining storage and distracting tasks performed at either encoding or retrieval have provided divergent results pointing towards accounts of forgetting in terms of either temporal decay or event-based interference respectively. The aim of this study was to shed light on the possible sources of such a divergence that could rely on methodological aspects or deeper differences in the memory traces elicited by the different paradigms used. Methodological issues were explored in a first series of experiments by introducing at retrieval computer-paced distracting tasks that involved articulatory suppression, attentional demand, or both. A second series of experiments that used a similar design was intended to induce differences in the nature of memory traces by increasing the time allowed for encoding the to-be-remembered items. Although the introduction of computer-paced distracting tasks allowed for a strict control of temporal parameters, the first series of experiments replicated the effects usually attributed to event-based interference. However, deeper encoding abolished these effects while time-related effects remained unchanged. These findings suggest that the interplay between temporal factors and event-based interference in forgetting at short term is more complex than expected and could depend on the nature of memory traces.	f	\N
23337616	Previous research has demonstrated that emotional material is more likely to be remembered than neutral material (Hamann, 2001). The present study employed the item-method of directed forgetting in order to examine whether emotionally negative words are not only easier to remember, but also harder to forget. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were additionally measured in order to investigate the processes of selective rehearsal and active inhibition in directed forgetting. The results demonstrated directed forgetting effects for both neutral and negative words, with a stronger effect for negative items. Late positive potentials (LPPs) for 'to-be-remembered' (TBR) relative to 'to-be-forgotten' (TBF) cues were enhanced when the cues followed negative in comparison to neutral words, indicating the greater selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. Frontal positivities to TBF relative to TBR cues were not modulated by word valence, indicating that inhibitory processes were unaffected by emotion. Taken together, the present research demonstrates for the first time that, not only are emotionally negative words prone to the same directed forgetting effects as neutral words, but that these effects are in fact enhanced for negative words and due to increased selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. The discrepancies between the present findings and those of previous studies are discussed.	f	\N
23345413	Attention to a spatial location or feature in a visual scene can modulate the responses of cortical neurons and affect perceptual biases in illusions. We add attention to a cortical model of spatial context based on a well-founded account of natural scene statistics. The cortical model amounts to a generalized form of divisive normalization, in which the surround is in the normalization pool of the center target only if they are considered statistically dependent. Here we propose that attention influences this computation by accentuating the neural unit activations at the attended location, and that the amount of attentional influence of the surround on the center thus depends on whether center and surround are deemed in the same normalization pool. The resulting form of model extends a recent divisive normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). We simulate cortical surround orientation experiments with attention and show that the flexible model is suitable for capturing additional data and makes nontrivial testable predictions.	f	\N
23347592	Sexual function of women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and/or urinary incontinence (UI) is adversely affected. However, our current understanding of the exact relationship between female sexual dysfunction and POP and/or UI is incomplete. A qualitative study can improve our understanding by describing what women themselves perceive as the real problem. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of POP and/or UI on the different categories of female sexual dysfunction by way of a qualitative study. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted in 37 women scheduled for pelvic floor surgery, and one was excluded from analysis due to incomplete recordings. The impact of POP and/or UI on female sexual function. Only 17% of women were completely positive about their sex life. Both POP and UI had a negative effect on body image. Women with POP had a negative image of their vagina, which caused them to be insecure about their partner's sexual experience, while women with UI were embarrassed about their incontinence and pad use, and feared smelling of urine. Worries about the presence of POP during sexual activity, discomfort from POP, and reduced genital sensations were the most important reasons for decreased desire, arousal, and difficulty reaching an orgasm in women with POP. Fear of incontinence during intercourse affected desire, arousal, and orgasm and could be a cause for dyspareunia in women with UI. Desire was divided into two main elements: "drive" and "motivation." Although "drive," i.e., spontaneous sexual interest, was not commonly affected by POP and/or UI, a decrease in "motivation" or the willingness to engage in sexual activity was the most common sexual dysfunction mentioned. Body image plays a key role in the sexual functioning of women with POP and/or UI with the biggest impact on women's "motivation."	f	\N
23350301	This review examines attention research appearing in The American Journal of Psychology over the journal's rich 125-year history. In particular, the review examines studies focused on selective attention's role in modulating the influence of distraction and the methods used to capture the nature of selective attention. Special attention is given to classic articles by Treisman (1964a, 1964b), Neisser (1963), and Eriksen and Rohrbaugh (1970), whose methods and results are examined in detail in light of current theory and research in selective attention.	f	\N
23351098	Past research suggests that high approach-motivated positive affects narrow attentional scope and cause greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. However, because arousal is related to motivational intensity, arousal may be responsible for these past findings. The present research investigated whether arousal, manipulated independently of affect using physical exercise, would influence attentional and LPP responses to stimuli. Results revealed that appetitive (vs. neutral) pictures evoked larger LPPs over central and left frontal regions, and caused more attentional narrowing. Individual differences in approach motivation predicted more attentional narrowing following appetitive stimuli. However, manipulated arousal did not influence attentional scope or LPPs to neutral or appetitive stimuli. Results suggest that attentional narrowing and LPPs to appetitive stimuli are related to approach motivation rather than enhanced general arousal.	f	\N
23356511	Previous research regarding anxiety and female sexual functioning has yielded conflicting conclusions. This study examined the effect of state/trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity on sexual responding and the propensity toward sexual inhibition/excitation in women without an anxiety disorder (n = 100, M age = 28.8 years) compared with women with an anxiety disorder (panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, n = 30, M age = 30.2 years). Participants completed self-report measures of state and trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, sexual functioning, and sexual inhibition/excitation. Women with an anxiety disorder reported worse sexual functioning compared with those without an anxiety disorder (except for desire, lubrication, and pain) and a greater propensity toward sexual inhibition, because of the threat of performance failure and its consequences. Dispositional anxiety and related worries significantly predicted various types of sexual dysfunctions. Findings suggested the importance of considering the relation between anxiety and sexual functioning to design optimal prevention and therapeutic interventions for women with anxiety disorders.	f	\N
23356552	The prefrontal cortex and its connections with other cortical areas participate in processing erotic stimuli and hence sexual arousal. Visual erotic stimuli elicit sexual arousal that is associated with changes in electroencephalographic activity. The electroencephalographic correlation analysis provides information on the functional synchronization among areas. This study analyzed the functional interaction among the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices during sexual arousal in young men induced by observing erotic photographs. In 2 groups of heterosexual men-an erotic stimulation group and a neutral stimulation group-the authors recorded electroencephalograms at the F3, F4, T3, T4, P3, and P4 derivations under 2 conditions: baseline and visual stimulation. Heart rate was monitored as a measure of peripheral activation. Participants in the erotic stimulation group reported a moderate degree of sexual arousal and a decrease in heart rate. Decreased inter- and intrahemispheric correlations of the fast frequencies were obtained only in erotic stimulation. These data support differential hemisphere participation in modulating sexual arousal and show that decreased synchronization patterns between prefrontal and posterior cortices (parietal and temporal) favor sexual arousal in young men. The results of this study may contribute to a better understanding of the central nervous system's mechanisms that underlie sexual arousal.	f	\N
23366539	This paper describes EEG analysis of frontal lobe area in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness. Arousal maintenance state is considered different physiological state from the normal sleep onset. To analyze the EEG of frontal area might be important because we believe that the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness causes neuron activities from the frontal lobe, which coordinates behavior, to hypothalamus, which coordinates wakefulness and sleep. It is, however, hard to use EEG signals in the frontal area consistently because blinking artifacts are mixed in the EEG signals. In this paper, we have analyzed the EEG signals of the frontal lobe in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness after removing the eye-blinking artifact from the scalp EEG signals using an ICA denoising method. As a result, the EEG signals of the frontal area in the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness have wide bandwidth as in the EEG of the occipital area. It strengthens our speculation, i.e., the EEG desynchronization occurs because of the neuron activities from the frontal lobe to hypothalamus in order to maintain arousal state against sleepiness.	f	\N
23369930	This study examined the effect of pain interference and attentional interference on the anticipatory postural adjustments of trunk muscles in patients with nonspecific chronic low back pain. Fifty-nine patients performed rapid flexion movements of the right arm under 6 conditions, namely a control condition and conditions with different attention demands. The latency between the activations of the shoulder and different trunk muscles, as measured with surface electromyography, was used as the outcome. Using repeated measures analysis of variance, attention conditions and group comparisons were tested between those who scored high and low on pain intensity, fear of movement, or pain catastrophizing. There were significant (although minimal) interactive effects but significant and potentially clinically relevant group and attention main effects. The group with the lowest scores showed delayed activity (14 to 29 ms) relative to those with higher scores. One attention-demanding condition delayed (20 to 35 ms) the latencies of some trunk muscles relative to the control condition, namely the one that was the most attention-demanding according to the reaction time results. These findings suggest that patients with chronic low back pain, who are characterized by higher scores on some pain-related variables (visual analog scale, Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia, Pain Catastrophizing Scale), react favorably to protect the spine from further pain and injuries but would be at greater risk of injury when performing a complex physical task requiring more attention demand.	f	\N
23371434	Hyperarousal is a hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD has been associated with increased blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) in veteran populations. We retrospectively identified male patients consulted to outpatient psychiatry at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Patients were divided into PTSD (n = 88) and non-PTSD (n = 98) groups. All PTSD patients and a subset of non-PTSD patients had documented blast exposure during service. The study investigated whether patients with PTSD had higher systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) than patients without PTSD. The effect of trauma exposure on BP was also examined. Mean SBP (133.8 vs. 122.3 mm Hg; p < .001), DBP (87.6 vs. 78.6 mm Hg; p < .001), and HR (78.9 vs. 73.1 bpm; p < .001) were all significantly higher in the PTSD group. Trauma-exposed patients without PTSD had significantly higher BP than nonexposed patients. The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) was 34.1% (diagnosed and undiagnosed) among PTSD patients. Patients with PTSD had higher BP and HR compared to patients without PTSD. Trauma exposure may increase BP in this population. These findings will increase awareness about the cardiovascular implications of PTSD.	f	\N
23374543	The dominant model that informs clinical training for preventing violence and managing aggression posits arousal as mediated downwards from higher cortical structures. This view results in an often-misplaced reliance on verbal and cognitive techniques for de-escalation. The emergence of sensory modulation, via the Six Core Strategies, is an alternative or complementary approach that is associated with reduced rates of seclusion and restraint. Sensory-based interventions are thought to promote adaptive regulation of arousal and emotion, but this connection has had limited theoretical and empirical development. This paper presents results of a pilot trial of sensory-based interventions in four inpatient mental health units in New Zealand. Narrative analysis of interview and focus group data suggest that modifications to the environment and the use of soothing stimuli moderate or optimize arousal and promote an ability to adaptively regulate emotion. Findings are discussed in light of recent advances in the neurophysiology of emotional regulation and the General Aggression Model that posits arousal and maladaptive emotional regulation as precursors to aggression.	f	\N
23375117	In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.	f	\N
23377282	Although major depression is projected to be among the top three causes of disability-adjusted life years lost in 2030, relatively little is known concerning the extent to which depressed mood states can bias social-economic decision making away from optimal outcomes. One experimental framework to study the interaction between negative emotion and social-economic decisions is the ultimatum game (UG), where the fair, cooperative player altruistically punishes the unfair, non-cooperative player. To assess a potential susceptibility of altruistic punishment to depressed mood, we repeatedly administered the UG task to a cohort of 20 currently depressed patients with a diagnosis of recurrent major depressive disorder and 20 healthy controls. Furthermore, valence and arousal ratings of emotionally laden pictures were obtained from all participants in order to assess a depressed mood-related distortion of emotion judgments. Compared to healthy controls, depressed patients over-sanctioned unfair proposals in the UG and judged emotional stimuli too negatively. Thus, major depression is associated with a negative emotional bias that hampers social-economic decision making and produces large personal costs.	f	\N
23381193	Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.	f	\N
23381483	People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit superior performance in visual search compared to others. However, most studies demonstrating this advantage have employed simple, uncluttered images with fully visible targets. We compare the performance of high-functioning adults with ASD and matched controls on a naturalistic luggage screening task. Although the two groups were equally accurate in detecting targets, the ASD adults improve in their correct elimination of target-absent bags faster than controls. This feature of their behavior is extremely important for many real-world monitoring tasks that require sustained attention for long time periods. Further analyses suggest that this improvement is attributable neither to the motor speed nor to the level of intelligence of the adults with ASD. These findings may have possible implications for employment opportunities of adult individuals with ASD.	f	\N
23382513	Although the literature on parent-child interactions in young children with autism has examined dyadic style, synchrony, and sustained engagement, the examination of parental skill in sustaining and developing play skills themselves has not been targeted. This study examined the extent to which parents of young children with autism match and scaffold their child's play. Sixteen dyads of parents and their children with autism participated in this study along with 16 matched dyads of typically developing children. Both groups were administered a structured play assessment and were observed during a 10-min free play situation. Strategies of play were examined and results revealed that parents of children with autism initiated more play schemes and suggested and commanded play acts more than parents of typical children. They also responded to their child's play acts more often with a higher level play act, while parents of typical children matched/expanded their responses to their child. Parent imitation was also related to longer sequences of play. The findings can guide further research and play intervention for parents.	f	\N
23387907	Sexual health issues for women who have cancer are an important and under-diagnosed and under-treated survivorship issue. Survivorship begins at the time a cancer is detected and addresses health-care issues beyond diagnosis and acute treatment. This includes improving access to care and quality-of-life considerations, as well as dealing with the late effects of treatment. Difficulties with sexual function are one of the more common late effects in women. This article attempted to characterize the etiology, prevalence, and treatment for sexual health concerns for women with gynecological cancer. A systematic survey of currently available relevant literature published in English was conducted. The issue of sexual health for women with cancer is a prevalent medical concern that is rarely addressed in clinical practice. The development of sexual morbidity in the female cancer survivor is a multifactorial problem incorporating psychological, physiologic, and sociological elements. Treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and hormonal manipulation appear to have the greatest influence on the development of sexual consequences. Sexual complaints include but are not limited to changes in sexual desire, arousal, and orgasmic intensity and latency. Many women suffer from debilitating vaginal dryness and painful intercourse. Many of the sexual health issues experienced by cancer survivors can be addressed in clinical practice. A multimodal treatment paradigm is necessary to effectively treat these sexual complaints in this special patient population.	f	\N
23399829	Conceptualizations of emotion regulation have led to the identification of cognitive and behavioral regulatory abnormalities that contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. However, existing research on emotion regulation in anxiety and mood disorders has primarily focused on the regulation of negative emotions rather than positive emotions. Recent findings indicate that disturbances in positive emotion regulation occur across emotional disorders, and may be a generative target for treatment research. The aims of this paper are to: 1. Present a transdiagnostic model of positive emotion disturbances in emotional disorders; 2. Review evidence for disturbances in positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders across categories of emotion regulation; and 3. Propose treatment strategies that may address these disturbances.	f	\N
23407975	Multisensory visuo-vestibular cortical areas are important for spatial orientation and facilitate the control of the brainstem-mediated vestibular ocular reflex (VOR). Despite reports of visual input and cognitive tasks modulating the VOR through cortical control, it is unknown whether higher-order visual stimuli such as bistable perception and attention tasks involving visual imagery have an effect on the VOR. This is a possibility since such stimuli recruit cortical areas overlapping with those engaged during vestibular activation. Here we used a novel paradigm in which human subjects view bistable perceptual stimuli or perform complex attention tasks during concurrent vestibular stimulation. Bistable perceptual phenomena and attention tasks asymmetrically modulated the VOR but only if they involved a visuospatial component (e.g., binocular motion rivalry but not color rivalry). Strikingly, the lateralization effect was dependent upon the subjects' handedness, making this report the first behavioral demonstration that vestibular cortical processing is strongly lateralized to the non-dominant hemisphere. Furthermore, we show that perceptual transitions can modulate the dynamics of the vestibular system contingent upon the presence of a spatial component in the perceptual transition stimuli. Both perceptual transitions and attentional tasks are thought to invoke a redirection of spatial attention. We infer that such redirection of spatial attention engages multisensory vestibular cortical areas that modulate low-level vestibular function which, in turn, may contribute to spatial orientation.	f	\N
23413011	An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that a response in one task can be activated automatically on the basis merely of instructed stimulus-response (S-R) mappings belonging to another task. Such instruction-based response activations are considered to be evidence for the formation of S-R associations on the basis of the S-R mappings for an upcoming, but not yet executed, task. A crucial but somewhat neglected assumption is that instructed S-R associations are formed only under conditions that impose a sufficient degree of task preparation. Accordingly, in the present study we investigated the relation between task preparation and the instruction-based task-rule congruency effect, which is an index of response activation on the basis of instructions. The results from two experiments demonstrated that merely instructed S-R mappings of a particular task only elicit instruction-based response activations when that task is prepared for to a sufficient degree. Implications are discussed for the representation of instructed S-R mappings in working memory.	f	\N
23417238	A subject's sensitivity to a stimulus variation can be studied by estimating the psychometric function. Generally speaking, three parameters of the psychometric function are of interest: the performance threshold, the slope of the function, and the rate at which attention lapses occur. In the present study, three psychophysical procedures were used to estimate the three-parameter psychometric function for an auditory gap detection task. These were an up-down staircase (up-down) procedure, an entropy-based Bayesian (entropy) procedure, and an updated maximum-likelihood (UML) procedure. Data collected from four young, normal-hearing listeners showed that while all three procedures provided similar estimates of the threshold parameter, the up-down procedure performed slightly better in estimating the slope and lapse rate for 200 trials of data collection. When the lapse rate was increased by mixing in random responses for the three adaptive procedures, the larger lapse rate was especially detrimental to the efficiency of the up-down procedure, and the UML procedure provided better estimates of the threshold and slope than did the other two procedures.	f	\N
23419275	This study aimed to further understanding of intimate partner stalking victimization in post-abuse women, with particular attention to the definition of stalking (with or without fear and threat) most predictive of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. In community midlife women with histories of divorce (N = 192), a history of stalking victimization accompanied by fear and threat was positively correlated with PTS symptom severity, after accounting for other partner abuse. The presence, compared with absence, of fear-and-threat stalking history doubled the odds of symptomatic levels of hyperarousal. Greater physical assault and injury chronicity differentiated fear-and-threat stalked women from other stalked women. Stalking contributed to a fuller understanding of PTS symptoms in women, showing particular relevance for hyperarousal.	f	\N
23419887	To compare a mindfulness-based intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the group treatment of anxiety disorders. One hundred five veterans (83% male, mean age=46 years, 30% minority) with one or more DSM-IV anxiety disorders began group treatment following randomization to adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or CBT. Both groups showed large and equivalent improvements on principal disorder severity thru 3-month follow up (ps<.001, d=-4.08 for adapted MBSR; d=-3.52 for CBT). CBT outperformed adapted MBSR on anxious arousal outcomes at follow up (p<.01, d=.49) whereas adapted MBSR reduced worry at a greater rate than CBT (p<.05, d=.64) and resulted in greater reduction of comorbid emotional disorders (p<.05, d=.49). The adapted MBSR group evidenced greater mood disorders and worry at Pre, however. Groups showed equivalent treatment credibility, therapist adherence and competency, and reliable improvement. CBT and adapted MBSR were both effective at reducing principal diagnosis severity and somewhat effective at reducing self-reported anxiety symptoms within a complex sample. CBT was more effective at reducing anxious arousal, whereas adapted MBSR may be more effective at reducing worry and comorbid disorders.	f	\N
23421322	Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.	f	\N
23427480	Accurately assessing how physicians perform in practice remains an unresolved psychometric challenge. Neither chart reviews nor patient surveys indicate when physicians overlook important information, which can result in a missed opportunity for a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of care. Standardized patient (SP) assessments provide an opportunity for direct observation of clinical behavior and are increasingly used in licensure examinations. (SPs who are sent incognito are termed unannounced standardized patients [USPs].) One study showed that physicians had particular difficulty adapting care to individual patient context ("contextual error"). In a subsequent study with the same actors, SP cases, and outcomes, an intervention was deployed to reduce contextual error among medical students. In an exploratory reanalysis of data from the two studies, clinicians' assessments of SPs and USPs were compared. Participants in the first study were 65 board-certified internists visited by USPs; the 59 participants in the second were fourth-year medical students examining SPs in a clinical performance center. Attending physicians measured with USPs significantly underperformed medical students measured with SPs in the probing of biomedical red flags (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45 [0.30 to 0.67]) and contextual red flags (OR = 0.66 [0.45 to 0.99]) and in planning appropriate care (OR = 0.43 [0.27 to 0.67]). Across these two studies, attending physicians underperformed medical students on the same outcomes, measured with the same patient cases presented by the same actors. Studies that seek to assess elicitation and incorporation of patient information by physicians as measures of individualization of care should weigh the benefits and costs of direct observation by USPs.	f	\N
23432829	Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6-month-olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.	f	\N
23434910	When sleep followed implicit training on a motor sequence, children showed greater gains in explicit sequence knowledge after sleep than adults. This greater explicit knowledge in children was linked to their higher sleep slow-wave activity and to stronger hippocampal activation at explicit knowledge retrieval. Our data indicate the superiority of children in extracting invariant features from complex environments, possibly as a result of enhanced reprocessing of hippocampal memory representations during slow-wave sleep.	f	\N
23437628	Our conception of attention is intricately linked to limited processing capacity and the consequent requirement to select, in both space and time, what objects and actions will have access to these limited resources. Seminal studies by Treisman (Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136, 1980) and Broadbent (Perception and Psychophysics, 42, 105-113, 1987; Raymond et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849-860, 1992) offered the field tasks for exploring the properties of attention when searching in space and time. After describing the natural history of a search episode we briefly review some of these properties. We end with the question: Is there one attentional "beam" that operates in both space and time to integrate features into objects? We sought an answer by exploring the distribution of errors when the same participant searched for targets presented at the same location with items distributed over time (McLean et al. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35A, 171-186, 1982) and presented all at once with items distributed over space (Snyder Journal of Experimental Psychology; 92, 428-431, 1972). Preliminary results revealed a null correlation between spatial and temporal slippage suggesting separate selection mechanisms in these two domains.	f	\N
23443466	Previous research has failed to find a consistent relation between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) and executive function (EF) in youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when laboratory-based neuropsychological tasks of EF are used, whereas recent research with youth and adults suggests a significant relation between SCT and ratings of EF. The purpose of this study was to examine ADHD dimensions and SCT symptoms in relation to ratings of EF in adolescents with ADHD. Fifty-two adolescents (ages 12-16; 70 % male) participated in this study. Parents and teachers completed validated measures of SCT, ADHD symptoms, and EF in daily life. Adolescents' intelligence and academic achievement were also assessed. ADHD and SCT symptoms were significantly correlated with ratings of EF. Regression analyses demonstrated that, as hypothesized, ADHD hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were strongly associated with behavioral regulation EF deficits, with ADHD inattentive and SCT symptoms unrelated to behavioral regulation EF when hyperactive-impulsivity symptoms were included in the model. The parent-reported SCT Slow scale measuring motivation, initiative, and apathy predicted both parent- and teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits above and beyond youth characteristics and ADHD symptoms. In contrast, teacher-reported ADHD inattention was most clearly associated with teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits. This study provides preliminary evidence for the importance of SCT symptoms in relation to metacognitive EF deficits among adolescents with ADHD and the need to further investigate the overlap and distinctiveness of SCT/ADHD. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings.	f	\N
23446727	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a very heterogeneous neurobiological condition. It is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder in the childhood population. Its prevalence is estimated to be 3-6% in school-age children. AIM. To review the characteristics of patients with inattentive subtype ADHD, including those who could be grouped in a more homogenous subtype which the DSM-5 proposes for classification as the restrictive subtype. The characteristic triad of symptoms consists of attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulsivity. The diagnostic criteria are defined in the DSM-IV-TR. For those with deterioration due to ADHD with no significant hyperactivity problems, this manual offers a confusing diagnostic label. Indeed, the neurobiological substrate underlying the diverse subtypes seems to be different in certain aspects, since the frontostriatal circuit appears to be more affected in combined ADHD, while the frontoparietal circuit is more compromised in the inattentive subtype. For these and other reasons, the DSM-5 will reformulate the different subtypes of ADHD and will probably include a new subgroup that will comprise those patients who satisfy at least six inattention criteria and fewer than two criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity (restrictive ADHD). The definition of this subgroup could make it easier to detect some patients who have so far received little attention from the point of view of both research and clinical practice.	f	\N
23450537	The Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is an age-specific disorder, characterised by epileptic seizures, a characteristic electroencephalogram (EEG), psychomotor delay and behavioural disorder. It occurs more frequently in males and onset is usually before the age of eight years, with a peak between three and five years of age. Late cases occurring in adolescence and early adulthood have rarely been reported. Language is frequently affected, with both slowness in ideation and expression in addition to difficulties of motor dysfunction. Severe behavioural disorders (e.g. hyperactivity, aggressiveness and autistic tendencies) and personality disorders are nearly always present. There is also a tendency for psychosis to develop with time. The long-term prognosis is poor; although the epilepsy often improves, complete seizure freedom is rare and conversely the mental and psychiatric disorders tend to worsen with time. To compare the effects of pharmaceutical therapies used to treat LGS in terms of control of seizures and adverse effects. Many people who suffer from this syndrome will already be receiving other antiepileptic medications at the time of their entry into a trial. However, for the purpose of this review we will only consider the effect of the single therapeutic agent being trialled (often as add-on therapy). We searched the Cochrane Epilepsy Group's Specialized Register (18 October 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library Issue 10 of 12, 2012) and MEDLINE (1946 to October week 2, 2012). We also searched EMBASE (1980 to March 2003). We imposed no language restrictions. We searched the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) register (18 October 2012) for ongoing trials and in addition, we contacted pharmaceutical companies and colleagues in the field to seek any unpublished or ongoing studies. All randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of the administration of drug therapy to patients with LGS. Two review authors independently extracted data. Analysis included assessing study quality, as well as statistical analysis of the effects on overall seizure rates and effects on specific seizure types (e.g. drop attacks), adverse effects and mortality. We found nine RCTs, but were unable to perform any meta-analysis, because each trial looked at different populations, different therapies and considered different outcomes. The optimum treatment for LGS remains uncertain and no study to date has shown any one drug to be highly efficacious; rufinamide, lamotrigine, topiramate and felbamate may be helpful as add-on therapy, clobazam may be helpful for drop seizures. Until further research has been undertaken, clinicians will need to continue to consider each patient individually, taking into account the potential benefit of each therapy weighed against the risk of adverse effects.	f	\N
23454277	Using electrophysiology, the attentional functions of target selection and distractor filtering were investigated during visual search. Observers searched for multiple tilted line segments amidst vertical distractors. In different conditions, observers were either looking for a specific line orientation ("feature-based" selection), or for any tilted line ("salience-based"). The search array could contain both left- and rightward tilted lines simultaneously (requiring spatial filtering) or only one line type (no filtering). The amplitude of the P1 event-related potential component was reduced during feature-based selection, compared to salience-based selection. The N1 showed a similar effect, at least when filtering was required. Amplitudes were also somewhat reduced when competing nontarget stimuli required filtering. Interactions between selection and filtering became stronger on the N2a and P3. When both feature-based selection and filtering were required, N2a amplitude was highest, and P3 amplitude was lowest. The results support an early locus of feature-based attentional selection in multi-item search.	f	\N
23457685	Typical interventions for acute pain in children attempt to reduce pain by directing attention away from pain. Conversely, mindfulness involves devoting attention to one's experience in an accepting and nonjudgmental way. However, the effect that instructing children to mindfully devote attention to acute pain has on pain outcomes is unknown. To examine whether mindful attention can help children attend to pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing pain tolerance; to compare the effects of mindful attention with a well-established intervention designed to take attention away from pain (guided imagery); and to test whether baseline coping style or trait mindfulness alter the effects of these interventions. A total of 82 children (10 to 14 years of age) completed measures of coping style and trait mindfulness. Participants then received either mindful attention or guided imagery instructions designed to direct attention toward or away from pain, respectively, before participating in a cold pressor task. The mindful attention group reported more awareness of the physical sensations of pain and thoughts about those sensations. Overall, there were no between-group differences in measures of pain intensity or pain tolerance during the cold pressor task, and no evidence of an interaction between baseline characteristics of the child and experimental condition. Mindful attention was successful in helping children focus attention on experimental pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing tolerance compared with a well-established intervention for acute pain reduction.	f	\N
23460366	Intervention studies indicate that children's early child-care experiences can be leveraged to foster their development of effective self-regulation skills. It is less clear whether typical child-care experiences play a similar role. In addition, evidence suggests that children with a common variant of the DRD4 gene (48-bp VNTR, 7-repeat) may be more sensitive to their experiences than those without this variant. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we considered the degree to which children's early child-care experiences-quantity, quality, and type-were associated with their attention and self-regulation abilities in prekindergarten, and, in particular, whether these relations were conditional on DRD4 genotype. G × E interactions were evident across multiple neuropsychological and observational measures of children's attention and self-regulation abilities. Across most outcome measures, DRD4 7+ children spending fewer hours in child care showed more effective attention/self-regulation abilities. For those without a copy of the DRD4 7-repeat allele, such associations were typically null. The results for child-care quality and type indicated no interactions with genotype; the main-effect associations were somewhat inconsistent.	f	\N
23462516	Parkinson's disease (PD) patients frequently develop obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In order to clarify the clinical significance of OSA in PD, we compared descriptive variables between PD patients with OSA (PD+OSA) and without (PD-OSA), and between the PD+OSA group and a group of OSA patients without PD (control OSA). The apnea hypopnea index (AHI) cutoff of 15 episodes/hour on polysomnogram (PSG) was used to assign 107 PD patients to groups; OSA-related symptoms and PSG findings were then compared. Demographic and PSG variables were compared between PD+OSA patients and 31 OSA controls. Twenty-four patients with PD (22.4%) were classified as PD+OSA. There were no significant differences in descriptive variables between the PD+OSA and PD-OSA groups. The PD+OSA group had a higher arousal index on PSG than the PD-OSA group, although the two groups had similar ESS scores. The PD+OSA patients had a lower respiratory arousal index and a smaller decrease in oxygen saturation than the control OSA group, despite having a similar AHI. The prevalence of OSA in PD did not differ from that in the general elderly population, indicating that the clinical significance of OSA as a contributor to daytime sleepiness in PD is low.	f	\N
23474283	Changes in gut microbiota have been reported to alter signaling mechanisms, emotional behavior, and visceral nociceptive reflexes in rodents. However, alteration of the intestinal microbiota with antibiotics or probiotics has not been shown to produce these changes in humans. We investigated whether consumption of a fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) for 4 weeks by healthy women altered brain intrinsic connectivity or responses to emotional attention tasks. Healthy women with no gastrointestinal or psychiatric symptoms were randomly assigned to groups given FMPP (n = 12), a nonfermented milk product (n = 11, controls), or no intervention (n = 13) twice daily for 4 weeks. The FMPP contained Bifidobacterium animalis subsp Lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and Lactococcus lactis subsp Lactis. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after the intervention to measure brain response to an emotional faces attention task and resting brain activity. Multivariate and region of interest analyses were performed. FMPP intake was associated with reduced task-related response of a distributed functional network (49% cross-block covariance; P = .004) containing affective, viscerosensory, and somatosensory cortices. Alterations in intrinsic activity of resting brain indicated that ingestion of FMPP was associated with changes in midbrain connectivity, which could explain the observed differences in activity during the task. Four-week intake of an FMPP by healthy women affected activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation.	f	\N
23475816	The higher order processes involved in self-regulation are generally thought to depend on cognitive (attentional/executive) functions with limited resources. Experimental studies further show that exerting self-control in a first task results in decreased performance in other following self-control tasks, which may be interpreted as the consequence of either effective or perceived resource depletion outlasting the first task. Given that higher order cognitive/attentional processes are also considered to be involved in pain modulatory mechanisms, we tested the idea that pain could be influenced by prior mobilization of cognitive resources. The present study investigated the consequences of performing a cognitively demanding task on subsequent pain (ratings) and spinal nociceptive responses (nociceptive flexion reflex, NFR) elicited by noxious electrical stimulations in healthy volunteers. Participants received four noxious stimulations immediately after each of six successive blocks (2 min each) of a numerical Stroop task in a neutral condition (low cognitive demand) and six successive blocks in an interference condition (high cognitive demand). Results revealed that pain was rated higher following the condition requiring higher cognitive control. A similar effect was observed on the NFR. These findings suggest that pain regulation mechanisms including the descending pain modulatory system may be less efficient after the performance of tasks requiring high cognitive control resulting in stronger pain experience.	f	\N
23480071	Sex and disgust seem like strange bedfellows. The premise of this review is that disgust-based mechanisms nevertheless hold great promise for improving our understanding of sexual behavior, including dysfunctions. Disgust is a defensive emotion that protects the organism from contamination. Accordingly, disgust is focused on the border of the self, with the mouth and vagina being the body parts that show strongest disgust sensitivity. Given the central role of these organs in sexual behavior, together with the fact that bodily products are among the strongest disgust elicitors, the critical question seems not whether disgust may interfere with sex but rather how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all. We argue that sexual arousal plays a critical role in counteracting disgust-induced avoidance via lowering the threshold for engaging in "disgusting sex." Following this, all mechanisms that interfere with the generation of sexual arousal or enhance the disgusting properties of sexual stimuli may hamper the functional transition from a sex-avoidance into an approach disposition. Since prolonged contact is the most powerful means to reduce disgust, disgust-based mechanisms that counteract sexual approach may give rise to a self-perpetuating cycle in which enhanced sexual disgust becomes a chronic feature.	f	\N
23492952	Our daily life is characterized by multiple response options that need to be cascaded in order to avoid overstrain of restricted response selection resources. While response selection and goal activation in action cascading are likely driven by a process varying from serial to parallel processing, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms that may underlie interindividual differences in these modes of response selection. To investigate these mechanisms, we used a stop-change paradigm for the recording of event-related potentials and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography source localizations in healthy subjects. Systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (the temporal spacing of "stop" and "change" signals), we applied mathematical constraints to classify subjects in more parallel or more serial goal activators during action cascading. On that basis, the electrophysiological data show that processes linking stimulus processing and response execution, but not attentional processes, underlie interindividual differences in either serial or parallel response selection modes during action cascading. On a systems level, these processes were mediated via a distributed fronto-parietal network, including the anterior cingulate cortex (Brodman area 32, BA32) and the temporo-parietal junction (BA40). There was a linear relation between the individual degree of overlap in activated task goals and electrophysiological processes.	f	\N
23499978	There is a long-running debate over the extent to which volitional attention can modulate the appearance of visual stimuli. Here we use monocular rivalry between afterimages to explore the effects of attention on the contents of visual experience. In three experiments, we demonstrate that attended afterimages are seen for longer periods, on average, than unattended afterimages. This occurs both when a feature of the afterimage is attended directly and when a frame surrounding the afterimage is attended. The results of these experiments show that volitional attention can dramatically influence the contents of visual experience.	f	\N
23506806	We examined (a) what rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time and/or pause time) predict reading and mathematics ability and (b) what processing skills involved in RAN (speed of processing, response inhibition, working memory, and/or phonological awareness) may explain its relationship with reading and mathematics. A sample of 72 children were followed from the beginning of kindergarten until the end of Grade 1 and were assessed on measures of RAN, general cognitive ability, speed of processing, attention, working memory, phonological awareness, reading, and mathematics. The results indicated that pause time was the critical component in both the RAN-reading and RAN-mathematics relationships and that it shared most of its predictive variance in reading and mathematics with speed of processing and working memory. Our findings further suggested that, unlike the relationship between RAN and reading fluency in Grade 1, there is nothing in the RAN task that is uniquely related to math.	f	\N
23507254	Post event processing (PEP) in social anxiety disorder involves rumination about social events after the fact, and is thought to be a crucial feature of the maintenance of the disorder. The current experiment aimed to manipulate the use of PEP in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Forty-one individuals with social anxiety disorder completed a videotaped speech. Anxiety ratings and degree of PEP were measured after the task as well as the day following the experiment. Individuals in the distract group reported a greater decrease in anxiety from baseline to post-experimental task than those asked to focus. Individuals in the distract group also reported higher PEP about the task than those instructed to complete a focus task, which appeared to be partially accounted for by baseline differences in symptom severity and state anxiety. Degree of PEP was positively correlated with anxiety ratings, both after the experimental task as well as 24 hours later. These findings suggest that naturalistic PEP is problematic for individuals with social anxiety disorder, especially for those with more severe symptoms. A distraction task, even with breakthrough PEP, appears to have useful short-term effects on anxiety reduction as compared to focus instructions.	f	\N
23513046	This study compares the behavioral profile of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) who were diagnosed using the Canadian Guidelines with children with prenatal alcohol exposure who did not meet criteria for a FASD diagnosis. To accomplish this, we used caregiver and teacher questionnaires evaluating different aspects of behavior. Investigated were 170 children, 109 who received a diagnosis of FASD (Diagnosed Group) and 61 who did not (Non-Diagnosed Group). On the caregiver report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the CBCL, more executive function difficulties on the BRIEF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. On teacher report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the TRF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. For both informants, more children in the Diagnosed group had scores in the clinically elevated range. Overall, the present results identify key caregiver- and teacher-rated profiles of children with FASD diagnoses. These profiles will aid in better understanding, diagnosing and providing focused treatment approaches for children with FASD.	f	\N
23516055	Sensory feedback and the required attentional demands are important aspects in prosthesis acceptance. In this study, hand-opening feedback is provided and the performance in a virtual grasping task is investigated. Simultaneously, a secondary task was performed to investigate the attentional demands. Ten nondisabled subjects performed the tasks with and without feedback about the hand opening through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators on the forearm. Activation of one stimulator corresponded to one hand-opening position. For the dual-task experiments, subjects simultaneously performed a secondary auditory counting task. The addition of vibrotactile feedback increased the performance (expressed in percentages of correct hand positions, mean absolute errors in position, and percentages of deviations up to one hand-opening position), but the duration of the tasks was also increased. Three levels of distraction (no distraction, counting task, count and subtract task) were applied, which did not influence the performance in the grasping tasks except for the highest level of distraction. We concluded that the proposed method to provide hand-opening feedback through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators is successful because the performance in a grasping task increases but it is not significantly attention demanding.	f	\N
23516802	With the assumption that circadian rhythms influence human performance, the work of live line electricians was reorganized and evaluated. The hypothesis was that in highly physical and attention-demanding work, the organization of tasks, according to the ideal period of day and day of week, should diminish stress and consequent work risks. There are only a few studies reporting the work of electricians and even fewer approaching work organization. Moreover, these investigations often do not consider human physiological limitations and capabilities as well as task demands. A new work system was proposed with consideration of (a) the circadian cycles and homeostatic processes; (b) the effect of heat, which is a zeitgeber (synchronizer) for the biological clocks; and (c) the degree of physical and mental demands of the different performed tasks, which was assessed on the basis of opinions of the electricians and physiological markers of stress that are controlled by circadian rhythms. The traditional and new systems were compared on the basis of two cognitive indices (the arrangement of matchsticks and the perception of a minute) and three physiological markers of mental-to-physical loads (heart frequency and the level of adrenaline and noradrenaline). Both physical and mental loads were reduced in the new system. Work organization should include consideration of human circadian rhythms, mainly when stressful and high-risk tasks are involved. The findings can be applied in any work design, but they are especially suited for highly demanding work carried out outdoors.	f	\N
23521354	Children with autism have characteristic difficulties with joint attention. In educational settings, this can present a challenge when directing a child's attention to new objects and activities. Drawing on videotaped interactions between teachers and two children with autism recorded in Finland, we use conversation analysis to examine how teachers manage such transitions during one-to-one teaching. We show how adjusting material objects can be used to manage the child's engagement and how these adjustments can escalate into more conspicuous actions so as to direct the child's attention. Rather than examining participants' use of communicational objects, we are instead concerned with practices that use task-related objects. We thereby offer an empirically grounded account of the interactional practices involved in achieving joint attention through the objects themselves.	f	\N
23521494	Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time-locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.	f	\N
23523374	Lifestyles involving sleep deprivation are common, despite mounting evidence that both acute total sleep deprivation and chronically restricted sleep degrade neurobehavioral functions associated with arousal, attention, memory and state stability. Current research suggests dynamic differences in the way the central nervous system responds to acute versus chronic sleep restriction, which is reflected in new models of sleep-wake regulation. Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology that could explain why recovery from it may require more time than from acute sleep loss. High intraclass correlations in neurobehavioral responses to sleep loss suggest that these trait-like differences are phenotypic and may include genetic components. Sleep deprivation induces changes in brain metabolism and neural activation that involve distributed networks and connectivity.	f	\N
23527644	Attention is a complex construct that taps into multiple mechanisms. One type of attention that is underinvestigated in autism is incidentally or implicitly guided attention. The purpose of this study is to characterize how children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) direct spatial attention based on incidental learning. Children with high-functioning ASD and typically developing children engaged in a visual search task. For the first half of the study, over multiple trials, the target was more often found in some locations than other locations. For the second half, the target was equally likely to appear in all locations. We measured search performance for targets located in the high-probability and low-probability locations. Children with ASD were able to direct spatial attention using incidentally learned information about the target's location probability. Although unaware of the experimental manipulation, children with ASD were faster and more efficient in finding a target in the high-probability locations than low-probability locations, and this bias dissipated after the target's location probability was even. The pace and magnitude of learning, as well as later adjustment to new statistics, were comparable between children with ASD and typically developing children. Incidentally learned attention is preserved in children with ASD.	f	\N
23543105	Humans are thought to be able to form shared representations, considered a keystone of social cognition. However, whether and to what extent such representations are social in nature is still open for debate. In the present study, we address the question of whether action co-representation can be modulated by social attitudes, such as judgments about one's own social status. Two groups of participants performed an Interactive Simon task after the experimental induction of a feeling of social inclusion or exclusion (ostracism) by means of a virtual ball tossing game. Results showed a compatibility effect in included, but not in excluded participants. This indicates that judgments about one's own social status modulate action co-representation. We suggest that this modulation may occur by way of a redirection of one's attentional focus away from others when one experiences social exclusion. This is a far-reaching issue given the increasing need for integration in modern society. Indeed, if integration fails, modern society fails also.	f	\N
23545077	The present study evaluated the socio-emotional development of very preterm born infants at 12 months corrected age. Forty-one infants born very preterm (<29 weeks of gestation) were compared to 22 infants born full term on a standardized behavioral assessment and a parental temperament questionnaire, both measuring emotional reactivity to joy, anger and fear, as well as sustained attention. The behavioral assessment showed that very preterm infants exhibited as much joy as full term infants during a joy-eliciting episode. However, they expressed a significantly higher reactivity in anger-eliciting situations and a reduced reactivity toward fear-eliciting situations. For all three emotion-eliciting situations, the preterm infants reacted with a higher level of motor activity. The preterm infants also exhibited a distinct attention pattern with a significantly higher initial attention level which declined rapidly throughout the episode. The questionnaire did not show any group differences. The clinical relevance of these results in terms of preliminary hallmarks of later behavioral difficulties such attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are discussed as well as the inconsistencies observed between the questionnaire and the behavioral assessment.	f	\N
23548574	Early mother-infant interactions are characterised by periods of synchronous interaction that are interrupted by periods of mismatch; the experience of such mismatches and their subsequent repair is held to facilitate the development of infant self-regulatory capacities (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). Infant responding to such interactive challenge is assumed to be a function of both maternal behaviour and pre-existing infant characteristics. However, the latter has received relatively little attention. In a prospective longitudinal study of a sample comprising high and low adversity dyads (n=122), we examined the contributions of both maternal sensitivity and neonatal irritability to infant behavioural and physiological responding to the interactive challenge of the Still Face paradigm. Results indicated that higher levels of maternal sensitivity were associated with more regulated infant behaviour during the Still Face paradigm. Neonatal irritability also predicted poorer behavioural and heart rate recovery following the Still Face challenge. Furthermore, there was an interaction such that irritable infants with insensitive mothers showed the worst behavioural outcomes. The findings highlight the importance of the interplay between maternal and infant characteristics in determining dyadic responding.	f	\N
23549856	The aim of the study is to examine the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) impact of the nocturnal awakenings and the duration of the sleep in the Finnish middle-aged and older population. Cross-sectional sample consisted of 823 community-dwelling persons aged 55-75 living in a single municipality in a rural area of Eastern Finland. Frequency of the nocturnal awakenings was dichotomized as reporting "frequent," if the participant reported subjectively awakening "often" or "very often," and "infrequent" if the participant reported awakening "sometimes" or less frequently. HRQOL was measured with a preference-based HRQOL-index instrument, 15D. Analyses were adjusted for gender, BMI, morbidities, depression, employment and marital status, current smoking and drinking, exercise, recommendation to exercise from a health care professional, and subjective opinion about own exercise habits. Frequent nocturnal awakenings had statistically and clinically significant negative impact on HRQOL, the mean (SE) adjusted marginal HRQOL impact being -0.0416 (0.006). More than 10 and less than 6.5 h of daily sleep were associated with higher probability of having low HRQOL, adjusted odd ratios (95 % CI) being 2.65 (1.11-6.33) and 2.65 (1.55-4.52), respectively. However, the changes in daily sleep duration did not have noticeable influence on the significance or magnitude of the negative HRQOL impact of the frequent nocturnal awakenings. Nocturnal awakenings displayed a strong independent association with decreased HRQOL. The findings suggest that both clinicians and researchers should pay closer attention to nocturnal awakenings and other sleep problems in order to find ways to improve the quality of life in individuals with such conditions.	f	\N
23557983	In relative terms, Spanish motorcyclists are more likely to be involved in crashes than other drivers and this tendency is constantly increasing. The objective of this study is to identify the factors that are related to being an offender in motorcycle accidents. A binary logit model is used to differentiate between offender and non-offender motorcyclists. A motorcyclist was considered to be offender when s/he had committed at least one traffic offense at the moment previous to the crash. The analysis is based on the official accident database of the Spanish general directorate of traffic (DGT) for the 2003-2008 time period. A number of explanatory variables including motorcyclist characteristics and environmental factors have been evaluated. The results suggest that inexperienced, older females, not using helmets, absent-minded and non-fatigued riders are more likely to be offenders. Moreover, riding during the night, on weekends, for leisure purposes and along roads in perfect condition, mainly on curves, predict offenses among motorcyclists. The findings of this study are expected to be useful in developing traffic policy decisions in order to improve motorcyclist safety.	f	\N
23558103	In listening to multi-part music, auditory streams can be attended to either selectively or globally. More specifically, musicians rely on prioritized integrative attention which incorporates both stream segregation and integration to assess the relationship between concurrent parts. In this fMRI study, we used a piano duet to investigate which factors of a leader-follower relationship between parts grab the listener's attention and influence the perception of multi-part music. The factors considered included the structural relationship between melody and accompaniment as well as the temporal relationship (asynchronies) between parts. The structural relationship was manipulated by cueing subjects to the part of the duet that had to be prioritized. The temporal relationship was investigated by synthetically shifting the onset times of melody and accompaniment to either a consistent melody or accompaniment lead. The relative importance of these relationship factors for segregation and integration as attentional mechanisms was of interest. Participants were required to listen to the cued part and then globally assess if the prioritized stream was leading or following compared to the second stream. Results show that the melody is judged as more leading when it is globally temporally ahead whereas the accompaniment is not judged as leading when it is ahead. This bias may be a result of the interaction of salience of both leader-follower relationship factors. Interestingly, the corresponding interaction effect in the fMRI-data yields an inverse bias for melody in a fronto-parietal attention network. Corresponding parameter estimates within the dlPFC and right IPS show higher neural activity for attending to melody when listening to a performance without a temporal leader, pointing to an interaction of salience of both factors in listening to music. Both frontal and parietal activation implicate segregation and integration mechanisms and a top-down influence of salience on attention and the perception of leader-follower relations in music.	f	\N
23567211	Research done in two Polish cities has uncovered an influence of an approaching tram on pedestrian behaviour. The measurements were done by counting pedestrians waiting for a green signal, crossing on red signal safely, or crossing on red signal taking a risk of being hit by a car, differentiating between pedestrians attempting to board a public transport vehicle and other pedestrians. It was expected, that pedestrian behaviour might be influenced by traffic control predictability, therefore two cities were chosen for the task: Wrocław with fixed time traffic control and Poznań with a majority of traffic responsive traffic signals. Data from the measurements was compared in order to find behaviour patterns - the comparison led to a conclusion, that an attempt to get on board of an incoming public transport vehicle can be a major cause for pedestrians to violate a red signal, including an increase of unsafe behaviour. These pedestrians may provoke other pedestrians to cross on a red signal. On the other hand if traffic control guarantees boarding the public transport vehicle, passengers-to-be may be even more obedient than other pedestrians.	f	\N
23574346	An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online ads interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters' attributes and overall characters' description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters' descriptions.	f	\N
23574348	A considerable literature suggests that the right hemisphere is dominant in vigilance for novel and survival-related stimuli, such as predators, across a wide range of species. In contrast to vigilance for change, change blindness is a failure to detect obvious changes in a visual scene when they are obscured by a disruption in scene presentation. We studied lateralised change detection using a series of scenes with salient changes in either the left or right visual fields. In Study 1 left visual field changes were detected more rapidly than right visual field changes, confirming a right hemisphere advantage for change detection. Increasing stimulus difficulty resulted in greater right visual field detections and left hemisphere detection was more likely when change occurred in the right visual field on a prior trial. In Study 2 an intervening distractor task disrupted the influence of prior trials. Again, faster detection speeds were observed for the left visual field changes with a shift to a right visual field advantage with increasing time-to-detection. This suggests that a right hemisphere role for vigilance, or catching attention, and a left hemisphere role for target evaluation, or maintaining attention, is present at the earliest stage of change detection.	f	\N
23574875	To investigate the correlations between cognitive function and clinical outcome variables. Patients diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia between January 2004 and June 2010 were cognitively tested in conjunction with diagnostic procedures. Cognitive test data were connected to Danish healthcare registers and patients were followed in the registers from their first contact with psychiatric in- and outpatient care until October 2011. Patients had impaired attention, processing speed and executive function as measured by Trail Making Test part B; their executive functions, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and working memory, as measured by Rigshospitalet's digit span test, were unaffected as compared to norms. The admission rate, from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study, was predicted by Trail Making Test part A, Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), RAVLT (total learning), RAVLT (memory), d2 Test of Attention (total) and d2 type 2 error (error of commission), independent of gender, age and schizophrenia subtype. The length of hospitalization after the schizophrenia diagnosis was mainly determined by the schizophrenia subtype (schizophrenia simplex: incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.24; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.15-0.40, p < 0.001). Diagnosis was secondarily determined by deficits in attention and executive function, Trail Making Test part B, d2 Test of Attention (total), d2 type 1 error (error of omission), d2 type 2 error, and also by age and substance use disorder. The outpatient contact rate from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study was predicted by d2 Test of Attention, Trail Making Test part A, and d2 type 2 error. The annual rate of criminal conviction, institutionalization and social retirement pension was mainly predicted by substance misuse. Cognitive function only predicted hospitalization and outpatient contacts to a minor degree in a cohort of newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia.	f	\N
23576114	Looking for a target in a visual scene becomes more difficult as the number of stimuli increases. In a signal detection theory view, this is due to the cumulative effect of noise in the encoding of the distractors, and potentially on top of that, to an increase of the noise (i.e., a decrease of precision) per stimulus with set size, reflecting divided attention. It has long been argued that human visual search behavior can be accounted for by the first factor alone. While such an account seems to be adequate for search tasks in which all distractors have the same, known feature value (i.e., are maximally predictable), we recently found a clear effect of set size on encoding precision when distractors are drawn from a uniform distribution (i.e., when they are maximally unpredictable). Here we interpolate between these two extreme cases to examine which of both conclusions holds more generally as distractor statistics are varied. In one experiment, we vary the level of distractor heterogeneity; in another we dissociate distractor homogeneity from predictability. In all conditions in both experiments, we found a strong decrease of precision with increasing set size, suggesting that precision being independent of set size is the exception rather than the rule.	f	\N
23586449	Verbal and physical dating aggression is prevalent among college-aged men and women, especially a pattern of mutual aggression in which both partners engage in aggression. Alcohol intoxication and anger arousal have been implicated in the occurrence of aggression, and the ability to regulate one's emotions may interact with both alcohol intoxication and emotional arousal to predict dating aggression. The current study is the first known experimental investigation to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication, alcohol expectancies, emotion regulation, and emotional arousal on dating aggression. Participants were randomized to receive alcohol (n = 48), placebo (n = 48), or no alcohol (n = 48). Intoxicated men and women expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those in the no-alcohol condition, and individuals in the placebo condition did not significantly differ from those in the alcohol and no-alcohol conditions. These results suggest that the pharmacological effects of alcohol were important to the occurrence of dating aggression, whereas the effects of expectancy are less clear. Among those less able to engage in cognitive reappraisal, individuals who consumed or believed they consumed alcohol expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those who received no alcohol. Those with higher arousal who were better able to suppress their emotions expressed fewer verbal and physical aggression intentions than those with lower arousal. In addition to reducing alcohol consumption, interventions for dating aggression might incorporate emotion regulation skills, with a focus on understanding the circumstances in which cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression are relatively more effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).	f	\N
23596189	Alexithymia and increased interoceptive awareness have been associated with affective disorders as well as with altered insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function. Brain imaging studies have demonstrated an association between neurotransmitter function and affective disorders as well as personality traits. Here, we first examined the relationship between alexithymic facets as assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and interoceptive awareness (assessed with the Body Perception Questionnaire) in 18 healthy subjects. Second, we investigated their association with glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the left insula and the ACC using 3-Tesla proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Behaviorally, we found a close association between alexithymia and interoceptive awareness. Furthermore, glutamate levels in the left insula were positively associated with both alexithymia and awareness of autonomic nervous system reactivity, while GABA concentrations in ACC were selectively associated with alexithymia. Although preliminary, our results suggest that increased glutamate-mediated excitatory transmission-related to enhanced insula activity-reflects increased interoceptive awareness in alexithymia. Suppression of the unspecific emotional arousal evoked by increased awareness of bodily responses in alexithymics might thus be reflected in decreased neuronal activity mediated by increased GABA concentration in ACC.	f	\N
23601793	In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval process of positive vs. negative emotional stimulus, as a function of the anxiety levels. Anxiety behavior showed a consistent attentional bias toward negative and aversive memories, induced by a right frontal cortical superiority. This effect was analyzed by using a rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects, who were divided in two different groups depending on their anxiety level (high/low-anxiety, State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory, STAI), were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding-phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; and a retrieval-phase, where the old stimuli and new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. We found that the rTMS stimulation affects the memory retrieval of emotional material. High-anxiety subjects benefit in greater measure from the left DLPFC stimulation with a reduced negative bias. This result suggested that left DLPFC activation favors the memory retrieval of positive emotional information and might limit the "unbalance effect" induced by a right hemispheric superiority at a high level of anxiety. The potentiality of TMS for anxiety behavior modulation was also discussed.	f	\N
23619205	Past research has reported that a small proportion of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) have excess beta activity in their EEG, rather than the excess theta typical of the syndrome. This atypical group has been tentatively labeled as hyperaroused. The aim of this study was to determine whether these children have a hyperaroused central nervous system. Participants included 104 boys aged 8 to 13 years old, with a diagnosis of either the Combined or Inattentive type of AD/HD (67 combined type), and 67 age-matched male controls. Ten and a half minutes of EEG and skin conductance (SCL) were simultaneously recorded during an eyes-closed resting condition. The EEG was Fourier transformed and estimates of total power, and relative power in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands, and the theta/beta ratio, were calculated. AD/HD patients were divided into an excess beta group and a typical excess theta group. Relative to controls, the typical excess theta group had significantly increased frontal total power, theta and theta/beta ratio, with reduced alpha and beta across the scalp. The excess beta group had significantly reduced posterior total power, increased centro-posterior delta, globally reduced alpha, globally increased beta activity, and globally reduced theta/beta ratio. Both AD/HD groups had significantly reduced SCL compared to the control group, but the two groups did not differ from each other on SCL. These results indicate that AD/HD children with excess beta activity are not hyperaroused, and confirm that the theta/beta ratio is not associated with arousal. This is the first study of arousal measures in AD/HD children with excess beta activity, and has implications for existing models of AD/HD.	f	\N
23620190	Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches. Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment. On process measures, both interventions increased self-efficacy to manage headaches, but only AAET reduced alexithymia and increased emotional processing and assertiveness. Yet, both interventions were equally effective at improving headache outcomes relative to controls. Enhancing anger awareness and expression may improve chronic headaches, although not more than RT. Researchers should study which patients are most likely to benefit from an emotional expression or emotional reduction approach to chronic pain.	f	\N
23624574	Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) and identification-production frameworks predict that repetition priming will be reduced by encoding-phase divided attention (DA) in implicit memory tasks that involve conceptual analysis of test stimuli and require responses that go beyond the identification of the test cue. This prediction was tested using the verb generation task. Verb generation priming was weakly affected by a number classification distracting task at encoding that impacted recognition, was affected more by a more demanding mental arithmetic task, and was abolished entirely by a selective attention manipulation. Priming originating largely from a process unique to the verb generation task was also found to be attention-sensitive. DA affected priming equivalently for high-competition and low-competition items, against the identification-production framework which predicts greater DA effects on priming in high-competition conditions. The results fit comfortably within the TAP framework.	f	\N
23625323	Minimal hepatic encephalopathy is a syndrome caused by liver cirrhosis and accompanied by a broad spectrum of cognitive symptoms. The objective of the present study was to describe the prevalence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients and to compare their cognitive performance with controls using standardized tests. Patients receiving medication or experiencing comorbidities associated with cognitive disorders were excluded. The final cohort was compared with a control-matched group using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), as well as Simple Drawing, Clock Drawing, Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Random Letter, Stroop, Trail-Making Test (TMT) A and B, Boston Naming, Category Verbal Fluency, Digit Span, Constructional Praxis, Processing Speed, and Similarities Tests. The results indicated no differences in the prevalence of cognitive complaints spontaneously reported by 29 patients with cirrhosis versus 22 healthy controls. The most affected tests included: MMSE (26.3 ± 2 vs. 28.1 ± 1.8 points; p = 0.004), learning (35.4 ± 9 vs. 41 ± 9.1 points; p = 0.041), retroactive interference (0.67 ± 0.22 vs. 0.84 ± 0.16 points; p = 0.004), and recognition (8.7 ± 2.6 vs. 11.2 ± 4.1 points; p = 0.024) in RAVLT, TMT-A (63.2 ± 29.3 vs. 47.6 ± 16.5 s; p = 0.029) and TMT-B (197.9 ± 88.1 vs. 146.8 ± 76.5 s; p = 0.03). No differences were observed with respect to age, gender, and education. In conclusion, MMSE proved to be a useful tool for detecting global cognitive impairment experienced by cirrhosis patients. Moreover, the most impaired cognitive functions were verbal episodic memory and information processing speed. These findings suggest that minimal hepatic encephalopathy represents a disorder that affects the medial temporal system and, possibly, the prefrontal cortex, and this requires further study.	f	\N
23627722	Classification is a flexible process that can be affected by mood. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the idea that mood may modulate categorization behavior through an attentional weighting mechanism in which mood changes the attention afforded to different stimulus dimensions. In two experiments, participants learn and are tested on categories while in a calm or sad mood. In Experiment 1, sad participants are faster to learn one- and two-dimensional category structures, but show no advantage on a three-dimensional category structure. In Experiment 2, the generalized context model of categorization is used to measure dimensional weighting. The results suggest that sad participants have a narrower focus of attention, but that the narrowing tends to be on diagnostic dimensions.	f	\N
23632202	Repeated action observation has been shown to alter the cortical representation of the observed movement in the motor system. This change in cortical representation is thought to reflect a motor adaptation to observational training (observational training effect). One factor that may impact the observational training effect is the degree of motor system activation that occurs during the observation of the action (i.e., individual differences in the responsiveness of the motor system during action observation). The present study was conducted to test this hypothesis by assessing the relationship between the change in motor system activity during action observation and the change in cortical representation of action following repeated action observation. To this end, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to evoke contractions of thumb muscles in two different protocols: 1) during the observation of thumb movements to assess the responsiveness of each individual's corticospinal system during action observation; and, 2) after the observation of 1800 thumb movements to assess the amount of adaptation in the representation of the thumb following repeated action observation. The key finding was the significant positive relationship between the level of corticospinal system activation during action observation and the amount of change in the direction of TMS evoked thumb movements. These data support the hypothesized relationship between motor system activation during action observation and the motor systems adaptation following observational training. They are also consistent with the notion that a common neural mechanism underlies these effects.	f	\N
23637913	Online social media are increasingly facilitating our social interactions, thereby making available a massive "digital fossil" of human behavior. Discovering and quantifying distinct patterns using these data is important for studying social behavior, although the rapid time-variant nature and large volumes of these data make this task difficult and challenging. In this study, we focused on the emergence of "collective attention" on Twitter, a popular social networking service. We propose a simple method for detecting and measuring the collective attention evoked by various types of events. This method exploits the fact that tweeting activity exhibits a burst-like increase and an irregular oscillation when a particular real-world event occurs; otherwise, it follows regular circadian rhythms. The difference between regular and irregular states in the tweet stream was measured using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, which corresponds to the intensity of collective attention. We then associated irregular incidents with their corresponding events that attracted the attention and elicited responses from large numbers of people, based on the popularity and the enhancement of key terms in posted messages or "tweets." Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using a large dataset that contained approximately 490 million Japanese tweets by over 400,000 users, in which we identified 60 cases of collective attentions, including one related to the Tohoku-oki earthquake. "Retweet" networks were also investigated to understand collective attention in terms of social interactions. This simple method provides a retrospective summary of collective attention, thereby contributing to the fundamental understanding of social behavior in the digital era.	f	\N
23639615	Imitation is commonly considered as a hierarchical process. The current study explored the reproduction of a multi-task course in deferred imitation. Eighty-five children between 3.5 and 7.5 years old were divided into five groups and instructed to watch a live human adult demonstrator who performed simple successive actions, such as walking, jumping, grasping, carrying objects from one location to another through six sessions. After a five-minute delay, the children were individually instructed to reproduce the course. Their responses were videotaped and coded in dichotomous data at two hierarchical levels, namely goals and their spatial location. The main findings showed no improvement in the replication of goals due either to age or trials. However, there was an improvement in the integration of the goals' spatial location over trials. This signifies that imitation is an active reconstruction mechanism hierarchically organized.	f	\N
23640591	Advanced mathematical models have the potential to capture the complex metabolic and physiological processes that result in energy expenditure (EE). Study objective is to apply quantile regression (QR) to predict EE and determine quantile-dependent variation in covariate effects in nonobese and obese children. First, QR models will be developed to predict minute-by-minute awake EE at different quantile levels based on heart rate (HR) and physical activity (PA) accelerometry counts, and child characteristics of age, sex, weight, and height. Second, the QR models will be used to evaluate the covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR across the conditional EE distribution. QR and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are estimated in 109 children, aged 5-18 yr. QR modeling of EE outperformed OLS regression for both nonobese and obese populations. Average prediction errors for QR compared with OLS were not only smaller at the median τ = 0.5 (18.6 vs. 21.4%), but also substantially smaller at the tails of the distribution (10.2 vs. 39.2% at τ = 0.1 and 8.7 vs. 19.8% at τ = 0.9). Covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE for the nonobese and obese children differed across quantiles (P < 0.05). The associations (linear and quadratic) between PA and HR with EE were stronger for the obese than nonobese population (P < 0.05). In conclusion, QR provided more accurate predictions of EE compared with conventional OLS regression, especially at the tails of the distribution, and revealed substantially different covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE in nonobese and obese children.	f	\N
23643925	The cingulate cortex is regarded as the backbone of structural and functional connectivity of the brain. While its functional connectivity has been intensively studied, little is known about its effective connectivity, its modulation by behavioral states, and its involvement in cognitive performance. Given the previously reported effects on cingulate functional connectivity, we investigated how eye-closure and sleep deprivation changed cingulate effective connectivity, estimated from resting-state high-density electroencephalography (EEG) using a novel method to calculate Granger Causality directly in source space. Effective connectivity along the cingulate cortex was dominant in the forward direction. Eyes-open connectivity in the forward direction was greater compared to eyes-closed, in well-rested participants. The difference between eyes-open and eyes-closed connectivity was attenuated and no longer significant after sleep deprivation. Individual variability in the forward connectivity after sleep deprivation predicted subsequent task performance, such that those subjects who showed a greater increase in forward connectivity between the eyes-open and the eyes-closed periods also performed better on a sustained attention task. Effective connectivity in the opposite, backward, direction was not affected by whether the eyes were open or closed or by sleep deprivation. These findings indicate that the effective connectivity from posterior to anterior cingulate regions is enhanced when a well-rested subject has his eyes open compared to when they are closed. Sleep deprivation impairs this directed information flow, proportional to its deleterious effect on vigilance. Therefore, sleep may play a role in the maintenance of waking effective connectivity.	f	\N
23643938	As planners and public health officials in many cities around the world seek to increase bicycle ridership, bicyclists who are performing a secondary task (such as listening to a portable music device) may pose a risk to public safety. This study examines bicycling safety and potentially distracted behavior in The Hague, the Netherlands, a place where bicycling is a common, everyday travel mode among all walks of life and where bicycling infrastructure is well developed. Based on 1360 observations of bicycling behavior, this study shows that bicyclists who were using a cell phone, listening to a portable music device, or talking with other bicyclists exhibited more unsafe behaviors than those bicyclists who were not performing a secondary task. Furthermore, bicyclists who were performing a secondary task also more frequently created situations where other people had to evade them to avoid an accident. As with distracted car driving, the performance of a secondary task while bicycling may be unsafe for the person engaging in the behavior as well as for other people around them.	f	\N
23656993	Traumatic coma is associated with disruption of axonal pathways throughout the brain, but the specific pathways involved in humans are incompletely understood. In this study, we used high angular resolution diffusion imaging to map the connectivity of axonal pathways that mediate the 2 critical components of consciousness-arousal and awareness-in the postmortem brain of a 62-year-old woman with acute traumatic coma and in 2 control brains. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography guided tissue sampling in the neuropathologic analysis. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography demonstrated complete disruption of white matter pathways connecting brainstem arousal nuclei to the basal forebrain and thalamic intralaminar and reticular nuclei. In contrast, hemispheric arousal pathways connecting the thalamus and basal forebrain to the cerebral cortex were only partially disrupted, as were the cortical "awareness pathways." Neuropathologic examination, which used β-amyloid precursor protein and fractin immunomarkers, revealed axonal injury in the white matter of the brainstem and cerebral hemispheres that corresponded to sites of high angular resolution diffusion imaging tract disruption. Axonal injury was also present within the gray matter of the hypothalamus, thalamus, basal forebrain, and cerebral cortex. We propose that traumatic coma may be a subcortical disconnection syndrome related to the disconnection of specific brainstem arousal nuclei from the thalamus and basal forebrain.	f	\N
23663456	The target article focuses on the predictive coding of "what" and "where" something happened and the "where" and "what" response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the "when" aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.	f	\N
23663497	It is often helpful to distinguish between a theory (Marr's computational level) and a specific implementation of that theory (Marr's physical level). However, in the target article, a single implementation of predictive coding is presented as if this were the theory of predictive coding itself. Other implementations of predictive coding have been formulated which can explain additional neurobiological phenomena.	f	\N
23663498	In important ways, Clark's "hierarchical prediction machine" (HPM) approach parallels the research agenda we have been pursuing. Nevertheless, we remain unconvinced that the HPM offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. The apparent convergence of research interests is offset by a profound divergence of theoretical starting points and ideal goals.	f	\N
23663531	Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models).	f	\N
23663865	Predictive processing models of cognition are promising an elegant way to unite action, perception, and learning. However, in the current formulations, they are species-unspecific and have very little particularly human about them. I propose to examine how, in this framework, humans can be able to massively interact and to build shared worlds that are both material and symbolic.	f	\N
23666554	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported increased activation of the mesolimbic system in response to anticipation of rewarding stimuli. The anticipation of uncertain outcomes evokes activation in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and insula. Drugs known to effect dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons also alter regional activation. Benzylpiperazine (BZP) and/or trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) have been recreationally used worldwide for more than a decade. BZP affects mainly dopaminergic neurons, while TFMPP has serotonergic effects. We investigated the effects of an acute dose of BZP, TFMPP or a combination of BZP and TFMPP on the anticipation of reward in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study using fMRI. An event-related gambling paradigm was completed by healthy controls 90 min after taking an oral dose of either BZP (200 mg), TFMPP (either 50 or 60 mg), BZP + TFMPP (100 + 30 mg) or placebo. After giving BZP, the anticipation of a $4 reward decreased the activation of the inferior frontal gyrus, insula and occipital regions in comparison to placebo. TFMPP increased the activation of the putamen but decreased the activity in the insula relative to placebo. When BZP and TFMPP were given in combination, activation of the rolandic operculum occurred. The magnitude of reward also affected neural correlates. We propose that the effects of BZP and TFMPP on dopaminergic and serotonergic circuitry, respectively, reflect regional changes. The dopaminergic effects of BZP appear to increase positive arousal and subsequently reduce the response to uncertainty, while TFMPP appears to alter the response to uncertainty by increasing emotional responses.	f	\N
23677737	Snoring is a common symptom among the adult population, and it is the most common complaint in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome. Patients who snore in a sitting position while taking a nap or sleeping may have a narrower upper airway. The aim of this study was to evaluate if snoring in a sitting position is a predictor of OSA in patients. We prospectively enrolled 166 SS+ (with a history of snoring in a sitting position) subjects and 139 SS- (who denied having a history of snoring in a sitting position) patients. All of the participants received questionnaires as well as a standard polysomnography thereafter. Patients with self-reported snoring in a sitting position (with a tilt position greater than 70°, SS+ group) had a higher body mass index as well as greater neck, waist, and buttock circumference and scored higher on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. During the polysomnographic study, the SS+ group had a higher percentage of N1 sleep and lower percentage of N2 sleep. In addition, the SS+ group had a higher apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) as well as higher arousal index and oxygen desaturation index. The sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 5) were 0.59 and 0.73, respectively, with a positive predictive value of 0.93. The likelihood ratio was 2.2. On the other hand, the sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for moderate to severe OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 15) were 0.82 and 0.48, respectively. Both SS+ and greater neck circumference have a high likelihood ratio for diagnosing OSA. In the present study, the symptoms of self-reported snoring in a sitting position and greater neck circumference can be useful clinical predictors of OSA in Chinese patients.	f	\N
23682731	The NAB is a comprehensive battery assessing five cognitive domains (Attention, Language, Memory, Spatial, Executive Function). Despite the advantage of co-normative domain data, its clinical utility is not well established because few studies have reported full-battery findings. The aim of this study was to determine if the NAB was sensitive to well documented hemispheric differences in language and spatial skills after unilateral stroke. We compared demographically matched control participants (n = 52) and individuals after left (LHD, n = 36) or right (RHD, n = 33) hemisphere damage due to stroke on the NAB, parts of the Western Aphasia Battery, and traditional visuospatial tasks. Both stroke groups showed impaired NAB Attention, Spatial, and Executive Functions relative to controls, while the LHD group was more impaired than control and RHD groups on Language and Memory modules. LHD patients with aphasia on traditional measures performed worse than control and non-aphasic LHD patients on all NAB domains. RHD patients with spatial impairment on traditional measures performed worse than controls, but not RHD patients without spatial impairment, on the NAB Spatial domain. Findings suggest the NAB is generally comparable to traditional language and visuospatial measures, and it sufficiently detects attention and executive deficits.	f	\N
23683312	Cognition research suggests that allocating attention resources to evolutionarily relevant stimuli is facilitated suggesting that sexual stimuli interfere with human information processing. In a group of gay (n = 13) and straight men (n = 13) recruited in Finland, Germany and Italy, we investigated if and how sexually relevant visual stimuli affect information processing of both a target one (T1) and a subsequent target two (T2) in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation procedure. We hypothesized that: (1) due to the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon, the accuracy of reporting of T2 would decrease when following accurately identified sexually preferred T1 compared to accurately identified non-sexually preferred T1; 2) due to the pop out effect, the accuracy of reporting of T1 and T2 would be relatively increased when T1 and T2 were sexually preferred by the participants compared to when they were not. Our findings did not support hypothesis 1 but supported hypothesis 2. We further found that the pop out effect had a good capacity to differentiate sexual preference between the groups of gay and straight men. We conclude that dual target rapid serial visual presentation can be used as an attention-based measurement to differentiate sexual preference in men. Limitations and the applicability in the field of measuring sexual preference were discussed.	f	\N
23685191	Observers often fail to detect substantial changes in a visual scene. This so-called change blindness is often taken as evidence that visual representations are sparse and volatile. This notion rests on the assumption that the failure to detect a change implies that representations of the changing objects are lost all together. However, recent evidence suggests that under change blindness, object memory representations may be formed and stored, but not retrieved. This study investigated the fate of object memory representations when changes go unnoticed. Participants were presented with scenes consisting of real world objects, one of which changed on each trial, while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were first asked to localize where the change had occurred. In an additional recognition task, participants then discriminated old objects, either from the pre-change or the post-change scene, from entirely new objects. Neural traces of object memories were studied by comparing ERPs for old and novel objects. Participants performed poorly in the detection task and often failed to recognize objects from the scene, especially pre-change objects. However, a robust old/novel effect was observed in the ERP, even when participants were change blind and did not recognize the old object. This implicit memory trace was found both for pre-change and post-change objects. These findings suggest that object memories are stored even under change blindness. Thus, visual representations may not be as sparse and volatile as previously thought. Rather, change blindness may point to a failure to retrieve and use these representations for change detection.	f	\N
23685391	The pupil constricts in response to light increments and dilates with light decrements. Here we show that a picture of the sun, introducing a small overall decrease in light level across the field of view, results in a pupillary constriction. Thus, the pictorial representation of a high-luminance object (the sun) can override the normal pupillary dilation elicited by a light decrement. In a series of experiments that control for a variety of factors known to modulate pupil size, we show that the effect (a) does not depend on the retinal position of the images and (b) is modulated by attention. It has long been known that cognitive factors can affect pupil diameter by producing pupillary dilations. Our results indicate that high-level visual analysis (beyond the simple subcortical system mediating the pupillary response to light) can also induce pupillary constriction, with an effect size of about 0.1 mm.	f	\N
23696214	Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate deficits in language comprehension, but little is known about how they process spoken language as it unfolds. Real-time lexical comprehension is associated with language and cognition in children without ASD, suggesting that this may also be the case for children with ASD. This study adopted an individual differences approach to characterizing real-time comprehension of familiar words in a group of 34 three- to six-year-olds with ASD. The looking-while-listening paradigm was employed; it measures online accuracy and latency through language-mediated eye movements and has limited task demands. On average, children demonstrated comprehension of the familiar words, but considerable variability emerged. Children with better accuracy were faster to process the familiar words. In combination, processing speed and comprehension on a standardized language assessment explained 63% of the variance in online accuracy. Online accuracy was not correlated with autism severity or maternal education, and nonverbal cognition did not explain unique variance. Notably, online accuracy at age 5½ was related to vocabulary comprehension 3 years earlier. The words typically learned earliest in life were processed most quickly. Consistent with a dimensional view of language abilities, these findings point to similarities in patterns of language acquisition in typically developing children and those with ASD. Overall, our results emphasize the value of examining individual differences in real-time language comprehension in this population. We propose that the looking-while-listening paradigm is a sensitive and valuable methodological tool that can be applied across many areas of autism research.	f	\N
23698323	We explored the associations of job strain with sleep and alertness of shift working female nurses and nursing assistants. Participants (n=95) were recruited from the Finnish Public Sector Study, from hospital wards that belonged to the top or bottom quartiles on job strain. Participants' own job strain was at least as high in high-strain group or low in low-strain group as the ward's average. The study included three-week measurements with sleep diary and actigraphy. Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) was performed during one pre-selected morning and night shift and a day off. Sleep efficiency before morning shifts was lower in the high-strain than low-strain group (p=0.03). Low-strain group took more often (72 vs. 45%; p<0.01) and longer naps (62 vs. 35 min; p=0.01) before the first night shift than high-strain group. Difficulties initiating sleep were more common in high-strain group, especially after evening shifts (p<0.01). High-strain group had more often at least one lapse in PVT during the night shift (p=0.02). Average sleep duration (06:49 h) and efficiency (89%) did not differ between these groups. In conclusion, high job strain is associated with difficulties initiating sleep and reduced psychomotor vigilance in night shifts. Shift working contributed to impaired sleep in both high and low job strain group. Individual and organization-based actions are needed to promote sufficient sleep in shift working nurses, especially with high job strain.	f	\N
23701388	This study extracted the error-related negativity (ERN) waveform component recorded from a visual-spatial attention and a visual short-term memory task to assess rigorously the long-term and cumulative effects of concussions on evaluative processes of cognitive control related to performance monitoring. This study demonstrates that, relative to control athletes, multiply concussed athletes show significant ERN amplitude reduction elicited by error generation. These cumulative effects of concussions on ERN amplitude were found in two distinct experimental paradigms designed to solicit concussion-sensitive cognitive abilities such as attention and short-term memory. This suggests that the mechanisms that contribute to the evaluation of cognitive performance may be significantly affected following multiple concussions even in low-conflict situations.	f	\N
23707592	Sleep and the functional connectome are research areas with considerable overlap. Neuroimaging studies of sleep based on EEG-PET and EEG-fMRI are revealing the brain networks that support sleep, as well as networks that may support the roles and processes attributed to sleep. For example, phenomena such as arousal and consciousness are substantially modulated during sleep, and one would expect this modulation to be reflected in altered network activity. In addition, recent work suggests that sleep also has a number of adaptive functions that support waking activity. Thus the study of sleep may elucidate the circuits and processes that support waking function and complement information obtained from fMRI during waking conditions. In this review, we will discuss examples of this for memory, arousal, and consciousness after providing a brief background on sleep and on studying it with fMRI.	f	\N
23707891	In two experiments, participants were required to identify a target stimulus by means of same/different judgments. Previously, they had received simultaneous or blocked pre-exposures to the target and a similar stimulus. Participants' ability to judge pre-exposed stimuli as different was better after simultaneous than after blocked pre-exposures. However, the benefit of the simultaneous schedule disappeared when, after pre-exposure, the distinctive elements were made common (and some common elements made distinctive) by changing their shape and position within the stimulus (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained when only one of the aforementioned physical features was modified (Experiment 2). These manipulations did not affect performance when the stimuli had been pre-exposed in separate blocks of trials. These findings support the idea that the effect of simultaneous pre-exposure on stimulus differentiation is based on a selective attention process by which attention is selectively directed towards the distinctive features of the stimuli and away from the common features (Gibson, 1969).	f	\N
23718701	The ability to inhibit is a major developmental dimension. Previous studies examined developmental change in instructed inhibition. The current study, however, focused on intentional inhibition. We examined heart rate responses to intentional action and inhibition, with a focus on developmental differences. Three age groups (8-10, 11-12, and 18-26 years) performed a child-friendly marble paradigm in which they had to choose between intentionally acting on, or inhibiting, a prepotent response. As instructed, all age groups chose to intentionally inhibit on approximately 50 percent of the intentional trials. A pronounced heart rate deceleration was observed during both intentional action and intentional inhibition, but this deceleration was most pronounced for intentional inhibition. Heart rate responses did not differentiate between age groups, suggesting that intentional action and inhibition reach mature levels early in childhood.	f	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	f	\N
23723144	A variety of techniques exist for eliciting acute psychological stress in the laboratory; however, they vary in terms of their ease of use, reliability to elicit consistent responses and the extent to which they represent the stressors encountered in everyday life. There is, therefore, a need to develop simple laboratory techniques that reliably elicit psychobiological stress reactivity that are representative of the types of stressors encountered in everyday life. The multitasking framework is a performance-based, cognitively demanding stressor, representative of environments where individuals are required to attend and respond to several different stimuli simultaneously with varying levels of workload. Psychological (mood and perceived workload) and physiological (heart rate and blood pressure) stress reactivity was observed in response to a 15-min period of multitasking at different levels of workload intensity in a sample of 20 healthy participants. Multitasking stress elicited increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and increased workload intensity elicited dose-response increases in levels of perceived workload and mood. As individuals rarely attend to single tasks in real life, the multitasking framework provides an alternative technique for modelling acute stress and workload in the laboratory.	f	\N
23724570	Because no studies have examined learning in hypnosis in an academic setting, the current study tested whether learning in hypnosis impacts test performance. Participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned into a hypnosis or a control group. Participants listened to an academic lecture, answered questions about their hypnotic depth, and completed a quiz based on the lecture. The data was analyzed using multilevel modeling predicting test performance from group placement. Learning in the hypnosis predicted significantly worse performance compared to the control group. This relationship was significantly mediated by attention, which had a positive relationship to test performance. However, the altered state of awareness produced by the hypnosis condition was associated with a more significant decrease in test performance.	f	\N
23727542	Attentional biases to threat are considered central to anxiety disorders, however physiological evidence of their nature and time course is lacking. Event-related potentials (ERPs) characterized sensory and cognitive changes while 20 outpatients with panic disorder (PD), 20 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and 20 healthy controls (HCs) responded to the color (emotional Stroop task) or meaning of threatening and neutral stimuli. ERPs indicated larger P1 amplitude and longer N1 latency in OCD, and shorter P1 latency in PD, to threatening (versus neutral) stimuli, across instructions to attend to, or ignore, threat content. Emotional Stroop interference correlated with phobic anxiety and was significant in PD. Participants with emotional Stroop interference had augmented P1 and P3 amplitudes to threat (versus neutral) stimuli when color-naming. The results suggest early attentional biases to threat in both disorders, with disorder-specific characteristics. ERPs supported preferential early attentional capture and cognitive elaboration hypotheses of emotional Stroop interference.	f	\N
23727627	Sleepiness at the wheel is a risk factor for traffic accidents. Past studies have demonstrated the validity of the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) scores as a predictor of driving impairment in untreated patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), but there is limited information on the validity of the maintenance of wakefulness test by MWT in predicting driving impairment in patients with hypersomnias of central origin (narcolepsy or idiopathic hypersomnia). The aim of this study was to compare the MWT scores with driving performance in sleep disorder patients and controls. 19 patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin (9 narcoleptics and 10 idiopathic hypersomnia), 17 OSAS patients and 14 healthy controls performed a MWT (4×40-minute trials) and a 40-minute driving session on a real car driving simulator. Participants were divided into 4 groups defined by their MWT sleep latency scores. The groups were pathological (sleep latency 0-19 min), intermediate (20-33 min), alert (34-40 min) and control (>34 min). The main driving performance outcome was the number of inappropriate line crossings (ILCs) during the 40 minute drive test. Patients with pathological MWT sleep latency scores (0-19 min) displayed statistically significantly more ILC than patients from the intermediate, alert and control groups (F (3, 46)=7.47, p<0.001). Pathological sleep latencies on the MWT predicted driving impairment in patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin as well as in OSAS patients. MWT is an objective measure of daytime sleepiness that appears to be useful in estimating the driving performance in sleepy patients.	f	\N
23731432	Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual's WM capacity and the emotional valence of the material influenced WM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts.	f	\N
23731911	The effect of dopamine agonists (DAs) on cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) is not yet completely established. Previous papers reported a worsening effect on some cognitive functions with some DAs, but not with others, suggesting that DAs may differently affect cognition in PD patients according to their pharmacological characteristics. We set out to test the effect of rotigotine and cabergoline on cognitive functions in a group of forty non-demented early-mild PD patients (H &Y <2). Subjects were randomly divided into two groups and evaluated in a randomized cross-over study using neuropsychological tests; at the same time, motor function was monitored under three different treatment conditions: DA (rotigotine or cabergoline), L-dopa, and off therapy. Rotigotine and cabergoline were chosen because while they share a mixed D1 and D2 receptor profile, the former is non-ergolinic and the latter ergolinic. No significant differences were found in cognitive function between the basal condition and the DA treatments. On the basis of the present data, which we compare with previous findings regarding pramipexole IR and pergolide, we hypothesize that combined stimulation of both dopamine receptor families, as occurs with rotigotine, cabergoline, L-dopa and pergolide, may preserve cognitive functions more than pure D2 family stimulation.	f	\N
23735486	It is well-established that environmental and biological risk factors contribute to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There is also growing consensus that SIDS requires the intersection of multiple risk factors that result in the failure of an infant to overcome cardio-respiratory challenges. Thus, the critical next steps in understanding SIDS are to unravel the physiological determinants that actually cause the sudden death, to synthesize how these determinants are affected by the known risk factors, and to develop novel ideas for SIDS prevention. In this review, we will examine current and emerging perspectives related to cardio-respiratory dysfunctions in SIDS. Specifically, we will review: (1) the role of the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as a multi-functional network that is critically involved in the failure to adequately respond to hypoxic and hypercapnic challenges; (2) the potential involvement of the preBötC in the gender and age distributions that are characteristic for SIDS; (3) the link between SIDS and prematurity; and (4) the potential relationship between SIDS, auditory function, and central chemosensitivity. Each section underscores the importance of marrying the epidemiological and pathological data to experimental data in order to understand the physiological determinants of this syndrome. We hope that a better understanding will lead to novel ways to reduce the risk to succumb to SIDS.	f	\N
23744347	The reinforcing properties of nicotine may be mediated through release of various neurotransmitters both centrally and systemically. People who smoke report positive effects such as pleasure, arousal, and relaxation as well as relief of negative affect, tension, and anxiety. Opioid (narcotic) antagonists are of particular interest to investigators as potential agents to attenuate the rewarding effects of cigarette smoking. To evaluate the efficacy of opioid antagonists in promoting long-term smoking cessation. The drugs include naloxone and the longer-acting opioid antagonist naltrexone. We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialised Register for trials of naloxone, naltrexone and other opioid antagonists and conducted an additional search of MEDLINE using 'Narcotic antagonists' and smoking terms in April 2013. We also contacted investigators, when possible, for information on unpublished studies. We considered randomised controlled trials comparing opioid antagonists to placebo or an alternative therapeutic control for smoking cessation. We included in the meta-analysis only those trials which reported data on abstinence for a minimum of six months. We also reviewed, for descriptive purposes, results from short-term laboratory-based studies of opioid antagonists designed to evaluate psycho-biological mediating variables associated with nicotine dependence. We extracted data in duplicate on the study population, the nature of the drug therapy, the outcome measures, method of randomisation, and completeness of follow-up. The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow-up in patients smoking at baseline. Abstinence at end of treatment was a secondary outcome. We extracted cotinine- or carbon monoxide-verified abstinence where available. Where appropriate, we performed meta-analysis, pooling risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed-effect model. Eight trials of naltrexone met inclusion criteria for meta-analysis of long-term cessation. One trial used a factorial design so five trials compared naltrexone versus placebo and four trials compared naltrexone plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) versus placebo plus NRT. Results from 250 participants in one long-term trial remain unpublished. No significant difference was detected between naltrexone and placebo (risk ratio (RR) 1.00; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.66 to 1.51, 445 participants), or between naltrexone and placebo as an adjunct to NRT (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.30, 768 participants). The estimate was similar when all eight trials were pooled (RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.76 to 1.24, 1213 participants). In a secondary analysis of abstinence at end of treatment, there was also no evidence of any early treatment effect, (RR 1.03; 95% CI 0.88 to 1.22, 1213 participants). No trials of naloxone or buprenorphine reported abstinence outcomes. Based on data from eight trials and over 1200 individuals, there was no evidence of an effect of naltrexone alone or as an adjunct to NRT on long-term smoking abstinence, with a point estimate strongly suggesting no effect and confidence intervals that make a clinically important effect of treatment unlikely. Although further trials might narrow the confidence intervals they are unlikely to be a good use of resources.	f	\N
23746822	To study the effects of antiepileptic treatment on sleep parameters and video-polysomnography (VPSG) seizures in nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE). Twenty patients with a clinical and VPSG diagnosis of NFLE (baseline polysomnography [PSG]) underwent a clinical follow-up and performed a second VPSG after effective antiepileptic treatment lasting for at least 6 months. Conventional sleep measures, cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) parameters, and objective VPSG seizures were assessed in NFLE patients before and after treatment and were compared with the results of 20 age- and gender-matched control subjects. Antiepileptic treatment determined a partial reduction of objective VPSG seizures of approximately 25% compared to baseline condition. Alterations of most conventional sleep measures recovered normal values, but nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep instability remained pathologically enhanced (CAP rate, +26% compared to controls) and was associated with persistence of daytime sleepiness. Residual epileptic events and high levels of unstable NREM sleep can define a sort of objective resistance of both seizures and disturbed arousal system to the therapeutic purpose of the antiepileptic drugs in NFLE. This finding could determine the need for new therapeutic options in this particular form of epilepsy.	f	\N
23748945	The tobacco consumption continues being a worrying problem due to the negative consequences in the health. At presents, strategies of prevention based on the persuasion across clue pictures are used, which need to attract the attention of the smoker in order that they are effective. Nevertheless, the number of experimental studies in Spain on attentional biases in smokers is very limited. For it, in this study the aim was to verify the presence of visual attentional biases using the dot probe task in university smokers, stage where the smoking habit is consolidated. The sample was constituted by 337 students of the University of Huelva, with ages between 17 and 30 years. The participation was voluntary and the participants signed an informed assent. 135 subjects presented consumption history, which were distributed, according to classification of the WHO, in daily smokers, occasional smokers and former smokers. A experimental Ex post facto prospective design was used. The results showed that the smokers group was significantly later time to respond to the clue located in the same place that the tobacco picture than the group of not smokers. This shows that the smokers presented more difficulty to disconnect the attention towards smoking cues than not smokers.	f	\N
23768150	In grapheme-colour synaesthesia, letters, numbers, and words elicit involuntary colour experiences. Recently, there has been much emphasis on individual differences and possible subcategories of synaesthetes with different underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are claims that for some, synaesthesia occurs prior to attention and awareness of the inducing stimulus. We first characterized our sample using two versions of the "Synaesthetic Congruency Task" to distinguish "projector" and "associator" synaesthetes who may differ in the extent to which their synaesthesia depends on attention and awareness. We then used a novel modification of the "Embedded Figures Task" that included a set-size manipulation to look for evidence of preattentive "pop-out" from synaesthetic colours, at both a group and an individual level. We replicate an advantage for synaesthetes over nonsynaesthetic controls on the Embedded Figures Task in accuracy, but find no support for pop-out of synaesthetic colours. We conclude that grapheme-colour synaesthetes are fundamentally similar in their visual processing to the general population, with the source of their unusual conscious colour experiences occurring late in the cognitive hierarchy.	f	\N
23786210	Cognitive deficits in several domains have been demonstrated in early-onset schizophrenia patients but their profile and relation to depressive symptoms and intelligence need further characterization. The purpose was to characterize the profile of cognitive deficits in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients, assess the potential associations with depressive symptom severity, and examine whether cognitive deficits within several domains reflect intelligence impairments. This study compared attention, visual-construction, aspects of visual and verbal memory, and executive functions in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients (mean age = 20.7 years) (N = 18) and healthy controls (N = 38). Schizophrenia diagnoses were established at the time of the patients' first clinical presentation during childhood or adolescence and were confirmed five years later. In the chronic phase of early-onset schizophrenia, significant deficits were observed in all specific cognitive functions. The profile of cognitive deficits was jagged, and visual-construction, attention, and one aspect of verbal memory (verbal stories recall) were differentially impaired. Deficits of visual recall, visual recognition, and executive functions were accounted for by deficits in intelligence, while this was not the case for deficits of verbal recall of stories or attention. No significant associations were observed between the severity of cognitive deficits and that of depressive symptoms. Chronic, early-onset schizophrenia is characterized by a broad and jagged profile of cognitive deficits. Deficits of attention and verbal recall of stories appear not to be accounted for by deficits in intelligence, and the severity of cognitive deficits seems independent from that of depressive symptoms.	f	\N
23797824	Vulnerability to transient insomnia is regarded as a predisposing factor for chronic insomnia. However, most individuals with transient insomnia do not develop chronic insomnia. The current study investigated the differential contributing factors for these two conditions to further the understanding of this phenomenon. Chronic insomnia patients and normal sleepers with high and low vulnerability to transient insomnia completed measures of pre-sleep arousal, dysfunctional sleep beliefs, and sleep-related safety behaviors. Both cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousals were identified as significant predictors for transient insomnia. Dysfunctional beliefs regarding worry about insomnia and cognitive arousal were predictors for chronic insomnia. Sleep-related safety behavior, although correlated with insomnia severity, was not a significant predictor for both conditions. Dysfunctional beliefs associated with worry and losing control over sleep are the most critical factors in differentiating chronic insomnia from transient insomnia. These factors should be addressed to help prevent individuals with high sleep vulnerability from developing chronic sleep disturbance.	f	\N
23809860	Although cocaine is known to be a highly addictive drug, there appears to be a select subset of individuals who are able to use the substance recreationally without developing dependence. These individuals do not report experiencing feelings of craving for cocaine, an important distinction from dependent users. However, no prior studies have compared attentional bias with cocaine cues between these groups to confirm this difference. Additionally, previous investigations into cognitive abilities in these individuals have been conflicting, and no research has been conducted on the neurobiological processes underlying cognitive functioning in this group. This study administered the emotional cocaine-word Stroop to 27 recreational cocaine users, 50 stimulant-dependent individuals, and 52 healthy control participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Behavioral and functional imaging results were compared between groups to assess attentional bias and cognitive effort to resist salient cocaine stimuli. Recreational users did not exhibit attentional bias to the cocaine words and did not differ from control subjects on task performance. Conversely, stimulant-dependent individuals were significantly more impaired on the task. Recreational participants also displayed a unique pattern of activation during performance, with significant underactivation in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices compared with both dependent users and control subjects. The absence of bias to cocaine-related stimuli in recreational users indicates they do not share attentional preference for these words with dependent users. Their distinct pattern of activation suggests a decreased need for cognitive control due to diminished desire for the drug, potentially serving as a resilience factor against dependence.	f	\N
23815454	A selective deficit in the recollection of episodic details is frequently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous explanations implicate dopamine dysregulation in prefrontal structures on which strategic memory processes rely. However, neuroimaging advancements suggest dopaminergic dysregulation of hippocampally dependent memory processes. Accordingly, dopamine agonists, which target D3 receptors in the hippocampus, may impair hippocampal functioning, causing a more pronounced recollection decline. Recognition memory (RM), familiarity, and recollection were examined in 21 patients with mild-to-moderate PD (Hoehn and Yahr mean: 2.67). Patients were subdivided into two subgroups according to dopamine agonist (pramipexole [PPX] or ropinirole [RPR]), and completed matched versions of an RM test in a medicated and unmedicated condition (termed ON and OFF, respectively). Ten demographically matched healthy volunteers (HVs) also completed both RM tasks in two separate sessions. The PD group (PPX and RPR subgroups combined) showed impairments in RM and recollection, but spared familiarity. When subdivided by dopamine agonist, the PPX subgroup's ON-medication recollection performance was significantly lower than that of both the HVs and RPR subgroup. There was no evidence of decline in OFF-medication recollection or familiarity in either the PPX or RPR subgroups. Recollection in both PD subgroups correlated positively with a composite measure of recall, but not prefrontally dependent measures of cognitive control. These findings suggest that mild-to-moderate PD patients may show relatively preserved recollection and familiarity, but that recollection is selectively disrupted by PPX, but not RPR and that this effect may depend on disrupted hippocampal function rather than impaired pre-frontally dependent executive functions.	f	\N
23832553	In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor-memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.	f	\N
23834356	Motivation is well known to enhance working memory (WM) capacity, but the mechanism underlying this effect remains unclear. The WM process can be divided into encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, and in a change detection visual WM paradigm, the encoding and retrieval processes can be subdivided into perceptual and central processing. To clarify which of these segments are most influenced by motivation, we measured ERPs in a change detection task with differential monetary rewards. The results showed that the enhancement of WM capacity under high motivation was accompanied by modulations of late central components but not those reflecting attentional control on perceptual inputs across all stages of WM. We conclude that the "state-dependent" shift of motivation impacted the central, rather than the perceptual functions in order to achieve better behavioral performances.	f	\N
23840558	The behavioral approach system (BAS) from Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory is a neurobehavioral system involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli that has been related to dopaminergic brain areas. Gray's theory hypothesizes that the functioning of reward brain areas is modulated by BAS-related traits. To test this hypothesis, we performed an fMRI study where participants viewed erotic and neutral pictures, and cues that predicted their appearance. Forty-five heterosexual men completed the Sensitivity to Reward scale (from the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire) to measure BAS-related traits. Results showed that Sensitivity to Reward scores correlated positively with brain activity during reactivity to erotic pictures in the left orbitofrontal cortex, left insula, and right ventral striatum. These results demonstrated a relationship between the BAS and reward sensitivity during the processing of erotic stimuli, filling the gap of previous reports that identified the dopaminergic system as a neural substrate for the BAS during the processing of other rewarding stimuli such as money and food.	f	\N
23845453	Attention to general and trauma-relevant threat was examined in individuals with clinical and subthreshold symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Participants' eye gaze was tracked and recorded while they viewed sets of four images over a 6-s presentation (one negative, positive, and neutral image, and either a general threat image or a trauma-relevant threat image). Two trauma-exposed groups (a clinical and a subthreshold PTSD symptom group) were compared to a non-trauma-exposed group. Both the clinical and subthreshold PTSD symptom groups attended to trauma-relevant threat images more than the no-trauma-exposure group, whereas there were no group differences for general threat images. A time course analysis of attention to trauma-relevant threat images revealed different attentional profiles for the trauma-exposed groups. Participants with clinical PTSD symptoms exhibited immediate heightened attention to the images relative to participants with no-trauma-exposure, whereas participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms did not. In addition, participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms attended to trauma-relevant threat images throughout the 6-s presentation, whereas participants with clinical symptoms of PTSD exhibited evidence of avoidance. The theoretical and clinical implications of these distinct attentional profiles are discussed.	f	\N
23849666	Increasing empirical studies suggest that the tripartite posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) model described in the DSM-IV does not accurately account for the underlying PTSD factor structure, and several alternative models have been proposed. The present study investigated a newly refined, five-factor model of PTSD symptoms in a sample of Chinese adolescent survivors of an earthquake. A total of 1198 middle school students (653 females, 526 males) with a mean age of 14.4 years (SD = 1.1, range: 11-18) participated in this study one month after an earthquake. The novel five-factor model comprised of intrusion, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal demonstrated significantly better fit than two alternative four-factor models. Further analyses revealed differentiable relations between the PTSD factors and external measures of anxiety and depression. These findings provide empirical support for the robustness of five-factor model, and carry implications for further reorganization of PTSD criteria.	f	\N
23855999	The role of interoception and its neural basis with relevance to drug addiction is reviewed. Interoception consists of the receiving, processing, and integrating body-relevant signals with external stimuli to affect ongoing motivated behavior. The insular cortex is the central nervous system hub to process and integrate these signals. Interoception is an important component of several addiction relevant constructs including arousal, attention, stress, reward, and conditioning. Imaging studies with drug-addicted individuals show that the insular cortex is hypo-active during cognitive control processes but hyperactive during cue reactivity and drug-specific, reward-related processes. It is proposed that interoception contributes to drug addiction by incorporating an "embodied" experience of drug uses together with the individual's predicted versus actual internal state to modulate approach or avoidance behavior, i.e. whether to take or not to take drugs. This opens the possibility of two types of interventions. First, one may be able to modulate the embodied experience by enhancing insula reactivity where necessary, e.g. when engaging in drug seeking behavior, or attenuating insula when exposed to drug-relevant cues. Second, one may be able to reduce the urge to act by increasing the frontal control network, i.e. inhibiting the urge to use by employing cognitive training. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'.	f	\N
23856173	Sleep inertia refers to the inability to attain full alertness following awakening from sleep and is a major component of hypersomnia. As event-related potentials (ERPs) are correlated to the degree of consciousness, they allow exploring information processing in transitional states of vigilance. Their modifications during forced awakening (FA) context have been shown to reflect sleep inertia. To assess the diagnostic value of a FA test using an oddball stimulation protocol during a nap in a representative sample of patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). One hundred and seventy three patients [30 narcolepsy, 62 idiopathic hypersomnia, 33 sleep apnoea syndrome, and 48 other (mainly psychiatric) hypersomnia] performed an auditory target detection stimulation task during pre-, post-nap wakefulness, and during two successive intra-nap FA while the EEG was simultaneously recorded. Both the accuracy of target detection and the ERPs were evaluated. ERPs during forced awakening test were considered to reflect sleep inertia if they presented with a P300 delay and/or sleep negativities (N350/N550). Pre-nap behavior and ERPs were normal in all patients. Behavioral results were significantly worse during FA than during wakefulness for all groups of patients. P300 latencies were significantly delayed on FA conditions in each group of patients except the psychiatric group. Sensitivity and specificity for detection of sleep inertia were 64% and 94%, respectively, with predictive values of 96% (positive) and 50% (negative). Our results suggest that the FA test could be helpful as a diagnostic procedure for discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia.	f	\N
23857779	The goals of the present study were to: (i) examine similarities and differences in behavioral/emotional problems manifested by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with anxiety disorder (ANX); (ii) test the ability of each of the eight child behavioral checklist (CBCL) and teacher report form (TRF) syndrome scales to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group; and (iii) test the ability of an ASD scale derived by Ooi et al. to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group. Archival CBCL and TRF data from 180 children between 4 and 18 years of age (119 males, 61 females) diagnosed with ASD (n = 86) or ANX (n = 94) at an outpatient child psychiatric clinic in Singapore were analyzed. The ASD group scored significantly higher on Social Problems and Attention Problems but significantly lower on Anxious/Depressed and Somatic Complaints than the ANX group. The groups did not show significant differences on Withdrawn/Depressed and Thought Problems. Both the CBCL and TRF ASD scales were significant predictors of the ASD group, with moderate to high sensitivity and specificity. Our findings for an Asian sample support the diagnostic overlap between ASD and ANX reported for Western samples and underscore the importance of treating ASD as both a unitary disease and as a web of overlapping configurations of underlying problem dimensions.	f	\N
23857836	SSRIs are known for their sexual side-effects with a variable rate of sexual dysfunction (SD). 5HT2A (rs6311) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was found to have significant association with SD. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of female SDD, its clinical correlates and association with 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) treated with SSRIs. This was a cross-sectional study. We evaluated 95 female outpatients with MDD treated with SSRIs who were in remission. Outcome measures were stratified by the presence or absence of SDD. A buccal swab was obtained from each patient and sent for genotyping in the Pharmacogenomics and Medical Biotechnology Laboratory of Universiti Malaya. The overall prevalence of female SD was 32.6%. The prevalence of female SDD was 62.1%. Those with arousal problem, lubrication problem, sexual satisfaction problem, orgasm problem and problematic marriage were more likely to have sexual desire disorder. The majority of participants who had sexual desire disorder had genotype TT (42.4%) but there was no significant association observed. After controlling for age, number of children, education level, SSRI type, lubrication problem, orgasm problem, satisfaction problem and marital problem, only arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder by 8.5 times (odds ratio = 8.46, 95% confidence interval = 1.24-57.58; P = 0.018). This study showed that there was no significant association between SDD and the 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP. Arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder.	f	\N
23860302	The present study investigates how individuals distribute their attentional resources between a prospective memory task and an ongoing task. Therefore, metacognitive expectations about the attentional demands of the prospective-memory task were manipulated while the factual demands were held constant. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found attentional costs from a prospective-memory task with low factual demands to be significantly reduced when information about the low to-be-expected demands were provided, while prospective-memory performance remained largely unaffected. In Experiment 2, attentional monitoring in a more demanding prospective-memory task also varied with information about the to-be-expected demands (high vs. low) and again there were no equivalent changes in prospective-memory performance. These findings suggest that attention-allocation strategies of prospective memory rely on metacognitive expectations about prospective-memory task demands. Furthermore, the results suggest that attentional monitoring is only functional for prospective memory to the extent to which anticipated task demands reflect objective task demands.	f	\N
23862902	Effects of word-level phonetic variation on the recognition of words with different pronunciation variants (e.g., center produced with/(out) [t]) are investigated via the semantic- and pseudoword-priming paradigms. A bias favoring clearly articulated words with canonical variants ([nt]) is found. By reducing the bias, words with different variants show robust and equivalent lexical activation. The equivalence of different word forms highlights a snag for frequency-based theories of lexical access: How are words and word productions with vastly different frequencies recognized equally well by listeners? A process-based account is proposed, suggesting that careful speech induces bottom-up processing and casual speech induces top-down processing.	f	\N
23862914	This study reports a role of temporal regularity on the perception of auditory streams. Listeners were presented with two-tone sequences in an A-B-A-B rhythm that was either regular or had a controlled amount of temporal jitter added independently to each of the B tones. Subjects were asked to report whether they perceived one or two streams. The percentage of trials in which two streams were reported substantially and significantly increased with increasing amounts of temporal jitter. This suggests that temporal predictability may serve as a binding cue during auditory scene analysis.	f	\N
23863955	Sleep deprivation immediately following an aversive event reduces fear by preventing memory consolidation during homeostatic sleep. This suggests that acute insomnia might act prophylactically against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even though it is also a possible risk factor for PTSD. We examined total sleep deprivation and memory suppression to evaluate the effects of these interventions on subsequent aversive memory formation and fear conditioning. Active suppression of aversive memory impaired retention of event memory. However, although the remembered fear was more reduced in sleep-deprived than sleep-control subjects, suppressed fear increased, and seemed to abandon the sleep-dependent plasticity of fear. Active memory suppression, which provides a psychological model for Freud's ego defense mechanism, enhances fear and casts doubt on the potential of acute insomnia as a prophylactic measure against PTSD. Our findings bring into question the role of sleep in aversive-memory consolidation in clinical PTSD pathophysiology.	f	\N
23864438	Although the relationship between alexithymia and psychopathology has been studied extensively in adults, research is lacking on alexithymia in childhood psychopathology. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children was administered to a sample of 50 children with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD, as assessed by means of the K-SADS PL, and to 100 healthy, age- and sex-matched children without ADHD. The total alexithymia score as well as the difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF) and externally oriented thinking factors were significantly associated with ADHD. The total alexithymia score, the DIF, and the difficulty in describing feelings factors were also significantly associated with symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity. No significant relationship between alexithymia and inattentiveness symptoms emerged. Results provide preliminary data on the relationship between alexithymia and ADHD. Findings point to an association between difficulty in identifying emotions and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Future studies conducted on larger patient samples, as well as longitudinal designs, are warranted to confirm our findings.	f	\N
23865336	Vigilance is defined as the ability to maintain attention or alertness over prolonged periods of time. Since Mid-20th century, following the increasing man-machine communication, high level of vigilance has been demanded in many areas including driving safety, medical care and therapy, aerospace and military affairs, etc. Therefore, finding quick methods to improve the level of vigilance has become a key issue in medical study. Based on physical regulation, chemical regulation and physiological regulation, the research progress has been summarized in this paper. We, furthermore, also try to predict the future trend in this academic area and develop some tentative ideas about seeking more effective and convenient ways to improve the level of brain vigilance.	f	\N
23875572	One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.	f	\N
23892066	Existing batteries for FMRI do not precisely meet the criteria for comprehensive mapping of cognitive functions within minimum data acquisition times using standard scanners and head coils. The goal was to develop a battery of neuropsychological paradigms for FMRI that can also be used in other brain imaging techniques and behavioural research. Participants were 61 healthy, young adult volunteers (48 females and 13 males, mean age: 22.25 ± 3.39 years) from the university community. The battery included 8 paradigms for basic (visual, auditory, sensory-motor, emotional arousal) and complex (language, working memory, inhibition/interference control, learning) cognitive functions. Imaging was performed using standard functional imaging capabilities (1.5-T MR scanner, standard head coil). Structural and functional data series were analysed using Brain Voyager QX2.9 and Statistical Parametric Mapping-8. For basic processes, activation centres for individuals were within a distance of 3-11 mm of the group centres of the target regions and for complex cognitive processes, between 7 mm and 15 mm. Based on fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the distance between the activation centres was 0-4 mm. There was spatial variability between individual cases; however, as shown by the distances between the centres found with fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the coordinates for individual cases can be used to represent those of the group. The findings show that the neuropsychological brain mapping battery described here can be used in basic science studies that investigate the relationship of the brain to the mind and also as functional localiser in clinical studies for diagnosis, follow-up and pre-surgical mapping.	f	\N
23896527	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how visual spatial or temporal cues modulated the auditory stimulus processing. The visual spatial cue (VSC) induces orienting of attention to spatial locations; the visual temporal cue (VTC) induces orienting of attention to temporal intervals. Participants were instructed to respond to auditory targets. Behavioral responses to auditory stimuli following VSC were faster and more accurate than those following VTC. VSC and VTC had the same effect on the auditory N1 (150-170 ms after stimulus onset). The mean amplitude of the auditory P1 (90-110 ms) in VSC condition was larger than that in VTC condition, and the mean amplitude of late positivity (300-420 ms) in VTC condition was larger than that in VSC condition. These findings suggest that modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visually induced spatial or temporal orienting of attention were different, but partially overlapping.	f	\N
23902752	Prolonged adaptation to a stimulus, such as a drifting grating, lowers sensitivity for detecting similar stimuli, and changes their appearance, for example, making gratings of the same orientation appear of lower contrast and move more slowly. It has been suggested that adaptation is increased by sustained attention to the adapting stimulus and is decreased by distracting attention with a competing task. This paper describes a novel 2AFC (spatial) measure of adaptation in which adaptation and bias are carefully distinguished by the random interleaving of different test conditions. The experiment revealed significant adaptation of perceived velocity, but no effect of attentional distraction.	f	\N
23912366	To assess the prevalence of sexual dysfunction in obese and overweight patients treated at the Professor Alberto Antunes University Hospital (HUPAA - UFAL). This is a descriptive study. The sample consisted of overweight or obese females. Anthropometric data were collected for assessment of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). In all subjects we measured the levels of blood glucose, total cholesterol and triglycerides. We applied a Portuguese-validated version of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSDI), which assesses sexual response as for desire, arousal, vaginal lubrication, orgasm, sexual satisfaction and pain. The total score is the sum of scores for each domain multiplied by the corresponding factor and can vary from '2 'to '36', a total score less than or equal to '26 ' being considered risky for sexual dysfunction. We evaluated 23 women with a mean age of 44, where 73.9% were obese and 82.6% had a highly increased risk for metabolic complications (WC e" 88 cm). The increased risk for sexual dysfunction was present in 78.3% of the interviewees, causing biopsychosocial impairment. Hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia were present in 33.3%, 22.2% and 61.1%, respectively, of patients at risk for sexual dysfunction. The analysis of the results demonstrates the need for better research and attention of physicians to patients with obesity or overweight.	f	\N
23915296	Most free-recall experiments employ a paradigm in which participants are given a preset amount of time to retrieve items from a list. While much has been learned using this paradigm, it ignores an important component of many real-world retrieval tasks: the decision to terminate memory search. The present study examines the temporal characteristics underlying memory search by comparing within subjects a standard retrieval paradigm with a finite, preset amount of time (closed interval) to a design that allows participants to terminate memory search on their own (open interval). Calling on the results of several presented simulations, we anticipated that the threshold for number of retrieval failures varied as a function of the nature of the recall paradigm, such that open intervals should result in lower thresholds than closed intervals. Moreover, this effect was expected to manifest in interretrieval times (IRTs). Although retrieval-interval type did not significantly impact the number of items recalled or error rates, IRTs were sensitive to the manipulation. Specifically, the final IRTs in the closed-interval paradigm were longer than those of the open-interval paradigm. This pattern suggests that providing participants with a preset retrieval interval not only masks an important component of the retrieval process (the memory search termination decision), but also alters temporal retrieval dynamics. Task demands may compel people to strategically control aspects of their retrieval by implementing different stopping rules.	f	\N
23916691	The control of dual-tasking effects is a daily challenge in stroke neurorehabilitation. It maybe one of the reasons why there is poor functional prognosis after a stroke in the right hemisphere, which plays a dominant role in posture control. The purpose of this study was to explore cognitive motor interference in right brain-lesioned and healthy subjects maintaining a standing position while performing three different tasks: a control task, a simple attentional task and a complex attentional task. We measured the sway area of the subjects on a force platform, including the center of pressure and its displacements. Results showed that stroke patients presented a reduced postural sway compared to healthy subjects, who were able to maintain their posture while performing a concomitant attentional task in the same dual-tasking conditions. Moreover, in both groups, the postural sway decreased with the increase in attentional load from cognitive tasks. We also noticed that the stability of stroke patients in dual-tasking conditions increased together with the weight-bearing rightward deviation, especially when the attentional load of the cognitive tasks and lower limb motor impairments were high. These results suggest that stroke patients and healthy subjects adopt a similar postural regulation pattern aimed at maintaining stability in dual-tasking conditions involving a static standing position and different attention-related cognitive tasks. Our results indicate that attention processes might facilitate static postural control.	f	\N
23920422	We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the selective H3 receptor inverse agonist MK-0249 to treat excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). In this three-period, double-blind, crossover study, 125 patients (100 men, 25 women; mean age, 48.6 years) with obstructive sleep apnea receiving nasal continuous positive airway pressure therapy who had refractory EDS were randomized to 2 weeks each of daily MK-0249 (5, 8, 10, or 12 mg, adaptively assigned), modafinil 200 mg, and placebo. At baseline and after each treatment period, six maintenance of wakefulness tests (MWT) and Psychomotor Vigilance Tasks (PVT) were conducted at 2-h intervals, beginning 1h postdose (∼09:00). The Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Clinical Global Impression of Severity (CGIS) and Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) also were assessed. The primary end point was MWT sleep latency averaged over the first four time points (MWT-early). MWT-early mean change from baseline sleep latency at week 2 was 1.2 min for placebo, 2.1 min for MK-0249 (top two doses pooled; P>.05 vs. placebo), and 5.9 min for modafinil (P < or = .001 vs. placebo). MK-0249 showed improvements vs placebo on secondary and exploratory end points of ESS, CGIS, PVT, and DSST. Insomnia adverse events (AEs) were greater for MK-0249 (combined doses, 17.5%) than for placebo (0.9%) or modafinil (1.8%). MK-0249 did not significantly affect MWT sleep latency. However, the pattern of improvement on subjective ratings and psychomotor performance end points suggested that MK-0249 was associated with changes in aspects of cognition and performance not captured by the MWT.	f	\N
23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	f	\N
23935959	There is growing debate on the use of drugs that promote cognitive enhancement. Amphetamine-like drugs have been employed as cognitive enhancers, but they show important side effects and induce addiction. In this study, we investigated the use of modafinil which appears to have less side effects compared to other amphetamine-like drugs. We analyzed effects on cognitive performances and brain resting state network activity of 26 healthy young subjects. A single dose (100 mg) of modafinil was administered in a double-blind and placebo-controlled study. Both groups were tested for neuropsychological performances with the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices II set (APM) before and three hours after administration of drug or placebo. Resting state functional magnetic resonance (rs-FMRI) was also used, before and after three hours, to investigate changes in the activity of resting state brain networks. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was employed to evaluate differences in structural connectivity between the two groups. Protocol ID: Modrest_2011; NCT01684306; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306. Results indicate that a single dose of modafinil improves cognitive performance as assessed by APM. Rs-fMRI showed that the drug produces a statistically significant increased activation of Frontal Parietal Control (FPC; p<0.04) and Dorsal Attention (DAN; p<0.04) networks. No modifications in structural connectivity were observed. Overall, our findings support the notion that modafinil has cognitive enhancing properties and provide functional connectivity data to support these effects. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01684306 http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306.	f	\N
23939584	During the learning process, whether students remain attentive throughout instruction generally influences their learning efficacy. If teachers can instantly identify whether students are attentive they can be suitably reminded to remain focused, thereby improving their learning effects. Traditional teaching methods generally require that teachers observe students' expressions to determine whether they are attentively learning. However, this method is often inaccurate and increases the burden on teachers. With the development of electroencephalography (EEG) detection tools, mobile brainwave sensors have become mature and affordable equipment. Therefore, in this study, whether students are attentive or inattentive during instruction is determined by observing their EEG signals. Because distinguishing between attentiveness and inattentiveness is challenging, two scenarios were developed for this study to measure the subjects' EEG signals when attentive and inattentive. After collecting EEG data using mobile sensors, various common features were extracted from the raw data. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was used to calculate and analyze these features to identify the combination of features that best indicates whether students are attentive. Based on the experiment results, the method proposed in this study provides a classification accuracy of up to 76.82%. The study results can be used as a reference for learning system designs in the future.	f	\N
23954763	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with risk for chronic pain, but the mechanisms contributing to the MDD and pain relationship are unclear. To examine whether disrupted emotional modulation of pain might contribute, this study assessed emotional processing and emotional modulation of pain in healthy controls and unmedicated persons with MDD (14 MDD, 14 controls). Emotionally charged pictures (erotica, neutral, mutilation) were presented in 4 blocks. Two blocks assessed physiological-emotional reactions (pleasure/arousal ratings, corrugator electromyography (EMG), startle modulation, skin conductance) in the absence of pain and 2 blocks assessed emotional modulation of pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR, a physiological measure of spinal nociception) evoked by suprathreshold electric stimulations. Results indicated pictures generally evoked the intended emotional responses; erotic pictures elicited pleasure, subjective arousal, and smaller startle magnitudes, whereas mutilation pictures elicited displeasure, corrugator EMG activation, and subjective/physiological arousal. However, emotional processing was partially disrupted in MDD, as evidenced by a blunted pleasure response to erotica and a failure to modulate startle according to a valence linear trend. Furthermore, emotional modulation of pain was observed in controls but not MDD, even though there were no group differences in NFR threshold or emotional modulation of NFR. Together, these results suggest supraspinal processes associated with emotion processing and emotional modulation of pain may be disrupted in MDD, but brain to spinal cord processes that modulate spinal nociception are intact. Thus, emotional modulation of pain deficits may be a phenotypic marker for future pain risk in MDD.	f	\N
23958342	The present study investigates the human brains' sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250-350 ms) and P3 (350-500 ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal.	f	\N
23958795	One approach to hypnosis suggests that for hypnotic experience to occur frontal lobe activity must be attenuated. For example, cold control theory posits that a lack of awareness of intentions is responsible for the experience of involuntariness and/or the subjective reality of hypnotic suggestions. The mid-dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are candidate regions for such awareness. Alcohol impairs frontal lobe executive function. This study examined whether alcohol affects hypnotisability. We administered 0.8 mg/kg of alcohol or a placebo to 32 medium susceptible participants. They were subsequently hypnotised and given hypnotic suggestions. All participants believed they had received some alcohol. Participants in the alcohol condition were more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions than participants in the placebo condition. Impaired frontal lobe activity facilitates hypnotic responding, which supports theories postulating that attenuation of executive function facilitates hypnotic response, and contradicts theories postulating that hypnotic response involves enhanced inhibitory, attentional or other executive function.	f	\N
23958866	Drugs-of-abuse may increase the salience of drug cues by sensitizing the dopaminergic (DA) system (Robinson and Berridge, 1993), leading to differential attention to smoking stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess attention to smoking cues but not using an ERP component associated with DA-mediated salience evaluation. In this study the DA-related P2a and the P3, were compared in smokers (N = 21) and non-smokers (N = 21) during an attention selection cue exposure task including both cigarette and neutral images. We predicted that both the P2a and P3 would be larger to targets than non-targets, but larger to non-target cigarette images than non-target neutral images only in the smokers, reflecting smokers' evaluation of smoking stimuli as relevant even when they were not targets. Results indicated that smokers showed behavioral cue reactivity, with more false alarms to cigarette images (responding to cigarette images when they were not targets) than non-smokers; however, both smokers and non-smokers had a larger P2a and P3 to cigarette images. Thus, while smokers showed behavioral evidence of differential salience evaluation of the cigarette images, this group difference was not reflected in differential brain activity. These findings may reflect characteristics of the ERPs (both ERP components were smaller in the smokers), the smoking sample (they were not more impulsive, i.e. reward sensitive, than the non-smokers, in contrast to prior studies) and the design (all participants were aware that the aim of the study was related to smoking).	f	\N
23966452	A growing body of research has illuminated beneficial effects of a single bout of physical activity (i.e., acute exercise) on cognitive function in school-age children. However, the influence of acute exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function has not been reported. To address this shortcoming, the current study examined the effects of a 30-min bout of exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function. Preschoolers' cognitive function was assessed following a single bout of exercise and a single sedentary period. Results revealed that, after engaging in a bout of exercise, preschoolers exhibited markedly better ability to sustain attention, relative to after being sedentary (p = .006, partial eta square = .400). Based on these findings, providing exercise opportunities appears to enhance preschoolers' cognitive function.	f	\N
23968792	The Western Neuro Sensory Stimulation Profile (WNSSP) presents a hierarchy of items suggestive of a sequence of recovery. The aim of this study was to understand the sequence of recovery of neurobehavioral function in patients with brain injury and determine whether this sequence was consistent with the WNSSP test item order. We conducted a retrospective clinical chart audit of 37 adult inpatients (mean age = 29 yr; 31 men, 6 women) with a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and a minimum of two medical record entries on the WNSSP. The sequence of recovery was statistically derived from the content and structure of the WNSSP. Our analysis did not support the current item ordering of the WNSSP as a function of the sequence of recovery from coma, with the exception of the Arousal/Attention subscale. WNSSP item performance suggested a sequence of recovery; clinicians may consider a revised item order that reflects this observed order.	f	\N
23980142	Cognitive emotion regulation has been widely shown in the laboratory to be an effective way to alter the nature of emotional responses. Despite its success in experimental contexts, however, we often fail to use these strategies in everyday life where stress is pervasive. The successful execution of cognitive regulation relies on intact executive functioning and engagement of the prefrontal cortex, both of which are rapidly impaired by the deleterious effects of stress. Because it is specifically under stressful conditions that we may benefit most from such deliberate forms of emotion regulation, we tested the efficacy of cognitive regulation after stress exposure. Participants first underwent fear-conditioning, where they learned that one stimulus (CS+) predicted an aversive outcome but another predicted a neutral outcome (CS-). Cognitive regulation training directly followed where participants were taught to regulate fear responses to the aversive stimulus. The next day, participants underwent an acute stress induction or a control task before repeating the fear-conditioning task using these newly acquired regulation skills. Skin conductance served as an index of fear arousal, and salivary α-amylase and cortisol concentrations were assayed as neuroendocrine markers of stress response. Although groups showed no differences in fear arousal during initial fear learning, nonstressed participants demonstrated robust fear reduction following regulation training, whereas stressed participants showed no such reduction. Our results suggest that stress markedly impairs the cognitive regulation of emotion and highlights critical limitations of this technique to control affective responses under stress.	f	\N
23982009	We analysed the cognitive influence on walking in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, in the absence of clinical disability. A case-control study was conducted with 12 MS patients with no disability and 12 matched healthy controls. Subjects were referred for completion a timed walk test of 10 m and a 3D-kinematic analysis. Participants were instructed to walk at a comfortable speed in a dual-task (arithmetic task) condition, and motor planning was measured by mental chronometry. Scores of walking speed and cadence showed no statistically significant differences between the groups in the three conditions. The dual-task condition showed an increase in the double support duration in both groups. Motor imagery analysis showed statistically significant differences between real and imagined walking in patients. MS patients with no disability did not show any influence of divided attention on walking execution. However, motor planning was overestimated as compared with real walking.	f	\N
23988395	To determine whether the Short-Term Executive Plus (STEP) cognitive rehabilitation program improves executive dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Randomized, waitlist controlled trial with minimization and blinded outcome assessment. Community. Participants with TBI and executive dysfunction (N=98; TBI severity 50% moderate/severe; mean time since injury ± SD, 12±14y; mean age ± SD, 45±14y; 62% women; 76% white). STEP program: 12 weeks (9h/wk) of group training in problem solving and emotional regulation and individual sessions of attention and compensatory strategies training. Factor analysis was used to create a composite executive function measure using the Problem Solving Inventory, Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome, and Self-Awareness of Deficits Interview. Emotional regulation was assessed with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. The primary attention measure was the Attention Rating and Monitoring Scale. Secondary measures included neuropsychological measures of executive function, attention, and memory and measures of affective distress, self-efficacy, social participation, and quality of life. Intention-to-treat mixed-effects analyses revealed significant treatment effects for the composite executive function measure (P=.008) and the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (P=.049) and Problem Solving Inventory (P=.016). We found no between-group differences on the neuropsychological measures or on measures of attention, emotional regulation, self-awareness, affective distress, self-efficacy, participation, or quality of life. The STEP program is efficacious in improving self-reported post-TBI executive function and problem solving. Further research is needed to identify the roles of the different components of the intervention and its effectiveness with different TBI populations.	f	\N
23988869	In this study, we assessed whether unspecific attention processes signaled by general reaction times (RTs), as well as specific facilitatory (validity or facilitation effect) and inhibitory (inhibition of return, IOR) effects involved in the attentional orienting network, are affected by low vigilance due to both circadian factors and sleep deprivation (SD). Eighteen male participants performed a cuing task in which peripheral cues were nonpredictive about the target location and the cue-target interval varied at three levels: 200 ms, 800 ms, and 1,100 ms. Facilitation with the shortest and IOR with the longest cue-target intervals were observed in the baseline session, thus replicating previous related studies. Under SD condition, RTs were generally slower, indicating a reduction in the participants' arousal level. The inclusion of a phasic alerting tone in several trials partially compensated for the reduction in tonic alertness, but not with the longest cue-target interval. With regard to orienting, whereas the facilitation effect due to reflexive shifts of attention was preserved with sleep loss, the IOR was not observed. These results suggest that the decrease of vigilance produced by SD affects both the compensatory effects of phasic alerting and the endogenous component involved in disengaging attention from the cued location, a requisite for the IOR effect being observed.	f	\N
23989094	The updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of pain, agitation, and delirium recommend either daily sedation interruption or maintaining light levels of sedation as methods to improve outcomes for patients who are sedated in the ICU. We review the evidence supporting both methods and discuss whether one method is preferable or if they should be used concurrently. Original research articles identified using the electronic PubMed database. Randomized controlled trials and large prospective cohort studies of mechanically ventilated ICU patients requiring sedation were selected. The methods of daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels (including avoidance of deep sedation) are safe in critically ill patients with no increase, and a potential decrease, in long-term psychiatric disturbances. Randomized trials comparing these methods with standard care, which has traditionally involved moderate to heavy sedation, found that both methods reduced duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay. Additionally, one trial noted that daily sedation interruption paired with spontaneous breathing trials improved 1-year survival, whereas a large observational study found that deep sedation was associated with decreased 180-day survival. Two common characteristics of these interventions in trials showing benefits were avoidance of deep levels of sedation and significant reductions in sedative doses, especially benzodiazepines. Thus, combining targeted light sedation with daily sedation interruption may be more beneficial than either method alone if sedative doses are reduced and arousal and mobility are facilitated during the ICU stay. Daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels are safe and proven to improve outcomes for sedated ICU patients when these approaches result in reduced sedative exposure and facilitate arousal. It remains unclear as to whether one approach is superior, and further studies are needed to evaluate which patients benefit most from either or both techniques.	f	\N
23991639	We review neuropsychological evidence for visual selection operating in different reference frames. There is general agreement that there may be a separation of coding space near to and farther from the body, and that deficits in selecting stimuli within each form of spatial representation may be impaired in patients with unilateral neglect. However, there remains a lack of consensus about whether all forms of spatial representation relate to the body or whether there are spatial representations based on reference frames abstracted from the body (allocentric and object-centered spatial codes). Here we will review the evidence for spatial coding in these more abstracted reference frames (allocentric and object-centered but also environmental) and argue for the psychological reality of (at least) allocentric spatial coding. We discuss computational accounts of how such codes may be created as objects are selected.	f	\N
23992838	To assess the sexual function of young women with spina bifida and myelomeningocele and to determine the factors influencing their sexual function. A postal cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was performed in 44 women, mean age 27.66 ± 5.89 years, with spina bifida and myelomeningocele. The questionnaire included the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women and questions about voiding mode, urinary symptoms, socioeconomic status, education level, lifestyle, and partnership. In parallel, data were also collected from the paediatric surgery records of patients who returned the questionnaire. The response rate was 56.8% (25/44). All domains of female sexual function (thoughts/desires, arousal, frequency of sexual activity, receptivity/initiation, pleasure/orgasm, relationship satisfaction) were altered. Urinary incontinence was likely to be the main factor responsible for altered sexual function and was associated with lower thoughts/desires, arousal, and receptivity/initiation scores. Wearing pads also constituted a limitation to achieving intimacy. Young myelomeningocele women report poor sexual functioning. The presence of urinary incontinence is associated with lower thoughts/desire, arousal, and receptivity/initiation.	f	\N
23994913	To study changes in attention and executive functions during psychopharmacotherapy in patients with paranoid schizophrenia, we have examined 120 patients with a first episode of paranoid schizophrenia treated with typical and atypical neuroleptics. Clinical and statistical analyses have revealed the heterogeneity within treatment groups that allowed to define two subgroups. These subgroups were characterized by a differed disease course (favorable or poor type). Before remission was achieved, the effect of atypical neuroleptics on cognitive performance was higher compared to typical neuroleptics. After remission, when doses of neuroleptics were decreased, a type of disease course played a main role. At 6 months after remission, attention and executive functions have improved in subgroups with favorable course of disease regardless of treatment.	f	\N
24000960	Immediately recalling a witnessed event can increase people's susceptibility to later postevent misinformation. But this retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) effect has been shown only when the initial recall test included specific questions that reappeared on the final test. Moreover, it is unclear whether this phenomenon is affected by the centrality of event details. These limitations make it difficult to generalize RES to criminal investigations, which often begin with free recall prior to more specific queries from legal officials and attorneys. In 3 experiments, we examined the influence of test formats (free recall vs. cued recall) and centrality of event details (central vs. peripheral) on RES. In Experiment 1, both the initial and final tests were cued recall. In Experiment 2, the initial test was free recall and the final test was cued recall. In Experiment 3, both the initial and final tests were free recall. Initial testing increased misinformation reporting on the final test for peripheral details in all experiments, but the effect was significant for central details only after aggregating the data from all 3 experiments. These results show that initial free recall can produce RES, and more broadly, that free recall can potentiate subsequent learning of complex prose materials.	f	\N
24005260	Selective attention to features of interest facilitates object processing in a cluttered and dynamic environment. Previous research found that distinct networks of regions across cortex are activated depending on the attended feature. These networks typically consist of posterior feature-preferring regions and anterior regions involved in attentional processes. In the current study, we investigated the role of white matter connections between the posterior and anterior regions within these networks for attention to features of novel colored dynamic objects. We asked participants to perform a 1-back feature-attention task while we acquired both functional and diffusion-weighted images. Using tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography, we found that the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) connected posterior and anterior object-processing regions and that voxels within the SLF correlated with response times on the task. Posterior and anterior regions that were anatomically connected also had increased functional connectivity relative to posterior and anterior regions that were not connected. Our results demonstrate that both functional and structural information has to be taken into account to understand selective attention and object perception.	f	\N
24010959	Although a beneficial role of post-training sleep for declarative memory has been consistently evidenced in children, as in adults, available data suggest that procedural memory consolidation does not benefit from sleep in children. However, besides the absence of performance gains in children, sleep-dependent plasticity processes involved in procedural memory consolidation might be expressed through differential interference effects on the learning of novel but related procedural material. To test this hypothesis, 32 10-12-year-old children were trained on a motor rotation adaptation task. After either a sleep or a wake period, they were first retested on the same rotation applied at learning, thus assessing offline sleep-dependent changes in performance, then on the opposite (unlearned) rotation to assess sleep-dependent modulations in proactive interference coming from the consolidated visuomotor memory trace. Results show that children gradually improve performance over the learning session, showing effective adaptation to the imposed rotation. In line with previous findings, no sleep-dependent changes in performance were observed for the learned rotation. However, presentation of the opposite, unlearned deviation elicited significantly higher interference effects after post-training sleep than wakefulness in children. Considering that a definite feature of procedural motor memory and skill acquisition is the implementation of highly automatized motor behaviour, thus lacking flexibility, our results suggest a better integration and/or automation or motor adaptation skills after post-training sleep, eventually resulting in higher proactive interference effects on untrained material.	f	\N
24012196	Female sexual dysfunctions include a group of sexual complaints and disorders affecting women of all ages, and stemming from a heterogeneous array of etiologies and contributing factors. The classification system for sexual dysfunctions in the woman has evolved from a linear categorization of sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain disorders to one that is more complex and overlapping. Personal distress is a key factor in defining a sexual problem as a dysfunction. The recently released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition 5, collapses former definitions of female sexual disorders and moves away from the older linear model of diagnostic categories. Physicians should be open to discussing sexual problems with women, and may make use of validated questionnaires in the office setting. Evaluation tools available for assessing sexual function in the woman are in use in the research setting, as are physiological measures of assessment.	f	\N
24018716	Temporal expectation is expectation with respect to the timing of an event such as the appearance of a certain stimulus. In this paper, temporal expectancy is investigated in the context of the theory of visual attention (TVA), and we begin by summarizing the foundations of this theoretical framework. Next, we present a parametric experiment exploring the effects of temporal expectation on perceptual processing speed in cued single-stimulus letter recognition with unspeeded motor responses. The length of the cue-stimulus foreperiod was exponentially distributed with one of six hazard rates varying between blocks. We hypothesized that this manipulation would result in a distinct temporal expectation in each hazard rate condition. Stimulus exposures were varied such that both the temporal threshold of conscious perception (t0 ms) and the perceptual processing speed (v letters s(-1)) could be estimated using TVA. We found that the temporal threshold t0 was unaffected by temporal expectation, but the perceptual processing speed v was a strikingly linear function of the logarithm of the hazard rate of the stimulus presentation. We argue that the effects on the v values were generated by changes in perceptual biases, suggesting that our perceptual biases are directly related to our temporal expectations.	f	\N
24022995	It has been suggested that autism-specific imitative deficits may be reduced or even spared in object-related activities. However, most previous research has not sufficiently distinguished object movement reenactment (learning about the ways in which object move) from imitation (learning about the topography of demonstrated actions). Twenty children with autism (CWA) and 20 typically developing children (TDC) were presented with puzzle boxes containing prizes. Test objects and experimental conditions were designed to isolate object- and action-related aspects of demonstrations. There were four types of video demonstrations: (a) a full demonstration by an adult; (b) a ghost demonstration with object movements alone; (c) mimed solutions demonstrated adjacent to the objects; and (d) random actions performed on the surface of the objects. There were no significant between-group differences in the degree to which CWA and TDC matched the full demonstrations, the actual demonstrations or in their times to first solution in any of the conditions. Although there was no clear imitative deficit in the CWA, regression analyses were conducted to explore in more detail whether diagnosis, verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ), nonverbal IQ NVIQ, age or motor coordination predicted performance. The results are discussed in relation to the use of extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards and the interplay between motor coordination and the relative rigidity vs. pliability of objects.	f	\N
24025057	Survivors of severe brain injuries may end up in a state of 'wakeful unresponsiveness' or in a minimally conscious state. Pharmacological treatments of patients with disorders of consciousness aim to improve arousal levels and recovery of consciousness. We here provide a systematic overview of the therapeutic effects of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem in patients recovering from coma. Evidence from clinical trials using these commonly prescribed pharmacological agents suggests positive changes of the patients' neurological status, leading sometimes to dramatic improvements. These findings are discussed in the context of current hypotheses of these agents' therapeutic mechanisms on cerebral function. In order to improve our understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of these drugs, we suggest combining sensitive and specific behavioral tools with neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures in large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled experimental designs. We conclude that the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem need further exploration to determine which treatment would provide a better neurological outcome regarding the patient's etiology, diagnosis, time since injury and overall condition.	f	\N
24035639	The objective of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the cognitive function of children with unilateral hearing loss in order to identify, quantify, and interpret differences in cognitive and language functions between children with unilateral hearing loss and with normal hearing. Fourteen children ages 9-14 years old (7 with severe-to-profound sensorineural unilateral hearing loss and 7 sibling controls with normal hearing) were administered five tests that assessed cognitive functions of working memory, processing speed, attention, and phonological processing. Mean composite scores for phonological processing were significantly lower for the group with unilateral hearing loss than for controls on one composite and four subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group trended toward worse performance on one additional composite and on two additional phonological processing subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group also performed worse than the control group on the complex letter span task. Analysis examining performance on the two levels of task difficulty revealed a significant main effect of task difficulty and an interaction between task difficulty and group. Cognitive function and phonological processing test results suggest two related deficits associated with unilateral hearing loss: (1) reduced accuracy and efficiency associated with phonological processing, and (2) impaired executive control function when engaged in maintaining verbal information in the face of processing incoming, irrelevant verbal information. These results provide a possible explanation for the educational difficulties experienced by children with unilateral hearing loss.	f	\N
24039108	Improved survival of children with brain tumors (BTs) has increased focus on ameliorating morbidity. To reduce the risk of progressive cognitive decline, remedial strategies need to be instituted early, based upon accurate appraisal of need, yet few studies have investigated cognition in BT children early post-diagnosis. The study aims were to investigate cognition in children with primary BTs 1, 6, and 12 months post-diagnosis compared with healthy children, exploring the impact of disease and treatment variables. Forty-eight children aged 2-16 years with primary BTs, referred to a Regional Neurosurgical Unit over the 2-year study period were eligible for enrollment. The "best friends" model was used to recruit matched controls. Cognition was assessed using age-appropriate Wechsler Intelligence scales; Children's Memory Scale; Test of Everyday Attention for Children, and Wechsler Quicktest. Patients with BTs had significantly reduced performance compared to controls early post-diagnosis in tests of Performance IQ, processing speed, verbal and visual memory, and selective attention. Improved performance over 12 months was seen in patients with BTs although also, for some measures, in controls. Significant deficits in cognitive performance were seen one year post-diagnosis for Verbal IQ; processing speed, visual and verbal immediate memory, and selective attention. Infratentorial site, high tumor grade, hydrocephalus, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy were associated with poorer functioning. Early cognitive impairment is present in BT children, sometimes prior to radiotherapy/chemotherapy treatment, and is associated with hydrocephalus, high tumor grade and infratentorial site. Future studies should investigate the role of early rehabilitation in improving cognition.	f	\N
24040251	Several highly-cited experiments have presented evidence suggesting that neuroimages may unduly bias laypeople's judgments of scientific research. This finding has been especially worrisome to the legal community in which neuroimage techniques may be used to produce evidence of a person's mental state. However, a more recent body of work that has looked directly at the independent impact of neuroimages on layperson decision-making (both in legal and more general arenas), and has failed to find evidence of bias. To help resolve these conflicting findings, this research uses eye tracking technology to provide a measure of attention to different visual representations of neuroscientific data. Finding an effect of neuroimages on the distribution of attention would provide a potential mechanism for the influence of neuroimages on higher-level decisions. In the present experiment, a sample of laypeople viewed a vignette that briefly described a court case in which the defendant's actions might have been explained by a neurological defect. Accompanying these vignettes was either an MRI image of the defendant's brain, or a bar graph depicting levels of brain activity-two competing visualizations that have been the focus of much of the previous research on the neuroimage bias. We found that, while laypeople differentially attended to neuroimagery relative to the bar graph, this did not translate into differential judgments in a way that would support the idea of a neuroimage bias.	f	\N
24044427	Joint attention (JA) is a cornerstone of adaptive human social functioning. Little functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has examined, in interactive paradigms, neural activation underlying bids for JA, met with a congruent or an incongruent social response. We developed a highly naturalistic fMRI paradigm utilizing eye-tracking to create real-time, contingent social responses to participant-initiated JA. During congruent responses to JA bids, we observed increased activation in the right amygdala, the right fusiform gyrus, anterior and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, striatum, ventral tegmental area, and posterior parietal cortices. Incongruent responses to JA bids elicited increased activity localized to the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and bilateral cerebellum. No differences in eye-gaze patterns were observed during congruent or incongruent trials. Our results highlight the importance of utilizing interactive fMRI paradigms in social neuroscience and the impact of congruency in recruiting integrated social, reward, and attention circuits for processing JA.	f	\N
24045099	This intervention examined whether fish-oil-supplementation in late infancy modifies free-play test scores and if this is related to blood pressure (BP) and mean RR interval. 83 Danish 9-month-old infants were randomized to ±fish oil (FO) (3.4±1.1mL/d) for 3months and 61 of these completed the free-play-test before and after the intervention. Most of the free-play scores changed during the intervention, but the intervention affected only the number of looks away from the toy, which was increased in +FO and decreased in -FO (p=0.037). The increased numbers of looks away were associated with an increase in erythrocyte eicosapentaenoic acid (r=0.401, p=0.017, n=35) and were also associated with a decrease in systolic-BP (r=-0.511, p<0.001, n=52). The results indicate that n-3 fatty acid intake also in late infancy can influence brain development and that the cognitive and cardiovascular effects may be related.	f	\N
24053045	Our perspective on resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) is that it provides a window into the substrate of cognitive and perceptual processing, reflecting the dynamic potential of the brain's current functional state. In an extended research program into the electrophysiology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), we have examined resting-state EEG power and coherence, and event-related potentials (ERPs), in children, adolescents, and adults with the disorder. We sought initially to identify consistent AD/HD anomalies in these measures, relative to normal control subjects, and then to understand how these differences related to existing models of AD/HD. An emergent strand in this program has been to clarify the EEG correlates of "arousal" and to understand the role of arousal dysfunction as a core anomaly in AD/HD. To date, findings in this strand serve to rule out a commonly held dictum in the AD/HD field: that elevated theta/beta ratio is an indicator of hypo-arousal. In turn, this requires further work to elucidate the ratio's functional significance in the disorder. Our brain dynamics studies relating prestimulus EEG amplitude and phase states to ERP outcomes are expected to help in this regard, but we are still at a relatively early stage, currently examining these relationships in control children, in order to better understand normal aspects of brain dynamics before turning to children with AD/HD. This range of studies provides a framework for our recent work relating resting-state EEG anomalies, in individuals with AD/HD, to their symptom profile. This has had promising results, indicating links between increased inattention scores and reduced resting EEG gamma power. With resting-state EEG coherence, reduced left lateralized coherences across several bands have correlated negatively with inattention scores, while reduced frontal interhemispheric coherence has been correlated negatively with hyperactivity/impulsivity scores. Such linkages appear to provide encouraging leads for future EEG research in AD/HD.	f	\N
24054320	The aim of the study was to explore whether temporal information processing can interfere with performance of a non-temporal task. A new methodology based on the Garner paradigm was employed. Participants were asked to classify two-dimensional stimuli according to either length or duration, with and without variation in the other (task-irrelevant) dimension. Garner interference was detected only with respect to classification by length when irrelevant variation in duration was present. Stroop interference was detected only in classification by length across compatible and non-compatible values of length and duration. Classification by length took more time when done with variation in duration than when duration was constant. Classification by length also took more time when length and duration were not compatible than when they were compatible. The findings indicate that the processing of duration is similar to the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The processing of duration consumes attentional resources and can interfere with the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The findings support attentional models of prospective duration judgment.	f	\N
24056700	Sleep can strengthen memory for emotional information, but whether emotional memories can be specifically targeted and modified during sleep is unknown. In human subjects who underwent olfactory contextual fear conditioning, re-exposure to the odorant context in slow-wave sleep promoted stimulus-specific fear extinction, with parallel reductions of hippocampal activity and reorganization of amygdala ensemble patterns. Thus, fear extinction may be selectively enhanced during sleep, even without re-exposure to the feared stimulus itself.	f	\N
24057352	Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials is elicited by stimuli violating the category rule of stimulus sequences, even if such stimuli are outside the focus of attention. Category-related vMMN emerges to colors, and color-related vMMN is sensitive to language-related effects. A higher-order perceptual category, bilateral symmetry is also represented in the memory processes underlying vMMN. As a relatively large body of research shows, violating the emotional category of human faces elicits vMMN. Another face-related category sensitive to the violation of regular presentation is gender. Finally, vMMN was elicited to the laterality of hands. As results on category-related vMMN show, stimulus representation in the non-conscious change detection system is fairly complex, and it is not restricted to the registration of elementary perceptual regularities.	f	\N
24060644	Task performance can be enhanced by the addition of extra information to a visual environment in which observers search for a target stimulus. One example of such information is the repetition of the searched-for stimulus; a form of target redundancy. In the present study, the electrophysiological correlates of such target redundancy were investigated in a visual discrimination task. Observers were asked to look for targets in displays that always contained two salient singletons (tilted lines; targets and/or nontargets) against a background of vertical distractor lines. Displays contained either two redundant targets, two nontargets, or a single target and nontarget, at opposite sides of the visual field. Search was most efficient when two targets were shown, and effects of target redundancy were observed on the event-related potential as well. Target redundancy modulated the anterior N2, and the P3 in both an early and a late window. The results are compatible with models of visual attention that support a relatively late (i.e., central or decisional) locus of redundancy processing.	f	\N
24065955	Complex neural circuits within the hypothalamus that govern essential autonomic processes and associated behaviors signal using amino acid and monoamine transmitters and a variety of neuropeptide (hormone) modulators, often via G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and associated cellular pathways. Relaxin-3 is a recently identified neuropeptide that is highly conserved throughout evolution. Neurons expressing relaxin-3 are located in the brainstem, but broadly innervate the entire limbic system including the hypothalamus. Extensive anatomical data in rodents and non-human primate, and recent regulatory and functional data, suggest relaxin-3 signaling via its cognate GPCR, RXFP3, has a broad range of effects on neuroendocrine function associated with stress responses, feeding and metabolism, motivation and reward, and possibly sexual behavior and reproduction. Therefore, this article aims to highlight the growing appreciation of the relaxin-3/RXFP3 system as an important "extrinsic" regulator of the neuroendocrine axis by reviewing its neuroanatomy and its putative roles in arousal-, stress-, and feeding-related behaviors and links to associated neural substrates and signaling networks. Current evidence identifies RXFP3 as a potential therapeutic target for treatment of neuroendocrine disorders and related behavioral dysfunction.	f	\N
24068814	Cortical activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while human subjects viewed 12 stimulus colors and performed either a color-naming or diverted attention task. A forward model was used to extract lower dimensional neural color spaces from the high-dimensional fMRI responses. The neural color spaces in two visual areas, human ventral V4 (V4v) and VO1, exhibited clustering (greater similarity between activity patterns evoked by stimulus colors within a perceptual category, compared to between-category colors) for the color-naming task, but not for the diverted attention task. Response amplitudes and signal-to-noise ratios were higher in most visual cortical areas for color naming compared to diverted attention. But only in V4v and VO1 did the cortical representation of color change to a categorical color space. A model is presented that induces such a categorical representation by changing the response gains of subpopulations of color-selective neurons.	f	\N
24070214	Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question "How would you define sexual satisfaction?" The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.	f	\N
24071775	Although there is evidence to suggest an association between ADHD and alcohol use in college students, results are inconclusive primarily because studies have failed to control for related variables. Thus, this study was designed to systematically compare the relative contributions of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in a sample of college students while controlling for effects of antisocial behaviors. A total of 192 undergraduate college students from a rural Midwestern university received class credit for participating in the study. They completed measures of alcohol use, ADHD symptoms, and antisocial behavior. Hierarchical regressions revealed inattention, but not hyperactivity/impulsivity, was related to alcohol-related problems even when controlling for antisocial behavior. However, neither inattention nor hyperactivity/impulsivity was related to alcohol use regardless of whether current antisocial behavior was controlled. Inattention may be an important factor related to alcohol-related problems in college students.	f	\N
24079062	Post-lunch dip is a well-known phenomenon that results in a substantial deterioration in function and productivity after lunch. To assess whether a new herbal-based potentially wake-promoting beverage is effective in counteracting somnolence and reduced post-lunch performance. Thirty healthy volunteers were studied on three different days at the sleep clinic. On each visit they ate a standard lunch at noontime, followed by a drink of "Wake up," 50 mg caffeine, or a placebo in a cross-over double-blind regimen. At 30 and 120 minutes post-drinking, they underwent a battery of tests to determine the effects of the beverage. These included: a) a subjective assessment of alertness and performance based on a visual analog scale, and b) objective function tests: the immediate word recall test, the digit symbol substitution test (DSST), and hemodynamic measurements. The results of the three visits were compared using one-way analysis of variance, with P < 0.05 considered statistically significant. In all performance tests, subjective vigilance and effectiveness assessment, both Wake up and caffeine were significantly superior to placebo 30 minutes after lunch. However, at 2 hours after lunch, performance had deteriorated in those who drank the caffeine-containing drink, while Wake up was superior to both caffeine and placebo. Blood pressure and pulse were higher 2 hours after caffeine ingestion, compared to both Wake up and placebo. These results suggest that a single dose of Wake up is effective in counteracting the somnolence and reduced performance during the post-lunch hours. In the current study it had no adverse hemodynamic consequences.	f	\N
24095116	The mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled. Perceptions, thoughts and feelings change, and respond to, the state of the body. This chapter describes the integration of cognitive and affective processes with the autonomic control of bodily arousal, focusing on reciprocal effects of autonomic responses on decision making, error detection, memory and emotions. Neuroimaging techniques are beginning to detail the neuronal substrates mediating these interactions between mental and physiological states, implicating cortical regions (specifically insular and cingulate cortices) alongside subcortical (amygdala) and brainstem (notably dorsal pons) in these mechanisms. The extent to which bodily states influence mental processes is determined in part by "interoceptive sensitivity," an index of individual differences in the ability to detect one's own bodily sensations. Moreover, the misidentification or misattribution of interoceptive responses is implicated in a number of pathologies such as depersonalization, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of body-mind interactions has wide ranging implications, from decision making to empathy, and may serve elucidate potential avenues of intervention for stress-sensitive conditions in which psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors impact on the expression of physical symptoms.	f	\N
24099547	Four experiments investigated whether infants and adults infer that a novel entity that interacts in a contingent, communicative fashion with an experimenter is itself an intentional agent. The experiments contrasted the hypothesis that such an inference follows from amodal representations of the contingent interaction alone with the hypothesis that features of the experimenter's behavior might also influence intentional attribution. Twelve- to 13-month-old infants and adults observed a novel entity respond contingently to a confederate experimenter, the form of whose actions varied across conditions. For infants, intentionality attribution was assessed by the extent to which they subsequently followed the faceless entity's implied attentional focus. For adults, intentionality attribution was assessed from their use of psychological terms when later describing the entity's behavior. In both groups, construal of the entity as an intentional agent was limited to a subset of contingent interaction conditions. At both ages, the pattern of responses across conditions suggests that whether an observed contingent interaction can be seen as a social interaction influences the attribution of intentional agency. These results further indicate that the agent detection mechanism responding to third-party contingent interactions, as a context-sensitive process, is distinct from the mechanism responding to directly experienced contingent interactions, suggested by prior developmental work to be based solely on amodal representations of an entity's contingent reaction to behaviors of an infant.	f	\N
24110382	Controlling a brain-actuated device requires the participant to look at and to split his attention between the interaction of the device with its environment and the status information of the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such parallel visual tasks are partly contradictory, with the goal of achieving a good and natural device control. Is there a possibility to free the visual channel from one of these tasks? To address this, a stimulation system based on 6 coin-motors is developed, which provides a spatially continuous tactile illusion as BCI feedback, so that the visual channel can be devoted to the device. Several experiments are conducted in this work, to optimize the tactile illusion patterns and to investigate the influence on the electroencephalogram (EEG). Finally, 6 healthy BCI participants compare visual with tactile feedback in online BCI recordings. The developed stimulator can be used without interfering with the EEG. All subjects are able to perceive this type of tactile feedback well, and no statistical degradation in the online BCI performance could be identified between visual and tactile feedback.	f	\N
24111051	Aging is a process that is inevitable, and makes our body vulnerable to age-related diseases. Age is the most consistent factor affecting the sleep structure. Therefore, new automatic sleep staging methods, to be used in both of young and elderly patients, are needed. This study proposes an automatic sleep stage detector, which can separate wakefulness, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep using only EEG and EOG. Most sleep events, which define the sleep stages, are reduced with age. This is addressed by focusing on the amplitude of the clinical EEG bands, and not the affected sleep events. The age-related influences are then reduced by robust subject-specific scaling. The classification of the three sleep stages are achieved by a multi-class support vector machine using the one-versus-rest scheme. It was possible to obtain a high classification accuracy of 0.91. Validation of the sleep stage detector in other sleep disorders, such as apnea and narcolepsy, should be considered in future work.	f	\N
24111247	Sleep is a physiological process with an internal program of a number of well defined sleep stages and intermediate wakefulness periods. The sleep stages modulate the autonomous nervous system and thereby the sleep stages are accompanied by different regulation regimes for the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The differences in regulation can be distinguished by new techniques of cardiovascular physics. The number of patients suffering from sleep disorders increases unproportionally with the increase of the human population and aging, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, the challenge of cardiovascular physics is to develop highly-sophisticated methods which are able to, on the one hand, supplement and replace expensive medical devices and, on the other hand, improve the medical diagnostics with decreasing the patient's risk. Methods of cardiovascular physics are used to analyze heart rate, blood pressure and respiration to detect changes of the autonomous nervous system in different diseases. Data driven modeling analysis, synchronization and coupling analysis and their applications to biosignals in healthy subjects and patients with different sleep disorders are presented. Newly derived methods of cardiovascular physics can help to find indicators for these health risks.	f	\N
24111262	This paper proposes a novel feature called differential entropy for EEG-based vigilance estimation. By mathematical derivation, we find an interesting relationship between the proposed differential entropy and the existing logarithm energy spectrum. We present a physical interpretation of the logarithm energy spectrum which is widely used in EEG signal analysis. To evaluate the performance of the proposed differential entropy feature for vigilance estimation, we compare it with four existing features on an EEG data set of twenty-three subjects. All of the features are projected to the same dimension by principal component analysis algorithm. Experiment results show that differential entropy is the most accurate and stable EEG feature to reflect the vigilance changes.	f	\N
24112932	The introduction of brain stimulation research techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has greatly advanced the understanding of the somatosensory system in humans. Over the last several years, several studies have focused on applying TMS in a variety of contexts to alter transiently the excitability of the somatosensory cortex or regions that project to it and exert some control over its activity in specific behavioral contexts. Specific foci that are discussed in this chapter are methods of repetitive TMS, including theta-burst protocols, delivered to the primary somatosensory cortex that have been shown to affect behavioral indices of somatic sensation such as tactile perception. Similar stimulation techniques can also be applied to distant areas that interact with and modulate activity in somatosensory cortex (i.e., attentional or motor networks). For example, suppression of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modifies the attention-modulation of somatosensory information in modality-specific cortices. Overall this chapter is focused on understanding the interaction of activity in systems that function with the somatosensory system in behavioral contexts. These include systems such as those that control attention, whether sustained or selective between sensory modalities, or those that control movement based on targets present in other sensory systems.	f	\N
24113330	To investigate whether pre-attentive auditory discrimination is impaired in patients with essential tremor (ET) and to evaluate the role of age at onset in this function. Seventeen non-demented patients with ET and seventeen age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent an EEG recording during a classical auditory MMN paradigm. MMN latency was significantly prolonged in patients with elderly-onset ET (>65 years) (p=0.046), while no differences emerged in either latency or amplitude between young-onset ET patients and controls. This study represents a tentative indication of a dysfunction of auditory automatic change detection in elderly-onset ET patients, pointing to a selective attentive deficit in this subgroup of ET patients. The delay in pre-attentive auditory discrimination, which affects elderly-onset ET patients alone, further supports the hypothesis that ET represents a heterogeneous family of diseases united by tremor; these diseases are characterized by cognitive differences that may range from a disturbance in a selective cognitive function, such as the automatic part of the orienting response, to more widespread and complex cognitive dysfunctions.	f	\N
24116885	Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to the change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). To the extent that core affect can be characterised by the two dimensions of valence and arousal, EC has important implications for the origin of affective responses. However, the distinction between valence and arousal is rarely considered in research on EC or conditioned responses more generally. Measuring the subjective feelings elicited by a CS, the results from two experiments showed that (1) repeated pairings of a CS with a positive or negative US of either high or low arousal led to corresponding changes in both CS valence and CS arousal, (2) changes in CS arousal, but not changes in CS valence, were significantly related to recollective memory for CS-US pairings, (3) subsequent presentations of the CS without the US reduced the conditioned valence of the CS, with conditioned arousal being less susceptible to extinction and (4) EC effects were stronger for high arousal than low arousal USs. The results indicate that the conditioning of affective responses can occur simultaneously along two independent dimensions, supporting evidence in related areas that calls for a consideration of both valence and arousal. Implications for research on EC and the acquisition of emotional dispositions are discussed.	f	\N
24117699	To better understand the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness-based practices function in a psychotherapeutic context, this article details the definition, techniques, and purposes ascribed to mindfulness training as described by its Buddhist tradition of origin and by contemporary neurocognitive models. Included is theory of how maladaptive mental processes become habitual and automatic, both from the Buddhist and Western psychological perspective. Specific noting and labeling techniques in open monitoring meditation, described in the Theravada and Western contemporary traditions, are highlighted as providing unique access to multiple modalities of awareness. Potential explicit and implicit mechanisms are discussed by which such techniques can contribute to transforming maladaptive habits of mind and perceptual and cognitive biases, improving efficiency, facilitating integration, and providing the flexibility to switch between systems of self-processing. Finally, a model is provided to describe the timing by which noting and labeling practices have the potential to influence different stages of low- and high-level neural processing. Hypotheses are proposed concerning both levels of processing in relation to the extent of practice. Implications for the nature of subjective experience and self-processing as it relates to one's habits of mind, behavior, and relation to the external world, are also described.	f	\N
24119895	To assess the effects of vaginal discharge on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) by using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). In a study at a university hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, women affected by vaginal discharge and age-matched healthy control women were recruited between January and December 2012. Women were grouped in accordance with their vaginal discharge complaints and each participant completed the FSFI questionnaire. A total of 114 women were included in the study. Women in the first group (n=58) had no vaginal discharge or had physiologic vaginal discharge, those in the second group (n=29) had abnormal vaginal discharge with itching, and those in the third group (n=27) had abnormal vaginal discharge without itching. Compared with the first group, women in the second and third groups had higher FSFI scores for desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain, in addition to higher overall FSFI scores. Women with genital malodor had significantly higher FSFI scores than patients without genital malodor (23.83 ± 5.07 vs 21.15 ± 4.78; P=0.008). Women with abnormal vaginal discharges were found to have better FSFI scores for some domains. This finding may be attributed to the adverse effects of sexual intercourse on vaginal infections.	f	\N
24120431	We investigated effects of inter-modal attention on concurrent visual and tactile stimulus processing by means of stimulus-driven oscillatory brain responses, so-called steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs). To this end, we frequency-tagged a visual (7.5Hz) and a tactile stimulus (20Hz) and participants were cued, on a trial-by-trial basis, to attend to either vision or touch to perform a detection task in the cued modality. SSEPs driven by the stimulation comprised stimulus frequency-following (i.e. fundamental frequency) as well as frequency-doubling (i.e. second harmonic) responses. We observed that inter-modal attention to vision increased amplitude and phase synchrony of the fundamental frequency component of the visual SSEP while the second harmonic component showed an increase in phase synchrony, only. In contrast, inter-modal attention to touch increased SSEP amplitude of the second harmonic but not of the fundamental frequency, while leaving phase synchrony unaffected in both responses. Our results show that inter-modal attention generally influences concurrent stimulus processing in vision and touch, thus, extending earlier audio-visual findings to a visuo-tactile stimulus situation. The pattern of results, however, suggests differences in the neural implementation of inter-modal attentional influences on visual vs. tactile stimulus processing.	f	\N
24123615	Adaptive ongoing behavior requires using immediate sensory input to guide upcoming actions. Using a novel paradigm with volitional exploration of visuo-spatial scenes, we revealed novel deficits among hippocampal amnesic patients in effective spatial exploration of scenes, indicated by less-systematic exploration patterns than those of healthy comparison subjects. The disorganized exploration by amnesic patients occurred despite successful retention of individual object locations across the entire exploration period, indicating that exploration impairments were not secondary to rapid decay of scene information. These exploration deficits suggest that amnesic patients are impaired in integrating memory for recent actions, which may include information such as locations just visited and scene content, to plan immediately forthcoming actions. Using a novel task that measured the on-line links between sensory input and behavior, we observed the critical role of the hippocampus in modulating ongoing behavior.	f	\N
24125802	Drivers are not always aware that they are becoming impaired as a result of sleepiness. Using specific symptoms of sleepiness might assist with recognition of drowsiness related impairment and help drivers judge whether they are safe to drive a vehicle, however this has not been evaluated. In this study, 20 healthy volunteer professional drivers completed two randomized sessions in the laboratory - one under 24h of acute sleep deprivation, and one with alcohol. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and a 30min simulated driving task (AusEdTM) were performed every 3-4h in the sleep deprivation session, and at a BAC of 0.00% and 0.05% in the alcohol session, while electroencephalography (EEG) and eye movements were recorded. After each test session, drivers completed the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Sleepiness Symptoms Questionnaire (SSQ), which includes eight specific sleepiness and driving performance symptoms. A second baseline session was completed on a separate day by the professional drivers and in an additional 20 non-professional drivers for test-retest reliability. There was moderate test-retest agreement on the SSQ (r=0.59). Significant correlations were identified between individual sleepiness symptoms and the KSS score (r values 0.50-0.74, p<0.01 for all symptoms). The frequency of all SSQ items increased during sleep deprivation (χ(2) values of 28.4-80.2, p<0.01 for all symptoms) and symptoms were related to increased subjective sleepiness and performance deterioration. The symptoms "struggling to keep your eyes open", "difficulty maintaining correct speed", "reactions were slow" and "head dropping down" were most closely related to increased alpha and theta activity on EEG (r values 0.49-0.59, p<0.001) and "nodding off to sleep" and "struggling to keep your eyes open" were related to slow eye movements (r values 0.67 and 0.64, p<0.001). Symptoms related to visual disturbance and impaired driving performance were most accurate at detecting severely impaired driving performance (AUC on ROC curve of 0.86-0.91 for detecting change in lateral lane position greater than the change at a BAC of 0.05%). Individual sleepiness symptoms are related to impairment during acute sleep deprivation and might be able to assist drivers in recognizing their own sleepiness and ability to drive safely.	f	\N
24128879	The present study investigated age-related attentional changes by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) in young and older adults during a rapid serial visual presentation task. We focused on analyzing the P3a and the N2 in both the target stimulus and the immediately succeeding irrelevant stimulus. As compared with younger adults, older adults exhibited a marked reduction in the amplitude of the P3a and N2 elicited by the stimulus following the target stimulus. Moreover, in younger adults, the P3a and N2 amplitudes did not differ between both stimuli, whereas in older adults these ERP components were significantly reduced in the subsequent stimulus compared to the target one. The age-related attenuation of P3a and N2 amplitudes for the subsequent stimulus indicates that older adults take longer and have more difficulty shifting their attention from one stimulus to the next one.	f	\N
24130703	It has been suggested that sleep selectively enhances memories with future relevance. Given that sleep's benefits can vary by item within a learning context, the present study investigated whether the amount of sleep-dependent consolidation may vary across items based on the value of the to-be-learned material. For this purpose, we used a value-based learning paradigm in which participants studied words paired with point values. There were two groups; participants either studied the words in the evening and were tested after a 12 hr interval containing a full night of sleep, or studied the words in the morning and were tested after 12 hr of continuous daytime wake. Free recall (F(1,36) = 19.35, p<.001) and recognition accuracy (F(1,36) = 7.59, p = .01) for words were better following sleep relative to wake. However there was no difference in the linear increase in the probability of delayed recall with increasing word value for sleep and wake groups (p = .74). Thus, while encoding may vary with the value of the to-be-learned item, sleep-dependent consolidation does not.	f	\N
24131042	This study examines the effects of cognitive reappraisal on the cardiovascular response to affective stimuli. Participants (N = 53) were shown affective images and were asked either to attend to the images, or to downregulate negative affect through reappraisal of negative images or upregulate positive affect through reappraisal of positive images while continuous measures of cardiovascular activity were recorded. Reappraisal of negative images was associated with lower total peripheral resistance and larger cardiac output in the prestimulus period, whereas reappraisal of positive images was associated with less pronounced decreases of heart rate, cardiac output, and mean blood pressure in the viewing period as compared to unregulated conditions. The results indicate that cognitive reappraisal engenders adaptive hemodynamic profiles both during anticipation and during viewing of affective images depending on their valence and the regulatory goal.	f	\N
24131316	Associations are confusable when they share an item. For example, double-function pairs (with the form AB, BC) are harder to remember than control pairs. Although ambiguous pairs are more difficult on average, it is not clear whether memories for associations compete directly with one another (associative competition hypothesis), as assumed by models that incorporate associative symmetry (bidirectional associations). Alternatively, associative interference results might be explained away by: (a) item suppression hypothesis: competition only between memory for the two target items (A and C are both targets of B); (b) candidate competition hypothesis: The cue (B) retrieves two potential targets, A and C, which compete to be output. These alternative hypotheses could explain previous results in the related, AB/AC learning procedure. Our procedure included a large amount of interference that had to be resolved within a single study set. Participants studied sets of control (single-function) and double-function pairs and were asked to produce one or two associates, respectively, to cue items. Recall of AB and BC were negatively correlated and could not be explained away by item suppression or competition between simultaneously retrieved candidate items. Thus, competition can occur at the level of representation of associations, regardless of which item is the cue, consistent with associative symmetry.	f	\N
24133250	Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we studied how distributed visual representations in human occipitotemporal cortex are modulated by attention and link their modulation to concurrent activity in frontal and parietal cortex. We detected similar occipitotemporal patterns during a simple visuoperceptual task and an attention-to-working-memory task in which one or two stimuli were cued before being presented among other pictures. Pattern strength varied from highest to lowest when the stimulus was the exclusive focus of attention, a conjoint focus, and when it was potentially distracting. Although qualitatively similar effects were seen inside regions relatively specialized for the stimulus category and outside, the former were quantitatively stronger. By regressing occipitotemporal pattern strength against activity elsewhere in the brain, we identified frontal and parietal areas exerting top-down control over, or reading information out from, distributed patterns in occipitotemporal cortex. Their interactions with patterns inside regions relatively specialized for that stimulus category were higher than those with patterns outside those regions and varied in strength as a function of the attentional condition. One area, the frontal operculum, was distinguished by selectively interacting with occipitotemporal patterns only when they were the focus of attention. There was no evidence that any frontal or parietal area actively inhibited occipitotemporal representations even when they should be ignored and were suppressed. Using MVPA to decode information within these frontal and parietal areas showed that they contained information about attentional context and/or readout information from occipitotemporal cortex to guide behavior but that frontal regions lacked information about category identity.	f	\N
24134143	The belief that alcohol makes you cheerful is one of the main reasons for engaging in high-risk drinking, especially among young adults. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between blood alcohol content (BAC) and cheerfulness, focus distraction, and sluggishness among students attending high school parties. Participants included 230 students attending high school parties. BAC, measured by use of a breath analyzer, self-reported cheerfulness (on a score from 0 to 16), focus distraction (score from 0 to 8), and sluggishness (score from 0 to 4) were assessed several times during the party. Data were analyzed by means of linear regression, including robust standard errors and stratified on sex. For girls, cheerfulness increased up to a BAC of 0.113 g% and decreased at higher BACs. At BACs of 0.020, 0.050, 0.100, and 0.150 g% cheerfulness was 11.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.4 to 11.6), 12.4 (95% CI: 11.8 to 12.9), 13.5 (95% CI: 13.0 to 14.0), and 13.1 (95% CI: 11.9 to 14.4), respectively. For boys, the association was linear with an increase of 0.18 points in cheerfulness (95% CI: 0.01 to 0.36) for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC: 0.22 (95% CI: 0.16 to 0.28) and 0.24 (95% CI: 0.14 to 0.33) points for girls and boys, respectively, per 0.010 g% increase in BAC. The degree of sluggishness increased only slightly with increasing BAC with 0.02 (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05) and 0.03 (95% CI: -0.01 to 0.07) points for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC for girls and boys, respectively. Cheerfulness increased up to a certain BAC value for girls, while it increased linearly for boys. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC.	f	\N
24162862	Saccadic and manual reactions to a peripherally presented target are facilitated by removing a central fixation stimulus shortly before a target onset (the gap effect). The present study examined the effects of removal of a visible and invisible fixation point on the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. Participants were required to fixate a central fixation point and respond to a peripherally presented target as quickly and accurately as possible by making a saccade (Experiment 1) or pressing a corresponding key (Experiment 2). The fixation point was dichoptically presented, and visibility was manipulated by using binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression technique. In both saccade and key-press tasks, removing the visible fixation strongly quickened the responses. Furthermore, the invisible fixation, which remained on the display but suppressed, significantly delayed the saccadic response. Contrarily, the invisible fixation had no effect on the manual task. These results indicate that partially different processes mediate the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. In particular, unconscious processes might modulate an oculomotor-specific component of the saccadic gap effect, presumably via subcortical mechanisms.	f	\N
24188061	Emotion regulation is generally thought to be a critical ingredient for successful interpersonal relationships. Ironically, few studies have investigated the link between how well spouses regulate emotion and how satisfied they are with their marriages. We utilized data from a 13-year, 3-wave longitudinal study of middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) long-term married couples, focusing on the associations between downregulation of negative emotion (measured during discussions of an area of marital conflict at Wave 1) and marital satisfaction (measured at all 3 waves). Downregulation of negative emotion was assessed by determining how quickly spouses reduced signs of negative emotion (in emotional experience, emotional behavior, and physiological arousal) after negative emotion events. Data were analyzed using actor-partner interdependence modeling. Findings showed that (a) greater downregulation of wives' negative experience and behavior predicted greater marital satisfaction for wives and husbands concurrently and (b) greater downregulation of wives' negative behavior predicted increases in wives' marital satisfaction longitudinally. Wives' use of constructive communication (measured between Waves 1 and 2) mediated the longitudinal associations. These results show the benefits of wives' downregulation of negative emotion during conflict for marital satisfaction and point to wives' constructive communication as a mediating pathway.	f	\N
24189992	Recent research has suggested that the extrinsic cognitive load generated by performing a nonlinguistic visual task while perceiving speech increases listeners' reliance on lexical knowledge and decreases their capacity to perceive phonetic detail. In the present study, we asked whether this effect is accounted for better at a lexical or a sublexical level. The former would imply that cognitive load directly affects lexical activation but not perceptual sensitivity; the latter would imply that increased lexical reliance under cognitive load is only a secondary consequence of imprecise or incomplete phonetic encoding. Using the phoneme restoration paradigm, we showed that perceptual sensitivity decreases (i.e., phoneme restoration increases) almost linearly with the effort involved in the concurrent visual task. However, cognitive load had only a minimal effect on the contribution of lexical information to phoneme restoration. We concluded that the locus of extrinsic cognitive load on the speech system is perceptual rather than lexical. Mechanisms by which cognitive load increases tolerance to acoustic imprecision and broadens phonemic categories were discussed.	f	\N
24210355	The neurodevelopmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) has been associated with a social phenotype of hypersociability, non-social anxiety and an unusual attraction to faces. The current study uses eye tracking to explore attention allocation to emotionally expressive faces. Eye gaze and behavioural measures of anxiety and social reciprocity were investigated in adolescents and adults with WS when compared to typically developing individuals of comparable verbal mental age (VMA) and chronological age (CA). Results showed significant associations between high levels of behavioural anxiety and attention allocation away from the eye regions of threatening facial expressions in WS. The results challenge early claims of a unique attraction to the eyes in WS and suggest that individual differences in anxiety may mediate the allocation of attention to faces in WS.	f	\N
24210745	The interpersonal theory of suicidal behavior proposes that fearlessness of death and physical pain insensitivity is a necessary requisite for self-inflicted lethal self-harm. Repeated experiences with painful and provocative events are supposed to cause an incremental increase in acquired capability. The present study examined whether playing a first-person shooter-game in contrast to a first-person racing game increases pain tolerance, a dimension of the acquired capability construct, and risk-taking behavior, a risk factor for developing acquired capability. N=81 male participants were randomly assigned to either play an action-shooter or a racing game before engaging in a game on risk-taking behavior and performing a cold pressor task (CPT). Participants exhibited higher pain tolerance after playing an action shooter game than after playing a racing game. Furthermore, playing an action shooter was generally associated with heightened risk-taking behavior. Group-differences were not attributable to the effects of the different types of games on self-reported mood and arousal. Overall these results indicate that action-shooter gaming alters pain tolerance and risk-taking behavior. Therefore, it may well be that long-term consumption of violent video games increases a person's capability to enact lethal self-harm.	f	\N
24211372	Many theories of human sexual behavior assume that sexual stimuli obtain arousing properties through associative learning processes. It is widely accepted that classical conditioning contributes to the etiology of both normal and maladaptive human behaviors. Despite the hypothesized importance of basic learning processes in sexual behavior, research on classical conditioning of the sexual response in humans is scarce. In the present paper, animal studies and studies in humans on the role of pavlovian conditioning on sexual responses are reviewed. Animal research shows robust, direct effects of conditioning processes on partner- and place preference. On the contrast, the empirical research with humans in this area is limited and earlier studies within this field are plagued by methodological confounds. Although recent experimental demonstrations of human sexual conditioning are neither numerous nor robust, sexual arousal showed to be conditionable in both men and women. The present paper serves to highlight the major empirical findings and to renew the insight in how stimuli can acquire sexually arousing value. Hereby also related neurobiological processes in reward learning are discussed. Finally, the connections between animal and human research on the conditionability of sexual responses are discussed, and suggestions for future directions in human research are given.	f	\N
24214215	Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to do something in the future, either in response to an event (event-based) or after a certain amount of time has elapsed (time-based). While the distinction between event- and time-based PM is widely acknowledged in the literature, little is known about the processes they share and those they do not. This is particularly true concerning their brain substrates, as almost all neuroimaging studies so far have focused on event-based PM. We proposed a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm assessing both event-based and time-based PM to 20 healthy young individuals. Analyses revealed that event- and time-based PM both induced activation in the posterior frontal and parietal cortices, and deactivation in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. In addition, activation more specific to each condition, which may underlie differences in strategic monitoring, was highlighted. Thus, occipital areas were more activated during event-based PM, probably reflecting target-checking, while a network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cuneus/precuneus and, to a lesser extent, the inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyrus, and the cerebellum, was more activated in time-based PM, which may reflect the involvement of time-estimation processes. These results confirm the allocation of attentional resources to the maintenance of intention for event-based and time-based PM, as well as the engagement of distinct mechanisms reflecting the monitoring strategies specific to each condition.	f	\N
24215294	Even single words in isolation can evoke emotional reactions, but the mechanisms by which emotion is involved in automatic lexical processing are unclear. Previous studies using extremely similar materials and methods have yielded apparently incompatible patterns of results. In much previous work, however, words' emotional content is entangled with other non-emotional characteristics such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity and age of acquisition, all of which have potential consequences for lexical processing themselves. In the present study, the authors compare different models of emotion using the British Lexicon Project, a large-scale freely available lexical decision database. After controlling for the potentially confounding effects of non-emotional variables, a variety of statistical approaches revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal; and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience.	f	\N
24219022	People's ability to resist cognitive distraction is crucial in many situations. The present research examines individuals' resistance to attentional distraction under conditions of evaluative pressure. In a series of 4 studies, participants had to complete various attentional tasks while believing their intelligence was or was not under the scrutiny of an experimenter. Using a spatial cuing paradigm, Studies 1 through 3 demonstrated that feeling evaluated led participants to implement stronger feature-based attentional control, which resulted in more (or less) distraction when irrelevant information matched (did not match) the searched-for target. Study 4 ruled out the possibility that the above effects were due to voluntary shifts of attention and demonstrated that the control settings implemented under evaluative pressure resulted in stronger goal-contingent response priming. Thus, the way individuals relate to the task-the performance context in which they are-induces strong attentional selection biases. Altogether, the present findings highlight an overlooked form of top-down modulation of attention based on performance self-relevance. Implications for both the current models of attentional control and the current hypotheses on the impact of evaluative pressure on cognition, as well as the consequences for more complex performances, are discussed.	f	\N
24219089	It has been suggested that individuals have an inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech, and that different acceptance of noise results in different hearing-aid (HA) use. The acceptable noise level (ANL) has been proposed for measurement of this property. It has been claimed that the ANL magnitude can predict hearing-aid use patterns. Many papers have been published reporting on different aspects of ANL, but none have challenged the predictive power of ANL. The purpose of this study was to discuss whether ANL can predict HA use and how more reliable ANL results can be obtained. Relevant literature regarding the ANL was found on Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar. Additional information was found as references in the included papers and through personal contacts, for instance when attending audiology conferences. Forty-five papers published in peer reviewed journals as well as a number of papers from trade journals, posters and oral presentations from audiology conventions. An inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech may exist, but no method for precise measurement of ANL is available. The ANL model for prediction of HA use has yet to be proven valid.	f	\N
24229338	This study examined the impact of cognition on young children's ability to navigate a speech-generating device (SGD) with dynamic paging. Knowledge of which cognitive factors impact navigational skills could help clinicians select the most appropriate SGD for children who have complex communication needs. A total of 65 typically developing children aged 48-77 months were assessed using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Although significant correlations were found between the ability to navigate an SGD (using a taxonomic organization) and all cognitive factors except for cognitive flexibility, a stepwise linear regression revealed that sustained attention, categorization, and fluid reasoning were the most pragmatic set of factors to predict navigational skills. Future studies are needed to further understand the factors that impact children's navigational skills.	f	\N
24231166	This article describes the relationship between expressive communication impairments and common challenging behaviors in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability. The communication challenges of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder/Intellectual Disability are described and several evidence-based intervention strategies are proposed to support communication so as to decrease challenging behaviors. Recommendations for practice are offered.	f	\N
24231224	Individuals with chronic pain consider improved sleep to be one of the most important outcomes of treatment. Physical activity has been shown to have beneficial effects on sleep in the general population. Despite these findings, the physical activity-sleep relationship has not been directly examined in a sample of people with chronic pain. This study aimed to examine the association between objective daytime physical activity and subsequent objective sleep for individuals with chronic pain while controlling for pain and psychosocial variables. An observational, prospective, within-person study design was used. A clinical sample of 50 adults with chronic pain was recruited. Participation involved completing a demographic questionnaire followed by 5 days of data collection. Over this period, participants wore a triaxial accelerometer to monitor their daytime activity and sleep. Participants also carried a handheld computer that administered a questionnaire measuring pain, mood, catastrophizing, and stress 6 times throughout the day. The results demonstrated that higher fluctuations in daytime activity significantly predicted shorter sleep duration. Furthermore, higher mean daytime activity levels and a greater number of pain sites contributed significantly to the prediction of longer periods of wakefulness at night. The small sample size used in this study limits the generalizability of the findings. Missing data may have led to overestimations or underestimations of effect sizes, and additional factors that may be associated with sleep (eg, medication usage, environmental factors) were not measured. The results of this study suggest that engagement in high-intensity activity and high fluctuations in activity are associated with poorer sleep at night; hence, activity modulation may be a key treatment strategy to address sleep complaints in individuals with chronic pain.	f	\N
24238471	Navigation without vision is a skill that is often employed in our daily lives, such as walking in the dark at night. Navigating without vision to a remembered target has previously been studied. However, little is known about the impact of age or obstacles on the attentional demands of a blind navigation task. This study examined the impacts of age and obstacles on reaction time (RT) and navigation precision during blind navigation in dual-task conditions. The aims were to determine the effects of age, obstacles, and auditory stimulus location on RT and navigation precision in a blind navigation task. Ten healthy young adults (24.5±2.5 years) and ten healthy older adults (69.5±2.9 years) participated in the study. Participants were asked to walk to a target located 8m ahead. In half the trials, the path was obstructed with hanging obstacles. Participants performed this task in the absence of vision, while executing a discrete RT task. Results demonstrated that older adults presented increased RT, linear distance travelled (LDT), and obstacle contact; that obstacle presence significantly increased RT compared to trials with no obstacles; and that an auditory stimulus emitted early versus late in the path increased LDT. Results suggest that the attentional demands of blind navigation are higher in older than young adults, as well as when obstacles are present. Furthermore, navigation precision is affected by age and when participants are distracted by the secondary task early in navigation, presumably because the secondary task interferes with path estimation.	f	\N
24245500	Spatial symbols can guide attention to a specific location only when they convey information about both direction and distance. However, the spatial symbols that have been used in previous cuing studies only convey information about direction, but not distance. Consequently, previous studies have only demonstrated that spatial symbols can exert partial control over the guidance of attention to specific locations. The present study investigated whether spatial symbols can also exert a more complete form of control over the guidance of attention to specific locations by presenting symbolic cues that conveyed information about both direction and distance. The effects of each spatial dimension were isolated by varying the spatial validity of each dimension separately. Consistent with the notion of more complete control, the results of 4 experiments showed that observers routinely combined symbolic information about direction and distance to guide their attention to specific locations. Perhaps more importantly, the results also suggested that observers demonstrated greater expertise orienting in response to direction symbols, though this expertise was only observed when these symbols were both familiar and commonly used to orient attention in the outside world. These results extend current theories, and set a new standard for studying symbolic control.	f	\N
24249815	Organophosphate exposures can affect children's neurodevelopment, possibly due to neurotoxicity induced by acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition, and may affect boys more than girls. We tested the hypothesis that lower AChE activity is associated with lower neurobehavioral development among children living in Ecuadorian floricultural communities. In 2008, we examined 307 children (age: 4-9 years; 52% male) and quantified AChE activity and neurodevelopment in 5 domains: attention/executive functioning, language, memory/learning, visuospatial processing, and sensorimotor (NEPSY-II test). Associations were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and height-for-age, flower worker cohabitation, and hemoglobin concentration. Mean ± standard deviation AChE activity was 3.14 ± 0.49 U/mL (similar for both genders). The range of scores among neurodevelopment subtests was 5.9 to 10.7 U (standard deviation: 2.6-4.9 U). Girls had a greater mean attention/executive functioning domain score than boys. In boys only, there were increased odds ratios of low (<9th percentile) neurodevelopment among those in the lowest tertile versus the highest tertile of AChE activity (odds ratios: total neurodevelopment: 5.14 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.84 to 31.48]; attention/executive functioning domain: 4.55 [95% CI: 1.19 to 17.38], memory/learning domain: 6.03 [95% CI: 1.17 to 31.05]) after adjustment for socioeconomic and demographic factors, height-for-age, and hemoglobin. Within these domains, attention, inhibition and long-term memory subtests were most affected. Low AChE activity was associated with deficits in neurodevelopment, particularly in attention, inhibition, and memory in boys but not in girls. These critical cognitive skills affect learning and academic performance. Added precautions regarding secondary occupational pesticide exposure would be prudent.	f	\N
24259568	Attention, the prioritization of goal-relevant stimuli, and expectation, the modulation of stimulus processing by probabilistic context, represent the two main endogenous determinants of visual cognition. Neural selectivity in visual cortex is enhanced for both attended and expected stimuli, but the functional relationship between these mechanisms is poorly understood. Here, we adjudicated between two current hypotheses of how attention relates to predictive processing, namely, that attention either enhances or filters out perceptual prediction errors (PEs), the PE-promotion model versus the PE-suppression model. We acquired fMRI data from category-selective visual regions while human subjects viewed expected and unexpected stimuli that were either attended or unattended. Then, we trained multivariate neural pattern classifiers to discriminate expected from unexpected stimuli, depending on whether these stimuli had been attended or unattended. If attention promotes PEs, then this should increase the disparity of neural patterns associated with expected and unexpected stimuli, thus enhancing the classifier's ability to distinguish between the two. In contrast, if attention suppresses PEs, then this should reduce the disparity between neural signals for expected and unexpected percepts, thus impairing classifier performance. We demonstrate that attention greatly enhances a neural pattern classifier's ability to discriminate between expected and unexpected stimuli in a region- and stimulus category-specific fashion. These findings are incompatible with the PE-suppression model, but they strongly support the PE-promotion model, whereby attention increases the precision of prediction errors. Our results clarify the relationship between attention and expectation, casting attention as a mechanism for accelerating online error correction in predicting task-relevant visual inputs.	f	\N
24281563	Very few studies have investigated the effects of individual disorder-specific treatment of social phobia (SP) in adolescents. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of individual cognitive therapy for SP, group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTG) and attentional placebo (AP) among adolescents with a primary diagnosis of SP. A randomized controlled design was used, and a total of 279 adolescents were assessed. Fifty-seven adolescents, between 13 and 16 years old, were allocated to individual cognitive therapy, CBTG or AP. The participants were assessed before treatment, at the end of treatment and at a 12-month follow-up using both self-report and a semi-structured interview. The individual cognitive therapy showed significant reductions in symptoms, impairment and diagnostic criteria both at the end of treatment and at the 12-month follow-up. Compared with CBTG and AP, the individual cognitive therapy group demonstrated significantly greater effects on both symptom reduction and impairment. There were no significant differences between CBTG and AP. In a direct comparison between the most commonly used treatments for adolescent SP, we found that individual therapy was the most effective, yielding better effects than both CBTG and AP.	f	\N
24292879	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two 15-min naps on nurses who work at night in a three-shift system. Of the 15 nurses who were included as study subjects on a night shift, eight took two short naps (the Nap condition), and seven worked without taking a nap (the No-nap condition) during the night shift. We measured sublingual temperature and the bispectral index (BIS), obtained heart rate and heart rate variability measures from an electrocardiogram (ECG), and evaluated sleepiness and fatigue levels every hour using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Both subjective sleepiness and fatigue increased between 4:00 and 5:00, with no significant differences observed between the two groups. However, the low- to high-frequency ratio (LF/HF) in the Nap condition group was found to be significantly lower than in the No-nap condition group. Furthermore, a sudden, brief increase in HF values was observed in the No-nap condition group in the morning. The results of this study suggest that taking two short naps may effectively reduce tension and prevent a brief increase in HF values by suppressing sympathetic nervous activity in the morning.	f	\N
24295123	Attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions and self-reported attentional control (AC) were analysed as predictors of the tendency to engage in dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Diminished attentional orienting predicted an increased tendency to engage in brooding rumination, and enhanced alertness predicted a greater chance of suppression, beyond trait anxiety and self-reported AC, which were not predictive of either rumination or suppression. This is the first study to show that some forms of dysfunctional emotion regulation are related to the attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions. Results are discussed in relation to regulatory temperament and anxiety-related attentional biases literature.	f	\N
24297128	CPAP therapy has remained the standard of care for the treatment of sleep apnea for nearly 4 decades. Its overall effectiveness, however, has been limited by incomplete adherence despite many efforts to improve comfort. Conventional alternative therapies include oral appliances and upper airway surgeries. Recently, several innovative alternatives to CPAP have been developed. These novel approaches include means to increase arousal thresholds, electrical nerve stimulation, oral vacuum devices, and nasal expiratory resistive devices. We will review the physiologic mechanisms and the current evidence for these novel treatments.	f	\N
24307489	Psychological pain may be helpful in conceptualizing suicidal behavior, in that high motivation to avoid pain combined with painful feelings may contribute to an increased risk of suicide. However, no experimental study has tested this hypothesis. The aim of the present study is to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between anhedonia, pain avoidance motivation, and suicidal ideation. The sample comprised 40 depressed outpatients and 20 healthy control subjects. All participants completed the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), Beck Depression Inventory, Psychache Scale, Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain Scale, the monetary incentive delay (MID), and affective incentive delay (AID) tasks. Based on BSS scores, clinical participants were divided into high suicidal ideation (HSI) and low suicidal ideation (LSI) groups. In the AID task, the HSI group had longer response times (RTs) under the reward condition than those under the punishment condition (p = .002). The LSI and control groups had shorter RTs under the reward condition compared with those under the neural condition (p <.001 and p = .008, respectively). The LSI group also had shorter RTs under the reward condition than under the punishment condition (p = .003). Pain arousal (r = -.33, p <.01) and BSS scores were significantly negatively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and reward conditions. Pain avoidance (r = .35, p <.01) and BSS scores were positively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and punishment conditions. The AID task was more sensitive than the MID task for the detection of participants' motivation in approaching hedonic experiences and avoiding pain. A suicidal mindset is manifested as decreased motivation to experience hedonia and increased motivation to avoid pain, which could be strong predictors of suicidal behavior.	f	\N
24308752	Understanding the factors that contribute to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is critical for developing the most appropriate interventions for improving or maintaining the HRQOL in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients. This study sought to determine the most significant predictors of the HRQOL in patients with PCOS. This was a cross-sectional study of 300 women with PCOS that was carried out in Kashan, Iran. A sample of women with PCOS was entered into the study and completed the following questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI), the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale score, the modified polycystic ovary syndrome health-related quality of life questionnaire, the Female Sexual Function Index. Both direct and indirect relationships among clinical severity, psychological status, self-esteem, body image, and sexual function as independent predictors of HRQOL were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. By using the SEM, we simultaneously test a number of possible hypotheses concerning the interrelations among the predictors of HRQOL in PCOS patients. In relation with severity of PCOS, reproductive history and menstrual status explained a high proportion of the variance of clinical variables (factor loading 0.37 and 0.34, respectively). The highest effect on HRQL was exerted by indirect effect of clinical factor (β = 0.90), self-esteem (β = 1.12), body image (β = 1.06), and sexual function (β = 0.26) that influenced negatively HRQOL. The infertility and menstrual domains were the most affected areas of HRQOL. In relation with sexual dysfunction, the most affected domains were desire and arousal. The highest effect of PCOS symptoms on HRQOL impairment among patients was exerted by self-esteem, body image, and sexual dysfunction. With regard to HRQOL in clinical routine, we conclude these mediating factors should be taken into consideration and adequately treated if present.	f	\N
24308770	The present study addressed the ecological validity of the individual-focused experimental paradigm in sex research. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of partner presence vs. absence in the laboratory testing situation, and of manipulation of attentional focus, on genital and subjective sexual arousal of healthy women and men. Sexually functional heterosexual men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) and their partners participated in this study. During partner presence, the partner sat opposite to the participant; self-focused attention was experimentally manipulated by introducing, respectively, a semi-reflecting glass pane, and a wall-mounted camera. Perceived state self-focused attention and genital and subjective sexual arousal during presentation of audiovisual erotic film stimuli were assessed. Partner presence resulted in higher perceived self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.22) and lower genital responses to erotic stimulation (η(p)(2) = 0.21). The interaction of partner presence and increased self-focused attention differentially affected genital arousal in female and male participants (η(p)(2) = 0.38). The mean genital response in men was lower during private self-focus than during non-self-focus with the partner present but was higher during private self-focus with the the partner absent (η(p)(2) = 0.23). The genital response in women to public self-focus was lower than to private self-focus and to non-self-focus with their partner present (η(p)(2) = 0.36). With the partner absent, the genital response in women to private self-focus was lower than to non-self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.23). Retrospective subjective arousal of women was higher with partner present (M = 3.2) than with partner absent (M = 2.9), whereas men reported higher retrospective subjective arousal with their partner absent (M = 3.5) than present (M = 3.1). These findings suggest that mere presence of the partner impacts the sexual response differentially in women and men. Enhancing the ecological validity of the individual-based laboratory paradigm for sex research warrants closer examination in future research.	f	\N
24311058	The change blindness paradigm, in which participants often fail to notice substantial changes in a scene, is a popular tool for studying scene perception, visual memory, and the link between awareness and attention. Some of the most striking and popular examples of change blindness have been demonstrated with digital photographs of natural scenes; in most studies, however, much simpler displays, such as abstract stimuli or "free-floating" objects, are typically used. Although simple displays have undeniable advantages, natural scenes remain a very useful and attractive stimulus for change blindness research. To assist researchers interested in using natural-scene stimuli in change blindness experiments, we provide here a step-by-step tutorial on how to produce changes in natural-scene images with a freely available image-processing tool (GIMP). We explain how changes in a scene can be made by deleting objects or relocating them within the scene or by changing the color of an object, in just a few simple steps. We also explain how the physical properties of such changes can be analyzed using GIMP and MATLAB (a high-level scientific programming tool). Finally, we present an experiment confirming that scenes manipulated according to our guidelines are effective in inducing change blindness and demonstrating the relationship between change blindness and the physical properties of the change and inter-individual differences in performance measures. We expect that this tutorial will be useful for researchers interested in studying the mechanisms of change blindness, attention, or visual memory using natural scenes.	f	\N
24321032	Subjects performed Sternberg-type memory recognition tasks (Sternberg paradigm) in four experiments. Category-instance names were used as learning and testing materials. Sternberg's original experiments demonstrated a linear relation between reaction time (RT) and memory-set size (MSS). A few later studies found no relation, and other studies found a nonlinear relation (logarithmic) between the two variables. These deviations were used as evidence undermining Sternberg's serial scan theory. This study identified two confounding variables in the fixed-set procedure of the paradigm (where multiple probes are presented at test for a learned memory set) that could generate a MSS RT function that was either flat or logarithmic rather than linearly increasing. These two confounding variables were task-switching cost and repetition priming. The former factor worked against smaller memory sets and in favour of larger sets whereas the latter factor worked in the opposite way. Results demonstrated that a null or a logarithmic RT-to-MSS relation could be the artefact of the combined effects of these two variables. The Sternberg paradigm has been used widely in memory research, and a thorough understanding of the subtle methodological pitfalls is crucial. It is suggested that a varied-set procedure (where only one probe is presented at test for a learned memory set) is a more contamination-free procedure for measuring the MSS effects, and that if a fixed-set procedure is used, it is worthwhile examining the RT function of the very first trials across the MSSs, which are presumably relatively free of contamination by the subsequent trials.	f	\N
24333280	During free viewing visual search, observers often refixate the same locations several times before and after target detection is reported with a button press. We analyzed the rate of microsaccades in the sequence of refixations made during visual search and found two important components. One related to the visual content of the region being fixated; fixations on targets generate more microsaccades and more microsaccades are generated for those targets that are more difficult to disambiguate. The other empathizes non-visual decisional processes; fixations containing the button press generate more microsaccades than those made on the same target but without the button press. Pupil dilation during the same refixations reveals a similar modulation. We inferred that generic sympathetic arousal mechanisms are part of the articulated complex of perceptual processes governing fixational eye movements.	f	\N
24345636	The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine the effects of emotion on memory for items and their associations. By presenting neutral and negative items with background contexts, Experiment 1 demonstrated that item memory was facilitated by emotional affect, whereas memory for an associated context was reduced. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated independently of the memoranda, by a threat of shock, whereby encoding trials occurred under conditions of threat or safety. Memory for context was equally impaired by the presence of negative affect, whether induced by threat of shock or a negative item, relative to retrieval of the context of a neutral item in safety. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with neutral and negative items as paired associates, including all combinations of neutral and negative items. The results showed both above effects: compared to a neutral item, memory for the associate of a negative item (a second item here, context in Experiments 1 and 2) is impaired, whereas retrieval of the item itself is enhanced. Our findings suggest that negative affect impairs associative memory while recognition of a negative item is enhanced. They support dual-processing models in which negative affect or stress impairs hippocampal-dependent associative memory while the storage of negative sensory/perceptual representations is spared or even strengthened.	f	\N
24352689	Despite a growing acceptance that attention and memory interact, and that attention can be focused on an active internal mental representation (i.e., reflective attention), there has been a paucity of work focusing on reflective attention to 'sound objects' (i.e., mental representations of actual sound sources in the environment). Further research on the dynamic interactions between auditory attention and memory, as well as its degree of neuroplasticity, is important for understanding how sound objects are represented, maintained, and accessed in the brain. This knowledge can then guide the development of training programs to help individuals with attention and memory problems. This review article focuses on attention to memory with an emphasis on behavioral and neuroimaging studies that have begun to explore the mechanisms that mediate reflective attentional orienting in vision and more recently, in audition. Reflective attention refers to situations in which attention is oriented toward internal representations rather than focused on external stimuli. We propose four general principles underlying attention to short-term memory. Furthermore, we suggest that mechanisms involved in orienting attention to visual object representations may also apply for orienting attention to sound object representations.	f	\N
24367795	Disturbed sleep is a common problem in both chronic pain and major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, many patients with chronic pain are depressed. To examine the effects of depression on the sleep behaviour of chronic pain patients by comparing patients who did or did not meet diagnostic criteria for MDD. A total of 60 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain underwent structured diagnostic interviews for MDD and insomnia, and completed questionnaires assessing pain severity, disability, sleep quality, beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and sleep hygiene. For four consecutive days, they also completed a sleep diary, and reported on sleep hygiene practices and presleep arousal. Thirty-three patients (55%) met diagnostic criteria for MDD, most of whom (n=32 [97%]) also fulfilled criteria for insomnia disorder. Insomnia was also common among patients without MDD (21 of 27&nbsp;[78%]). Participants with MDD had higher self-reports of pain, disability, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, and, on a prospective basis, greater presleep arousal and poorer sleep hygiene. However, diary assessments of specific sleep parameters (eg, sleep onset latency, total sleep time, sleep efficiency) did not differ between the groups. Chronic pain patients with comorbid MDD exhibited more dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, poorer sleep hygiene practices and greater presleep arousal; however, diary-recorded sleep characteristics may not differ from those of patients without MDD. Chronic pain itself may disturb sleep so extensively that MDD introduces little additive effect. MDD in chronic pain may be related to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of insomnia, rather than to an incremental disturbance in the initiation or maintenance of sleep.	f	\N
24368220	Visual marking refers to the phenomenon in which old items in a visual search are excluded from the search when new items appear in the visual field. Visual marking may result from inhibition of irrelevant information at the location of old items before new items appear. Moreover, sensitivity to increments in contrast at the old locations has been shown to be lower than that to increments at the new locations. We used equivalent noise analysis to examine whether the reduction in sensitivity is the result of an increase in internal noise or a decrease in calculation efficiency. Following a search in which reaction time was measured, participants were asked to indicate whether a Gaussian luminance blob was present. Parameters estimated from the threshold-versus-noise contrast function indicated that calculation efficiency at old locations was lower than that at new locations, and internal noise did not increase at old locations but rather decreased slightly. Thus, the reduction in sensitivity at old locations is attributable a decrease in calculation efficiency. These data suggest that an inhibitory template for visual marking may benefit visual search by diverting limited attentional resources, such as time and resolution, away from previewed locations and reserving them for the target search.	f	\N
24372764	The sympathetic nervous system and children's sleep serve critical arousal regulation functions. Shortened pre-ejection period, a reliable indirect index of greater sympathetic nervous system activity, has been associated with reduced sleep duration and quality in adults, but limited evidence exists in children regarding associations between pre-ejection period and sleep. We examined relations between pre-ejection period reactivity in response to a laboratory-based stressor and multiple parameters of actigraphy-based sleep duration and quality in children. The sample included 123 boys and 112 girls [mean age = 11.31 years, standard deviation (SD) = 0.63 years]. Controlling for body mass index, sex and pre-ejection period baseline, increased sympathetic nervous system reactivity, indexed by a lower level of pre-ejection period during the challenge than the baseline, was associated with worse sleep quality indicated by lower sleep efficiency, greater sleep activity and greater long wake episodes. The findings add to a small literature on relations between sympathetic nervous system functioning and children's sleep, suggesting that poor sleep quality is related to dysregulation of this stress response system.	f	\N
24374558	The visual system is exquisitely adapted to the task of extracting conceptual information from visual input with every new eye fixation, three or four times a second. Here we assess the minimum viewing time needed for visual comprehension, using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of a series of six or 12 pictures presented at between 13 and 80 ms per picture, with no interstimulus interval. Participants were to detect a picture specified by a name (e.g., smiling couple) that was given just before or immediately after the sequence. Detection improved with increasing duration and was better when the name was presented before the sequence, but performance was significantly above chance at all durations, whether the target was named before or only after the sequence. The results are consistent with feedforward models, in which an initial wave of neural activity through the ventral stream is sufficient to allow identification of a complex visual stimulus in a single forward pass. Although we discuss other explanations, the results suggest that neither reentrant processing from higher to lower levels nor advance information about the stimulus is necessary for the conscious detection of rapidly presented, complex visual information.	f	\N
24379080	Unlike men, heterosexual women's genital arousal is gender nonspecific, such that heterosexual women show relatively similar genital arousal to sexual stimuli depicting men and women but typically report greater subjective arousal to male stimuli. Based on the ovulatory-shift hypothesis-that women show a mid-cycle shift in preferences towards more masculine features during peak fertility-we predicted that heterosexual women's genital and subjective arousal would be gender specific (more arousal towards male stimuli) during peak fertility. Twenty-two naturally-cycling heterosexual women were assessed during the follicular and luteal phases of their menstrual cycle to examine the role of menstrual cycle phase in gender specificity of genital and subjective sexual arousal. Menstrual cycle phase was confirmed with salivary hormone assays; phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced. Women's genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns were gender nonspecific, irrespective of cycle phase. Cycle phase at first testing session did not influence genital or subjective arousal in the second testing session. Similar to previous research, women's genital and subjective sexual arousal varied with cues of sexual activity, but neither genital nor subjective sexual arousal varied by gender cues, with the exception of masturbation stimuli, where women showed higher genital arousal to the stimuli depicting male compared to female actors. These data suggest that menstrual cycle phase does not influence the gender specificity of heterosexual women's genital and subjective sexual arousal.	f	\N
24382820	This study examined correlations between surgical recommendations based on either drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) or common awake examination methods in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Prospective, blinded, clinical trial at a university hospital. An otorhinolaryngologist designed surgical plans for patients with OSAS after clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, the Müller maneuver, and Friedman staging. A second otorhinolaryngologist blinded to the previous plans made surgical recommendations after DISE. A third person tested agreement between the two sets of plans using Cohen's kappa statistic and the chi-squared test. One hundred and sixty-two patients (15 females, 147 males) completed the protocol. Good correlation was observed between DISE and Friedman staging regarding recommendations for isolated oropharyngeal or multilevel surgery (kappa = 0.61). Correlations between DISE and clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver regarding surgical procedures on specific structures contributing to upper airway obstruction ranged from fair for velum/tonsil surgery (k = 0.41-0.60) to poor (k = 0.01-0.20) for tongue-base, lateral pharyngeal wall, and epiglottal surgery. The most informative value was DISE versus clinical evaluation, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver, which changed surgical recommendations concerning the structures contributing to hypopharyngeal or laryngeal obstruction in > 40% of patients. Our results indicate that DISE provides more information about the anatomical locations and pattern of obstruction, particularly regarding the specific structures contributing to hypopharyngeal and laryngeal obstruction. DISE changes surgical decision making compared to awake evaluation methods.	f	\N
24387832	The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of intention to fall asleep on sleep quality in good sleepers using polysomnographic and subjective nap parameters. We hypothesized that high intention to sleep would lead to arousal, worsening sleep quality. A counterbalanced 2 × 2 experimental design with one intra-individual (neutral versus motivating instruction) and one inter-individual (instruction sequence) variable was used. Thirty-three good sleepers (22 females; mean age: 24.1 ± 8.4 years) each attended two 1-h daytime polysomnographic recording sessions in the laboratory. When providing motivating instruction, the experimenter insisted on the importance of falling asleep as quickly as possible and promised a financial reward. Compared with neutral instruction, motivating instruction was associated with increased waking after sleep onset, number of awakenings and arousal index during napping. No relationship between instruction and subjective nap appraisal was found. The effect of high intention on sleep fragmentation remained significant after controlling for habitual napping, depression, anxiety and sleepiness. Thus, our findings suggest that high intention to fall asleep worsened sleep quality, especially in terms of sleep fragmentation, in good sleepers.	f	\N
24390823	Attention can modulate processing of visual input according to task-relevant features, even as early as approximately 100 ms after stimulus presentation. In the present study, event-related potential and behavioral data revealed that inhibition of distractor features, rather than activation of target features, is the primary driver of early feature-based selection in human observers. This discovery of inhibition consistent with task goals during early visual processing suggests that inhibition plays a much larger role at an earlier stage of target selection than previously recognized. It also highlights the importance of understanding the role of inhibition (in addition to activation) in attention.	f	\N
24405496	To assess cognitive function in children and adolescents presenting with acute conversion symptoms. Fifty-seven participants aged 8.5-18 years (41 girls and 16 boys) with conversion symptoms and 57 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed the IntegNeuro neurocognitive battery, an estimate of intelligence, and self-report measures of subjective emotional distress. Participants with conversion symptoms showed poorer performance within attention, executive function, and memory domains. Poorer performance was reflected in more errors on specific tests: Switching of Attention (t(79) = 2.17, p = .03); Verbal Interference (t(72) = 2.64, p = .01); Go/No-Go (t(73) = 2.20, p = .03); Memory Recall and Verbal Learning (interference errors for memory recall; t(61) = 3.13, p < .01); and short-delay recall (t(75) = 2.05, p < .01) and long-delay recall (t(62) = 2.24, p = .03). Poorer performance was also reflected in a reduced span of working memory on the Digit Span Test for both forward recall span (t(103) = -3.64, p < .001) and backward recall span (t(100) = -3.22, p < .01). There was no difference between participants and controls on IQ estimate (t(94) = -589, p = .56), and there was no correlation between cognitive function and perceived distress. Children and adolescents with acute conversion symptoms have a reduced capacity to manipulate and retain information, to block interfering information, and to inhibit responses, all of which are required for effective attention, executive function, and memory.	f	\N
24411524	The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that dual-hemisphere transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) could improve performance in a tactile spatial discriminative task, compared with uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS. Nine healthy adults participated in this double-blind, sham-controlled, and cross-over design study. The performance in a grating orientation task (GOT) in the right index finger was evaluated before, during, immediately after and 30min after the dual-hemisphere, uni-hemisphere (1mA, 20min), or sham tDCS (1mA, 30s) over S1. In the dual-hemisphere and sham conditions, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the right S1. In the uni-hemisphere condition, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the contralateral supraorbital front. The percentage of correct responses on the GOT during dual-hemisphere tDCS was significantly higher than that in the uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS conditions when the grating width was set to 0.75mm (all p<0.05). Dual-hemisphere tDCS over S1 improved performance in a tactile spatial discrimination task in healthy volunteers. Dual-hemisphere tDCS may be a useful strategy to improve sensory function in patients with sensory dysfunctions.	f	\N
24411652	The main objective was to explore early-age conditions associated to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); secondly, to determine which of those conditions are specific to ADHD subjects; and finally, to compare ADHD and non-ADHD subjects in terms of SUD lifetime prevalence and professional, social and personal adjustment. Comparison between ADHD adults with (n=236) and without lifetime SUD (n=309) regarding clinical characteristics of ADHD, externalization disorders, temperamental traits, environmental factors, academic history and family psychiatric history; secondly, ADHD subjects were compared to a non-ADHD group (n=177) concerning those variables. The following variables were found to be positively associated to SUD in ADHD subjects: ADHD severity, CD and ODD comorbidities, temperamental characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone" and "frequent temper tantrums"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school", family history of SUD and ADHD, and male gender; ADHD inattentive subtype and "fearful" were inversely associated to SUD. From those variables, "frequent temper tantrums" was also associated to SUD in non-ADHD subjects. ADHD subjects had higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment than non-ADHD subjects. Findings suggest a significant association between ADHD, SUD and early-age conditions, such as CD and ODD comorbidity; other variables from childhood, namely, ADHD subtype, temper characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school" and family history of ADHD are associated to SUD in ADHD subjects, but not in non-ADHD subjects. Moreover, this study confirms both the higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment in ADHD subjects than in non-ADHD subjects.	f	\N
24415407	We present the German adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang in Technical Report No. C-1. Gainsville: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology). A total of 1,003 Words-German translations of the ANEW material-were rated on a total of six dimensions: The classic ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance (as in the ANEW corpus) were extended with additional arousal ratings using a slightly different scale (see BAWL: Võ et al. in Behavior Research Methods 41: 531-538, 2009; Võ, Jacobs, & Conrad in Behavior Research Methods 38: 606-609, 2006), along with ratings of imageability and potency. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic variables (different types of word frequency counts, grammatical class, number of letters, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors) for the words were also added, so as to further facilitate the use of this new database in psycholinguistic research. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.	f	\N
24422248	Patients with extinction fail to report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus, and patients with unilateral neglect fail to report a contralesional stimulus even when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. Whereas extinction and neglect are common following stroke, the related phenomenon of anti-extinction is rare--there are four cases of anti-extinction in the literature, and all four cases demonstrated anti-extinction in the visual modality. Patients with anti-extinction do report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus; but, like patients with neglect, they fail to report a contralesional stimulus when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. We present the first case ofanti-extinction in the tactile modality.	f	\N
24427146	Researchers studying the emotional impact of music have not traditionally been concerned with the principled relationship between form and function in evolved animal signals. The acoustic structure of musical forms is related in important ways to emotion perception, and thus research on non-human animal vocalizations is relevant for understanding emotion in music. Musical behavior occurs in cultural contexts that include many other coordinated activities which mark group identity, and can allow people to communicate within and between social alliances. The emotional impact of music might be best understood as a proximate mechanism serving an ultimately social function. Recent work reveals intimate connections between properties of certain animal signals and evocative aspects of human music, including (1) examinations of the role of nonlinearities (e.g., broadband noise) in non-human animal vocalizations, and the analogous production and perception of these features in human music, and (2) an analysis of group musical performances and possible relationships to non-human animal chorusing and emotional contagion effects. Communicative features in music are likely due primarily to evolutionary by-products of phylogenetically older, but still intact communication systems. But in some cases, such as the coordinated rhythmic sounds produced by groups of musicians, our appreciation and emotional engagement might be driven by an adaptive social signaling system. Future empirical work should examine human musical behavior through the comparative lens of behavioral ecology and an adaptationist cognitive science. By this view, particular coordinated sound combinations generated by musicians exploit evolved perceptual response biases - many shared across species - and proliferate through cultural evolutionary processes.	f	\N
24448520	Contextual cueing reflects a memory-based attentional guidance process that develops through repeated exposure to displays in which a target location has been consistently paired with a specific context. In two experiments, we compared 20 younger children's (6-7 years old), 20 older children's (9-10 years old), and 20 young adults' (18-21 years old) abilities to acquire contextual cueing effects from displays in which half of the distracters predicted the location of the target and half did not. Across experiments, we varied the similarity between the predictive and nonpredictive distracters and the target. In Experiment 1, the predictive distracters were visually similar to the target and dissimilar from the nonpredictive distracters. In Experiment 2, the nonpredictive distracters were also similar to the target and predictive distracters. All three age groups exhibited contextual cueing in Experiment 1, although the effect was not as strong for the younger children relative to older children and adults. All participants exhibited weaker contextual cueing effects in Experiment 2, with the younger children not exhibiting significant contextual cueing at all. Apparently, when search processes could not be guided to the predictive distracters on the basis of salient stimulus features, younger children in particular experienced difficulty in implicitly identifying and using aspects of the context to facilitate with the acquisition of contextual cueing effects.	f	\N
24451416	Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are common, but their outcomes are not very well known. A prospective study was conducted in Annecy hospital, France (CHRA), to assess the incidence of disorders 6 months after the injury and to identify risk factors for persistent disorders. All patients admitted to the emergency department after a mild brain injury between February 2006 and July 2007 were included. They were contacted by telephone 6 months later to detect (by questionnaire) the presence of persistent disorders. Patients reporting disorders were referred to the l ocal brain injury centre for a follow-up check-up. Ninety three of the 795 patients contacted reported disorders: memory disorders (80%), sleep disorders (79%), headaches (65%), irritability (64%), speech disorders (64%) and concentration disorders (62%). Disorders at 6 months were independently associated with age, female gender, presence of headache at the initial examination and CT scan performed in the emergency department. The disorders reported in this study were consistent with the results of previous studies. As these disorders are usually nonspecific, a case-control study or an exposed-unexposed study would be necessary to determine whether or not these disorders are linked to mTBI.	f	\N
24462326	To assess sexual function among women via self-evaluation of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and to determine risk factors for FSD among Korean women. A preliminary questionnaire-based study in Ansan, Korea, enrolled 935 women between January and December 2010. Participants completed the Female Sexual Function Index and a self-administered survey. Participants were divided into 2 groups: in the recognized group (RG), women were aware of their sexual problems; in the unrecognized group (URG), women were not. The prevalence of FSD was 46.1% (n=431). The prevalence of recognized FSD was 21.5% (n=201), whereas that of unrecognized FSD was 24.6% (n=230) Younger women showed a significantly more positive attitude toward sex compared with older individuals (P<0.001). Sexual desire, sexual arousal, dyspareunia, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction were factors of sexual dysfunction in the RG. In the URG, sexual arousal, sexual desire, orgasm, dyspareunia, and sexual satisfaction were identified as significant factors. Women in the RG had positive attitudes toward sex, whereas those in the URG had negative attitudes. Women who were unsatisfied with their sexual life did not express a need for treatment. The sociocultural background of Korean women should be considered in the diagnosis and treatment of FSD.	f	\N
24462384	The standard of care for pediatric patients with ependymoma involves postoperative radiation therapy. Prior research suggests that conformal radiation therapy (CRT) is associated with relative sparing of cognitive and academic functioning, but little is known about the effect of CRT on emotional and behavioral functioning. A total of 113 patients with pediatric ependymoma underwent CRT using photons as part of their enrollment on an institutional trial. Patients completed annual evaluations of neurocognitive functioning during the first 5 years after CRT. Emotional and behavioral functioning was assessed via the Child Behavior Checklist. Before CRT, emotional and behavioral functioning were commensurate with those of the normative population and within normal limits. After 5 years, means remained within normal limits but were significantly below the normative mean. Linear mixed models revealed a significant increase in attention problems over time. These problems were associated with age at diagnosis/CRT, tumor location, and extent of resection. A higher-than-expected incidence of school problems was present at all assessment points after baseline. The use of photon CRT for ependymoma is associated with relatively stable emotional and behavioral functioning during the first 5 years after treatment. The exception is an increase in attention problems. Results suggest that intervening earlier in the survivorship period-during the first year posttreatment-may be beneficial.	f	\N
24473941	This internet-based study provided descriptive information and exploratory analyses on 1,795 male and 139 female members of the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community. Based on prior research, some research questions focused on the degree to which ABDL behavior was associated with negative mood states, parental relationships, and attachment style. Based on clinical experience, a second research question focused on discerning two possible subgroups within the ABDL community: persons focused on role play behavior and persons who were primarily interested in sexual arousal in their ABDL behavior. The results showed modest support for the former research questions, but notable support for the last research question. Because of some overlap between the two hypothesized subgroups, additional subgroups may exist. Males in the ABDL community identified their ABDL interests earlier than females and these males may be more focused on sexual aspects of ABDL practices. Both males and females perceived being dominated as important in their ABDL behavior. Most participants were comfortable with their ABDL behavior and reported few problems. ABDL behavior may represent a sexual subculture that is not problematic for most of its participants.	f	\N
24475313	Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to a motion illusion in which a flash at one end of a bar prior to the bar's instantaneous presentation or removal results in the percept of motion. While some theories attribute the origin of ILM to attention or early perceptual mechanisms, others have proposed that ILM results from impletion mechanisms that reinterpret the static bar as one in motion. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined participants while they made decisions about the direction of motion in which a bar appeared to be removed. Preceding the instantaneous removal of the bar with a flash at one end resulted in a motion percept away from the flash. If this flash and the bar's removal overlapped in time, it appeared that the bar was removed towards the flash (reverse ILM). Independent of the motion type, brain responses indicated activations in areas associated with motion (MT+), endogenous and exogenous attention (intraparietal sulcus, frontal eye fields, and ventral frontal cortex), and response selection (ACC). ILM was associated with lower percept scores and higher activations in ACC relative to real motion, but no differences in shape-selective areas emerged. This pattern of brain activation is consistent with the attentional gradient model or bottom-up accounts of ILM in preference to impletion.	f	\N
24490947	The human visual system is continuously confronted with dynamic visual input. One challenge that the visual system must solve, therefore, is recognizing when two distinct objects have appeared at a given location despite their brief presentation and rapid succession, that is, temporal object segmentation. Here we examined the role of magnocellular neurons in this process. We measured temporal object segmentation via object substitution masking (OSM), which reflects the failure to distinguish the target and mask as distinct objects through time. We isolated the selective role of magnocellular neurons by comparing performance under conditions of pulsed luminance pedestals, which are designed to saturate the magnocellular response, with that in a steady-pedestal condition that leaves both magnocellular and parvocellular channels available to process the target. Across two experiments, we found that OSM magnitude was enhanced under pulsed-pedestal conditions, in which the magnocellular response was impaired. This indicates that magnocellular neurons contribute to temporal object segmentation. Given that temporal object segmentation has consequences for which stimuli are consciously perceived, this demonstrates a functional mechanism via which magnocellular neurons contribute to determining the contents conscious perception. Implications for models of specialization of dorsal and ventral cortical streams are discussed.	f	\N
24492883	A physiologically based mathematical model of sleep-wake cycles is used to examine the effects of shift rotation interval (RI) (i.e., the number of days spent on each shift) on sleepiness and circadian dynamics on forward rotating 3-shift schedules. The effects of the schedule start time on the mean shift sleepiness are also demonstrated but are weak compared to the effects of RI. The dynamics are studied for a parameter set adjusted to match a most common natural sleep pattern (i.e., sleep between 0000 and 0800) and for common light conditions (i.e., 350 lux of shift lighting, 200 lux of daylight, 100 lux of artificial lighting during nighttime, and 0 lux during sleep). Mean shift sleepiness on a rotating schedule is found to increase with RI, reach maximum at intermediate RI=6 d, and then decrease. Complete entrainment to shifts within the schedules is not achieved at RI≤10 d. However, circadian oscillations synchronize to the rotation cycles, with RI=1,2 d and RI≥6 d demonstrating regular periodic changes of the circadian rhythm. At rapid rotation, circadian phase stays within a small 4-h interval, whereas slow rotation leads to around-the-clock transitions of the circadian phase with constantly delayed sleep times. Schedules with RI=3-5 d are not able to entrain the circadian rhythms, even in the absence of external circadian disturbances like social commitments and days off. To understand the circadian dynamics on the rotating shift schedules, a shift response map is developed, showing the direction of circadian change (i.e., delay or advance) depending on the relation between the shift start time and actual circadian phase. The map predicts that the un-entrained dynamics come from multiple transitions between advance and delay behavior on the shifts in the schedules. These are primarily caused by the imbalance between the amount of delay and advance on the different shift types within the schedule. Finally, it is argued that shift response maps can aid in the development of shift schedules with desired circadian characteristics.	f	\N
24493837	Numerous studies have investigated the neural substrates supporting cognitive reappraisal, identifying the importance of cognitive control processes implemented by prefrontal cortex (PFC). This study examined how valence and attention affect the processes used for cognitive reappraisal by asking participants to passively view or to cognitively reappraise positive and negative images with full or divided attention. When participants simply viewed these images, results revealed few effects of valence or attention. However, when participants engaged in reappraisal, there was a robust effect of valence, with the reappraisal of negative relative to positive images associated with more widespread activation, including within regions of medial and lateral PFC. There also was an effect of attention, with more lateral PFC recruitment when regulating with full attention and more medial PFC recruitment when regulating with divided attention. Within two regions of medial PFC and one region of ventrolateral PFC, there was an interaction between valence and attention: in these regions, divided attention reduced activity during reappraisal of positive but not negative images. Critically, participants continued to report reappraisal success even during the Divided Attention condition. These results suggest multiple routes to successful cognitive reappraisal, depending upon image valence and the availability of attentional resources.	f	\N
24498297	Cognitive impairment is associated with a negative prognosis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as well as with clinical specificity. We investigate neuropsychological function in ALS patients without known genetic mutations in a Korean tertiary clinic. Three hundred and eighteen patients were enrolled in a prospective longitudinal cohort from September 2008 to February 2012. At the time of diagnosis of sporadic ALS, we carried out genetic and comprehensive neuropsychological tests on all patients, and collected demographic and clinical characteristics. Six cognitive domains, namely executive function, attention, language, calculation, visuospatial function and memory were evaluated. ANOVA and t-tests were used to assess differences in clinical characteristics and neuropsychological parameters between sporadic ALS patients. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model were used for survival analysis. One hundred and sixty-six patients were categorized into five subtypes: normal cognition (ALS pure), cognitive impairment (ALSci), behavioral impairment (ALSbi), frontotemporal dementia (ALS-FTD), and other types of dementia. Seventy patients (70/166, 42.2%) were cognitively or behaviorally impaired. Among the impaired patients, eight (8/166, 4.8%) had FTD-type dementia and one (1/166, 0.6%) was Alzheimer's disease-type. The ALS patients with cognitive impairment (ALSci) and with FTD (ALS-FTD) were more severely impaired in executive function, attention, language and memory than the cognitively intact ALS patients (ALS pure). In a survival analysis, ALSci (β = 1.925, p = 0.025) and ALS-FTD groups (β = 4.150, p = 0.019) tended to have shorter survival than the ALS pure group. About half of ALS patients without known genetic variation have cognitive or behavioral impairment. ALS patients with cognitive abnormalities, especially FTD, have a poorer prognosis than those without cognitive impairment. In neuropsychological profiling, executive tasks were effective in identifying cognitive impairment in the ALS patients. It would be useful for clinicians to classify ALS according to neuropsychological profiles, and screen for subtle cognitive impairment.	f	\N
24512247	Emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are viewed as important cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. To date, there is a limited understanding of the interplay among these processing biases. This study tested the dependence of memory on depression-related biases in attention and interpretation. Subclinically depressed and nondepressed participants completed a computerized version of the scrambled sentences test (measuring interpretation bias) while their eye movements were recorded (measuring attention bias). This task was followed by an incidental free recall test of previously constructed interpretations (measuring memory bias). Path analysis revealed a good fit for the model in which selective orienting of attention was associated with interpretation bias, which in turn was associated with a congruent bias in memory. Also, a good fit was observed for a path model in which biases in the maintenance of attention and interpretation were associated with memory bias. Both path models attained a superior fit compared with path models without the theorized functional relations among processing biases. These findings enhance understanding of how mechanisms of attention and interpretation regulate what is remembered. As such, they offer support for the combined cognitive biases hypothesis or the notion that emotionally biased cognitive processes are not isolated mechanisms but instead influence each other. Implications for theoretical models and emotion regulation across the spectrum of depressive symptoms are discussed.	f	\N
24534417	Low sexual desire is the most common sexual complaint in women. As a result, many women suffer from sexual dissatisfaction which often negatively interferes with their quality of life. These complaints have been classified as the condition Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), and have recently been merged with the condition Female Sexual Arousal Disorder (FSAD) into the diagnosis Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) in the DSM-5. To date, no drug treatment approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)/European Medicines Agency (EMA) is available to treat women with HSDD/FSIAD. As a result, there is an unmet need for a drug treatment for HSDD/FSIAD. In our search for an adequate treatment we followed a different approach compared to other pharmaceutical companies. Based on a personalized sexual medicine approach we proposed that different mechanisms cause low sexual desire in women, namely an insensitive system for sexual cues or dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. Subsequently we developed two new on-demand drug treatments for women with HSDD/FSIAD based on these different causal mechanisms. One treatment (testosterone combined with a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to a relatively insensitive system for sexual cues, while the second treatment (testosterone combined with a 5-HT₁A receptor agonist) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms.	f	\N
24547790	Mental arithmetic shows systematic spatial biases. The association between numbers and space is well documented, but it is unknown whether arithmetic operation signs also have spatial associations and whether or not they contribute to spatial biases found in arithmetic. Adult participants classified plus and minus signs with left and right button presses under two counterbalanced response rules. Results from two experiments showed that spatially congruent responses (i.e., right-side responses for the plus sign and left-side responses for the minus sign) were responded to faster than spatially incongruent ones (i.e., left-side responses for the plus sign and right-side responses for the minus sign). We also report correlations between this novel operation sign spatial association (OSSA) effect and other spatial biases in number processing. In a control experiment with no explicit processing requirements for the operation signs there were no sign-related spatial biases. Overall, the results suggest that (a) arithmetic operation signs can evoke spatial associations (OSSA), (b) experience with arithmetic operations probably underlies the OSSA, and (c) the OSSA only partially contributes to spatial biases in arithmetic.	f	\N
24551458	The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, "short-term plasticity", might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50 ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100 ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300 ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance.	f	\N
24553279	The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing behavior guidance technique utilization among practicing pediatric dentists and explore potential barriers to the incorporation of previously unused techniques. The data for this study were obtained from a web-based survey containing 15 multiple choice questions concerning the practitioners' past, current, and anticipated future behavior guidance technique utilization. Most respondents received hands-on training in 10 of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry behavior guidance techniques. The type of training was associated with the practitioners' level of comfort using a given technique upon graduation and with the current frequency of technique utilization. Residency type impacted hands-on behavior guidance training, with 39 percent of respondents reporting no intravenous sedation training. The type of practice was associated with the frequency of behavior guidance technique utilization, as was graduation decade. Currently practicing dentists cited legal concerns, parental acceptance to change, and limited resources as perceived obstacles in the incorporation of new techniques. Behavior guidance technique selection and utilization among practicing pediatric dentists was influenced by multiple factors, including advanced education training, residency type, graduation decade, and practice type. Obstacles to the incorporation of previously unused techniques appear to be multifactorial.	f	\N
24561999	Object-based theories of attention propose that the selection of an object's feature leads to the rapid selection of all other constituent features, even those that are task irrelevant. We used magnetoencephalographic recordings to examine the timing and sequencing of neural activity patterns in feature-specific cortical areas as human subjects performed an object-based attention task. Subjects attended to one of two superimposed moving dot arrays that were perceived as transparent surfaces on the basis either of color or speed of motion. When surface motion was attended, the magnetoencephalographic waveforms showed enhanced activity in the motion-specific cortical area starting at ∼ 150 ms after motion onset, followed after ∼ 60 ms by enhanced activity in the color-specific area. When surface color was attended, this temporal sequence was reversed. This rapid sequential activation of the relevant and irrelevant feature modules provides a neural basis for the binding of an object's features into a unitary perceptual experience.	f	\N
24563397	The electroencephalogram (EEG) of wakefulness, sleep, and anaesthesia changes during childhood. Especially marked are the changes during the first year of life. In the second half of the first year, in most children EEG stages can be classified visually and automatically during anaesthesia which are similar to those observed in older children. In the first months of life, the EEG of anaesthesia is less differentiated, but it is still useful in patient monitoring during anaesthesia.	f	\N
24571815	The last few years have seen much research on girls with conduct disorder (CD). This article summarizes the gender-specific data regarding prevalence, differences with respect to symptomatology (e.g., subtypes of aggression, callous-unemotional (cu)-traits), and it presents data on the autonomic and neuroendocrine stress system as well as genetic, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data. Differences in the impact of environmental factors on boys and girls for the development of CD are discussed. Taken together, the data indicate that there is great overlap in symptomatology, personality traits, and neurobiological aberrations in girls and boys with CD. Since fewer girls than boys exhibit CD symptomatology, further investigations on CD in girls might help to identify resilience factors that could improve future therapeutic interventions.	f	\N
24577097	The present study is an open-label extension (OLE) aimed at evaluating the effect of 100 mg/day of phosphatidylserine enriched with docosahexaenoic acid (PS-DHA) on cognitive performance in nondemented elderly individuals with memory complaints. From the participants who completed the core study, 122 continued with a 15-week OLE. Efficacy was assessed using a computerized tool and the Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGI-C) rating scale. A significant improvement in sustained attention and memory recognition was observed in the PS-DHA naïve group, while the PS-DHA continuers maintained their cognitive status. Additionally, a significant improvement in CGI-C was observed in the naïve group. The results demonstrate that consumption of 100 mg/day of PS-DHA might be associated with improving or maintaining cognitive status in elderly subjects with memory complaints.	f	\N
24578016	Anxious youth have shown altered behavioral performance on the dot-probe task, but neural activation patterns provoked by the task remain poorly understood. In particular, neural mechanisms of threat disengagement, a clinically relevant construct, have been inadequately explored. During fMRI acquisition, 121 youth (ages 9-13; 90 with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, and/or Social Phobia; 31 nonanxious controls) completed a dot-probe task, which required participants to identify the location of a dot replacing either a neutral or fearful face in a pair containing both faces. We assessed neural substrates of threat disengagement by comparing congruent trials (in which the dot replaces the fearful face) to incongruent trials (in which the dot replaces the neutral face). Across subjects, decreased rostrodorsal anterior cingulate cortex (rdACC) activity was observed specifically during incongruent trials. Nonanxious youth showed a convergent pattern in bilateral parahippocampal and hippocampal regions, whereas anxious youth showed an opposing pattern in these limbic areas, suggesting less integration of response across cortical and limbic areas relevant to threat appraisal. Reduced functional connectivity between rdACC and left parahippocampus/hippocampus was associated with greater anxiety. In the largest dot-probe fMRI sample to date, both anxious and nonanxious youth showed a neural pattern consistent with successful disengagement of threat reactivity in the rdACC. However, anxious youth showed evidence of abnormal disengagement in bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal clusters when attention was directed away from threat. Early interventions targeting neural mechanisms of threat disengagement may be beneficial, for example, by increasing integration across rdACC and limbic regions.	f	\N
24578091	It is often the case that stimuli (or aspects of a stimulus) are referred to as being "task-irrelevant." Here, we recount where this label originated and argue that the use of this label is at odds with the concept of "relevance" that has arisen in the contingent-capture literature. This is not merely a matter of labels, but a matter of inference: When people describe a flanker stimulus as being "task-irrelevant," they may be (and sometimes are) tempted to infer that the conditions that were studied in the flanker task generalize to other tasks and other types of stimuli. Here, we show that this generalization is not warranted. The flanker effect exists not because attention has failed at selecting only the target from the display, but rather, the effect arises precisely because attention succeeded at selecting target-like (i.e., attentionally relevant) stimuli from the display. As a result, the flanker effect should not be used to infer how stimuli that are entirely unrelated to a participant's main task would be processed. We propose the use of a new terminology to replace this potentially misleading label.	f	\N
24587578	To compare sleep microstructure (cyclic alternating pattern, CAP) characteristics in otherwise healthy overweight (OW) and normal weight (NW) children. Polysomnographic cross-sectional study. Sleep laboratory. Fifty-eight (26 NW and 32 OW) 10-year-old children. N/A. Participants were part of a longitudinal study beginning in infancy and free of sleep disorders. Groups were based on body-mass index (BMI) z-score. From polysomnographic overnight recordings, sleep-waking states were scored according to international criteria. CAP analysis was performed visually during NREM sleep. Conventional sleep parameters were similar between groups. BMI was positively related to CAP rate and CAP sequences but inversely related to CAP B phase duration. Differences between groups were confined to slow-wave sleep (SWS), with OW children showing higher CAP rate, CAP cycles, and CAP A1 number and index and shorter CAP cycles and B phase duration. They also showed more CAP class intervals shorter than 30 s, and a suggestive trend for fewer intervals longer than 30 s. Cyclic alternating pattern characteristics in children related to nutritional status and were altered in overweight subjects during slow-wave sleep. We suggest that the more frequent oscillatory pattern of electroencephalographic slow activity in overweight subjects might reflect less stable slow-wave sleep episodes.	f	\N
24595540	Awake craniotomy is a valuable procedure since it allows brain mapping and live monitoring of eloquent brain functions. The advantage of minimizing resource utilization is also emphasized by some physicians in North America. Data on how well an awake craniotomy is tolerated by patients and how much stress it creates is available from different studies, but this topic has not consequently been summarized in a review of the available literature. Therefore, it is the purpose of this review to shed more light on the still controversially discussed aspect of an awake craniotomy. We reviewed the available English literature published until December 2013 searching for studies that investigated patients' responses to awake craniotomies. Twelve studies, published between 1998 and 2013, including 396 patients with awake surgery were identified. Eleven of these 12 studies set the focus on the perioperative time, one study focused on the later postoperative time. The vast majority of patients felt well prepared and overall satisfaction with the procedure was high. In the majority of studies up to 30 % of the patients recalled considerable pain and 10-14 % experienced strong anxiety during the procedure. The majority of patients reported that they would undergo an awake craniotomy again. A post traumatic stress disorder was present neither shortly nor years after surgery. However, a normal human response to such an exceptional situation can for instance be the delayed appearance of unintentional distressing recollections of the event despite the patients' satisfaction concerning the procedure. For selected patients, an awake craniotomy presents the best possible way to reduce the risk of surgery related neurological deficits. However, benefits and burdens of this type of procedure should be carefully considered when planning an awake craniotomy and the decision should serve the interests of the patient.	f	\N
24597272	Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.	f	\N
24604626	In typical daily life, adults routinely adapt posture so that balance can be maintained while other goal-directed activities are performed. Interestingly, newly standing infants also control posture based on the demands of a task. It is unknown if the ability to properly adapt postural movements as a goal-directed task is performed emerges soon after the acquisition of independent stance or if it is present at earlier key postural milestones, such as independent sitting. In this study, the postural sway patterns of independently sitting infants were compared while either holding or not holding a toy. Infants exhibited less postural sway when holding the toy. This reduction in sway allowed infants to look at and stabilize the toy in their hand. Thus, the ability to adjust postural movements while performing a concurrent goal-directed task emerges long before the acquisition of independent stance.	f	\N
24617096	A scheme aimed at distracting children in the waiting room of the paediatric ophthalmology department of Bordeaux university hospital was developed and assessed at the end of the first year. Positive results were identified by those involved, benefiting both the children and the caregivers.	f	\N
24623783	The earliest stages of cortical processing of speech sounds take place in the auditory cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have provided evidence that the human articulatory motor cortex contributes also to speech processing. For example, stimulation of the motor lip representation influences specifically discrimination of lip-articulated speech sounds. However, the timing of the neural mechanisms underlying these articulator-specific motor contributions to speech processing is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether they depend on attention. Here, we used magnetoencephalography and TMS to investigate the effect of attention on specificity and timing of interactions between the auditory and motor cortex during processing of speech sounds. We found that TMS-induced disruption of the motor lip representation modulated specifically the early auditory-cortex responses to lip-articulated speech sounds when they were attended. These articulator-specific modulations were left-lateralized and remarkably early, occurring 60-100 ms after sound onset. When speech sounds were ignored, the effect of this motor disruption on auditory-cortex responses was nonspecific and bilateral, and it started later, 170 ms after sound onset. The findings indicate that articulatory motor cortex can contribute to auditory processing of speech sounds even in the absence of behavioral tasks and when the sounds are not in the focus of attention. Importantly, the findings also show that attention can selectively facilitate the interaction of the auditory cortex with specific articulator representations during speech processing.	f	\N
24630049	Recent studies have correlated neurocognitive function and regional brain volumes in children with epilepsy. We tested whether brain volume differences between children with and without epilepsy explained differences in neurocognitive function. The study sample included 108 individuals with uncomplicated non-syndromic epilepsy (NSE) and 36 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. Participants received a standardized cognitive battery. Whole brain T1-weighted MRI was obtained and volumes analyzed with FreeSurfer (TM). Total brain volume (TBV) was significantly smaller in cases. After adjustment for TBV, cases had significantly larger regional grey matter volumes for total, frontal, parietal, and precentral cortex. Cases had poorer performance on neurocognitive indices of intelligence and variability of sustained attention. In cases, TBV showed small associations with intellectual indices of verbal and perceptual ability, working memory, and overall IQ. In controls, TBV showed medium associations with working memory and variability of sustained attention. In both groups, small associations were seen between some TBV-adjusted regional brain volumes and neurocognitive indices, but not in a consistent pattern. Brain volume differences did not account for cognitive differences between the groups. Patients with uncomplicated NSE have smaller brains than controls but areas of relative grey matter enlargement. That this relative regional enlargement occurs in the context of poorer overall neurocognitive functioning suggests that it is not adaptive. However, the lack of consistent associations between case-control differences in brain volumes and cognitive functioning suggests that brain volumes have limited explanatory value for cognitive functioning in childhood epilepsy.	f	\N
24631246	The human motor system is remarkably proficient in the online control of visually guided movements, adjusting to changes in the visual scene within 100 ms [1-3]. This is achieved through a set of highly automatic processes [4] translating visual information into representations suitable for motor control [5, 6]. For this to be accomplished, visual information pertaining to target and hand need to be identified and linked to the appropriate internal representations during the movement. Meanwhile, other visual information must be filtered out, which is especially demanding in visually cluttered natural environments. If selection of relevant sensory information for online control was achieved by visual attention, its limited capacity [7] would substantially constrain the efficiency of visuomotor feedback control. Here we demonstrate that both exogenously and endogenously cued attention facilitate the processing of visual target information [8], but not of visual hand information. Moreover, distracting visual information is more efficiently filtered out during the extraction of hand compared to target information. Our results therefore suggest the existence of a dedicated visuomotor binding mechanism that links the hand representation in visual and motor systems.	f	\N
24632819	Given the critical risks to public health and safety that can involve lapses in attention (e.g., through implication in workplace accidents), researchers have sought to develop cognitive-state tracking technologies, capable of alerting individuals engaged in cognitively demanding tasks of potentially dangerous decrements in their levels of attention. The purpose of the present study was to address this issue through an investigation of the reliability of optical measures of cortical correlates of attention in conjunction with machine learning techniques to distinguish between states of full attention and states characterized by reduced attention capacity during a sustained attention task. Seven subjects engaged in a 30 minutes duration sustained attention reaction time task with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring over the prefrontal and the right parietal areas. NIRS signals from the first 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'full attention' class, while the NIRS signals from the last 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'attention decrement' class. A two-class support vector machine algorithm was exploited to distinguish between the two levels of attention using appropriate NIRS-derived signal features. Attention decrement occurred during the task as revealed by the significant increase in reaction time in the last 10 compared to the first 10 minutes of the task (p<.05). The results demonstrate relatively good classification accuracy, ranging from 65 to 90%. The highest classification accuracy results were obtained when exploiting the oxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 77 to 89%, depending on the cortical area considered) rather than the deoxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 65 to 66%). Moreover, the classification accuracy increased to 90% when using signals from the right parietal area rather than from the prefrontal cortex. The results support the feasibility of developing cognitive tracking technologies using NIRS and machine learning techniques.	f	\N
24636071	Although pedophilia is defined by a recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, little attention has been paid to the stability or fluidity of this sexual interest over time. The aim of the current study was to investigate if patterns of penile tumescence (as a proxy for sexual interest) measured by penile plethysmography testing (PPT) can change. In this retrospective chart review study, PPT results of 43 men diagnosed with pedophilia were collected and analyzed. All participants displayed a pedophilic sexual arousal pattern at the time of their first PPT. To test for change, we compared initial PPT results with subsequent PPT results measured at least 6 months later. Sexual arousal was assessed using PPT by measuring change in penile circumference induced by the presentation of standardized sexual audio stimuli. Approximately half of the sample (n = 21) displayed a change in PPT results. This change was characterized by a significant decrease of sexual arousal in response to pedophilic (child) stimuli and a significant increase of sexual arousal in response to nonpedophilic (adult) stimuli. No differences between sexual interest changers (ICs) and nonchangers (NC) were found for demographic data or for length of time between assessments. However, between-group comparisons revealed that ICs had significantly lower pedophilic indices at the initial assessment than NCs. Results from the current study indicate that relative pedophilic interest, as defined by increase in penile circumference in response to nonpedophilic stimuli as measured by PPT, changed in about 50% of men diagnosed with pedophilia who also had initial pedophilic PPT sexual responses. This represents a significant challenge to the hypothesis that sexual interest in men with pedophilia is unchangeable and should be the focus of future studies.	f	\N
24636501	A growing body of research has revealed that social evaluative stressors trigger biological and psychological responses that in chronic forms have been linked to aging and disease. Recent research suggests that self-compassion may protect the self from typical defensive responses to evaluation. We investigated whether brief training in self-compassion moderated biopsychological responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in women. Compared to attention (placebo) and no-training control conditions, brief self-compassion training diminished sympathetic (salivary alpha-amylase), cardiac parasympathetic, and subjective anxiety responses, though not HPA-axis (salivary cortisol) responses to the TSST. Self-compassion training also led to greater self-compassion under threat relative to the control groups. In that social stress pervades modern life, self-compassion represents a promising approach to diminishing its potentially negative psychological and biological effects.	f	\N
24642806	The most common explanation for joint-action effects has been the action co-representation account in which observation of another's action is represented within one's own action system. However, recent evidence has shown that the most prominent of these joint-action effects (i.e., the Social Simon effect), can occur when no co-actor is present. In the current work we examined whether another joint-action phenomenon (a movement congruency effect) can be induced when a participant performs their part of the task with a different effector to that of their co-actor and when a co-actor's action is replaced by an attention-capturing luminance signal. Contrary to what is predicted by the action co-representation account, results show that the basic movement congruency effect occurred in both situations. These findings challenge the action co-representation account of this particular effect and suggest instead that it is driven by bottom-up mechanisms.	f	\N
24645871	One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Forty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively. As predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.	f	\N
24647227	Loss of consciousness in anesthetized healthy participants and in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) is associated with substantial alterations of functional connectivity across large-scale brain networks. Yet, a prominent distinction between the two cases is that after anesthesia, brain connectivity and consciousness are spontaneously restored, whereas in patients with UWS this restoration fails to occur, but why? A possible explanation is that the self-organizing capability of the brain is compromised in patients with UWS but not in healthy participants undergoing anesthesia. According to the theory of self-organized criticality, many natural complex systems, including the brain, evolve spontaneously to a critical state wherein system behaviors display spatial and/or temporal scale-invariant characteristics. Here we tested the hypothesis that the scale-free property of brain network organization is in fact fundamentally different between anesthetized healthy participants and UWS patients. We introduced a novel, computationally efficient approach to determine anatomical-functional parcellation of the whole-brain network at increasingly finer spatial scales. We found that in healthy participants, scale-free distributions of node size and node degree were present across wakefulness, propofol sedation, and recovery, despite significant propofol-induced functional connectivity changes. In patients with UWS, the scale-free distribution of node degree was absent, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two groups in adaptive reconfiguration of functional interaction between network components. The maintenance of scale-invariance across propofol sedation in healthy participants suggests the presence of persistent, on-going self-organizing processes to a critical state--a capacity that is compromised in patients with UWS.	f	\N
24650282	Neuropsychological tests are increasingly applied in research studies and clinical practice in psychiatry. In this context, the detection of poor effort is crucial to adequately interpret data. We measured schizophrenia patients' performance on a memory test designed to detect excessive malingering (the "21-Item Test"), before examining whether a second group of schizophrenia patients would excessively malinger on this test when given an incentive to feign memory impairment. Two independent studies including respectively 49 schizophrenia patients and 100 controls (study 1) and 25 schizophrenia patients and 25 controls (study 2) were conducted. In study 1, participants were asked to complete the 21-Item Test to the best of their ability. In study 2, participants were given a hypothetical scenario in which having a memory impairment would be financially advantageous for them, before completing the 21-Item Test. In study 1, no participant scored at levels indicative of excessive malingering. In study 2, 84% of controls but only 36% of patients scored at excessive levels of malingering, and these patients had higher executive functioning than patients who did not excessively malinger, although it should be noted that a significantly greater proportion of patients excessively malingered in study 2 compared to study 1. These results indicate that schizophrenia patients do not normally feign excessive memory impairment during psychological testing. Furthermore, they are less able and/or less inclined to excessively malinger than controls in situations where a memory impairment would be advantageous, perhaps indicating a better ability to malinger without detection. Potential clinical implications are discussed.	f	\N
24652341	While inattentional blindness is a modern classic in attention and perception research, analogous phenomena of inattentional deafness have been widely neglected. We here present the first investigation of inattentional deafness in and with music under controlled experimental conditions. Inattentional deafness in music is defined as the inability to consciously perceive an unexpected musical stimulus when attention is focused on a certain facet of the piece. Participants listened to a modification of the first 1'50″ of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra; while the control group just listened, the experimental group had to count the number of timpani beats. An e-guitar solo served as the unexpected event. In Study 1, experimental data from n = 115 participants were analyzed. Non-musicians were compared with musicians to investigate the impact of expertise. In Study 2 (n = 47), the scope of the inattentional deafness effect was investigated with a more salient unexpected stimulus. Results demonstrate an inattentional deafness effect under dynamic musical conditions. Quite unexpectedly, the effect was structurally equivalent even for musicians. Our findings clearly show that sustained inattentional deafness exists in the musical realm, in close correspondence to inattentional blindness with dynamic visual stimuli.	f	\N
24655152	Flexible and appropriate allocation of attention resources is important during dual-tasking to achieve task goals while maintaining postural safety. This pilot study aimed to examine the influence of explicit prioritization of attention on the dual-task paradigm by employing two levels of difficulty for the postural tasks and reaction time (RT) tasks in healthy young adults. The task entailed standing on a force platform on two feet or on one foot, attending to posture or RT, and completing a simple or choice RT task. Participants verbally responded "top" as soon as the light cue illuminated. In general, attending to RT produced faster RTs (F(1,19) = 30.9, p < 0.001) and improved center of pressure (COP) Displacement (F(1,19) = 5.1, p < 0.05) and 95% Area Ellipse (F(1,19) = 7.1, p < 0.05). These findings suggest that prioritizing attention away from posture may be beneficial for postural performance when completing a second task.	f	\N
24660887	Higher wake promotion against sleep drive boosts cognitive processing, but it also seems to increase the risk of insomnia by reinforcing an obsession with sleep in neurotic patients. To explore whether a personality trait of neuroticism simultaneously facilitates wake-promoting ability and sleep devaluation via a common regional prefrontal function under a sleep-restricted condition, working memory tasks were administered to 49 healthy humans after a 2-h sleep restriction. Higher wake-promoting ability demonstrated in a high-load task was correlated with lower bilateral prefrontal activation, as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Structural equation modeling revealed that neuroticism predicts sleep devaluation and wake-promoting ability via left and right regional prefrontal efficiency, respectively. Our results indicate that neuroticism-related neural efficiency increases resilience to sleepiness, but decreases sleep satisfaction.	f	\N
24661175	Visual attention and visual working memory exert severe capacity limitations on cognitive processing. Impairments in both functions may exacerbate the social and communication deficits seen in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study characterizes spatial working memory and visual attention in school-age children with high-functioning autism. Children with ASD, and age, gender, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children performed 2 tasks: a spatial working memory task and an attentive tracking task. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed a more pronounced deficit in the spatial working memory task than the attentive tracking task, even though the latter placed significant demands on sustained attention, location updating, and distractor inhibition. Because both groups of children were sensitive to configuration mismatches between the sample and test arrays, the spatial working memory deficit was not because of atypical organization of spatial working memory. These findings show that attention and working memory are dissociable, and that children with ASD show a specific deficit in buffering visual information across temporal discontinuity.	f	\N
24661700	All available studies addressing the clinical and legal aspects of child pornography have systematically concerned male abusers. The social lens through which women are viewed tends to play down their responsibility in the sexual abuse of children. Unlike men, women rarely abuse children outside the close or family circle. Furthermore, they have frequently been abused themselves in their childhood. To our knowledge, no cases of women charged with sex-related offences, including child pornography, have been described in the literature. The psychopathological characteristics of female sexual abusers and of the two women in our cases tend to suggest that the deliberate downloading of child pornography images by women is unusual, as their deviant behaviour is not related to paedophile sexual arousal It is hypothesized that the act enables women perpetrators to satisfy the sexual urges of their spouse. Sexual abuse by women exists, but the nature of the abuse appears to be specific to the gender of the perpetrator. We present two cases of women charged with sexual offences concerning minors, including the production of child pornography material.	f	\N
24672782	Attention allows us to selectively process the vast amount of information with which we are confronted, prioritizing some aspects of information and ignoring others by focusing on a certain location or aspect of the visual scene. Selective attention is guided by two cognitive mechanisms: saliency of the image (bottom up) and endogenous mechanisms (top down). These two mechanisms interact to direct attention and plan eye movements; then, the movement profile is sent to the motor system, which must constantly update the command needed to produce the desired eye movement. A new approach is described here to study how the eye motor control could influence this selection mechanism in clinical behavior: two groups of patients (SCA2 and late onset cerebellar ataxia LOCA) with well-known problems of motor control were studied; patients performed a cognitively demanding task; the results were compared to a stochastic model based on Monte Carlo simulations and a group of healthy subjects. The analytical procedure evaluated some energy functions for understanding the process. The implemented model suggested that patients performed an optimal visual search, reducing intrinsic noise sources. Our findings theorize a strict correlation between the "optimal motor system" and the "optimal stimulus encoders."	f	\N
24684315	Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms.	f	\N
24687588	The underlying nature of verbal fluency deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) was investigated in this study. Participants were 48 individuals with AD and 48 cognitively healthy older adults. Fluency performance on letter and category tasks was analyzed across two 30-s intervals for total words produced, mean cluster size, and total switches. Compared with the control group, AD participants produced fewer words and switches on both fluency tasks and had a reduced category cluster size. The AD group was differentially impaired on category compared with letter fluency and produced more repetitive responses but fewer category exemplars than controls on the category task. A multidimensional scaling approach revealed that AD participants' semantic maps were similar to controls. Overall, the data suggest that executive abilities involving search and retrieval processes and a reduced availability of semantically related words contributed to the AD group's poorer performance despite similar temporal recall and organizational patterns.	f	\N
24692319	Attentional effort relates to the allocation of limited-capacity attentional resources to meet current task demands and involves the activation of top-down attentional systems in the brain. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of this intensity aspect of top-down attentional control. Studies relate pupillary changes in response to cognitive processing to activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), which is the main hub of the brain's noradrenergic system and it is thought to modulate the operations of the brain's attentional systems. In the present study, participants performed a visual divided attention task known as multiple object tracking (MOT) while their pupil sizes were recorded by use of an infrared eye tracker and then were tested again with the same paradigm while brain activity was recorded using fMRI. We hypothesized that the individual pupil dilations, as an index of individual differences in mental effort, as originally proposed by Kahneman (1973), would be a better predictor of LC activity than the number of tracked objects during MOT. The current results support our hypothesis, since we observed pupil-related activity in the LC. Moreover, the changes in the pupil correlated with activity in the superior colliculus and the right thalamus, as well as cortical activity in the dorsal attention network, which previous studies have shown to be strongly activated during visual tracking of multiple targets. Follow-up pupillometric analyses of the MOT task in the same individuals also revealed that individual differences to cognitive load can be remarkably stable over a lag of several years. To our knowledge this is the first study using pupil dilations as an index of attentional effort in the MOT task and also relating these to functional changes in the brain that directly implicate the LC-NE system in the allocation of processing resources.	f	\N
24700789	Lack of insight into illness is a multidimensional phenomenon that has relevant implications on clinical course and therapy compliance. Here, we focused on metacognitive insight in schizophrenia, that is, the ability to monitor one's changes in state of mind and sensations, with the aim of investigating its neuroanatomical, psychopathological, and neuropsychological correlates. Fifty-seven consecutive patients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Text Revision) diagnosis of schizophrenia were administered the Insight Scale, and comprehensive psychopathological and neuropsychological batteries. They underwent a high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes were analyzed on a voxel-by-voxel basis using Statistical Parametric Mapping 8. Reduced metacognitive insight was related to reduced GM volumes in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula, and bilateral premotor area and putamen. Further, it was related to reduced WM volumes of the right superior longitudinal fasciculum, left corona radiata, left forceps minor, and bilateral cingulum. Increased metacognitive insight was related to increased depression severity and attentional control impairment, while the latter was related to increased GM volumes in brain areas linked to metacognitive insight. Results of this study suggest that prefrontal GM and WM bundles, all implied in cognitive control and self-reflection, may be the neuroanatomical correlates of metacognitive insight in schizophrenia. Further, higher metacognitive insight is hypothesized to be a risk factor for depression which may subsequently impair attention. This line of research may provide the basis for the development of cognitive interventions aimed at improving self-monitoring and compliance to treatment.	f	\N
24701725	To study the prevalence and associating factors of sexual dysfunction in Thai women using contraception with intrauterine device (IUD). A cross-sectional study was conducted in IUD users at the Family Planning Unit, Siriraj Hospital. Data were recruited between October 2012 and June 2013. The participants answered the questionnaires to collect demographic, obstetric-gynecological data, and female sexual function index (FSFI) score. Two hundred seventy one IUD users participated in this study. The mean age was 32.1 +/- 7.1 years old, mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.1 +/- 5.3 kg/m2. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction in IUD users was 50.9%. The associating factor that affected the sexual dysfunction significantly was observed in BMI group (p-value 0.033). Subgroup analysis illustrated that the underweight group had more sexual dysfunction. The lowest FSFI score was observed in the underweight group. The score was 23.50 +/- 4.52. The significant domains were found to be desirable and arousal domains. The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction in the period after IUD using was 50.9%. The BMI was a significant associating factor Underweight women showed higher trend of sexual dysfunction than other group, especially in the desire and arousal domain.	f	\N
24702791	Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the 'signal') and those that are not (the 'noise'). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed.	f	\N
24705203	The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) plays critical roles in healthy motivation and learning, as well as in psychiatric disorders (including schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Thus, techniques that confer control of NAcc activity might inspire new therapeutic interventions. By providing second-to-second temporal resolution of activity in small subcortical regions, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can resolve online changes in NAcc activity, which can then be presented as "neurofeedback." In an fMRI-based neurofeedback experiment designed to elicit NAcc activity, we found that subjects could increase their own NAcc activity, and that display of neurofeedback significantly enhanced their ability to do so. Subjects were not as capable of decreasing their NAcc activity, however, and enhanced control did not persist after subsequent removal of neurofeedback. Further analyses suggested that individuals who recruited positive aroused affect were better able to increase NAcc activity in response to neurofeedback, and that NAcc neurofeedback also elicited functionally correlated activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that humans can modulate their own NAcc activity and that fMRI-based neurofeedback may augment their efforts. The observed association between positive arousal and effective NAcc control further supports an anticipatory affect account of NAcc function.	f	\N
24705681	The existence of a network of brain regions which are activated when one undertakes a difficult visual search task is well established. Two primary nodes on this network are right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) and right frontal eye fields. Both have been shown to be involved in the orientation of attention, but the contingency that the activity of one of these areas has on the other is less clear. We sought to investigate this question by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to selectively decrease activity in rPPC and then asking participants to perform a visual search task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comparison with a condition in which sham tDCS was applied revealed that cathodal tDCS over rPPC causes a selective bilateral decrease in frontal activity when performing a visual search task. This result demonstrates for the first time that premotor regions within the frontal lobe and rPPC are not only necessary to carry out a visual search task, but that they work together to bring about normal function.	f	\N
24721302	To explore whether cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients after the completion of chemotherapy treatment in comparisons with breast cancer patients without chemotherapy treatment and matched healthy controls. A neuropsychology battery was applied in all breast cancer patients at our hospital from January 2012 to February 2013. Forty-two breast cancer patients with chemotherapy treatment (CT) underwent neuropsychologic testing before the start of chemotherapy (T1) and after treatment (T2). And 37 patients without chemotherapy treatment (non-CT) and matched healthy controls (HC) underwent the same assessment at matched intervals. The CT group performed significantly worse on attention, memory and executive function tests at T2 versus T1 (P < 0.05). As compared with HC and non-CT groups, the correct numbers of backward, digit symbol, delayed recall and recognition were lower in the CT group (P < 0.05). The reacting time of TMT test B, Stroop test B and Stroop test C were longer in the CT group (P < 0.05). There was significant time interaction in three groups (P < 0.05). There are longitudinal changes in cognitive functioning of memory, attention and executive functions in breast cancer patients on Chemotherapy.	f	\N
24728130	To date, tactile distractor processing has primarily been investigated by focusing on the spatial characteristics of distractors and the impact of their presentation on the orienting of attention. In two experiments, we examined the influence of tactile distractors when the location of stimulus presentation was kept constant, thus controlling for the effects of spatial attention. A response priming paradigm was used in which two stimuli were sequentially presented from the same (fixated) direction. Typically, target responses are facilitated when the previously presented distractor (i.e., the prime) happens to map on to the same response as compared to the distractor maps on to the opposite response. Similar response priming effects were observed for tactile and visual distractors within a unimodal experimental setting (Experiments 1a and 1b). Interestingly, however, when the targets and distractors were presented in different sensory modalities, only the visual distractors exerted a crossmodal effect on the subsequent processing of vibrotactile targets (Experiment 2). These results therefore indicate that visual stimuli automatically trigger their corresponding response even when the task at hand is not visual, whereas tactile stimuli are only processed up to the level of response generation when the participants' task is tactile.	f	\N
24729533	Cancer survivors often experience cognitive difficulties after treatment completion. Although chemotherapy enhances risk for cognitive problems, it is likely only one piece of a complex puzzle that explains survivors' cognitive functioning. Loneliness may be one psychosocial risk factor. The current studies included both subjective and objective cognitive measures and tested whether lonelier breast cancer survivors would have more concentration and memory complaints and experience more concentration difficulties than their less lonely counterparts. The relationship between loneliness and cognitive function was tested among three samples of breast cancer survivors. Study 1 was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 200) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2a was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 185) and noncancer controls (n = 93) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2b was a subsample of Study 2a breast cancer survivors (n = 22) and noncancer controls (n = 21) who completed a standardized neuropsychological test assessing concentration. Studies 1 and 2a revealed that lonelier women reported more concentration and memory problems than less lonely women. Study 2b utilized a standardized neuropsychological continuous performance test and demonstrated that lonelier women experienced more concentration problems than their less lonely counterparts. These studies demonstrated that loneliness is linked to concentration and memory complaints and the experience of concentration problems among breast cancer survivors. The results were also highly consistent across three samples of breast cancer survivors. These data suggest that loneliness may be a risk factor for cognitive difficulties among cancer survivors.	f	\N
24730739	Recent studies have demonstrated that the contents of working memory capture attention when performing a visual search task. However, it remains an intriguing and unresolved question whether all kinds of items stored in working memory capture attention. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating the attentional tags (target or distractor) associated with information maintained in working memory. The results showed that working memory-driven attentional capture is a flexible process, and that attentional tags associated with items stored in working memory do modulate attentional capture. When items were tagged as a target, they automatically captured attention; however, when items were tagged as a distractor, attentional capture was reduced.	f	\N
24745467	The anhedonia paradox has been a topic of ongoing study in schizophrenia. Previous research has found that schizophrenia patients report less enjoyment from various activities when compared to their healthy counterparts; however, the two groups appear to have similar in-the-moment emotional ratings of these events (Gard et al., 2007; Herbener et al., 2007; Horan et al., 2006). This study examined these in-the-moment experiences further, by assessing whether they differed between social and non-social experiences. The data were collected from 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 53 matched healthy controls in the greater Chicago area. In-the-moment emotional experience was measured by self-reported arousal and valence ratings for social and non-social stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Clinical ratings for patients were gathered by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A series of ANOVAs revealed that controls were more aroused by the social than nonsocial unpleasant stimuli, whereas patients did not show this distinction. Further, regression analyses revealed that negative symptom severity uniquely predicted lower arousal responses to unpleasant social, but not nonsocial, stimuli. Our results indicate that both subject and stimulus factors appear to contribute to differences in emotional responses in individuals with schizophrenia.	f	\N
24747873	Responses in the second of two subsequently performed tasks can speed up compatible responses in the temporally preceding first task. Such backward crosstalk effects (BCEs) represent a challenge to the assumption of serial processing in stage models of human information processing, because they indicate that certain features of the second response have to be represented before the first response is emitted. Which of these features are actually relevant for BCEs is an open question, even though identifying these features is important for understanding the nature of parallel and serial response selection processes in dual-task performance. Motivated by effect-based models of action control, we show in three experiments that the BCE to a considerable degree reflects features of intended action effects, although features of the response proper (or response-associated kinesthetic feedback) also seem to play a role. These findings suggest that the codes of action effects (or action goals) can become activated simultaneously rather than serially, thereby creating BCEs.	f	\N
24750256	Studies of infant looking times over the past 50 years have provided profound insights about cognitive development, but their dependent measures and analytic techniques are quite limited. In the context of infants' attention to discrete sequential events, we show how a Bayesian data analysis approach can be combined with a rational cognitive model to create a rich data analysis framework for infant looking times. We formalize (i) a statistical learning model, (ii) a parametric linking between the learning model's beliefs and infants' looking behavior, and (iii) a data analysis approach and model that infers parameters of the cognitive model and linking function for groups and individuals. Using this approach, we show that recent findings from Kidd, Piantadosi and Aslin (iv) of a U-shaped relationship between look-away probability and stimulus complexity even holds within infants and is not due to averaging subjects with different types of behavior. Our results indicate that individual infants prefer stimuli of intermediate complexity, reserving attention for events that are moderately predictable given their probabilistic expectations about the world.	f	\N
24754400	Executive functions (EFs) are interrelated cognitive processes that have been studied in relation to behavior, attention, academic achievement, and developmental disorders. Studies of EF skills assessed through parent report and performance-based measures show correlations between them ranging from none to modest. Few studies have examined the relationship between EF skills measured through parent report and performance-based measures in relation to adaptive function. The present study included preschool children born preterm as a population at high risk for EF impairments. Preschool children (N = 149) completed a battery of EF tasks that assess working memory, response inhibition, idea generation, and attention shifting or cognitive flexibility. Parents reported on children's EF and adaptive skills. Preterm children showed more parent-rated and performance-based EF impairments than did full-term children. The combined use of either parent report or performance-based measures resulted in the identification of a large number of children at risk for EF impairment, especially in the preterm group. Both parent report and performance-based EF measures were associated with children's adaptive function. EF skills are measurable in young child'ren, and we suggest that EF skills may serve as targets for intervention to improve functional outcomes. We recommend the use of both parent report and performance-based measures to characterize children's EF profiles and to customize treatment.	f	\N
24759441	The proliferation of new communication technologies and capabilities has prompted concern about driving safety. This concern is particularly acute for inexperienced adolescent drivers. In addition to being early adopters of technology, many adolescents have not achieved the degree of automaticity in driving that characterizes experienced adults. Consequently, distractions may be more problematic in this group. Yet little is known about the nature or prevalence of distracted driving behaviors or distracting conditions among adolescent drivers. Vehicles of 52 high-school age drivers (N=38 beginners and N=14 more experienced) were equipped for 6 months with unobtrusive event-triggered data recorders that obtain 20-second clips of video, audio, and vehicle kinematic information when triggered. A low recording trigger threshold was set to obtain a sample of essentially random driving segments along with those indicating rough driving behaviors. Electronic device use (6.7%) was the most common single type of distracted behavior, followed by adjusting vehicle controls (6.2%) and grooming (3.8%). Most distracted driver behaviors were less frequent when passengers were present. However, loud conversation and horseplay were quite common in the presence of multiple peer passengers. These conditions were associated with looking away from the road, the occurrence of serious events, and, to a lesser extent, rough driving (high g-force events). Common assumptions about adolescent driver distraction are only partially borne out by in-vehicle measurement. The association of passengers with distraction appears more complex than previously realized. The relationship between distractions and serious events differed from the association with rough driving.	f	\N
24763127	Successful achievement of task goals depends critically on the ability to adjust ongoing actions in response to environmental changes. The neural substrates underlying action modification have been a topic of great controversy: both, posterior parietal cortex and frontal regions, particularly prefrontal cortex have been previously identified as crucial in this regard, with most studies arguing in favor of one or the other. We aimed to address this controversy and understand whether frontal and parietal regions might play distinct roles during action modification. We tested ipsilesional arm performance of 27 stroke patients with focal lesions to frontal or parietal regions of the left or right cerebral hemisphere, and left or right arm performance of 18 healthy subjects on the classic double-step task in which a target is unpredictably displaced to a new location, requiring modification of the ongoing action. Only right hemisphere frontal lesions adversely impacted the timing of initiation of the modified response, while only left hemisphere parietal lesions impaired the accuracy of the modified action. Patients with right frontal lesions tended to complete the ongoing action to the initially displayed baseline target and initiated the new movement after a significant delay. In contrast, patients with left parietal damage did not accurately reach the new target location, but compared to the other groups, initiated the new action during an earlier phase of motion, before their baseline action was complete. Our findings thus suggest distinct, hemisphere specific contributions of frontal and parietal regions to action modification, and bring together, for the first time, disparate sets of prior findings about its underlying neural substrates.	f	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	f	\N
24766521	This study examined the performance of 198 Veteran research participants deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and/or Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) on four measures of performance validity: the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT), California Verbal Learning Test: Forced Choice Recognition (FCR), Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and TOVA Symptom Exaggeration Index (SEI). Failure on these performance validity tests (PVTs) ranged from 4% to 9%. The overall base rate of poor performance validity, as measured by failure of the MSVT in conjunction with an embedded PVT (FCR, RDS, SEI), was 5.6%. Regression analyses revealed that poor performance validity predicted cognitive test performance and self-reported psychological symptom severity. Furthermore, a greater prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), co-morbid TBI/PTSD, and other Axis I diagnoses, was observed among participants with poor effort. Although poor performance validity is relatively uncommon in a research setting, these findings demonstrate that clinicians should be cautious when interpreting psychological symptoms and neuropsychological test performance of Veteran participants who fail effort measures.	f	\N
24773193	Speakers modulate their prosody to express not only emotional information but also semantic information (e.g., raising pitch for upward motion). Moreover, this information can help listeners infer meaning. Work investigating the communicative role of prosodically conveyed meaning has focused on reference resolution, and potential mnemonic benefits remain unexplored. We investigated the effect of prosody on memory for the meaning of novel words, even when it conveys superfluous information. Participants heard novel words, produced with congruent or incongruent prosody, and viewed image pairs representing the intended meaning and its antonym (e.g., a small and a large dog). Importantly, an arrow indicated the image representing the intended meaning, resolving the ambiguity. Participants then completed 2 memory tests, either immediately after learning or after a 24-hr delay, on which they chose an image (out of a new image pair) and a definition that best represented the word. On the image test, memory was similar on the immediate test, but incongruent prosody led to greater loss over time. On the definition test, memory was better for congruent prosody at both times. Results suggest that listeners extract semantic information from prosody even when it is redundant and that prosody can enhance memory, beyond its role in comprehension.	f	\N
24773417	The transition from childhood to adulthood is characterized by improved motor and cognitive performance in many domains. Developmental studies focus on average performance in single domains but ignore consistency of performance across domains. Within-individual variability (WIV) provides an index of that evenness and is a potential marker of development. We gave a computerized battery of 14 neurocognitive tests to 9138 youths ages 8-21 from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. As expected, performance improved with age, with both accuracy and speed peaking in adulthood. WIV, however, showed a U-shaped course: highest in childhood, declining yearly into mid-adolescence, and increasing again into adulthood. Young females outperformed and were less variable than males, but by early adulthood male performance matched that of females despite being more variable. We conclude that WIV declines from childhood to adolescence as developmental lags are overcome, and then increases into adulthood reflecting the emergence of cognitive specializations related to skill-honing and brain maturation.	f	\N
24785592	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The present study examined the effect of training on age differences in performing a highly practiced task using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm (Pashler, 1984, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 358-377). Earlier training studies have concentrated on tasks that are not already overlearned. The present question of interest is whether task dual-task integration will be more efficient when single-task performance is approaching asymptotic levels. Task 1 was red/green signal discrimination (green = "go" and red = "wait"; analogous to pedestrian signals) and Task 2 was tone discrimination (white noise vs. a horn "honk"; analogous to traffic sound). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between Task 1 and Task 2 was varied (50, 150, 600, and 1000 ms). All individuals participated in eight sessions spread over 8 weeks (one session per week). Participants completed a dual-task pretest (Week 1), followed by 6 weeks of single-task testing (Weeks 2-7), followed by a dual-task posttest (Week 8). Although older adults showed larger overall dual-task costs (i.e., PRP effects), they were able to reduce the costs with practice as much as younger adults. However, even when training on Task 1 results in asymptotic performance, this still did not lead to an appreciable reduction in dual-task costs. Also, older adults, but not younger adults, responded more rapidly to green stimuli than to red stimuli in the Task 1 training latency data. The authors confirmed this green/go bias using diffusion modeling, which takes into account response time and error rates at the same time. This green/go bias is potentially dangerous at crosswalks, especially when combined with large dual-task interference, and might contribute to the high rate of crosswalk accidents in the elderly.	f	\N
24794051	A variety of causes of boredom have been proposed including environmental, motivational, emotional, and cognitive factors. Here, we explore four potential cognitive causes of boredom: inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and executive dysfunction. Specifically, we examine the unique and common associations between these factors and boredom propensity. Recent research has established that the two most commonly used measures of boredom propensity (BPS and BSS) are not measuring the same underlying construct. Thus, a second goal of the present project is to determine the unique and common roles of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and poor executive system functioning in predicting the BPS and BSS specifically. The findings reveal that inattention, hyperactivity and executive dysfunction predict boredom propensity, with shared variance accounting for the greater part of this effect. Further, executive dysfunction and hyperactivity uniquely predict boredom propensity as measured by the BPS and BSS, respectively.	f	\N
24800896	Evidence from a growing body of literature suggests that alcohol, even at moderate-dose levels, disrupts the ability to ignore distractors. However, little work has been done to elucidate the neural processes underlying this deficit. The present study was conducted to determine if low-to-moderate alcohol doses affect sensory gating, an electrophysiological phenomenon believed to reflect the pre-attentive filtering of irrelevant sensory information. Sixty social drinkers were administered one of three doses intended to produce breath alcohol concentrations of 0.0% (placebo), 0.04% (i.e., low dose), and 0.065% (i.e., moderate dose). A paired-click paradigm consisting of 100 pairs of identical tones (S1 and S2) was used to assess sensory gating. Amplitudes of P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were used to calculate gating difference (S1-S2) and ratio (S2/S1) scores. The moderate alcohol dose significantly decreased P50 and N100 gating relative to placebo. Comparisons between the difference and ratio scores helped characterize the gating mechanisms affected at these stages of information processing. Alcohol did not alter P200 sensory gating. These data suggest that alcohol disrupts pre-attentional sensory-filtering processes at breath alcohol concentrations (BrACs) below the current 0.08% legal limit. Future studies should perform a combined assessment of sensory gating and selective attention to better understand the relationship between these two alcohol-induced deficits.	f	\N
24806689	The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS) in the Fusiform Face Area is influenced by the probability of repetitions of faces (Summerfield et al., 2008), implying that perceptual expectations affect repetition-related processes. Surprisingly, however, macaque single-cell (Kaliukhovich and Vogels, 2011) and human fMRI (Kovács et al., 2013) studies have failed to find repetition probability [P(rep)] modulations of RS with nonface stimuli in the occipitotemporal cortex, suggesting that the effect is face specific. One possible explanation of this category selectivity is that the extensive experience humans have with faces affects the neural mechanisms of RS specifically, creating P(rep) modulatory effects. To address this question, we used fMRI to test the P(rep) effects for another well trained stimulus category, upright letters of the roman alphabet as well as for unfamiliar false fonts. We observed significant RS for both stimulus sets in the Letter Form Area as well as in the caudodorsal part of the lateral occipital complex. Interestingly, the influence of P(rep) on RS was dependent on the stimulus: while we observed P(rep) modulations for the roman letters, no such effects were found for the unfamiliar false fonts in either area. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for nonface stimuli as well, but that they depend on the experience of the subjects with the stimulus category. This shows, for the first time, that prior experience affects the influence of contextual predictive information on RS in the human occipitotemporal cortex.	f	\N
24820669	Research has shown that integer comparison is quick and efficient. This efficiency may be a function of the structure of the integer comparison system. The present study tests whether integers are compared with an unlimited capacity system or a limited capacity system. We tested these models using a visual search task with time delimitation. The data from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that integers are encoded, identified, and compared within an unlimited capacity system. The data from Experiment 3 indicate that 2nd-order magnitude comparisons are processed with a highly efficient limited capacity system.	f	\N
24826505	This study examines neuropsychological impairments associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and explores their association with related clinical factors. Sixty-eight women with CFS were assessed with a neuropsychological battery. Raw scores were adjusted for age and gender and were converted to T scores according to normative data extracted from a local sample of 250 healthy subjects. Neuropsychological dysfunction was calculated using summary impairment indexes (proportion of test scores outside normal limits-T score <40-for each cognitive domain). Finally, a linear regression was calculated to identify predictors of cognitive deficit, including intrinsic factors of the disease (level of fatigue and length of illness) and extrinsic factors (emotional factors, age, and education). Approximately 50% of scores showed impairment in attention and motor functioning, and nearly 40% showed impairment in speed information processing and executive functioning. Fatigue predicted attention and executive functioning impairment, and emotional factors predicted verbal memory dysfunction. According to our findings, cognitive dysfunction in CFS could be explained by pathophysiological processes of the disease. One implication of this would be the need to identify homogeneous subgroups of patients with CFS by taking into account common factors, which, in turn, would help to identify more specific cognitive profiles, which could then serve to implement appropriate therapeutic measures accordingly.	f	\N
24831114	The serotonin and circadian systems are two important interactive regulatory networks in the mammalian brain that regulate behavior and physiology in ways that are known to impact human mental health. Previous work on the interaction between these two systems suggests that serotonin modulates photic input to the central circadian clock (the suprachiasmatic nuclei; SCN) from the retina and serves as a signal for locomotor activity, novelty, and arousal to shift the SCN clock, but effects of disruption of serotonergic signaling from the raphe nuclei on circadian behavior and on SCN function are not fully characterized. In this study, we examined the effects on diurnal and circadian behavior, and on ex vivo molecular rhythms of the SCN, of genetic deficiency in Pet-1, an ETS transcription factor that is necessary to establish and maintain the serotonergic phenotype of raphe neurons. Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit loss of rhythmic behavioral coherence and an extended daily activity duration, as well as changes in the molecular rhythms expressed by the clock, such that ex vivo SCN from Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit period lengthening and sex-dependent changes in rhythmic amplitude. Together, our results indicate that Pet-1 regulation of raphe neuron serotonin phenotype contributes to the period, precision and light/dark partitioning of locomotor behavioral rhythms by the circadian clock through direct actions on the SCN clock itself, as well as through non-clock effects.	f	\N
24838871	Anxious people show an attentional bias towards threatening information. It was investigated whether an attentional bias exists for cancer-related stimuli in breast cancer survivors and if different levels of fear of cancer recurrence would lead to different patterns of selective attention. Breast cancer survivors with high (n = 35) and low (n = 32) fear of cancer recurrence were compared to 40 healthy female hospital employees. Specificity of attentional biases was investigated using a modified Emotional Stroop Task. Self-report measures were used to assess depression and anxiety, feelings of fatigue, and experienced traumas. Compared to control participants, breast cancer survivors with both high and low levels of fear of cancer recurrence showed increased interference for cancer-related words, but not for other word types. The findings suggest a specific attentional bias for cancer-related words in breast cancer survivors that is independent of level of fear of cancer recurrence.	f	\N
24839251	To investigate whether acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) leads to decreased cognitive control when food cues are presented during a task requiring active attention, by assessing the ability to cognitively inhibit prepotent responses. Fourteen males participated in the study on two separate occasions in a randomized, crossover within-subject design: one night of TSD versus normal sleep (8.5 hours). Following each nighttime intervention, hunger ratings and morning fasting plasma glucose concentrations were assessed before performing a go/no-go task. Following TSD, participants made significantly more commission errors when they were presented "no-go" food words in the go/no-go task, as compared with their performance following sleep (+56%; P<0.05). In contrast, response time and omission errors to "go" non-food words did not differ between the conditions. Self-reported hunger after TSD was increased without changes in fasting plasma glucose. The increase in hunger did not correlate with the TSD-induced commission errors. Our results suggest that TSD impairs cognitive control also in response to food stimuli in healthy young men. Whether such loss of inhibition or impulsiveness is food cue-specific as seen in obesity-thus providing a mechanism through which sleep disturbances may promote obesity development-warrants further investigation.	f	\N
24842070	Performance in response inhibition paradigms is typically attributed to inhibitory control. Here we examined the idea that stopping may largely depend on the outcome of a sensory detection process. Subjects performed a speeded go task, but they were instructed to withhold their response when a visual stop signal was presented. The stop signal could occur in the center of the screen or in the periphery. On half of the trials, perceptual distractors were presented throughout the trial. We found that these perceptual distractors impaired stopping, especially when stop signals could occur in the periphery. Furthermore, the effect of the distractors on going was smallest in the central stop-signal condition, medium in a condition in which no signals could occur, and largest in the condition in which stop signals could occur in the periphery. The results show that an important component of stopping is finding a balance between ignoring irrelevant information in the environment and monitoring for the occurrence of occasional stop signals. These findings highlight the importance of sensory detection processes when stopping and could shed new light on a range of phenomena and findings in the response inhibition literature.	f	\N
24845743	We examine how haptic feedback could enable an implicit human-computer interaction, in the context of an audio stream listening use case where a device monitors a user's electrodermal activity for orienting responses to external interruptions. When such a response is detected, our previously developed system automatically places a bookmark in the audio stream for later resumption of listening. Here, we investigate two uses of haptic feedback to support this implicit interaction and mitigate effects of noisy (false-positive) bookmarking: (a) low-attention notification when a bookmark is placed, and (b) focused-attention display of bookmarks during resumptive navigation. Results show that haptic notification of bookmark placement, when paired with visual display of bookmark location, significant improves navigation time. Solely visual or haptic display of bookmarks elicited equivalent navigation time; however, only the inclusion of haptic display significantly increased accuracy. Participants preferred haptic notification over no notification at interruption time, and combined haptic and visual display of bookmarks to support navigation to their interrupted location at resumption time. Our contributions include an approach to handling noisy data in implicit HCI, an implementation of haptic notifications that signal implicit system behavior, and discussion of user mental models that may be active in this context.	f	\N
24857238	Schizophrenia is associated with poor Theory of Mind (ToM), particularly in goal and belief attribution to others. It is also associated with abnormal gaze behaviors toward others: individuals with schizophrenia usually look less to others' face and gaze, which are crucial epistemic cues that contribute to correct mental states inferences. This study tests the hypothesis that impaired ToM in schizophrenia might be related to a deficit in visual attention toward gaze orientation. We adapted a previous non-verbal ToM paradigm consisting of animated cartoons allowing the assessment of goal and belief attribution. In the true and false belief conditions, an object was displaced while an agent was either looking at it or away, respectively. Eye movements were recorded to quantify visual attention to gaze orientation (proportion of time participants spent looking at the head of the agent while the target object changed locations). 29 patients with schizophrenia and 29 matched controls were tested. Compared to controls, patients looked significantly less at the agent's head and had lower performance in belief and goal attribution. Performance in belief and goal attribution significantly increased with the head looking percentage. When the head looking percentage was entered as a covariate, the group effect on belief and goal attribution performance was not significant anymore. Patients' deficit on this visual ToM paradigm is thus entirely explained by a decreased visual attention toward gaze.	f	\N
24859426	Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant to counter sleep-loss effects. While the pharmacokinetics of caffeine in the body is well-understood, its alertness-restoring effects are still not well characterized. In fact, mathematical models capable of predicting the effects of varying doses of caffeine on objective measures of vigilance are not available. In this paper, we describe a phenomenological model of the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance of sleep-deprived subjects. We used the two-process model of sleep regulation to quantify performance during sleep loss in the absence of caffeine and a dose-dependent multiplier factor derived from the Hill equation to model the effects of single and repeated caffeine doses. We developed and validated the model fits and predictions on PVT lapse (number of reaction times exceeding 500 ms) data from two separate laboratory studies. At the population-average level, the model captured the effects of a range of caffeine doses (50-300 mg), yielding up to a 90% improvement over the two-process model. Individual-specific caffeine models, on average, predicted the effects up to 23% better than population-average caffeine models. The proposed model serves as a useful tool for predicting the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on the PVT performance of sleep-deprived subjects and, therefore, can be used for determining caffeine doses that optimize the timing and duration of peak performance.	f	\N
24866977	Previous research has shown that loading information on working memory affects selective attention. However, whether the load effect on selective attention is domain-general or domain-specific remains unresolved. The domain-general effect refers to the findings that load in one content (e.g. phonological) domain in working memory influences processing in another content (e.g., visuospatial) domain. Attentional control supervises selection regardless of information domain. The domain-specific effect refers to the constraint of influence only when maintenance and processing operate in the same domain. Selective attention operates in a specific content domain. This study is designed to resolve this controversy. Across three experiments, we manipulated the type of representation maintained in working memory and the type of representation upon which the participants must exert control to resolve conflict and select a target into the focus of attention. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants maintained digits and nonverbalized objects, respectively, in working memory while selecting a target in a letter array. In Experiment 2, we presented auditory digits with a letter flanker task to exclude the involvement of resource competition within the same input modality. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we replaced the letter flanker task with an object flanker task while manipulating the memory load on object and digit representation, respectively. The results consistently showed that memory load modulated distractibility only when the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in the same domain. The magnitude of distractor interference was larger under high load than under low load, reflecting a lower efficacy of information prioritization. When the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in different domains, memory load did not modulate distractibility. Control of processing priority in selective attention demands domain-specific resources.	f	\N
24874173	Sex differences in attentional selection of global and local components of stimuli have been hypothesized to underlie sex differences in cognitive strategy choice. A Navon figure paradigm was employed in 32 men, 41 naturally cycling women (22 follicular, 19 luteal) and 19 users of oral contraceptives (OCs) containing first to third generation progestins in their active pill phase. Participants were first asked to detect targets at any level (divided attention) and then at either the global or the local level only (focused attention). In the focused attention condition, luteal women showed reduced global advantage (i.e. faster responses to global vs. local targets) compared to men, follicular women and OC users. Accordingly, global advantage during the focused attention condition related significantly positively to testosterone levels and significantly negatively to progesterone, but not estradiol levels in a multiple regression model including all naturally cycling women and men. Interference (i.e. delayed rejection of stimuli displaying targets at the non-attended level) was significantly enhanced in OC users as compared to naturally cycling women and related positively to testosterone levels in all naturally cycling women and men. Remarkably, when analyzed separately for each group, the relationship of testosterone to global advantage and interference was reversed in women during their luteal phase as opposed to men and women during their follicular phase. As global processing is lateralized to the right and local processing to the left hemisphere, we speculate that these effects stem from a testosterone-mediated enhancement of right-hemisphere functioning as well as progesterone-mediated inter-hemispheric decoupling.	f	\N
24875233	Hypoxia has been postulated as a key mechanism for neurocognitive impairment in sleep-disordered breathing. However, the effect of hypoxia on the electroencephalogram (EEG) is not clear. We examined quantitative EEG recordings from 20 normal volunteers under three 5-min ventilatory control protocols: progressive hypercapnia with iso-hyperoxia (pO2=150mmHg) (Protocol 1), progressive hypercapnia with iso-hypoxia (pO2=50mmHg) (Protocol 2), and progressive hypoxia with a CO2 scrubber in the circuit (Protocol 3). Each protocol started with a 5-min session of breathing room air as baseline. In Protocol 1, compared to its baseline, iso-hyperoxia hypercapnia led to a lower Alpha% and higher Delta/Alpha (D/A) ratio. Similarly, in Protocol 2, the iso-hypoxia hypercapnia induced a higher Delta%, a lower Alpha% and higher D/A ratio. No difference was found in any EEG spectral band including the D/A ratio when Protocols 1 & 2 were compared. In Protocol 3, the Delta%, Alpha% and D/A ratio recorded during hypoxia were not significantly different from baseline. We found that hypercapnia, but not hypoxia, may play a key role in slowing of the EEG in healthy humans. Hypercapnia may be a greater influence than hypoxia on brain neuroelectrical activities.	f	\N
24878318	The traditional sleep scoring approach has been invented long before the recognition of strictly local nature of the sleep process. It considers sleep as a whole-organism behavior state, and, thus, it cannot be used for identification of sleep onset in a separate brain region. Therefore, this paper was aimed on testing whether the practically useful, simple and reliable yes-or-no criterion of sleep onset in a particular cortical region might be developed through applying principal component analysis to the electroencephalographic (EEG) spectra. The resting EEG was recorded with 2-hour intervals throughout 43-61-hour prolongation of wakefulness, and during 12 20-minute attempts to nap in the course of 24-hour wakefulness (15 and 18 adults, respectively). The EEG power spectra were averaged on 1-min intervals of each resting EEG record and on 1-min intervals of each napping attempt, respectively. Since we earlier demonstrated that scores on the first and second principal components of the EEG spectrum exhibit dramatic changes during the sleep onset period, a zero-crossing buildup of the first score and a zero-crossing decline of the second score were examined as possible yes-or-no markers of regional sleep onsets. The results suggest that, irrespective of electrode location, sleep onset criterion and duration of preceding wakefulness, a highly significant zero-crossing decline of the second principal component score always occurred within 1-minute interval of transition from wakefulness to sleep. Therefore, it was concluded that such zero-crossing decline can serve as a reliable, simple, and practically useful yes-or-no marker of drop off event in a given cortical area.	f	\N
24880095	Visual attention has been shown to progress from the most to the least salient item in a given scene. Cognitive and physiological models assume that this orienting of covert attention relies on the collicular pathway, involving the superior colliculus and the pulvinar. Recent studies questioned this statement as they described attentional capture by visual items invisible to the superior colliculus. Electrophysiological studies shown that there is no direct projections from short-wave receptors to the superior colliculus. S-cone stimuli can thus be employed to assess visual processing without the involvement of the collicular pathway. We have attempted to investigate whether this pathway is involved in the salience-based orientation of attention by presenting S-cone stimuli. Volunteers were asked to make a judgment regarding a target among two distractors (all items of unequal sizes). Items' location and size varied randomly, as well as color, randomly black or calibrated for each subject to activate exclusively S-cones. The hierarchical pattern testifying of the salience-based orientation of attention was only found with black stimuli, arguing in favor of an implication of the collicular pathway in salience. In a second experiment, one item was presented at a time in order to test the item-multiplicity effect by comparing experiments. Performance was the most penalized when presenting multiple stimuli in the black condition. Results were interpreted in terms of distinct modes of processing by the collicular and geniculate pathways. The establishment of salience that determines attentional progression appeared to be only possible when the collicular pathway was solicited.	f	\N
24887007	Sex differences in pain perception are still poorly understood, but they may be related to the way the brains of men and women respond to the affective dimensions of pain. Using a matched pain intensity paradigm, where pain intensity was kept constant across participants but pain unpleasantness was left free to vary among participants, we studied the relationship between pain unpleasantness and pain-evoked brain activity in healthy men and women separately. Experimental pain was provoked using transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the sural nerve while pain-related brain activity was measured using somatosensory-evoked brain potentials with source localization. Cardiac responses to pain were also measured using electrocardiac recordings. Results revealed that subjective pain unpleasantness was strongly associated with increased perigenual anterior cingulate cortex activity in women, whereas it was strongly associated with decreased ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity in men. Only ventromedial prefrontal cortex deactivations in men were additionally associated with increased autonomic cardiac arousal. These results suggest that in order to deal with pain's objectionable properties, men preferentially deactivate prefrontal suppression regions, leading to the mobilization of threat-control circuits, whereas women recruit well-known emotion-processing areas of the brain. This article presents neuroimaging findings demonstrating that subjective pain unpleasantness ratings are associated with different pain-evoked brain responses in men and women, which has potentially important implications regarding sex differences in the risk of developing chronic pain.	f	\N
24906032	To examine the trajectories of sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings in infants from 6 to 18 months of age and to identify predictors of short sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings. Data for this study come from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. A total of 55,831 mother reports of child sleep were used to estimate the stability and predictors of awakenings and short sleep. Nocturnal awakenings were frequent among 6-month-old children. Although there was an overall reduction in both sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings from 6 to 18 months, the chronicity of sleep problems was high and impacted by prior sleep behavior and sleeping arrangements. Bedsharing was an independent and graded predictor of nocturnal awakenings and short sleep duration, also after controlling for prior sleep. Breastfeeding was related to concurrent nocturnal awakening but was not negatively related to later nocturnal awakenings. Considering the chronicity of nocturnal awakening and its association with bedsharing, our findings support current recommendations of reducing bedsharing to improve sleep among infants.	f	\N
24912070	Dopaminergic medication in Parkinson's disease has been proposed to improve cognitive processing by modulating the severely depleted dorsal striatum, while impairing reward processing by modulating the relatively intact ventral striatum. However, there is no direct (neural) evidence for this hypothesis. Here we fill this gap by scanning Parkinson's disease patients (n=15) ON and relatively OFF their dopaminergic medication using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, patients performed a task that enabled the simultaneous measurement of task-switching and reward-related processing. Brain-behavior correlations revealed that medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in switch-related BOLD signal (switch-repeat) in the dorsomedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with improvements in task-switching (i.e. a decreased switch cost). Conversely, medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in reward-related BOLD signal (high-low) in the ventromedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with impairments in performance in anticipation of reward (i.e. an increased reward cost). Linear regression analyses demonstrated that the positive relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the reward cost was unique to the ventromedial striatum, whereas the negative relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the switch cost was not unique to the dorsomedial striatum. These findings extend the dopamine overdose hypothesis, according to which dopamine-induced changes in dorsal and ventral striatal processing lead to cognitive improvement and impairment respectively.	f	\N
24912136	People differ in both their sensitivity for bitter taste and their tendency to respond to emotional stimuli with approach or avoidance. The present study investigated the relationship between these sensitivities in an affective picture paradigm with startle responding. Emotion-induced changes in arousal and attention (pupil modulation), priming of approach and avoidance behavior (startle reflex modulation), and subjective evaluations (ratings) were examined. Sensitivity for bitter taste was assessed with the 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)-sensitivity test, which discriminated individuals who were highly sensitive to PROP compared to NaCl (PROP-tasters) and those who were less sensitive or insensitive to the bitter taste of PROP. Neither pupil responses nor picture ratings differed between the two taster groups. The startle eye blink response, however, significantly differentiated PROP-tasters from PROP-insensitive subjects. Facilitated response priming to emotional stimuli emerged in PROP-tasters but not in PROP-insensitive subjects at shorter startle lead intervals (200-300ms between picture onset and startle stimulus onset). At longer lead intervals (3-4.5s between picture onset and startle stimulus onset) affective startle modulation did not differ between the two taster groups. This implies that in PROP-sensitive individuals action tendencies of approach or avoidance are primed immediately after emotional stimulus exposure. These results suggest a link between PROP taste perception and biologically relevant patterns of emotional responding. Direct perception-action links have been proposed to underlie motivational priming effects of the startle reflex, and the present results extend these to the sensory dimension of taste.	f	\N
24918067	Affect recognition deficits found in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan may bias the development of cognitive control processes implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder. This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which facial expressions influence cognitive control in young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Fourteen probands with childhood ADHD and 14 comparison subjects with no history of ADHD were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a face emotion go/no-go task. Event-related analyses contrasted activation and functional connectivity for cognitive control collapsed over face valence and tested for variations in activation for response execution and inhibition as a function of face valence. Probands with childhood ADHD made fewer correct responses and inhibitions overall than comparison subjects, but demonstrated comparable effects of face emotion on response execution and inhibition. The two groups showed similar frontotemporal activation for cognitive control collapsed across face valence, but differed in the functional connectivity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with fewer interactions with the subgenual cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and putamen in probands than in comparison subjects. Further, valence-dependent activation for response execution was seen in the amygdala, ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex in comparison subjects but not in probands. The findings point to functional anomalies in limbic networks for both the valence-dependent biasing of cognitive control and the valence-independent cognitive control of face emotion processing in probands with childhood ADHD. This limbic dysfunction could impact cognitive control in emotional contexts and may contribute to the social and emotional problems associated with ADHD.	f	\N
24918502	To investigate the existence of correlations between the performance of children in auditory temporal tests (Frequency Pattern and Gaps in Noise--GIN) and IQ, attention, memory and age measurements. Fifteen typically developing individuals between the ages of 7 to 12 years and normal hearing participated in the study. Auditory temporal processing tests (GIN and Frequency Pattern), as well as a Memory test (Digit Span), Attention tests (auditory and visual modality) and intelligence tests (RAVEN test of Progressive Matrices) were applied. Significant and positive correlation between the Frequency Pattern test and age variable were found, which was considered good (p<0.01, 75.6%). There were no significant correlations between the GIN test and the variables tested. Auditory temporal skills seem to be influenced by different factors: while the performance in temporal ordering skill seems to be influenced by maturational processes, the performance in temporal resolution was not influenced by any of the aspects investigated.	f	\N
24932753	A number of studies have shown strong relations between numbers and oriented spatial codes. For example, perceiving numbers causes spatial shifts of attention depending upon numbers' magnitude, in a way suggestive of a spatially oriented, mental representation of numbers. Here, we investigated whether this phenomenon extends to non-symbolic numbers, as well as to the processing of the continuous dimensions of size and brightness, exploring whether different quantitative dimensions are equally mapped onto space. After a numerical (symbolic Arabic digits or non-symbolic arrays of dots; Experiment 1) or a non-numerical cue (shapes of different size or brightness level; Experiment 2) was presented, participants' saccadic response to a target that could appear either on the left or the right side of the screen was registered using an automated eye-tracker system. Experiment 1 showed that, both in the case of Arabic digits and dot arrays, right targets were detected faster when preceded by large numbers, and left targets were detected faster when preceded by small numbers. Participants in Experiment 2 were faster at detecting right targets when cued by large-sized shapes and left targets when cued by small-sized shapes, whereas brightness cues did not modulate the detection of peripheral targets. These findings indicate that looking at a symbolic or a non-symbolic number induces attentional shifts to a peripheral region of space that is congruent with the numbers' relative position on a mental number line, and that a similar shift in visual attention is induced by looking at shapes of different size. More specifically, results suggest that, while the dimensions of number and size spontaneously map onto an oriented space, the dimension of brightness seems to be independent at a certain level of magnitude elaboration from the dimensions of spatial extent and number, indicating that not all continuous dimensions are equally mapped onto space.	f	\N
24935807	Although perception is typically constrained by limits in available processing resources, these constraints can be overcome if information about environmental properties, such as the spatial location or expected onset time of an object, can be used to direct resources to particular sensory inputs. In this work, we examined these temporal expectancy effects in greater detail in the context of the attentional blink (AB), in which identification of the second of two targets is impaired when the targets are separated by less than about half a second. We replicated previous results showing that presenting information about the expected onset time of the second target can overcome the AB. Uniquely, we also showed that information about expected onset (a) reduces susceptibility to distraction, (b) can be derived from salient temporal consistencies in intertarget intervals across exposures, and (c) is more effective when presented consistently rather than intermittently, along with trials that do not contain expectancy information. These results imply that temporal expectancy can benefit object processing at perceptual and postperceptual stages, and that participants are capable of flexibly encoding consistent timing information about environmental events in order to aid perception.	f	\N
24953882	Noise stress (NS) is detrimental to many aspects of human health and behavior. Understanding the effect of noise stressors on human cognitive function is a growing area of research and is crucial to helping clinical populations, such as those with schizophrenia, which are particularly sensitive to stressors. A review of electronic databases for studies assessing the effect of acute NS on cognitive functions in healthy adults revealed 31 relevant studies. The review revealed (1) NS exerts a clear negative effect on attention, working memory and episodic recall, and (2) personality characteristics, in particular neuroticism, and sleep influence the impact of noise stressors on performance in interaction with task complexity. Previous findings of consistent impairment in NS-relevant cognitive domains, heightened sensitivity to stressors, elevated neuroticism and sleep disturbances in schizophrenia, taken together with the findings of this review, highlight the need for empirical studies to elucidate whether NS, a common aspect of urban environments, exacerbates cognitive deficits and other symptoms in schizophrenia and related clinical populations.	f	\N
24954442	The aim of this study was to have a linguistic validation of the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) in Iranian children with Persian language. The study included a randomly selected sample of children, aged 6-15 years, from three primary and secondary schools located in Isfahan City, Iran. Following the forward-backward translation method, parents completed the SDSC as well as the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). Reliability (Cronbach's α) and convergent validity (item-subscale and subscale-total correlations) were assessed. The association of SDSC scores with PedsQL scores was evaluated for construct validity. One hundred children were studied; mean age, 9.36±2.58 years, 68 girls. Scale Cronbach's α was 0.82, ranging from 0.40 for 'disorder of arousal' to 0.86 for 'sleep hyperhidrosis' subscales. Convergent validity was acceptable according to the corrected item-subscale correlations (r = 0.22-0.76) and corrected subscale-total correlations (r = 0.30-0.50). The SDSC total score as well as its subscales, except the 'disorder of arousal', were associated with the total PedsQL score and its factors (r = -0.20 to -0.64). The overall psychometric properties of the Persian version of the SDSC seem to be appropriate in Iranian children.	f	\N
24956002	Older adults fixate less on negative parts of skin cancer videos than younger adults, leading them to feel better (Isaacowitz & Choi, 2012). We extended this paradigm to middle-aged adults (ages 35-59, n = 63), whose fixation patterns were measured as they viewed skin cancer videos; mood and behavior were also assessed. Middle-aged adults looked even less at the videos than the other age groups, especially at the negative clips. They also reported the best moods but relatively low levels of learning and positive skin cancer behavior. In some cases, middle-aged adults may show larger "age-related positivity effects" than older adults.	f	\N
24956067	The ability to detect and use information from errors is essential during the acquisition of new skills. There is now a wealth of evidence about the brain mechanisms involved in error processing. However, the extent to which those mechanisms are engaged during the acquisition of new motor skills remains elusive. Here we examined rhythm synchronization learning across 12 blocks of practice in musically naïve individuals and tracked changes in ERP signals associated with error-monitoring and error-awareness across distinct learning stages. Synchronization performance improved with practice, and performance improvements were accompanied by dynamic changes in ERP components related to error-monitoring and error-awareness. Early in learning, when performance was poor and the internal representations of the rhythms were weaker we observed a larger error-related negativity (ERN) following errors compared to later learning. The larger ERN during early learning likely results from greater conflict between competing motor responses, leading to greater engagement of medial-frontal conflict monitoring processes and attentional control. Later in learning, when performance had improved, we observed a smaller ERN accompanied by an enhancement of a centroparietal positive component resembling the P3. This centroparietal positive component was predictive of participant's performance accuracy, suggesting a relation between error saliency, error awareness and the consolidation of internal templates of the practiced rhythms. Moreover, we showed that during rhythm learning errors led to larger auditory evoked responses related to attention orientation which were triggered automatically and which were independent of the learning stage. The present study provides crucial new information about how the electrophysiological signatures related to error-monitoring and error-awareness change during the acquisition of new skills, extending previous work on error processing and cognitive control mechanisms to a more ecologically valid context.	f	\N
24960589	This preliminary study explored differences between adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) for speech processing accuracy, processing speed and effort in various conditions of interference. Ten adults with TBI and six adults without TBI participated. Speech processing was studied using sentence repetition in six listening conditions with different types of interference, including noise and two simultaneous talkers. Participants repeated sentences and rated effort. Participants also completed standardized tests of cognition, including working memory and processing speed measures. Sentence repetition accuracy did not differ between groups. However, the TBI group demonstrated slower processing speed than the control group and also reported significantly greater effort in the two-talker condition. Faster processing speed was also correlated with higher accuracy in the two-talker condition. RESULTS of this study show group similarities in repetition accuracy across listening conditions, but group differences in speed and effort. This preliminary finding, as well as the relationship between processing speed and repetition accuracy, suggests that it is only in the most complex listening conditions that the effects of brain injury may be detectable.	f	\N
24964082	Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or "runs" that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items "popped-out" search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species.	f	\N
24967719	Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic colour-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases [indexed by the emotional Stroop (e-Stroop)] and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N = 159) completed the emotional and colour-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioural avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between e-Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioural avoidance), such that greater social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with weak IC, whereas lesser social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with strong IC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed.	f	\N
24979861	We report the successful awake tracheal intubation in a patient with hypopharyngeal cancer and gastroesophageal regurgitation with the TaperGuard Evac tracheal tube (TaperGuard) and Pentax-AWS Airwayscope (AWS). A 63-year-old man with hypopharyngeal cancer with invasion to the glottis was scheduled for total laryngectomy under general anesthesia. He had undergone thoracic esophagectomy and could not maintain supine position due to severe gastroesophageal regurgitation. To avoid vomiting after induction of anesthesia, we planned awake intubation in the sitting position with the AWS. After topical anesthesia with 8% lidocaine and infusion of fentanyl and continuous dexmedetomidine, the AWS was inserted into his mouth in the sitting position from the cranial side. The AWS allowed visualizing the glottis avoiding the cancer, leading to safe placement of the tracheal tube.	f	\N
24999612	To dissociate feature-based and object-based stages in the control of spatial attention during visual search, we employed the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection. Participants searched for a target object that was defined by a conjunction of color and shape. Some search displays contained the target or a nontarget object that matched either the target color or its shape among 3 nonmatching distractors. In other displays, the target and a partially target-matching nontarget object appeared together. N2pc results demonstrated that the initial stage of attentional object selection is controlled by local feature-specific signals. Attention is allocated in parallel and independently to objects with target-matching features during this early stage, irrespective of whether another target-matching object is simultaneously present elsewhere. From around 250 ms poststimulus, information is integrated across feature dimensions, and spatially selective attentional processing becomes object-based. These findings demonstrate that feature-based and object-based stages of attentional selectivity in visual search can be dissociated in real time.	f	\N
25004102	Research using the diffusion model to decompose task-switching effects has contributed to a better understanding of the processes underlying the observed effect in the explicit task cueing paradigm: Previous findings could be reconciled with multiple component models of task switching or with an account on compound-cue retrieval/repetition priming. In the present study, we used two cues for each task in order to decompose task-switch and cue-switch effects. Response time data support previous findings that comparable parts of the switching effect can be attributed to cue-switching and task-switching. A diffusion model analysis of the data confirmed that non-decision time is increased and drift rates are decreased in unpredicted task-switches. Importantly, it was shown that non-decision time was selectively increased in task-switching trials but not in cue-switching trials. Results of the present study specifically support the notion of additional processes in task-switches and can be reconciled with broader multiple component accounts.	f	\N
25012367	What defines the spatial and temporal boundaries of seizure activity in brain networks? To fully answer this question a precise and quantitative definition of seizures is needed, which unfortunately remains elusive. Nevertheless, it is possible to ask under conditions where clearly divergent patterns of activity occur in large-scale brain networks whether certain activity patterns are part of the seizure while others are not. Here we examine brain network activity during focal limbic seizures, including diverse regions such as the hippocampus, subcortical arousal systems and fronto-parietal association cortex. Based on work from patients and from animal models we describe a characteristic pattern of intense increases in neuronal firing, cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) signals and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption in the hippocampus during focal limbic seizures. Similar increases are seen in certain closely linked subcortical structures such as the lateral septal nuclei and anterior hypothalamus, which contain inhibitory neurons. In marked contrast, decreases in all of these parameters are seen in the subcortical arousal systems of the upper brainstem and intralaminar thalamus, as well as in the fronto-parietal association cortex. We propose that the seizure proper can be defined as regions showing intense increases, while those areas showing opposite changes are inhibited by the seizure network and constitute long-range network consequences beyond the seizure itself. Importantly, the fronto-parietal cortex shows sleep-like slow wave activity and depressed metabolism under these conditions, associated with impaired consciousness. Understanding which brain networks are directly involved in seizures versus which sustain secondary consequences can provide new insights into the mechanisms of brain dysfunction in epilepsy, hopefully leading to innovative treatment approaches.	f	\N
25035439	General anaesthesia (GA) carries high risks of ventilator dependency with increased morbidity and mortality in patients with severe respiratory disease. It also presents an ethical dilemma if surgery remains the only treatment option for patients with advanced terminal chronic respiratory disease. Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for awake thoracic surgery (TEATS) in high-risk patients with dyspnoea at rest could avoid ventilator dependency and speed up recovery even in patients with severe dyspnoea. This retrospective observational study analysed indications, management and outcome of patients contraindicated to GA undergoing awake thoracic surgery with thoracic epidural anaesthesia. From 716 patients requiring thoracic surgery, nine were contraindicated to GA. Eight patients [American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 4] had a maximum grade four of the modified Medical Research Council dyspnea scale (MMRC). Two patients (ASA 3, grade 1 MMRC and ASA 4, grade 4 MMRC) refused GA. Patients (female : male ratio 1.25 : 1, age 19-76 years) had the following chronic respiratory diseases: pulmonary fibrosis (n = 2), pulmonary metastases (n = 3), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n = 1), alveolitis (n = 1) and myopathy (n = 2). Surgical indications were: thoracotomy (n = 6) for pleurectomy to treat recurring pneumothorax (n = 3), pleurostomy (n = 1), emphysema surgery (n = 1), lung biopsy (n = 1) and thoracoscopy (n = 3) for pleural/lung biopsy (n = 2), pneumothorax (n = 1). Lidocaine 20 mg/ml or ropivacaine 7.5 mg/ml was titrated to achieve an anaesthesia level T2-T12. No patient required GA [time of surgery: 46-128 min, mean = 76 min, standard deviation (SD) = 23 min]. Seven patients had light sedation with TCI propofol, remifentanyl or both and remained responsive. Fifty percent of patients received phenylephrine or ephedrine to maintain arterial pressure. Two patients went into hypercapnia, which was reversed with assisted mask ventilation. One patient suffered acute respiratory distress 7 days postoperatively and died of intestinal bleeding on Day 25. There were no postoperative complications in other patients. Excluding Patient 9 always remaining in a medical intensive care unit (ICU), the mean postoperative ICU stay in thoracic surgery was 4.4 days (SD 5.2). Hospital discharge was between 5 and 40 days after surgery. TEATS with/without sedation was an alternative to GA for thoracotomy/thoracoscopy in severely dyspnoeic patients (MMRC grade 4, ASA 4) without postoperative sequelae.	f	\N
25039045	To examine the association between domain-specific qualities of formal childcare at age 2-3 years and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation at age 4-5 and 6-7 years. We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 1038). Three domain-specific aspects of childcare quality were assessed: provider and program characteristics of care, activities in childcare, and carer-child relationship. Two self-regulatory abilities were considered: task attentiveness and emotional regulation. Associations between domain-specific qualities of childcare and self-regulation were investigated in linear regression analyses adjusted for confounding, with imputation for missing data. There was no association between any provider or program characteristics of care and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation. The quality of activities in childcare were associated only with higher levels of emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.03-0.44) and 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.04-0.48). Higher-quality carer-child relationships were associated with higher levels of task attentiveness (β = 0.20; 95% CI, 0.05-0.36) and emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.04-0.34) that persisted to age 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.10-0.42; β = 0.31; 95% CI, 0.16-0.47). Among children using formal childcare, those who experienced higher-quality relationships were better able to regulate their attention and emotions as they started school. Higher emotional regulation was also observed for children engaged in more activities in childcare. Beneficial effects were stable over time.	f	\N
25044928	While forgetfulness is widely reported by breast cancer survivors, studies documenting objective memory performance yield mixed, largely inconsistent, results. Failure to find consistent, objective memory issues may be due to the possibility that cancer survivors misattribute their experience of forgetfulness to primary memory issues rather than to difficulties in attention at the time of learning. To clarify potential attention issues, factor scores for Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, and Inaccurate Memory were analyzed for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II) in 64 clinically referred breast cancer survivors with self-reported cognitive complaints; item analysis was conducted to clarify specific contributors to observed effects, and contrasts between learning and recall trials were compared with normative data. Performance on broader cognitive domains is also reported. The Attention Span factor, but not Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, or Inaccurate Memory factors, was significantly affected in this clinical sample. Contrasts between trials were consistent with normative data and did not indicate greater loss of information over time than in the normative sample. Results of this analysis suggest that attentional dysfunction may contribute to subjective and objective memory complaints in breast cancer survivors. These results are discussed in the context of broader cognitive effects following treatment for clinicians who may see cancer survivors for assessment.	f	\N
25051341	Although previous research had related structural changes and impaired cognition to chronic cigarette smoking, recent neuroimaging studies have associated nicotine, which is a main chemical substance in cigarettes, with improvements in cognitive functions (e.g. improved attention performance). However, information about the alterations of whole-brain functional connectivity after acute cigarette smoking is limited. In this study, 22 smokers underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) after abstaining from smoking for 12 hours (state of abstinence, SOA). Subsequently, the smokers were allowed to smoke two cigarettes (state of satisfaction, SOS) before they underwent a second rs-fMRI. Twenty non-smokers were also recruited to undergo rs-fMRI. In addition, high-resolution 3D T1-weighted images were acquired using the same magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)scanner for all participants. The results showed that smokers had structural changes in insula, thalamus, medial frontal cortex and several regions of the default mode network (DMN) compared with non-smokers. Voxel-wise group comparisons of newly developed global brain connectivity (GBC) showed that smokers in the SOA condition had higher GBC in the insula and superior frontal gyrus compared with non-smokers. However, smokers in the SOS condition demonstrated significantly lower GBC in several regions of the DMN, as compared with smokers in the SOA condition. These results suggest that structural integrity combined with dysfunction of the DMN might be involved in relapses after a short period of time among smokers.	f	\N
25073453	Studies that have measured the effects of attentional training have relied on a range of training formats, which may vary in their efficacy. In particular, it is unclear whether programs that practice dual-tasking are more effective in improving divided attention than programs focusing on flexible allocation priority training. The aims of this study were as follows: (1) to compare the efficacy of different types of attentional training formats and (2) to assess transfer to distal measures. Forty-two healthy older adults were randomly assigned to one of three training groups. In the SINGLE training condition, participants practiced a visual detection and an alphanumeric equation task in isolation. In the FIXED training condition, participants practiced both tasks simultaneously with equal attention allocated to each. In the VARIABLE training condition, participants varied the attentional priority allocated to each task. After training, all participants improved their performance on the alphanumeric equation task when performed individually, including those in the SINGLE training condition. Participants in the FIXED training condition improved their divided attention, but only the participants in the VARIABLE training condition showed a greater capacity to vary their attentional priorities according to the instructions. Regarding transfer, all groups improved their performance on the 2-back condition, but only the VARIABLE and FIXED conditions resulted in better performance on the 1-back condition. Overall, the study supports the notion that attentional control capacities in older adults are plastic and can be improved with appropriate training and that the type of training determines its impact on divided attention.	f	\N
25083012	To determine relationships of polysomnographic (PSG) measures with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a young adult, urban African American population. Cross-sectional, clinical and laboratory evaluation. Community recruitment, evaluation in the clinical research unit of an urban University hospital. Participants (n = 145) were Black, 59.3% female, with a mean age of 23.1 y (SD = 4.8). One hundred twenty-one participants (83.4%) met criteria for trauma exposure, the most common being nonsexual violence. Thirty-nine participants (26.9%) met full (n = 19) or subthreshold criteria (n = 20) for current PTSD, 41 (28.3%) had met lifetime PTSD criteria and were recovered, and 65 (45%) were negative for PTSD. Evaluations included the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and 2 consecutive nights of overnight PSG. Analysis of variance did not reveal differences in measures of sleep duration and maintenance, percentage of sleep stages, and the latency to and duration of uninterrupted segments of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep by study group. There were significant relationships between the duration of PTSD and REM sleep percentage (r = 0.53, P = 0.001), REM segment length (r = 0.43, P = 0.006), and REM sleep latency (r = -0.34, P < 0.03) among those with current PTSD that persisted when removing cases with, or controlling for, depression. The findings are consistent with observations in the literature of fragmented and reduced REM sleep with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relatively proximate to trauma exposure and nondisrupted or increased REM sleep with chronic PTSD. Mellman TA, Kobayashi I, Lavela J, Wilson B, Hall Brown TS. A relationship between REM sleep measures and the duration of posttraumatic stress disorder in a young adult urban minority population.	f	\N
25102420	Activation of frontal and parietal brain regions is associated with attentional control during visual search. We used fMRI to characterize age-related differences in frontoparietal activation in a highly efficient feature search task, detection of a shape singleton. On half of the trials, a salient distractor (a color singleton) was present in the display. The hypothesis was that frontoparietal activation mediated the relation between age and attentional capture by the salient distractor. Participants were healthy, community-dwelling individuals, 21 younger adults (19-29 years of age) and 21 older adults (60-87 years of age). Top-down attention, in the form of target predictability, was associated with an improvement in search performance that was comparable for younger and older adults. The increase in search reaction time (RT) associated with the salient distractor (attentional capture), standardized to correct for generalized age-related slowing, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. On trials with a color singleton distractor, search RT increased as a function of increasing activation in frontal regions, for both age groups combined, suggesting increased task difficulty. Mediational analyses disconfirmed the hypothesized model, in which frontal activation mediated the age-related increase in attentional capture, but supported an alternative model in which age was a mediator of the relation between frontal activation and capture.	f	\N
25109005	Depth of field (DOF) is defined as the distance range within which objects are perceived as sharp. Previous research has focused on blur discrimination in artificial stimuli and natural photographs. The discrimination of DOF, however, has received less attention. Since DOF introduces blur which is related to distance in depth, many levels of blur are simultaneously present. As a consequence, it is unclear whether discrimination thresholds for blur are appropriate for predicting discrimination thresholds for DOF. We therefore measured discrimination thresholds for DOF using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Ten participants were asked to observe two images and to select the one with the larger DOF. We manipulated the scale of the scene--that is, the actual depth in the scene. We conducted the experiment under stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic viewing conditions. We found that the threshold for a large DOF (39.1 mm) was higher than for a small DOF (10.1 mm), and the thresholds decreased when scale of scene increased. We also found that there was no significant difference between stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic conditions. We compared our results with thresholds predicted from the literature. We concluded that using blur discrimination thresholds to discriminate DOF may lead to erroneous conclusions because the depth in the scene significantly affects people's DOF discrimination ability.	f	\N
25116758	A phasic change in alertness is produced every time that a warning stimulus precedes a target, and it enhances and maintains the response readiness to an impending stimulus. In the present study, we investigated the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) phenomenon, as index of phasic alertness, during a S1-S2 paradigm in which the imperative stimulus was represented by a double-choice reaction time task, designed to increase the executive requests at S2. Subjects performed the task at three consecutive time points in order to explore the CNV activity over time. The repetition of a cued double-choice reaction time task reduced the reaction times (RTs), while CNV amplitude remained steady along the sessions. Our data suggest that the continuous recruitment of attentional resources does not undergo habituation when it is related to the brain activity required in the maintenance of working memory when the mental model of the stimulus environment is updated.	f	\N
25117780	Studies investigating the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and cognition in the very old (85+) are lacking. Cross-sectional (baseline) and prospective data (up to 3 years follow-up) from 775 participants in the Newcastle 85+ Study were analysed for global (measured by the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination) and attention-specific (measured by the attention battery of the Cognitive Drug Research test) cognitive performance in relation to season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles. Those in the lowest and highest season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles had an increased risk of impaired prevalent (1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.06-2.60, P = 0.03; 1.62, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.59, P = 0.04, respectively) but not incident global cognitive functioning or decline in functioning compared with those in the middle quartiles adjusted for sociodemographic, health and lifestyle confounders. Random effects models showed that participants belonging to the lowest and highest 25(OH)D quartiles, compared with those in the middle quartiles, had overall slower (log-transformed) attention reaction times for Choice Reaction Time (lowest, β = 0.023, P = 0.01; highest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02), Digit Vigilance Task (lowest, β = 0.009, P = 0.05; highest, β = 0.01, P = 0.02) and Power of Attention (lowest, β = 0.017, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.022, P = 0.002) and greater Reaction Time Variability (lowest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.02, P = 0.03). The increased risk of worse global cognition and attention amongst those in the highest quartile was not observed in non-users of vitamin D supplements/medication. Low and high season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles were associated with prevalent cognitive impairment and poorer overall performance in attention-specific tasks over 3 years in the very old, but not with global cognitive decline or incident impairment.	f	\N
25119128	Bilateral lung transplantation (BLTx) is an established treatment for end-stage pulmonary hypertension (PH). Ventilator weaning failure and death are more common as in BLTx for other indications. We hypothesized that left ventricular (LV) dysfunction is the main cause of early postoperative morbidity or mortality and investigated a weaning strategy using awake venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In 23 BLTx for severe PH, ECMO used during BLTx was continued for a minimum of 5 days (BLTx-ECMO group). Echocardiography, left atrial (LA) and Swan-Ganz catheters were used for monitoring. Early extubation after transplantation was attempted under continued ECMO. Preoperatively, all patients had severely reduced cardiac index (mean, 2.1 L/min/m2). On postoperative day 2, reduction of ECMO flow resulted in increasing LA and decreasing systemic blood pressures. On the day of ECMO explantation (median, postoperative day 8), LV diameter had increased; LA and blood pressures remained stable. Survival rates at 3 and 12 months were 100% and 96%, respectively. Data were compared to two historic control groups of BLTx without ECMO (BLTx ventilation) or combined heart-lung transplantation for severe PH. Early after BLTx for severe PH, the LV may be unable to handle normalized LV preload. This can be effectively bridged with awake venoarterial ECMO.	f	\N
25119464	There is enormous interest in designing training methods for reducing cognitive decline in healthy older adults. Because it is impaired with aging, multitasking has often been targeted and has been shown to be malleable with appropriate training. Investigating the effects of cognitive training on functional brain activation might provide critical indication regarding the mechanisms that underlie those positive effects, as well as provide models for selecting appropriate training methods. The few studies that have looked at brain correlates of cognitive training indicate a variable pattern and location of brain changes--a result that might relate to differences in training formats. The goal of this study was to measure the neural substrates as a function of whether divided attentional training programs induced the use of alternative processes or whether it relied on repeated practice. Forty-eight older adults were randomly allocated to one of three training programs. In the single repeated training, participants practiced an alphanumeric equation and a visual detection task, each under focused attention. In the divided fixed training, participants practiced combining verification and detection by divided attention, with equal attention allocated to both tasks. In the divided variable training, participants completed the task by divided attention, but were taught to vary the attentional priority allocated to each task. Brain activation was measured with fMRI pre- and post-training while completing each task individually and the two tasks combined. The three training programs resulted in markedly different brain changes. Practice on individual tasks in the single repeated training resulted in reduced brain activation whereas divided variable training resulted in a larger recruitment of the right superior and middle frontal gyrus, a region that has been involved in multitasking. The type of training is a critical factor in determining the pattern of brain activation.	f	\N
25122911	The mental chronometry of the human brain's processing of sounds to be categorized as targets has intensively been studied in cognitive neuroscience. According to current theories, a series of successive stages consisting of the registration, identification, and categorization of the sound has to be completed before participants are able to report the sound as a target by button press after ∼300-500 ms. Here we use miniature eye movements as a tool to study the categorization of a sound as a target or nontarget, indicating that an initial categorization is present already after 80-100 ms. During visual fixation, the rate of microsaccades, the fastest components of miniature eye movements, is transiently modulated after auditory stimulation. In two experiments, we measured microsaccade rates in human participants in an auditory three-tone oddball paradigm (including rare nontarget sounds) and observed a difference in the microsaccade rates between targets and nontargets as early as 142 ms after sound onset. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with directed saccades measured in a paradigm in which tones had to be matched to score-like visual symbols. Considering the delays introduced by (motor) signal transmission and data analysis constraints, the brain must have differentiated target from nontarget sounds as fast as 80-100 ms after sound onset in both paradigms. We suggest that predictive information processing for expected input makes higher cognitive attributes, such as a sound's identity and category, available already during early sensory processing. The measurement of eye movements is thus a promising approach to investigate hearing.	f	\N
25124118	The specific cognitive-affective mechanisms involved in the activation and regulation of the subjective and genital components of sexual arousal are not fully understood yet. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contribution of self-reported thoughts and affect to the prediction of women's subjective and genital responses to erotica. Twenty-eight sexually functional women (mean age = 32, SD = 6.29) were presented with sexually explicit and nonexplicit romantic films. Genital responses, subjective sexual arousal, state affect, and self-reported thoughts were assessed. Vaginal pulse amplitude was measured using a vaginal photoplethysmograph. Subjective sexual arousal, thoughts, and affective responses were assessed through self-report scales. Correlations between subjective and physiological sexual arousal were low (r = -0.05, P > 0.05). Self-reported thoughts and affect were significant predictors of subjective sexual arousal. The strongest single predictor of subjective arousal was sexual arousal thoughts (e.g., "I'm getting excited") (β = 0.63, P < 0.01). None of the cognitive or affective variables predicted women's genital responses. Overall, results support the role of cognitive (self-reported thoughts) and affective dimensions in women's subjective sexual arousal to erotica and, consistent with previous findings, suggest that subjective and physiological sexual arousal may be impacted by different processes.	f	\N
25142042	There is a paucity of work addressing the distractive, affect-enhancing, and motivational influences of music and video in combination during exercise. We examined the effects of music and music-and-video on a range of psychological and psychophysical variables during treadmill running at intensities above and below ventilatory threshold (VT). Participants (N = 24) exercised at 10 % of maximal capacity below VT and 10 % above under music-only, music-and-video, and control conditions. There was a condition × intensity × time interaction for perceived activation and state motivation, and an intensity × time interaction for state attention, perceived exertion (RPE), and affective valence. The music-and-video condition elicited the highest levels of dissociation, lowest RPE, and most positive affective responses regardless of exercise intensity. Attentional manipulations influence psychological and psychophysical variables at exercise intensities above and below VT, and this effect is enhanced by the combined presentation of auditory and visual stimuli.	f	\N
25148787	We examined ERP indices of proactive and reactive cognitive control processes in younger and older adults performing a sustained attention Go/No-Go task. Behavioral results showed that older adults were able to maintain a stable level of performance over time, while younger adults exhibited a vigilance decrement. The main ERP findings showed that in older adults, the amplitude of the pre-stimulus slow wave, a marker of proactive control, remained stable with time on task, and that the amplitude of the sustained potential, a marker of reactive control, increased with time on task. On the other hand, in younger adults, the amplitudes of both components decreased over time. Overall, older participants also exhibited larger amplitudes of the error negativity than their younger counterparts. These results suggest that age-related differences in the recruitment of proactive and reactive control over the course of the task can explain age differences in sustained attention performance.	f	\N
25151518	The current study aimed to explore whether self-reported attentional control (AC) and the attentional network functioning would predict spontaneous emotion downregulation after emotional induction. A total of 117 healthy volunteers were asked to continuously rate their discomfort while looking at affective pictures, as well as for a period of time after exposure. After controlling for trait anxiety, higher self-reported AC significantly predicted a greater spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to aversive pictures. Both higher self-reported AC and lower executive control network functioning (i.e., greater interference) predicted a faster spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to affectively neutral pictures. Results are discussed focusing on the relationship between AC and emotion regulation difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record	f	\N
25153776	Slow oscillations (<1 Hz) during slow wave sleep (SWS) promote the consolidation of declarative memory. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been shown to display deficits in sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memory supposedly due to dysfunctional slow brain rhythms during SWS. Using transcranial oscillating direct current stimulation (toDCS) at 0.75 Hz, we investigated whether an externally triggered increase in slow oscillations during early SWS elevates memory performance in children with ADHD. 12 children with ADHD underwent a toDCS and a sham condition in a double-blind crossover study design conducted in a sleep laboratory. Memory was tested using a 2D object-location task. In addition, 12 healthy children performed the same memory task in their home environment. Stimulation enhanced slow oscillation power in children with ADHD and boosted memory performance to the same level as in healthy children. These data indicate that increasing slow oscillation power during sleep by toDCS can alleviate declarative memory deficits in children with ADHD.	f	\N
25154283	When observers are asked to match the depth of an object according to its height, they often report systematic errors depending on viewing distance. Systematic biases can also arise while vergence distances are induced by binocular disparities. Observers of stereoscopic images tend to overestimate the depth of objects displayed in front of the screen, while the depth of objects displayed behind the screen plane is underestimated. This phenomenon creates a serious problem in that veridicality in depth perception appears distorted when one attempts to render the metrics of a captured 3-D world. These distortions could also subsist with structure-from-motion information and during motion-in-depth. Observers judged the circularity of transparent rotating cylinders that were either static or moving in depth. Crossed results show that participants could precisely retrieve the best modulation between presented depth and width. As this effect could be amplified with stimuli containing stronger perspective cues (ie contour perspective), participants judged the rigidity of spinning cubes, moving along the line of sight, which were either edges-defined or defined by randomly textured surfaces (dots). The results showed that, although depth constancy was not improved by contour perspective, perceived rigidity was increased by perspective when the best scaling estimate was displayed. This finding suggests that appropriate binocular disparity information in combination to monocular signal is necessary for stereoscopic depth perception.	f	\N
25159702	The implications of sleep for morality are only starting to be explored. Extending the ethics literature, we contend that because bringing morality to conscious attention requires effort, a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. We test this prediction with three studies. A laboratory study with a manipulation of sleep across 90 participants judging a scenario for moral content indicates that a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. An archival study of Google Trends data across 6 years highlights a national dip in Web searches for moral topics (but not other topics) on the Monday after the Spring time change, which tends to deprive people of sleep. Finally, a diary study of 127 participants indicates that (within participants) nights with a lack of sleep are associated with low moral awareness the next day. Together, these three studies suggest that a lack of sleep leaves people less morally aware, with important implications for the recognition of morality in others.	f	\N
25173177	Visual cognitive integrative functions need to be evaluated by a behavioral assessment, which requires an experienced evaluator. The Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire was designed to evaluate these functions, both in general pediatric population or in children with high risk of visual cognitive problems, through primary caregivers' answers. We aimed to validate the PreViAs questionnaire by comparing caregiver reports with results from a comprehensive clinical protocol. A total of 220 infants (<2 years old) were divided into two groups according to visual development, as determined by the clinical protocol. Their primary caregivers completed the PreViAs questionnaire, which consists of 30 questions related to one or more visual domains: visual attention, visual communication, visual-motor coordination, and visual processing. Questionnaire answers were compared with results of behavioral assessments performed by three pediatric ophthalmologists. Results of the clinical protocol classified 128 infants as having normal visual maturation, and 92 as having abnormal visual maturation. The specificity of PreViAs questionnaire was >80%, and sensitivity was 64%-79%. More than 80% of the infants were correctly classified, and test-retest reliability exceeded 0.9 for all domains. The PreViAs questionnaire is useful to detect abnormal visual maturation in infants from birth to 24months of age. It improves the anamnesis process in infants at risk of visual dysfunctions.	f	\N
25173722	Expecting a particular stimulus can facilitate processing of that stimulus over others, but what is the fate of other stimuli that are known to co-occur with the expected stimulus? This study examined the impact of learned association on feature-based attention. The findings show that the effectiveness of an uninformative color transient in orienting attention can change by learned associations between colors and the expected target shape. In an initial acquisition phase, participants learned two distinct sequences of stimulus-response-outcome, where stimuli were defined by shape ('S' vs. 'H'), responses were localized key-presses (left vs. right), and outcomes were colors (red vs. green). Next, in a test phase, while expecting a target shape (80% probable), participants showed reliable attentional orienting to the color transient associated with the target shape, and showed no attentional orienting with the color associated with the alternative target shape. This bias seemed to be driven by learned association between shapes and colors, and not modulated by the response. In addition, the bias seemed to depend on observing target-color conjunctions, since encountering the two features disjunctively (without spatiotemporal overlap) did not replicate the findings. We conclude that associative learning - likely mediated by mechanisms underlying visual object representation - can extend the impact of goal-driven attention to features associated with a target stimulus.	f	\N
25174852	The lifetime risk of suicide in patients with schizophrenia is estimated to be 4.9-13%. While there are many known risk factors for suicide in schizophrenia, the relationship between cognitive function and suicide risk is unclear, particularly in non-Caucasian populations. In our cross-sectional study, we administered the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) to 316 Han Chinese chronic inpatients with schizophrenia and compared the performance of those who had attempted suicide (n=25) to non-attempters (n=291). The lifetime suicide attempt data were collected from medical records and interviews with patients and their family members. We found a lifetime suicide attempt rate of 7.9%. Suicide attempters were more likely to be single, but showed no significant differences in other demographic factors such as age, gender, or living arrangements. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no significant relationship between performance on the RBANS test and lifetime risk of suicide attempts in Han Chinese inpatients with schizophrenia. The literature remains mixed on this topic. Culturally influenced differences in suicidal behavior may have affected the outcome of this study and further investigation of this topic is necessary.	f	\N
25175914	Cannabis-induced psychotic disorder (CIPD) refers to psychotic symptoms that arise in the context of cannabis intoxication. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits have been extensively identified in schizophrenia and in cannabis abusers. We aimed to characterize PPI in CIPD patients. We used a sample of 48 CIPD patients, 54 schizophrenia patients and cannabis abuse (SCHZ), 44 cannabis dependents (CD), and 44 controls. CIPD, SCHZ and CD were abstinent of cannabis consumption for 9 months. Participants were assessed with PPI at 30, 60, and 120 ms. At 30 ms, CIPD showed lower PPI levels than controls, and SCHZ obtained worse functioning than controls and CD. At 60 ms, only SCHZ exhibited worse PPI percentages (of object) than controls. Finally, at 120 ms, CIPD showed higher PPI levels than SCHZ, and SCHZ obtained lower percentages than controls. We found that CIPD and SCHZ patients showed deficits at the most pre-attentional levels, whereas CIPD patients performed better than SCHZ at higher attentional levels. These results suggest that CIPD constitutes a different group of patients than that of SCHZ. Deficits in PPI functioning at 30 ms could be a useful psychophysiological measure to detect CIPD patients, who are frequently confused with cannabis abusers whose symptoms may mimic that of schizophrenia.	f	\N
25184299	Previous research has shown that adults with dyslexia (AwD) are disproportionately impacted by close spacing of stimuli and increased numbers of distractors in a visual search task compared to controls [1]. Using an orientation discrimination task, the present study extended these findings to show that even in conditions where target search was not required: (i) AwD had detrimental effects of both crowding and increased numbers of distractors; (ii) AwD had more pronounced difficulty with distractor exclusion in the left visual field and (iii) measures of crowding and distractor exclusion correlated significantly with literacy measures. Furthermore, such difficulties were not accounted for by the presence of covarying symptoms of ADHD in the participant groups. These findings provide further evidence to suggest that the ability to exclude distracting stimuli likely contributes to the reported visual attention difficulties in AwD and to the aetiology of literacy difficulties. The pattern of results is consistent with weaker and asymmetric attention in AwD.	f	\N
25188718	The relevance of sleep instability is poorly appreciated among the metrics of sleep physiology. The cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) is a periodic electroencephalogram activity of non-REM sleep, characterized by sequences of transient electrocortical events that are distinct from the tonic background and recur at up to 1-min intervals. In the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP expresses a condition of instability that reflects the brain's effort in preserving and regulating the physiological structure of sleep. CAP quantification is a topical feature in the evaluation of sleep quality. In addition to duration, depth, and continuity, sleep restorative properties depend on the brain's capacity to determine the periods of sustained stable sleep. This issue is not confined only to the electroencephalogram activities but reverberates upon the ongoing autonomic and behavioral functions, which are mutually entrained in a synchronized oscillation. As a master clock involved in the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP plays a crucial role in numerous sleep disorders and is powerfully influenced by medication and appropriate treatment. This article reviews the scoring, significance, and clinical applications of CAP.	f	\N
25192605	We aimed to measure the diurnal changes of critical flicker frequency in healthy subjects and cirrhotic patients and to investigate their relationship with sleep disturbance. Cirrhotic patients and healthy volunteers were included. All groups completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and a simple sleep questionnaire. Sleep disturbance was defined as a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of >5. Critical flicker frequency was measured twice a day to detect diurnal abnormalities. Overall, 59 cirrhotic patients (54.2% males, Mean Age 59 ± 11 years) and 18 controls (39.9% males, Mean Age 58 ± 9 years) were included. Sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics (66.1%) than controls (38.9%, p<0.05). In cirrhotics, the critical flicker frequency was not related to decompensation. The nocturnal values were higher than the morning values in cirrhotics (64.4%), but not in controls (p<0.0001). Additionally, sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics who had higher nocturnal values (p<0.05). Changes in the diurnal critical flicker frequency were observed in cirrhotics but not in controls. Sleep disturbances in cirrhotics appear to be associated with deviations of the diurnal rhythm of critical flicker frequency rather than with clinical parameters such as the clinical stages of cirrhosis and the Model For End-Stage Liver Disease and Child-Pugh scores.	f	\N
25203170	The subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been shown to be implicated in the control of voluntary action, especially during tasks involving conflicting choice alternatives or rapid response suppression. However, the precise role of the STN during nonmotor functions remains controversial. First, we tested whether functionally distinct neuronal populations support different executive control functions (such as inhibitory control or error monitoring) even within a single subterritory of the STN. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study extracellular activity of the putative associative-limbic part of the STN while patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder performed a stop-signal task. Second, 2-4 days after the surgery, local field potential recordings of STN were used to test the hypothesis that STN oscillations may also reflect executive control signals. Extracellular recordings revealed three functionally distinct neuronal populations: the first one fired selectively before and during motor responses, the second one selectively increased their firing rate during successful inhibitory control, and the last one fired selectively during error monitoring. Furthermore, we found that beta band activity (15-35 Hz) rapidly increased during correct and incorrect behavioral stopping. Taken together, our results provide critical electrophysiological support for the hypothesized role of the STN in the integration of motor and cognitive-executive control functions.	f	\N
25210709	The underlying processes responsible for the differences between morning and afternoon measurements of postural control have not yet been clearly identified. This study was conducted to specify the role played by vestibular, visual, and somatosensory inputs in postural balance and their link with the diurnal fluctuations of body temperature and vigilance level. Nineteen healthy male subjects (mean age: 20.5 ± 1.3 years) participated in test sessions at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. after a normal night's sleep. Temperature was measured before the subjects completed a sign cancellation test and a postural control evaluation with eyes both open and closed. Our results confirmed that postural control improved throughout the day according to the circadian rhythm of body temperature and sleepiness/vigilance. The path length as a function of surface ratio increased between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. This is due to a decrease in the centre-of-pressure surface area, which is associated with an increase in path length. Romberg's index did not change throughout the day; however, the spectral analysis (fast Fourier transform) of the centre-of-pressure excursions (in anteroposterior and mediolateral directions) indicated that diurnal fluctuations in postural control may occur via changes in the different processes responsible for readjustment via muscle contractions.	f	\N
25215475	Previous studies have established that obese adolescents possess a stronger tendency to behave more impulsively and be more inattentive than healthy-weight children. Additionally, gender difference in inattention and impulsivity has also been substantiated by previous researchers. The current study examined the relationship between gender, body weight, and inattention and impulsivity in adolescents. It was hypothesized that obese males and females would have more inattentive and impulsive responses than their healthy-weight peers. Participants were 113 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19; all participants completed the CPT-II, a measure of inattentive and impulsive response styles. Findings indicated that males who were classified as overweight or obese scored higher on inattention than did obese females, healthy-weight males, and healthy-weight females. Additionally, females committed a greater number of commission errors and were less able to distinguish the target stimuli, suggestive of impulsive responding. These findings indicate a gender difference in regard to impulsive responding, and also reveal an interaction of weight status and gender on inattention. Implications for prevention and treatment are discussed.	f	\N
25224180	Changes of EEG alpha asymmetry in terms of increased right versus left sided activity in prefrontal cortex are considered to index activation of the withdrawal/avoidance motivational system. The present study aimed to add evidence of the validity of individual differences in the EEG alpha asymmetry response and their relevance regarding the impact of emotional events. The magnitude of the EEG alpha asymmetry response while watching a film consisting of scenes of real injury and death correlated with components of transient cardiac responses to sudden horrifying events happening to persons in the film which index withdrawal/avoidance motivation and heightened attention and perceptual intake. Additionally, it predicted greater mood deterioration following the film and film-related intrusive memories and avoidance over the following week. The study provides further evidence for prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry changes in response to relevant stimuli reflecting an individual's sensitivity to negative social-emotional cues encountered in everyday life.	f	\N
25226214	The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word's shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.	f	\N
25227004	This study investigated neuronal activation differences under two conditions: driving only and distracted driving. Driving and distraction tasks were performed using a Magnetic Resonance (MR)-compatible driving simulator with a driving wheel and pedal. The experiment consisted of three blocks, and each block had both a Rest phase (1 min) and a Driving phase (2 min). During the Rest phase, drivers were instructed to simply look at the stop screen without performing any driving tasks. During the Driving phase, each driver was required to drive at 110 km/h under two conditions: driving only and driving while performing additional distraction tasks. The results show that the precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, cuneus, and declive are less activated in distracted driving than in driving only. These regions are responsible for spatial perception, spatial attention, visual processing and motor control. However, the cingulate gyrus and sub-lobar regions (lentiform nucleus and caudate), which are responsible for error monitoring and control of unnecessary movement, show increased activation during distracted driving compared with driving only.	f	\N
25236921	Comparative judgment is a crucial task in ecological settings, as well as in many experimental studies about basic aspects of perceptual processes. It has long been known that sequential comparison is prone to order effects. This phenomenon has received little attention and has often been discounted as a type of response bias. In the present study, we investigated brightness discrimination of two brief (100 ms) spatially disjoint luminance stimuli. In the first and second experiments, stimuli were presented against a dark background with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) from 0 to 200 ms, in a paradigm controlling for response bias. In the third experiment, stimuli were presented against a bright background. We demonstrate that the time interval between stimuli modulates and even inverts their perceived brightness difference, enhancing the second stimulus relative to the first. When the background is brighter than the target stimuli, the sign of the effect is inverted, suggesting that the underlying mechanism operates on contrast rather than brightness. The magnitude of this effect is shown to depend on SOA and average luminance level of the target stimuli. Hypotheses in terms of neural and attentional dynamics are proposed.	f	\N
25241396	Right brain damage often provokes deficits of visuospatial attention. Although the spatial attention networks have been widely investigated in stroke patients as well as in the healthy brain, little is known about the impact of slow growing lesions in the right hemisphere. We here present a longitudinal study of 20 patients who have been undergoing awake brain surgery with per-operative line bisection testing. Our aim was to investigate the impact of tumour presence and of tumour resection on the functional (re)organization of the attention networks. We assessed patients' performance on lateralized target detection, visual exploration and line bisection before surgery, and in the acute and post-acute operative phases after surgery. Clear evidence for transient neglect signs was observed in the acute post-operative phase, although full recovery had invariably occurred in all patients. The resection of the right angular gyrus was associated with transient neglect-like symptoms in all tasks, whereas resection of more anterior regions correlated with transient deficits only in visual exploration or detection (but not in line bisection). The attentional networks showed substantial functional recovery. This impressive pattern of recovery is discussed in terms of involvement of the contralateral left hemisphere and of preservation of long-range white matter pathways within the right hemisphere.	f	\N
25244118	Working memory (WM) is strongly influenced by attention. In visual WM tasks, recall performance can be improved by an attention-guiding cue presented before encoding (precue) or during maintenance (retrocue). Although precues and retrocues recruit a similar frontoparietal control network, the two are likely to exhibit some processing differences, because precues invite anticipation of upcoming information whereas retrocues may guide prioritization, protection, and selection of information already in mind. Here we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological differences between precueing and retrocueing in a new visual WM task designed to permit a direct comparison between cueing conditions. We found marked differences in ERP profiles between the precue and retrocue conditions. In line with precues primarily generating an anticipatory shift of attention toward the location of an upcoming item, we found a robust lateralization in late cue-evoked potentials associated with target anticipation. Retrocues elicited a different pattern of ERPs that was compatible with an early selection mechanism, but not with stimulus anticipation. In contrast to the distinct ERP patterns, alpha-band (8-14 Hz) lateralization was indistinguishable between cue types (reflecting, in both conditions, the location of the cued item). We speculate that, whereas alpha-band lateralization after a precue is likely to enable anticipatory attention, lateralization after a retrocue may instead enable the controlled spatiotopic access to recently encoded visual information.	f	\N
25248557	The aim of this study was to elucidate the dimensional structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and potential moderators and functional correlates of this structure in disaster-affected adolescents. A population-based sample of 2000 adolescents aged 12-17 years (M = 14.5 years; 51% female) completed interviews on post-tornado PTSD symptoms, substance use, and parent-adolescent conflict between 4 and 13 months (M = 8.8, SD = 2.6) after tornado exposure. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that all models fit well but a 5-factor dysphoric arousal model provided a statistically significantly better representation of adolescent PTSD symptoms compared to 4-factor dysphoria and emotional numbing models. There was evidence of measurement invariance of the dysphoric arousal model across gender and age, although girls and older adolescents aged 15-17 years had higher mean scores than boys and younger adolescents aged 12-14 years, respectively, on some PTSD dimensions. Differential magnitudes of association between PTSD symptom dimensions and functional correlates were observed, with emotional numbing symptoms most strongly positively associated with problematic substance use since the tornado, and dysphoric arousal symptoms most strongly positively associated with parent-adolescent conflict; both correlations were significantly larger than the corresponding correlations with anxious arousal. Taken together, these results suggest that the dimensional structure of tornado-related PTSD symptomatology in adolescents is optimally characterized by five separate clusters of re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal symptoms, which showed unique associations with functional correlates. Findings emphasize that PTSD in disaster-exposed adolescents is not best conceptualized as a homogenous construct and highlight potential differential targets for post-disaster assessment and intervention.	f	\N
25253260	Along with urbanization of the living environment, the number of patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorder (CRSD) has been increasing. There are several treatment candidates for CRSD, such as light therapy, drugs (melatonin and vitamin B12), and sleep hygiene education. However, successful treatment method has not been established. In free-running type (FRT) CRSD, the endogenous circadian rhythm cannot be entrained to the 24-h light-dark cycle, resulting in free running on a cycle 0.5-2.5 h longer than the 24-h period. This condition is relatively common in blind individuals and is unusual in sighted individuals. Here we report two sighted patients with FRT, successfully treated with a melatonin receptor agonist, ramelteon. Patient 1 (36-year-old female) had suffered from FRT for nearly 4 months after resigning her job. She was given sleep hygiene education together with ramelteon at first and the free-running cycle stopped after treatment day 15. Triazolam was added from the day 25 to promote earlier sleep onset. And the sleep-wake schedule was normalized by the day 34. Patient 2 (33-year-old male) had suffered from FRT for nearly 8 months after starting to take a leave of absence from his job. He was given sleep hygiene education and was treated with ramelteon and methylcobalamin. His sleep-wake schedule was normalized from the first treatment day. By the combined treatment with ramelteon, both patients have maintained favorable sleep-wake schedules. The agonist action of ramelteon at the melatonin 2 receptor may have primarily contributed to the cessation of the free-running cycle in these patients.	f	\N
25254067	This study investigates the effect of tone inventories on brain activities underlying pitch without focal attention. We find that the electrophysiological responses to across-category stimuli are larger than those to within-category stimuli when the pitch contours are superimposed on nonspeech stimuli; however, there is no electrophysiological response difference associated with category status in speech stimuli. Moreover, this category effect in nonspeech stimuli is stronger for Cantonese speakers. Results of previous and present studies lead us to conclude that brain activities to the same native lexical tone contrasts are modulated by speakers' language experiences not only in active phonological processing but also in automatic feature detection without focal attention. In contrast to the condition with focal attention, where phonological processing is stronger for speech stimuli, the feature detection (pitch contours in this study) without focal attention as shaped by language background is superior in relatively regular stimuli, that is, the nonspeech stimuli. The results suggest that Cantonese listeners outperform Mandarin listeners in automatic detection of pitch features because of the denser Cantonese tone system.	f	\N
25260191	This study tested the effects of a parent-mediated intervention on parental responsiveness with their toddlers at high risk for an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included caregivers and their 66 toddlers at high risk for ASD. Caregivers were randomized to 12 sessions of an individualized parent education intervention aimed at improving parental responsiveness or to a monitoring control group involving 4 sessions of behavioral support. Parental responsiveness and child outcomes were measured at three time points: at beginning and end of the 3-month treatment and at 12-months post-study entry. Parental responsiveness improved significantly in the treatment group but not the control group. However, parental responsiveness was not fully maintained at follow up. There were no treatment effects on child outcomes of joint attention or language. Children in both groups made significant developmental gains in cognition and language skills over one year. These results support parental responsiveness as an important intervention target given its general association with child outcomes in the extant literature; however, additional supports are likely needed to fully maintain the treatment effect and to affect child outcomes.	f	\N
25273924	The study used a dual-task (DT) postural paradigm (two tasks performed at once) that included electroencephalography (EEG) to examine cortical interference when a visual working memory (VWM) task was paired with a postural task. The change detection task was used, as it requires storage of information without updating or manipulation and predicts VWM capacity. Ground reaction forces (GRFs) (horizontal and vertical), EMG, and EEG elements, time locked to support surface perturbations, were used to infer the active neural processes underlying the automatic control of balance in 14 young adults. A significant reduction was seen between single task (ST) and DT conditions in VWM capacity (F(1,13) = 6.175, p < 0.05, r = 06) and event-related potential (ERP) N1 component amplitude over the L motor (p < 0.001) and R sensory (p < 0.05) cortical areas. In addition, a significant increase in the COP trajectory peak (pkcopx) was seen in the DT versus ST condition. Modulation of VWM capacity as well as ERP amplitude and pkcopx in DT conditions provided evidence of an interference pattern, suggesting that the two modalities shared a similar set of attentional resources. The results provide direct evidence of the competition for central processing attentional resources between the two modalities, through the reduction in amplitude of the ERP evoked by the postural perturbation.	f	\N
25294128	The differentiation of the vegetative or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) from the minimally conscious state (MCS) is an important clinical issue. The cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglc) declines when consciousness is lost, and may reveal the residual cognitive function of these patients. However, no quantitative comparisons of cerebral glucose metabolism in VS/UWS and MCS have yet been reported. We calculated the regional and whole-brain CMRglc of 41 patients in the states of VS/UWS (n=14), MCS (n=21) or emergence from MCS (EMCS, n=6), and healthy volunteers (n=29). Global cortical CMRglc in VS/UWS and MCS averaged 42% and 55% of normal, respectively. Differences between VS/UWS and MCS were most pronounced in the frontoparietal cortex, at 42% and 60% of normal. In brainstem and thalamus, metabolism declined equally in the two conditions. In EMCS, metabolic rates were indistinguishable from those of MCS. Ordinal logistic regression predicted that patients are likely to emerge into MCS at CMRglc above 45% of normal. Receiver-operating characteristics showed that patients in MCS and VS/UWS can be differentiated with 82% accuracy, based on cortical metabolism. Together these results reveal a significant correlation between whole-brain energy metabolism and level of consciousness, suggesting that quantitative values of CMRglc reveal consciousness in severely brain-injured patients.	f	\N
25295649	Diagnosis and management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults is complex and challenging because of the frequent comorbidity of other psychiatric disorders that have symptoms overlapping with those of ADHD. The presence of comorbidities can create challenges to making an accurate diagnosis and also impact treatment options and outcomes. This review discusses disorders that may be comorbid with ADHD in adults, including anxiety, mood, substance use disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Suggestions for recognizing these comorbidities and distinguishing them from ADHD and perspectives on their possible impact on ADHD treatment are included. Adjunctive nonpharmacologic modalities may be especially helpful in the case of comorbid mood, anxiety, substance abuse, or personality disorders.	f	\N
25311333	Women at high risk for ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation or family history are recommended to undergo risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) after age 35 or completion of childbearing. This potentially life-saving surgery leads to premature menopause, frequently resulting in distressing and unaddressed sexual dysfunction. To pilot a novel sexual health intervention for women with BRCA1/2 mutations who previously underwent RRSO a using a single-arm trial. Feasibility and primary outcomes including sexual dysfunction and psychological distress were assessed. This single-arm trial included a one-time, half-day educational session comprised of targeted sexual health education, body awareness and relaxation training, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy strategies, followed by two sessions of tailored telephone counseling. Assessments were completed at baseline and 2 months postintervention. Study end points include feasibility and effectiveness as reported by the participant. Thirty-seven women completed baseline and postintervention assessments. At baseline, participants had a mean age of 44.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 3.9) years and mean duration of 3.8 (SD = 2.7) years since RRSO. Overall sexual functioning (P = 0.018), as well as desire (P = 0.003), arousal (P = 0.003), satisfaction (P = 0.028), and pain (P = 0.018), improved significantly. There were significant reductions in somatization (P = 0.029) and anxiety scores (P < 0.001), and, overall, for the Global Severity Index (P < 0.001) of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Sexual self-efficacy and sexual knowledge also improved significantly from baseline to postintervention (both P < 0.001). Women were highly satisfied with the intervention content and reported utilizing new skills to manage sexual dysfunction. This intervention integrates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy with sexual health education to address a much-neglected problem after RRSO. Results from this promising single-arm study provide preliminary data to move toward conducting a randomized, controlled trial.	f	\N
25314961	To estimate the heritability of child behaviour problems and investigate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and child behaviour problems in a genetically sensitive design. Observational cross-sectional study. The Twins and Multiple Births Association Heritability Study (TAMBAHS) is an online UK-wide volunteer-based study investigating the development of twins from birth until 5 years of age. A total of 443 (16% of the initial registered members) mothers answered questions on pre-pregnancy weight and their twins' internalising and externalising problems using the Child Behavior Checklist and correcting for important covariates including gestational age, twins' birth weight, age and sex, mother's educational level and smoking (before, during and after pregnancy). The heritability of behaviour problems and their association with maternal pre-pregnancy weight. The genetic analysis suggested that genetic and common environmental factors account for most of the variation in externalising disorders (an ACE model was the most parsimonious with genetic factors (A) explaining 46% (95% CI 33% to 60%) of the variance, common environment (C) explaining 42% (95% CI 27% to 54%) and non-shared environmental factors (E) explaining 13% (95% CI 10% to 16%) of the variance. For internalising problems, a CE model was the most parsimonious model with the common environment explaining 51% (95% CI 44% to 58%) of the variance and non-shared environment explaining 49% (95% CI 42% to 56%) of the variance. Moreover, the regression analysis results suggested that children of overweight mothers showed a trend (OR=1.10, 95% CI 0.58% to 2.06) towards being more aggressive and exhibit externalising behaviours compared to children of normal weight mothers. Maternal pre-pregnancy weight may play a role in children's aggressive behaviour.	f	\N
25322890	Physiological hyperarousal is manifested acutely by increased heart rate, decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and increased skin conductance level and variability. Yet it is uncertain to what extent such activation occurs with the symptomatic hyperarousal of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We compared 56 male veterans with current PTSD to 54 males who never had PTSD. Subjects wore ambulatory devices that recorded electrocardiograms, finger skin conductance, and wrist movement while in their normal environments. Wrist movement was monitored to estimate sleep and waking periods. Heart rate, but not the other variables, was elevated in subjects with PTSD equally during waking and during actigraphic sleep (effect sizes, Cohen's d, ranged from 0.63 to 0.89). The length of the sleep periods and estimated sleep fragmentation did not differ between groups. Group heart rate differences could not be explained by differences in body activity, PTSD hyperarousal symptom scores, depression, physical fitness, or antidepressant use.	f	\N
25325493	Alterations in emotional reactivity may play a key role in the pathophysiology of insomnia disorder (ID). However, only few supporting experimental data are currently available. We evaluated in a hypothesis-driven design whether patients with ID present altered amygdale responses to emotional stimuli related and unrelated to the experience of insomnia and, because of chronic hyperarousal, less habituation of amygdala responses. Case-control study. Departments of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and of Radiology of the University of Freiburg Medical Center. There were 22 patients with ID (15 females; 7 males; age 40.7 ± 12.6 y) and 38 healthy good sleepers (HGS, 21 females; 17 males; age 39.6 ± 8.9 y). N/A. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging session, five different blocks of pictures with varying emotional arousal, valence, and content (insomnia-relatedness) were presented. Pictures were presented twice to test for habituation processes. Results showed that patients with ID, compared to HGS, presented heightened amygdala responses to insomnia-related stimuli. Moreover, habituation of amygdale responses was observed only in HGS, but not in patients with ID who showed a mixed pattern of amygdala responses to the second presentation of the stimuli. The results provide evidence for an insomnia-related emotional bias in patients with ID. Cognitive behavior treatment for ID could benefit from strategies dealing with the emotional charge associated with the disorder. Further studies should clarify the role of ID with respect to habituation of amygdala responses.	f	\N
25328996	Intermodal integration required for perceptual learning tasks is rife with individual differences. Participants vary in how they use perceptual information to one modality. One participant alone might change her own response over time. Participants vary further in their use of feedback through one modality to inform another modality. Two experiments test the general hypothesis that perceptual-motor fluctuations reveal both information use within modality and coordination among modalities. Experiment 1 focuses on perceptual learning in dynamic touch, in which participants use exploratory hand-wielding of unseen objects to make visually guided length judgments and use visual feedback to rescale their judgments of the same mechanical information. Previous research found that the degree of fractal temporal scaling (i.e., "fractality") in hand-wielding moderates the use of mechanical information. Experiment 1 shows that head-sway fractality moderates the use of visual information. Further, experience with feedback increases head-sway fractality and prolongs its effect on later hand-wielding fractality. Experiment 2 replicates effects of head-sway fractality moderating use of visual information in a purely visual-judgment task. Together, these findings suggest that fractal fluctuations may provide a modal-general window onto not just how participants use perceptual information but also how well they may integrate information among different modalities.	f	\N
25330316	It has been well known that pediatric allergic rhinitis was associated with poor performance at school due to attention deficit. However, there were no cohort studies for the effect of treatment of allergic rhinitis on attention performance in pediatric population. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate whether attention performance was improved after treatment in children with allergic rhinitis. In this ARCO-Kids (Allergic Rhinitis Cohort Study for Kids), consecutive pediatric patients with rhinitis symptoms underwent a skin prick test and computerized comprehensive attention test. According to the skin prick test results, the children were diagnosed as allergic rhinitis or non- allergic rhinitis. All of the patients were regularly followed up and treated with oral medication or intranasal corticosteroid sprays. The comprehensive attention tests consisted of sustained and divided attention tasks. Each of the tasks was assessed by the attention score which was calculated by the number of omission and commission errors. The comprehension attention test was repeated after 1 year. A total of 797 children with allergic rhinitis and 239 children with non-allergic rhinitis were included. Initially, the attention scores of omission and commission errors on divided attention task were significantly lower in children with allergic rhinitis than in children with non-allergic rhinitis. After 1 year of treatment, children with allergic rhinitis showed improvement in attention: commission error of sustained (95.6±17.0 vs 97.0±16.6) and divided attention task (99.1±15.8 vs 91.8±23.5). Meanwhile, there was no significant difference of attention scores in children with non-allergic rhinitis. Our study showed that management of allergic rhinitis might be associated with improvement of attention.	f	\N
25338537	In the present study, we investigated how feature- and location-based selection influences visual working memory (VWM) encoding and maintenance. In Experiment 1, cue type (color, location) and cue timing (precue, retro-cue) were manipulated in a change detection task. The stimuli were color-location conjunction objects, and binding memory was tested. We found a significantly greater effect for color precues than for either color retro-cues or location precues, but no difference between location pre- and retro-cues, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Griffin & Nobre in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176-1194, 2003). We also found no difference between location and color retro-cues. Experiment 2 replicated the color precue advantage with more complex color-shape-location conjunction objects. Only one retro-cue effect was different from that in Experiment 1: Color retro-cues were significantly less effective than location retro-cues in Experiment 2, which may relate to a structural property of multidimensional VWM representations. In Experiment 3, a visual search task was used, and the result of a greater location than color precue effect suggests that the color precue advantage in a memory task is related to the modulation of VWM encoding rather than of sensation and perception. Experiment 4, using a task that required only memory for individual features but not for feature bindings, further confirmed that the color precue advantage is specific to binding memory. Together, these findings reveal new aspects of the interaction between attention and VWM and provide potentially important implications for the structural properties of VWM representations.	f	\N
25348131	To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. University hospital sleep disorder unit. Case-control study. Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5 controls who self-identified as frequent lucid dreamers underwent nighttime and daytime sleep monitoring after being given instructions regarding how to give an eye signal when lucid. Compared to 53 healthy controls, the 53 narcolepsy patients reported more frequent dream recall, nightmares and recurrent dreams. Lucid dreaming was achieved by 77.4% of narcoleptic patients and 49.1% of controls (P < 0.05), with an average of 7.6±11 vs. 0.3±0.8 lucid dreams/ month (P < 0.0001). The frequency of cataplexy, hallucinations, sleep paralysis, dyssomnia, HLA positivity, and the severity of sleepiness were similar in narcolepsy with and without lucid dreaming. Seven of 12 narcoleptic (and 0 non-narcoleptic) lucid dreamers achieved lucid REM sleep across a total of 33 naps, including 14 episodes with eye signal. The delta power in the electrode average, in delta, theta, and alpha powers in C4, and coherences between frontal electrodes were lower in lucid than non-lucid REM sleep in spectral EEG analysis. The duration of REM sleep was longer, the REM sleep onset latency tended to be shorter, and the percentage of atonia tended to be higher in lucid vs. non-lucid REM sleep; the arousal index and REM density and amplitude were unchanged. Narcolepsy is a novel, easy model for studying lucid dreaming.	f	\N
25351450	To evaluate sexual function in women undergoing assisted reproductive techniques. This is a case-control study including 278 women assisted in Human Reproduction services and at the Gynecology Clinic of the University Hospital, Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. The women were divided into a study group (168 infertile women) and a control group (110 fertile women), and they answered the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire used the assess the sexual function. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) for the chance of sexual dysfunction in infertile women (p<0.05). Out of the analyzed women, 33.09% reported sexual dysfunction, with no difference in the FSFI score between groups (p=0.29). The prevalence of sexual dysfunction was of 36.30% among infertile women and 28.18% among fertile women; however, there was no difference between FSFI scores (p=0.36). The desire and arousal domains were significantly different among infertile women (p=0.01). Infertile women had the same chances of having sexual dysfunction as fertile women (OR=1.4, 95%CI 0.8-2.4; p=0.2). There were no differences between infertile and fertile women. Infertile women undergoing assisted reproduction techniques require professional approach to sexual health regarding desire and arousal.	f	\N
25352218	Coordinated attention to information from multiple senses is fundamental to our ability to respond to salient environmental events, yet little is known about brain network mechanisms that guide integration of information from multiple senses. Here we investigate dynamic causal mechanisms underlying multisensory auditory-visual attention, focusing on a network of right-hemisphere frontal-cingulate-parietal regions implicated in a wide range of tasks involving attention and cognitive control. Participants performed three 'oddball' attention tasks involving auditory, visual and multisensory auditory-visual stimuli during fMRI scanning. We found that the right anterior insula (rAI) demonstrated the most significant causal influences on all other frontal-cingulate-parietal regions, serving as a major causal control hub during multisensory attention. Crucially, we then tested two competing models of the role of the rAI in multisensory attention: an 'integrated' signaling model in which the rAI generates a common multisensory control signal associated with simultaneous attention to auditory and visual oddball stimuli versus a 'segregated' signaling model in which the rAI generates two segregated and independent signals in each sensory modality. We found strong support for the integrated, rather than the segregated, signaling model. Furthermore, the strength of the integrated control signal from the rAI was most pronounced on the dorsal anterior cingulate and posterior parietal cortices, two key nodes of saliency and central executive networks respectively. These results were preserved with the addition of a superior temporal sulcus region involved in multisensory processing. Our study provides new insights into the dynamic causal mechanisms by which the AI facilitates multisensory attention.	f	\N
25366823	This investigation brings together a response-time system identification methodology (e.g., Townsend & Wenger Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 391-418, 2004a) and an accuracy methodology, intended to assess models of integration across stimulus dimensions (features, modalities, etc.) that were proposed by Shaw and colleagues (e.g., Mulligan & Shaw Perception & Psychophysics 28, 471-478, 1980). The goal was to theoretically examine these separate strategies and to apply them conjointly to the same set of participants. The empirical phases were carried out within an extension of an established experimental design called the double factorial paradigm (e.g., Townsend & Nozawa Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39, 321-359, 1995). That paradigm, based on response times, permits assessments of architecture (parallel vs. serial processing), stopping rule (exhaustive vs. minimum time), and workload capacity, all within the same blocks of trials. The paradigm introduced by Shaw and colleagues uses a statistic formally analogous to that of the double factorial paradigm, but based on accuracy rather than response times. We demonstrate that the accuracy measure cannot discriminate between parallel and serial processing. Nonetheless, the class of models supported by the accuracy data possesses a suitable interpretation within the same set of models supported by the response-time data. The supported model, consistent across individuals, is parallel and has limited capacity, with the participants employing the appropriate stopping rule for the experimental setting.	f	\N
25376192	Evidence from perceptually based implicit memory tasks demonstrates greater priming from distracting information among older compared with younger adults. We examined whether older adults also show greater conceptually based implicit priming from distracting information. We measured priming using a general-knowledge test that was preceded by an incidental-encoding task (a color-naming Stroop task in one experiment and a 1-back task involving pictures with irrelevant words superimposed in a second experiment). Younger adults showed no priming from the distracting information in either experiment, whereas older adults showed reliable priming in both experiments. Thus, unlike young adults, older adults process irrelevant information conceptually and then can use that information to boost their performance on a subsequent task.	f	\N
25379451	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been characterized by atypical socio-communicative behavior, sensorimotor impairment and abnormal neurodevelopmental trajectories. DTI has been used to determine the presence and nature of abnormality in white matter integrity that may contribute to the behavioral phenomena that characterize ASD. Although atypical patterns of sensory responding in ASD are well documented in the behavioral literature, much less is known about the neural networks associated with aberrant sensory processing. To address the roles of basic sensory, sensory association and early attentional processes in sensory responsiveness in ASD, our investigation focused on five white matter fiber tracts known to be involved in these various stages of sensory processing: superior corona radiata, centrum semiovale, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, posterior limb of the internal capsule, and splenium. We acquired high angular resolution diffusion images from 32 children with ASD and 26 typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 8. We also administered sensory assessments to examine brain-behavior relationships between white matter integrity and sensory variables. Our findings suggest a modulatory role of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and splenium in atypical sensorimotor and early attention processes in ASD. Increased tactile defensiveness was found to be related to reduced fractional anisotropy in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, which may reflect an aberrant connection between limbic structures in the temporal lobe and the inferior parietal cortex. Our findings also corroborate the modulatory role of the splenium in attentional orienting, but suggest the possibility of a more diffuse or separable network for social orienting in ASD. Future investigation should consider the use of whole brain analyses for a more robust assessment of white matter microstructure.	f	\N
25384235	During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.	f	\N
25384520	The aim of this study was to assess sexual function in female patients with myocardial infarction (MI). As research instruments, an interview form of 20 questions that questioned personal characteristics was developed by researchers, Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) that evaluated sexual dysfunction was used. The Beck Depression Inventory was used to evaluate depression. In the course of this study, 45 female patients (62.73 ± 8.55 years) with MI and 50 control women were interviewed. The total FSFI score was 16.41 ± 8.04 in the MI group versus 23.13 ± 3.95 (P < 0.001) in the control group. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction is significantly higher and the mean FSFI score was significantly lower in MI group women in comparison with the control group. Subscale scores of desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm domains were lower than the other subscale scores in the MI group. Besides, 75.6% of the women in the MI group and 48.2% of women in the control group had a female sexual dysfunction. The frequency of intercourse was significantly lower in women with MI (1.55 ± 0.50 times last month) compared to the control group (2.14 ± 1.04 times last month). No significant differences were detected between the mean total BDI scores. But the correlation between FSFI and BDI total scores indicates that the increasing BDI scores in MI and control groups affected the total FSFI scores negatively. Sexual problems are frequent in women with MI. Sexuality should be evaluated after MI and patients' education and counseling may contribute to a better sexual function.	f	\N
25428212	Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism.	f	\N
25443228	The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an internal and external attentional focus on single leg hop jump distance and knee kinematics in patients after ACL reconstruction (ACLR). Experimental. Outpatient physical therapy facility. Sixteen patients after ACLR. Patients received either an instruction with an internal focus or an external focus before performing a single leg hop jump. The jump distance, knee valgus angle at initial contact, peak knee valgus angle, knee flexion angle at initial contact, peak knee flexion angle, total ROM and time to peak angles for the injured and non-injured legs were recorded. A repeated measures MANOVA was used to determine significance between the experimental conditions with the primary outcome measures as dependent variables. The external focus group had significant larger knee flexion angles at initial contact, peak knee flexion, total ROM and time to peak knee flexion for the injured legs. This study demonstrates the applicability of using an external focus during rehabilitation of patients after ACLR to enhance safer movement patterns compared to an internal focus of attention and subsequently may help to reduce second ACL injury risk.	f	\N
25445180	Efforts to determine and understand the causes of autism are currently hampered by a large disconnect between recent molecular genetics findings that are associated with the condition and the core behavioral symptoms that define the condition. In this perspective piece, we propose a systems biology framework to bridge that gap between genes and symptoms. The framework focuses on basic mechanisms of socialization that are highly-conserved in evolution and are early-emerging in development. By conceiving of these basic mechanisms of socialization as quantitative endophenotypes, we hope to connect genes and behavior in autism through integrative studies of neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and epigenetic changes. These changes both lead to and are led by the accomplishment of specific social adaptive tasks in a typical infant's life. However, based on recent research that indicates that infants later diagnosed with autism fail to accomplish at least some of these tasks, we suggest that a narrow developmental period, spanning critical transitions from reflexive, subcortically-controlled visual behavior to interactional, cortically-controlled and social visual behavior be prioritized for future study. Mapping epigenetic, neural, and behavioral changes that both drive and are driven by these early transitions may shed a bright light on the pathogenesis of autism.	f	\N
25446944	We review reports of brain activations that occur immediately prior to the onset or following the offset of to-be-remembered information and can predict subsequent mnemonic success. Memory-predictive pre-encoding processes, occurring from fractions of a second to minutes prior to event onset, are mainly associated with activations in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), amygdala and midbrain, and with enhanced theta oscillations. These activations may be considered as the neural correlates of one or more cognitive operations, including contextual processing, attention, and the engagement of distinct computational modes associated with prior encoding or retrieval. Post-encoding activations that correlate with subsequent memory performance are mainly observed in the MTL, sensory cortices and frontal regions. These activations may reflect binding of elements of the encoded information and initiation of memory consolidation. In all, the findings reviewed here illustrate the importance of brain states in the immediate peri-encoding time windows in determining encoding success. Understanding these brain states and their specific effects on memory may lead to optimization of the encoding of desired memories and mitigation of undesired ones.	f	\N
25448628	The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) state that young people need to have access to the best evidence-based care to improve outcome. The current 'gold standard' ADHD diagnostic assessment combines clinical observation with subjective parent, teacher and self-reports. In routine practice, reports from multiple informants may be unavailable or contradictory, leading to diagnostic uncertainty and delay. The addition of objective tests of attention and activity may help reduce diagnostic uncertainty and delays in initiating treatment leading to improved outcomes. This trial investigates whether providing clinicians with an objective report of levels of attention, impulsivity and activity can lead to an earlier, and more accurate, clinical diagnosis and improved patient outcome. This multisite randomised controlled trial will recruit young people (aged 6-17 years old) who have been referred for an ADHD diagnostic assessment at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Community Paediatric clinics across England. Routine clinical assessment will be augmented by the QbTest, incorporating a continuous performance test (CPT) and infrared motion tracking of activity. The participant will be randomised into one of two study arms: QbOpen (clinician has immediate access to a QbTest report): QbBlind (report is withheld until the study end). Primary outcomes are time to diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy. Secondary outcomes include clinician's diagnostic confidence and routine clinical outcome measures. Cost-effective analysis will be conducted, alongside a qualitative assessment of the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating QbTest in routine practice. The findings from the study will inform commissioners, clinicians and managers about the feasibility, acceptability, clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of incorporating QbTest into routine diagnostic assessment of young people with ADHD. The results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The study has received ethical approval. NCT02209116.	f	\N
25460674	Mounting research shows that the tendency to co-ruminate with peers regarding ongoing problems increases adolescents' depression risk; however, the means by which this interpersonal process fosters risk has not been identified. This said, theorists have proposed that co-rumination increases depression risk, in part, by increasing one's tendency to ruminate when alone. We tested this hypothesis in a study of 201 high-school freshmen who completed two assessments, six months apart. Supporting the proposed model, co-rumination predicted prospective increases in rumination and rumination predicted increases in depressive symptoms. The direct effect of co-rumination on depressive symptom change was not significant. Results indicate that co-rumination with friends may serve to increase rumination, which in turn increases depression risk.	f	\N
25461224	The present proof-of-concept study investigated the feasibility of skin conductance biofeedback training in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), whose seizures are triggered by stress. Skin conductance biofeedback aims to increase levels of peripheral sympathetic arousal in order to reduce cortical excitability. This might seem somewhat counterintuitive, since such autonomic arousal may also be associated with increased stress and anxiety. Thus, this sought to verify that patients with TLE and stress-triggered seizures are not worsened in terms of stress, anxiety, and negative emotional response to this nonpharmacological treatment. Eleven patients with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress were treated with 12 sessions of biofeedback. Patients did not worsen on cognitive evaluation of attentional biases towards negative emotional stimuli (P>.05) or on psychometric evaluation with state anxiety inventory (P = .059); in addition, a significant improvement was found in the Negative Affect Schedule (P = .014) and in the Beck Depression Inventory (P = .009). Biofeedback training significantly reduced seizure frequency with a mean reduction of -48.61% (SD = 27.79) (P = .005). There was a correlation between the mean change in skin conductance activity over the biofeedback treatment and the reduction of seizure frequency (r(11) = .62, P = .042). Thus, the skin conductance biofeedback used in the present study, which teaches patients to achieve an increased level of peripheral sympathetic arousal, was a well-tolerated nonpharmacological treatment. Further, well-controlled studies are needed to confirm the therapeutic value of this nonpharmacological treatment in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress.	f	\N
25462041	During early childhood, girls outperform boys on key dimensions of cognitive functions, including inhibitory control, sustained attention, and working memory. The role of parenting in these sex differences is unknown despite evidence that boys are more sensitive to the effects of the early environment. In this study, we measured parental sensitivity at 14 and 36 months of age, and children's cognitive and executive functions (sustained attention, inhibitory control, and forward/backward memory) at 52 months of age, in a longitudinal cohort (N=752). Boys scored significantly lower than girls on inhibitory control (more Go/NoGo "commission errors") and short-term memory (forward color recall task), but boys did not differ from girls on attention (Go/NoGo "omission errors") or working memory (backward color recall task). In stratified analyses, parental sensitivity at 36 months of age was negatively associated with number of errors of commission (p=.05) and omission (p=.02) in boys, whereas child's age was the only significant predictor of commission and omission errors in girls. A combined analysis of both sexes confirmed an interaction between sex and parenting for omission errors (p=.03). The results indicate that sex differences in cognitive functions are evident in preschoolers, although not across all dimensions we assessed. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to early parenting effects, but only in association with omission errors (attention) and not with the other cognitive function dimensions.	f	\N
25463351	Much research evidences a system in adults and young children for approximately representing quantity. Here we provide evidence that the bias to attend to discrete quantity versus other dimensions may be mediated by set size and culture. Preschool-age English-speaking children in the United States and Japanese-speaking children in Japan were tested in a match-to-sample task where number was pitted against cumulative surface area in both large and small numerical set comparisons. Results showed that children from both cultures were biased to attend to the number of items for small sets. Large set responses also showed a general attention to number when ratio difficulty was easy. However, relative to the responses for small sets, attention to number decreased for both groups; moreover, both U.S. and Japanese children showed a significant bias to attend to total amount for difficult numerical ratio distances, although Japanese children shifted attention to total area at relatively smaller set sizes than U.S. children. These results add to our growing understanding of how quantity is represented and how such representation is influenced by context--both cultural and perceptual.	f	\N
25463457	EEG studies of cue-induced visual alpha power (8-13 Hz) lateralization have been conducted on young adults without examining differences that may develop as a consequence of normal aging. Here, we examined age-related differences in spatial attention by comparing healthy older and younger adults. Our key finding is that cue-induced alpha power lateralization was observed in younger, but not older adults, even though both groups exhibited classic event-related potential signatures of spatial orienting. Specifically, both younger and older adults showed significant early directing-attention negativity (EDAN), anterior directing-attention negativity (ADAN), late directing-attention positivity (LDAP) and contingent negative variation (CNV). Furthermore, target-evoked sensory components were enhanced for attended relative to unattended targets in both younger and older groups. This pattern of results suggests that although older adults can successfully allocate spatial attention, they do so without the lateralization of alpha power that is commonly observed in younger adults. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that younger and older adults might engage different neural mechanisms for attentional orienting, and that alpha power lateralization during visual spatial attention is a phenomenon that diminishes during normal aging.	f	\N
25464934	Some components of generalized anxiety disorder, such as physical symptoms, are thought to reflect autonomic nervous system arousal. This study primarily assessed the relationships between psychophysiological and clinical measures using venlafaxine extended release or applied relaxation, and secondarily, the impact of combination treatment in patients not remitting after 8 weeks. Fifty-eight patients were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of treatment with either venlafaxine or applied relaxation (Phase I). Non-remitted patients received combination treatment for an additional 8 weeks (Phase II). Assessments included the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), Beck Depression Inventory, Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Stroop Color-Word Task coupled with electrophysiological measures (skin conductance and frontalis electromyography (EMG)). In Phase 1, a time effect was found for the clinical and skin conductance measures. Thirteen patients from each group were in remission. In Phase 2, seven additional patients remitted. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not associated with baseline clinical variables or with clinical outcomes. Independently of treatment allocation, a reduction in frontal EMG values at week 4 was significantly associated with a decrease in HAM-A scores at week 8. At week 4, responders from the applied relaxation group had lower electrophysiological activity than the venlafaxine group. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not linked with clinical measures at study inclusion or with treatment response. Frontal EMG response at week 4 is a possible predictor of treatment response. Treatment combination enhances treatment response after initial failure.	f	\N
25466695	Hallucinations and delusions that complicate Parkinson's disease (PD) could lead to nursing home placement and are linked to increased mortality. Cognitive impairments are typically associated with the presence of hallucinations but there are no data regarding whether such a relationship exists with delusions. We hypothesized that hallucinations would be associated with executive and visuospatial disturbance. An exploratory examination of cognitive correlates of delusions was also completed to address the question of whether they differ from hallucinations. 144 PD subjects completed a neuropsychological battery to assess cognition and the SAPS to examine psychosis. Correlational analyses assessed associations between hallucinations and delusions with cognitive domains. 48 subjects (33%) reported psychotic symptoms: 25 (17%) experienced hallucinations without delusions, 23 (16%) had symptoms dominated by delusions. Severity and/or number of hallucination subtypes were significantly correlated with lower scores in language, memory, attention, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. Correlations with delusions were non-significant. Tests of differences in the size of the correlations between groups revealed a significant relationship between language and visuospatial performance with hallucinations. Cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions appear to be different in PD, suggesting distinct pathogenic mechanisms and possibly anatomical substrates. Hence, delusions may not share the same associations with dementia as hallucinations. Since this is a new finding, further studies will be needed to confirm our results.	f	\N
25487871	The physiological effects of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in hibernating bats and ultimate causes of mortality from infection with Pseudogymnoascus (formerly Geomyces) destructans are not fully understood. Increased frequency of arousal from torpor described among hibernating bats with late-stage WNS is thought to accelerate depletion of fat reserves, but the physiological mechanisms that lead to these alterations in hibernation behavior have not been elucidated. We used the doubly labeled water (DLW) method and clinical chemistry to evaluate energy use, body composition changes, and blood chemistry perturbations in hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) experimentally infected with P. destructans to better understand the physiological processes that underlie mortality from WNS. These data indicated that fat energy utilization, as demonstrated by changes in body composition, was two-fold higher for bats with WNS compared to negative controls. These differences were apparent in early stages of infection when torpor-arousal patterns were equivalent between infected and non-infected animals, suggesting that P. destructans has complex physiological impacts on its host prior to onset of clinical signs indicative of late-stage infections. Additionally, bats with mild to moderate skin lesions associated with early-stage WNS demonstrated a chronic respiratory acidosis characterized by significantly elevated dissolved carbon dioxide, acidemia, and elevated bicarbonate. Potassium concentrations were also significantly higher among infected bats, but sodium, chloride, and other hydration parameters were equivalent to controls. Integrating these novel findings on the physiological changes that occur in early-stage WNS with those previously documented in late-stage infections, we propose a multi-stage disease progression model that mechanistically describes the pathologic and physiologic effects underlying mortality of WNS in hibernating bats. This model identifies testable hypotheses for better understanding this disease, knowledge that will be critical for defining effective disease mitigation strategies aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality that results from WNS.	f	\N
25490078	This paper attempts to integrate child developmental research and early childhood neural-cognitive development within the complexities of the early infant-mother relationship as described by psychoanalytic theory. Accumulating research evidence for the importance of the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze calls into question the origin and analytic significance of the alliance relationship that emerges from the primary relationship between the mother and child. This paper explores the apparently neglected relationship between the respective theories of the therapeutic alliance of Zetzel, Greenson, and Brenner, and the developmental progression from mutual gaze and joint gaze, upon which important aspects of mental and cognitive development rest. Nonblind infants and children rely heavily on the ability to see in order to learn and form representations, while trauma affects these dynamics and perception. This issue is particularly relevant given the high incidence of unresolved childhood trauma in the form of neglect, loss, and abuse in those who seek out therapy. Freud's original conception of developmental phase progression has been unsubstantiated by recent researchers in terms of chronological progression and the receptors through which the infants experience the world. In this paper the author applies specific developmental lenses to this basic conception of the dyadic relationship in psychoanalytic treatment, and will reexamine and redefine both working and therapeutic alliance in the frame of an essential developmental stage of joint visual attention. A clinical example will reveal compromised normal preverbal interactive development, exposing faults in the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze.	f	\N
25490810	We assess the driving distraction potential of texting with Google Glass (Glass), a mobile wearable platform capable of receiving and sending short-message-service and other messaging formats. A known roadway danger, texting while driving has been targeted by legislation and widely banned. Supporters of Glass claim the head-mounted wearable computer is designed to deliver information without concurrent distraction. Existing literature supports the supposition that design decisions incorporated in Glass might facilitate messaging for drivers. We asked drivers in a simulator to drive and use either Glass or a smartphone-based messaging interface, then interrupted them with an emergency brake event. Both the response event and subsequent recovery were analyzed. Glass-delivered messages served to moderate but did not eliminate distracting cognitive demands. A potential passive cost to drivers merely wearing Glass was also observed. Messaging using either device impaired driving as compared to driving without multitasking. Glass in not a panacea as some supporters claim, but it does point the way to design interventions that effect reduced load in multitasking. Discussions of these identified benefits are framed within the potential of new in-vehicle systems that bring both novel forms of distraction and tools for mitigation into the driver's seat.	f	\N
25496437	Erectile dysfunction (ED) is frequent in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and may act as a surrogate of endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, impairments of vigilance and sustained attention are also commonly associated with OSA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there is an association between ED and sustained attention deficits. A prospective cross-sectional cohort of 401 male in-patients undergoing diagnostic polysomnography for suspected OSA and a 25-minute sustained attention test was analyzed. ED was assessed using the 15-item International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-15) questionnaire. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) served as a measure of daytime sleepiness. Severity of impaired erectile function (EF) assessed by the IIEF-15, core task parameters of the sustained attention test (i.e., CR: correct reactions; V-CR: variation of correct reactions, CE: commission errors, RT: reaction time; V-RT: variation of reaction times). Three hundred eighty-one consecutive patients presenting for in-lab polysomnography were included in the analysis. Impaired EF was diagnosed in 246 patients (65%). With increasing impairment of EF, patients scored significantly worse in all vigilance test parameters and demonstrated more severely diminished vigilance (normal EF: 11.9%, moderately impaired EF: 24.1%, and severely impaired EF: 34.9%). Multivariate regression analyses including established risk factors for ED, OSA, or sleepiness revealed a significant independent association between lower scores for EF and impairments on the following vigilance test variables: odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for V-CR: 0.52 (0.34-0.81), CE: 0.87 (0.80-0.95), and V-RT: 0.91 (0.87-0.96). The ESS was independently associated with both measures of performance instability: odds ratio for V-CR: 6.94 (2.97-16.23) and V-RT: 1.28 (1.14-1.44). In OSA patients, the severity of impaired EF was associated with impaired vigilance performance, independent of other known risk factors for ED or OSA and not mediated by sleepiness. Potentially, the findings suggest a direct relationship between vascular or endothelial dysfunction and impairments in both EF and neurobehavioral cognitive function.	f	\N
25505324	Humans are selective information processors who efficiently prevent goal-inappropriate stimulus information to gain control over their actions. Nonetheless, stimuli, which are both unnecessary for solving a current task and liable to cue an incorrect response (i.e., "distractors"), frequently modulate task performance, even when consistently paired with a physical feature that makes them easily discernible from target stimuli. Current models of cognitive control assume adjustment of the processing of distractor information based on the overall distractor utility (e.g., predictive value regarding the appropriate response, likelihood to elicit conflict with target processing). Although studies on distractor interference have supported the notion of utility-based processing adjustment, previous evidence is inconclusive regarding the specificity of this adjustment for distractor information and the stage(s) of processing affected. To assess the processing of distractors during sensory-perceptual phases we applied EEG recording in a stimulus identification task, involving successive distractor-target presentation, and manipulated the overall distractor utility. Behavioral measures replicated previously found utility modulations of distractor interference. Crucially, distractor-evoked visual potentials (i.e., posterior N1) were more pronounced in high-utility than low-utility conditions. This effect generalized to distractors unrelated to the utility manipulation, providing evidence for item-unspecific adjustment of early distractor processing to the experienced utility of distractor information.	f	\N
25510197	Cognitive performance in healthy persons varies widely between individuals. Sex differences in cognition are well reported, and there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the relationship between dopaminergic neurotransmission, implicated in many cognitive functions, is modulated by sex. Here, we examine the influence of sex and genetic variations along the dopaminergic pathway on aspects of cognitive control. A total of 415 healthy individuals, selected from an international consortium linked to Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Network (BRAINnet), were genotyped for two common and functional genetic variations of dopamine regulating genes: the catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT] gene (rs4680) and the dopamine receptor D2 [DRD2] gene (rs6277). Cognitive measures were selected to explore sustained attention (using a continuous performance task), switching of attention (using a Trails B adaptation) and working memory (a visual computerised adaptation of digit span). While there were no main effects for genotype across any tasks, analyses revealed significant sex by genotype interactions for the capacity to switch attention. In relation to COMT, superior performance was noted in females with the Val/Val genotype and for DRD2, superior performance was seen for TT females and CC males. These findings highlight the importance of considering genetic variation in baseline dopamine levels in addition to sex, when considering the impact of dopamine on cognition in healthy populations. These findings also have important implications for the many neuropsychiatric disorders that implicate dopamine, cognitive changes and sex differences.	f	\N
25514652	It is solidly established that top-down (goal-driven) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attention mechanisms depend on distributed cortical networks, including prefrontal and frontoparietal regions. On the other hand, it is less clear whether the BG also contribute to one or the other of these mechanisms, or to both. The current study was principally undertaken to clarify this issue. Parkinson disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder primarily affecting the BG, has proven to be an effective model for investigating the contribution of the BG to different brain functions; therefore, we set out to investigate deficits of top-down and bottom-up attention in a selected cohort of PD patients. With this objective in mind, we compared the performance on three computerized tasks of two groups of 12 parkinsonian patients (assessed without any treatment), one otherwise pharmacologically treated and the other also surgically treated, with that of a group of controls. The main behavioral tool for our study was an attentional capture task, which enabled us to tap the competition between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of visual attention. This task was suitably combined with a choice RT and a simple RT task to isolate any specific deficit of attention from deficits in motor response selection and initiation. In the two groups of patients, we found an equivalent increase of attentional capture but also comparable delays in target selection in the absence of any salient distractor (reflecting impaired top-down mechanisms) and movement initiation compared with controls. In contrast, motor response selection processes appeared to be prolonged only in the operated patients. Our results confirm that the BG are involved in both motor and cognitive domains. Specifically, damage to the BG, as it occurs in PD, leads to a distinct deficit of top-down control of visual attention, and this can account, albeit indirectly, for the enhancement of attentional capture, reflecting weakened ability of top-down mechanisms to antagonize bottom-up control.	f	\N
25515099	The rat psychomotor vigilance task (rPVT) was developed as a rodent analog of the human psychomotor vigilance task (hPVT). We examined whether rPVT performance displays time-on-task effects similar to those observed on the hPVT. The rPVT requires rats to respond to a randomly presented light stimulus to obtain a water reward. Rats were water deprived for 22 h prior to each 30-min rPVT session to motivate performance. We analyzed rPVT performance over time on task and as a function of the response-stimulus interval, at baseline and after sleep deprivation. The study was conducted in an academic research vivarium. Male Long-Evans rats were trained to respond to a 0.5 sec stimulus light within 3 sec of stimulus onset. Complete data were available for n = 20 rats. Rats performed the rPVT for 30 min at baseline and after 24 h total sleep deprivation by gentle handling. Compared to baseline, sleep deprived rats displayed increased performance lapses and premature responses, similar to hPVT lapses of attention and false starts. However, in contrast to hPVT performance, the time-on-task performance decrement was not significantly enhanced by sleep deprivation. Moreover, following sleep deprivation, rPVT response times were not consistently increased after short response-stimulus intervals. The rPVT manifests similarities to the hPVT in global performance outcomes, but not in post-sleep deprivation effects of time on task and response-stimulus interval.	f	\N
25521352	In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.	f	\N
25547035	To evaluate the reliability of actigraphy to distinguish the features of estimated daytime and nighttime sleep between patients with central disorders of hypersomnolence and healthy controls. Thirty-nine drug-naïve patients with Narcolepsy Type 1, twenty-four drug-naïve patients with Idiopathic Hypersomnia, and thirty age- and sex- matched healthy controls underwent seven days of actigraphic and self-report monitoring of sleep/wake behavior. The following variables were examined: estimated time in bed (eTIB), estimated total sleep time, estimated sleep latency (eSOL), estimated sleep efficiency, estimated wake after sleep onset, number of estimated awakenings (eAwk), number of estimated awakenings longer than 5 minutes, estimated sleep motor activity (eSMA), number of estimated naps, mean duration of the longest estimated nap (eNapD), and daytime motor activity. All actigraphic parameters significantly differentiated the three groups, except eTIB and eSOL. A discriminant score computed combining actigraphic parameters from nighttime (eSMA, eAwk) and daytime (eNapD) periods showed a wide area under the curve (0.935) and a good balance between positive (95%) and negative predictive (87%) values in Narcolepsy Type 1 cases. Actigraphy provided a reliable objective measurement of sleep quality and daytime napping behavior able to distinguish central disorders of hypersomnolence and in particular Narcolepsy Type 1. The nycthemeral profile, combined with a careful clinical evaluation, may be an ecological information, useful to track disease course.	f	\N
25549505	Boundary extension is a constructive memory error for views of scenes in which viewx tendto be remembered as more spatially expansive than they appeared. In seven experiments xwe examinedwhether local differences in boundary extension within views might exist by presenting par ticipants ith overhead views of single, elongated objects or object pairs on textured ground surfaces i:n whichobjects were oriented either vertically or horizontally. Memory for views' spatial expanse xwas testedwith either a view-recognition test or a border-adjustment test in which participants could ad just thespatial expanse of a test view using the computer's mouse. The border-adjustment test was uused tossess local boundary extension (primarily); the view-recognition test was used to assess paparticipants'emories for the overall spatial expanse of views (ie global boundary extension). Across exexperiments,n the border-adjustment tests specifically, participants showed more spatial expanse along the obobject'songer axis, in some cases restricting the view along the object's shorter axis. In addition, the rerecognition-t data revealed greater boundary extension for views with vertically oriented objects than for x.iviewsth horizontally oriented objects. Taken together, the results suggest that objects in scene x iviews canfect both local and global aspects of memory for spatial expanse of scene views.	f	\N
25560106	The delivery suite is a high-risk environment. Transitions between low-risk and high-risk can be swift, and sentinel events can occur without warning. The prevention of accidents in this environment rests on the vigilance of the individual practitioner at the frontline. It is, therefore, important that the individual practitioner should develop and maintain the cognitive skills to anticipate, recognize, and intercept unfolding error chains. This commentary gives an overview of a nontechnical skill that is essential for safe practice in a delivery suite: situational awareness. A basic description of situational awareness is provided, using examples of loss of situational awareness in the delivery suite and examples of simple interventions that could promote situational awareness. Involuntary automaticity readily creeps in during performance of routine tasks, and cognitive overload could deplete attentional resources that are, by nature, limited. Strategies and tactics for maintaining situational awareness include proactively seeking and managing information on unfolding events, continually updating individual and team mental models, mindful use of checklists and scoreboards, and avoidance of attentional blindness. These simple interventions require minimal financial resources but could immensely enhance clinical performance and patient safety. Situational awareness should be included in the training of obstetrician-gynecologists and other staff working in a delivery suite.	f	\N
25569948	Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common respiratory disorder among adults. Recently we have shown that sedentary lifestyle causes an increase in diurnal leg fluid volume (LFV), which can shift into the neck at night when lying down to sleep and increase OSA severity. The purpose of this work was to investigate various metrics that represent baseline fluid retention in the legs and examine their correlation with neck fluid volume (NFV) and to develop a robust model for predicting fluid accumulation in the neck. In 13 healthy awake non-obese men, LFV and NFV were recorded continuously and simultaneously while standing for 5 minutes and then lying supine for 90 minutes. Simple regression was used to examine correlations between baseline LFV, baseline neck circumference (NC) and change in LFV with the outcome variables: change in NC (ΔNC) and in NFV (ΔNFV90) after lying supine for 90 minutes. An exhaustive grid search was implemented to find combinations of input variables which best modeled outcomes. We found strong positive correlations between baseline LFV (supine and standing) and ΔNFV90. Models developed for predicting ΔNFV90 included baseline standing LFV, baseline NC combined with change in LFV after lying supine for 90 minutes. These correlations and the developed models suggest that a greater baseline LFV might contribute to increased fluid accumulation in the neck. These results give more evidence that sedentary lifestyle might play a role in the pathogenesis of OSA by increasing the baseline LFV. The best models for predicting ΔNC include baseline LFV and NC; they improved accuracies of estimating ΔNC over individual predictors, suggesting that a combination of baseline fluid metrics is a good predictor of the change in NC while lying supine. Future work is aimed at adding additional baseline demographic features to improve model accuracy and eventually use it as a screening tool to predict severity of OSA prior to sleep.	f	\N
25583612	Selective attention is fundamental for human activity, but the details of its neural implementation remain elusive. One influential theory, the adaptive coding hypothesis (Duncan, 2001, An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2:820-829), proposes that single neurons in certain frontal and parietal regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively encode relevant information. This selective representation may in turn support selective processing in more specialized brain regions such as the visual cortices. Here, we use multi-voxel decoding of functional magnetic resonance images to demonstrate selective representation of attended--and not distractor--objects in frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. In addition, we highlight a critical role for task demands in determining which brain regions exhibit selective coding. Strikingly, representation of attended objects in frontoparietal cortex was highest under conditions of high perceptual demand, when stimuli were hard to perceive and coding in early visual cortex was weak. Coding in early visual cortex varied as a function of attention and perceptual demand, while coding in higher visual areas was sensitive to the allocation of attention but robust to changes in perceptual difficulty. Consistent with high-profile reports, peripherally presented objects could also be decoded from activity at the occipital pole, a region which corresponds to the fovea. Our results emphasize the flexibility of frontoparietal and visual systems. They support the hypothesis that attention enhances the multi-voxel representation of information in the brain, and suggest that the engagement of this attentional mechanism depends critically on current task demands.	f	\N
25594946	Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit spatial learning where participants incidentally learn to associate a target location with its repeated spatial context. Successful contextual learning produces an efficient visual search through familiar environments. Despite the fact that children exhibit the basic ability of implicit spatial learning, their general effectiveness in this form of learning can be compromised by other development-dependent factors. Learning to extract useful information (signal) in the presence of various amounts of irrelevant or distracting information (noise) characterizes one of the most important changes that occur with cognitive development. This research investigated whether signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) affects contextual cueing differently in children and adults. S/N was operationally defined as the ratio of repeated versus new displays encountered over time. Three ratio conditions were created: high (100%), medium (67%), and low (33%) conditions. Results suggested no difference in the acquisition of contextual learning effects in the high and medium conditions across three age groups (6- to 8-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds, and young adults). However, a significant developmental difference emerged in the low S/N condition. As predicted, adults exhibited significant contextual cueing effects, whereas older children showed marginally significant contextual cueing and younger children did not show cueing effects. Group differences in the ability to exhibit implicit contextual learning under low S/N conditions and the implications of this difference are discussed.	f	\N
25614241	Cluster analysis was used to create patterns of individual differences reflecting infant behaviors during the initial interaction episode of the Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. The clusters were used as the basic unit of analysis for studying infant and maternal behavior and dyadic coordination (i.e., matching and reparation) across FFSF. Seventy-five 4-month-old infants participated with their mothers. Cluster analysis identified three patterns: a Socially Engaged cluster (33%) exhibited high levels of social engagement with their mothers; a Disengaged cluster (60%) showed a tendency to be low in social interaction and a Negatively Engaged cluster (7%) showed high negative emotionality. During the Still-Face episode, the Socially Engaged cluster reacted by reducing focus on their mother and shifting their attention elsewhere, while infants in the Disengaged cluster reduced focus on the environment. Although both the Socially Engaged and Disengaged clusters increased in negative emotionality during the Still-Face, the Socially Engaged group largely recovered during the Reunion, whereas the Disengaged group displayed more negative emotion. The Negatively Engaged cluster demonstrated high levels of negative affect throughout the entire procedure. Mothers of Negatively Engaged infants showed less positive engagement and more social monitoring than mothers in other clusters during all episodes. Dyadic interaction differed between groups, with greater levels of matching and reparations in the engaged group, less in the Disengaged group, and very little coordination in the Negatively Engaged cluster. Findings highlight the role of distinctive patterns of infants' individual differences in determining early dyadic functioning.	f	\N
25624754	There is growing evidence that cognitive training (CT) can improve the cognitive functioning of the elderly. CT may be influenced by cultural and linguistic factors, but research examining CT programs has mostly been conducted on Western populations. We have developed an innovative electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) CT program that has shown preliminary efficacy in improving cognition in 32 healthy English-speaking elderly adults in Singapore. In this second pilot trial, we examine the acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy of our BCI CT program in healthy Chinese-speaking Singaporean elderly. Thirty-nine elderly participants were randomized into intervention (n=21) and wait-list control (n=18) arms. Intervention consisted of 24 half-hour sessions with our BCI-based CT training system to be completed in 8 weeks; the control arm received the same intervention after an initial 8-week waiting period. At the end of the training, a usability and acceptability questionnaire was administered. Efficacy was measured using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), which was translated and culturally adapted for the Chinese-speaking local population. Users were asked about any adverse events experienced after each session as a safety measure. The training was deemed easily usable and acceptable by senior users. The median difference in the change scores pre- and post-training of the modified RBANS total score was 8.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.0-16.0, P=0.042) higher in the intervention arm than waitlist control, while the mean difference was 9.0 (95% CI: 1.7-16.2, P=0.017). Ten (30.3%) participants reported a total of 16 adverse events - all of which were graded "mild" except for one graded "moderate". Our BCI training system shows potential in improving cognition in both English- and Chinese-speaking elderly, and deserves further evaluation in a Phase III trial. Overall, participants responded positively on the usability and acceptability questionnaire.	f	\N
25631970	Iron deficiency, associated with a decline in cognitive function, is the most common nutritional deficiency globally. The present study aimed to identify the impact of weekly iron supplements on the attention function of female students from a high school in North Khorasan Province, Iran. This was a blind, controlled, clinical trial study, involving 200 female students who were chosen using the stratified randomised sampling method. First, laboratory studies were performed to detect iron consumption limitations. Next, the 200 students were divided randomly and equally into case and control groups. The case group was treated with 50 mg of ferrous sulfate twice a week for 16 weeks. We compared both groups' data on attention, iron status and erythrocyte indices. Questionnaires were used to collect demographic data, while clinical data was collected using complete blood count and Toulouse-Piéron tests. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, as well as paired and independent t-tests. The mean attention scores of the case and control groups were 104.8 ± 7.0 and 52.7 ± 9.6, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean haemoglobin levels of the two groups were 12.5 ± 0.9 and 11.2 ± 1.0, respectively (p < 0.001). Compared to the control group, the attention scores and haemoglobin concentrations of the case group were found to be improved by approximately 90% and 10%, respectively. Oral iron supplements (50 mg twice a week for 16 weeks) were able to improve the attention span and haematologic indices of female high school students.	f	\N
25637852	Attention has been shown to affect the neural processing of pain. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unknown. Here, we used a new method called pain steady-state evoked potentials (PSSEPs) to investigate whether selective spatial attention affects EEG responses to tonic painful stimuli. In general, steady-state evoked potentials reflect changes in the EEG spectrum at a certain frequency that correspond to the frequency of a train of applied stimuli. In this study, high intensity transcutaneous electrical stimulation was delivered to both hands simultaneously with 31 Hz and 37 Hz, respectively. Subject׳s attention was directed to one of the two trains of stimulation in order to detect a small gap that was occasionally interspersed into the stimulus trains. Thereby, they had to ignore the stimulation applied to the other hand. Results show that PSSEPs were induced at 31 Hz and 37 Hz at frontal and central electrodes. PSSEPs occurred contralaterally to the respective hand stimulated with that frequency. Surprisingly, the magnitude of PSSEPs was not modulated by spatial attention towards one of the two stimuli. Our results indicate that attention can hardly be shifted between two simultaneously applied tonic painful stimulations.	f	\N
25638026	Anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) abuse is prevalent not only among elite athletes, but is increasingly common in high school and collegiate sports. AAS are implicated in maladaptive behaviors such as increased aggression and risk taking, which may result from impaired cognition. Because they affect dopamine function in prefrontal cortical (PFC)-striatal circuitry, AAS may disrupt PFC-dependent processes such as behavioral flexibility. This was the focus of the present study. Adolescent male Long-Evans rats were treated chronically with high-dose testosterone (7.5mg/kg in water with 13% cyclodextrin) or vehicle sc, and tested for set-shifting and reversal-learning. For set-shifting, rats were trained on a visual cue task (VCT), then were shifted to a direction cue task (DCT), or vice-versa. For reversal learning, rats were first trained on VCT and were then required to press the opposite lever. 2-cue set-shifting introduced a novel paradigm in which rats shifted from a 1-Light Visual Task (1LVT) to a tone cue task (TCT). Testosterone-treated rats were significantly impaired on the set-shift from DCT to VCT compared to vehicle-treated controls (trials to criterion: vehicle 240.9±29.9, testosterone 388.3±59.3, p<0.05). However, on the set-shift from VCT to DCT, testosterone did not affect performance. During reversal-learning, testosterone significantly increased trials to criterion (vehicle: 495.9±91.8 trials, testosterone: 793.7±96.7 trials, p<0.05). In 2-cue set-shifting, testosterone diminished performance and the difference showed borderline significance (vehicle: 443.2±84.4 trials, testosterone: 800.4±178.2 trials, p=0.09). Our results show that testosterone impairs behavioral flexibility and have implications for understanding cognitive and behavioral changes in human AAS users.	f	\N
25647070	The etiology of premenstrual disorders, including premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorders (PMDD), is not well understood. In the current study, the relationship between self-focused attention (SFA) and premenstrual disorders was examined to explore the hypothesis that women with premenstrual disorders tend to respond to symptoms in a maladaptive manner. Based on retrospective report, clinical interview, and 30-day prospective recording of premenstrual symptoms, women (N = 52) were categorized as meeting criteria for premenstrual disorders (PMD; n = 24) or not (controls; n = 28). Key findings indicated that women with premenstrual disorders reported greater use of SFA in response to negative affect elicited by laboratory tasks than controls, despite no significant differences in change in negative affect between the two groups. Women with premenstrual disorders also reported greater trait levels of SFA and maladaptive coping styles compared to controls. Women with premenstrual disorders may tend to respond to menstrual cycle changes using increased levels of SFA. The interaction between psychological and physiological menstrual cycle-related changes may lead to increased distress and impairment. Implications for psychological contributions to premenstrual distress and disorders are discussed.	f	\N
25647484	This study examined the separate influence and joint influences on event-based prospective memory task performance due to the valence of cues and the valence of contexts. We manipulated the valence of cues and contexts with pictures from the International Affective Picture System. The participants, undergraduate students, showed higher performance when neutral compared to valenced pictures were used for cueing prospective memory. In addition, neutral pictures were more effective as cues when they occurred in a valenced context than in the context of neutral pictures, but the effectiveness of valenced cues did not vary across contexts that differed in valence. The finding of an interaction between cue and context valence indicates that their respective influence on event-based prospective memory task performance cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Our findings are not consistent with by the prevailing view which holds that the scope of attention is broadened and narrowed, respectively, by positively and negatively valenced stimuli. Instead, our findings are more supportive of the recent proposal that the scope of attention is determined by the motivational intensity associated with valenced stimuli. Consistent with this proposal, we speculate that the motivational intensity associated with different retrieval cues determines the scope of attention, that contexts with different valence values determine participants' task engagement, and that prospective memory task performance is determined jointly by attention scope and task engagement.	f	\N
25665861	We set out hypotheses which are based in the technique of Brainspotting (Grand, 2013) [1] but have wider applicability within the range of psychotherapies for post-traumatic and other disorders. We have previously (Corrigan and Grand, 2013) [2] suggested mechanisms by which a Brainspot may be established during traumatic experience and later identified in therapy. Here we seek to formulate mechanisms for the healing processing which occurs during mindful attention to the Brainspot; and we generate hypotheses about what is happening during the time taken for the organic healing process to flow to completion during the therapy session and beyond it. Full orientation to the aversive memory of a traumatic experience fails to occur when a high level of physiological arousal that is threatening to become overwhelming promotes a neurochemical de-escalation of the activation: there is then no resolution. In Brainspotting, and other trauma psychotherapies, healing can occur when full orientation to the memory is made possible by the superior colliculi-pulvinar, superior colliculi-mediodorsal nucleus, and superior colliculi-intralaminar nuclei pathways being bound together electrophysiologically for coherent thalamocortical processing. The brain's response to the memory is "reset" so that the emotional response experienced in the body, and conveyed through the paleospinothalamic tract to the midbrain and thalamus and on to the basal ganglia and cortex, is no longer disturbing. Completion of the orientation "reset" ensures that the memory is reconsolidated without distress and recollection of the event subsequently is no longer dysphorically activating at a physiological level.	f	\N
25678274	While there is growing understanding of visual selective attention in children, some aspects such as selection in the presence of distractors are not well understood. Adult studies suggest that when presented with a visual search task, an enhanced negativity is seen beginning around 200 ms (the N2pc) that reflects selection of a target item among distractors. However, it is not known if similar selective attention-related activity is seen in children during visual search. This study was designed to investigate the presence of the N2pc in children. Nineteen children (ages 9-12 years) and 21 adults (ages 18-22 years) completed a visual search task in which they were asked to attend to a fixation surrounded by both a target and a distractor stimulus. Three types of displays were analyzed at parietal electrodes P7 and P8; lateral target/lateral distractor, lateral target/midline distractor, and midline target/lateral distractor. Both adults and children showed a significant increased negativity contralateral compared to ipsilateral to the target (reflected in the N2pc) in both displays with a lateral target while no such effect was seen in displays with a midline target. This suggests that children also utilized additional resources to select a target item when distractors are present. These findings demonstrate that the N2pc can be used as a marker of attentional object selection in children.	f	\N
25681698	Whether or not awareness entails attention is a much debated question. Since iconic memory has been generally assumed to be attention-free, it has been considered an important piece of evidence that it does not (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Therefore the question of the role of attention in iconic memory matters. Recent evidence (Persuh, Genzer, & Melara, 2012), suggests that iconic memory does depend on attention. Because of the centrality of iconic memory to this debate, we looked again at the role of attention in iconic memory using a standard whole versus partial report task of letters in a 3×2 matrix. We manipulated attention to the array by coupling it with a second task that was either easy or hard and by manipulating the probability of which task was to be performed on any given trial. When attention was maximally diverted from the matrix, participants were able to report less than a single item, confirming the prior results and supporting the conclusion that iconic memory entails attention. It is not an instance of attention-free awareness.	f	\N
25689233	Little attention has been paid to distress in sexual functioning or the sexual satisfaction of people who practice BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadism and Masochism). The purpose of this study was to describe sociodemographic characteristics and BDSM practices and compare BDSM practitioners' sexual outcomes (in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts). A convenience sample of 68 respondents completed an online survey that used a participatory research framework. Cronbach's alpha and average inter-item correlations assessed scale reliability, and the Wilcoxon paired samples test compared the total scores between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts separately for men and women. Open-ended questions about BDSM sexual practices were coded using a preexisting thematic tree. We used self-reported demographic factors, including age at the onset of BDSM interest, age at first BDSM experience, and favorite and most frequent BDSM practices. The Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction measured the amount of sexual distress, including low desire, arousal, maintaining arousal, premature orgasm, and anorgasmia. The participants had an average age of 33.15 years old and were highly educated and waited 6 years after becoming interested in BDSM to act on their interests. The practices in which the participants most frequently engaged did not coincide with the practices in which they were most interested and were overwhelmingly conducted at home. Comparisons between genders in terms of distress in sexual functioning in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts demonstrate that, with the exception of maintaining arousal, we found distress in sexual functioning to be statistically the same in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for women. For men, we found that distress in sexual functioning, with the exception of premature orgasm and anorgasmia, was statistically significantly lower in the BDSM context. There were no differences in sexual satisfaction between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for men or women. Our findings suggest that BDSM sexual activity should be addressed in clinical settings that account for BDSM identities, practices, relationships, preferences, sexual satisfaction, and distress in sexual function for men and women. Additional research needs are identified, such as the need to define distressful sexual functioning experiences and expand our understanding of the development of BDSM sexual identities.	f	\N
25689289	Comparing drug-induced driving impairments with the effects of benchmark blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) is an approved approach to determine the clinical relevance of findings for traffic safety. The present study aimed to collect alcohol calibration data to validate findings of clinical trials that were derived from a representative test course in a dynamic driving simulator. The driving performance of 24 healthy volunteers under placebo and with 0.05% and 0.08% BACs was measured in a double-blind, randomized, crossover design. Trained investigators assessed the subjects' driving performance and registered their driving errors. Various driving parameters that were recorded during the simulation were also analyzed. Generally, the participants performed worse on the test course (P < 0.05 for the investigators' assessment) under the influence of alcohol. Consistent with the relevant literature, lane-keeping performance parameters were sensitive to the investigated BACs. There were significant differences between the alcohol and placebo conditions in most of the parameters analyzed. However, the total number of errors was the only parameter discriminating significantly between all three BAC conditions. In conclusion, data show that the present experimental setup is suitable for future psychopharmacological research. Thereby, for each drug to be investigated, we recommend to assess a profile of various parameters that address different levels of driving. On the basis of this performance profile, the total number of driving errors is recommended as the primary endpoint. However, this overall endpoint should be completed by a specifically sensitive parameter that is chosen depending on the effect known to be induced by the tested drug.	f	\N
25690831	Neural responses in the auditory cortex have historically been measured from either anesthetized or awake but non-behaving animals. A growing body of work has begun to focus instead on recording from auditory cortex of animals actively engaged in behavior tasks. These studies have shown that auditory cortical responses are dependent upon the behavioral state of the animal. The longer ascending subcortical pathway of the auditory system and unique characteristics of auditory processing suggest that such dependencies may have a more profound influence on cortical processing in the auditory system compared to other sensory systems. It is important to understand the nature of these dependencies and their functional implications. In this article, we review the literature on this topic pertaining to cortical processing of sounds.	f	\N
25701796	To better understand the contribution of the dorsal system to word reading, we explored transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) effects when adults with developmental dyslexia received active stimulation over the visual extrastriate area MT/V5, which is dominated by magnocellular input. Stimulation was administered in 5 sessions spread over two weeks, and reading speed and accuracy as well as reading fluency were assessed before, immediately after, and a week after the end of the treatment. A control group of adults with developmental dyslexia matched for age, gender, reading level, vocabulary and block-design WAIS-III sub-tests and reading level was exposed to the same protocol but with sham stimulation. The results revealed that active, but not sham stimulation, significantly improved reading speed and fluency. This finding suggests that the dorsal stream may play a role in efficient retrieval from the orthographic input lexicon in the lexical route. It also underscores the potential of tDCS as an intervention tool for improving reading speed, at least in adults with developmental dyslexia.	f	\N
25704737	We examined longitudinal relations between adult interpartner conflict (referred to as marital conflict) and children's subsequent sleep minutes and quality assessed objectively via actigraphy, and tested parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity indexed through respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity (RSA-R) and initial sleep as moderators of predictive associations. At Wave 1 (W1), children (85 boys, 75 girls) with a mean age of 9.43 years (SD=.69) reported on marital conflict, and their sleep was assessed with actigraphs for seven nights. Sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, sleep activity, and number of long wake episodes were derived. RSA-R was measured in response to a lab challenge. Sleep parameters were assessed again 1 year later at Wave 2 (W2; mean age=10.39; SD=.64). Analyses consistently revealed 3-way interactions among W1 marital conflict, sleep, and RSA-R as predictors of W2 sleep parameters. Sleep was stable among children with more sleep minutes and better sleep quality at W1 or low exposure to marital conflict at W1. Illustrating conditional risk, marital conflict predicted increased sleep problems (reduced sleep minutes, worse sleep quality) at W2 among children with poorer sleep at W1 in conjunction with less apt physiological regulation (i.e., lower levels of RSA-R or less vagal withdrawal) at W1. Findings build on the scant literature and underscore the importance of simultaneous consideration of bioregulatory systems (PNS and initial sleep in this study) in conjunction with family processes in the prediction of children's later sleep parameters.	f	\N
25705797	Patients with primary adrenal insufficiency (AI) need to replace glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids that act on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR). Both receptors are highly expressed in the hippocampus and are closely associated with cognitive function, which might be impaired by insufficient or increased GR and MR stimulation. However, little is known about cognitive function in patients with AI. It was examined whether patients with AI exhibit worse cognitive function compared to sex-, age-, and education-matched controls. Cognitive function (executive function, concentration, verbal memory, visual memory, working memory, and autobiographical memory) was assessed in 30 patients with AI (mean age 52.4 yrs. ±14.4, n=21 women, mean duration of illness 18.2 yrs. ±11.1) and 30 matched controls. We also measured depressive symptoms, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure. Patients with AI showed more depressive symptoms, had a greater BMI and lower systolic blood pressure compared to controls. Adjusted analyses controlling for these variables revealed that patients with AI performed significantly worse in verbal learning (F=7.8, p=.007). Executive function, concentration, working memory, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, and autobiographical memory did not differ between groups. No clinically relevant cognitive impairment was found in patients with AI compared to matched controls. Even long-term glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid substitution over almost two decades appears to have only subtle effects on cognition in patients with AI.	f	\N
25717168	Motor system excitability is transiently suppressed during the preparation of movement. This preparatory inhibition is hypothesized to facilitate response selection and initiation. Given that demands on selection and initiation processes increase with movement complexity, we hypothesized that complexity would influence preparatory inhibition. To test this hypothesis, we probed corticospinal excitability during a delayed-response task in which participants were cued to prepare right- or left-hand movements of varying complexity. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over right primary motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) of the left hand. MEP suppression was greater during the preparation of responses involving coordination of the FDI and adductor digiti minimi relative to easier responses involving only the FDI, independent of which hand was cued to respond. In contrast, this increased inhibition was absent when the complex responses required sequential movements of the two muscles. Moreover, complexity did not influence the level of inhibition when the response hand was fixed for the trial block, regardless of whether the complex responses were performed simultaneously or sequentially. These results suggest that preparatory inhibition contributes to response selection, possibly by suppressing extraneous movements when responses involve the simultaneous coordination of multiple effectors.	f	\N
25723014	We studied influence of the anxiety-related trait Harm Avoidance and the COMT gene, which is an important modulator of prefrontal functioning, on event-related potentials in oddball paradigm and performance effectiveness of selective attention. For 50 individuals accuracy and time of searching words among letters at any desired rate and then under an instruction to perform the task as quickly and accurate as possible were measured. Scores on the Harm Avoidance scale from Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, N100 and P300 parameters, and COMTVa1158Met genotypes were obtained for them as well. Searching accuracy and time were mainly related to N100 amplitude. The COMT genotype and Harm Avoidance did not affect N100 amplitude; however, the N100 amplitude modulated their effects on accuracy and time dynamics. Harm Avoidance was positively correlated with P300 latency. The results suggest that anxiety and the COMT gene effects on performance effectiveness of selective attention depend on cognitive processes reflected in N100 parameters.	f	\N
25723016	In order to study spontaneous attentional lapses the experimental task was used that created a moderately high attentional load and involved response choice based on stimulus feature conjunction. The participant's average correct response rate was 85.1%; they made errors in 9.6% trials and response omissions in 5.4% trials. Peak N1 of the evoked potential was consistent across all behavioral outcomes, while peak P2 amplitude was significantly greater before errors and response omissions compared to correct responses. The analysis of polygraphic indexes (ECG, EMG, SGR) did not reveal any arousal level reduction before attentional lapses. The proposed interpretation of the results obtained is based on the assumption that attentional lapses are mediated by the suppression of external stimuli information processing caused by the state of mind-wandering.	f	\N
25726855	Several organisms irrespective of their complexity in structure and function have an inbuilt circadian rhythm. Zebrafish could be used as an alternate model animal in sleep research as it exhibits similar sleep-wake dynamics as mammals and Drosophila. In this study, we have analysed the adult zebrafish brain for its differential proteome and gene expression during perturbed light/dark cycle. A total of 53 and 25 proteins including sncb, peroxiredoxins and TCR alpha were identified based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis Fourier transform mass spectrometer/ion trap tandem mass spectrometer and differential in-gel electrophoresis MALDI TOF MS/MS analysis, respectively, with at least 1.5-fold changes between the control and experimental brains. Real time-polymerase chain reaction revealed that many circadian pathway-associated genes, such as per1b, bmal1b, cry1b, bmal2 and nr1d2, were differentially regulated during continuous light/dark exposures. It is hypothesized that the differential regulation of these genes might lead to the discovery of potential diagnostic markers for gaining insight into the light/dark-associated stress in humans.	f	\N
25737257	The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(2), 248-261, 2005). A key debate is whether such memory-based attentional guidance is automatic or under strategic control. Generally, two distinct task paradigms have been employed to assess memory-based guidance, one demonstrating that attention is involuntarily captured by memory-matching stimuli even at a cost to search performance (Soto et al., 2005), and one demonstrating that participants can strategically avoid memory-matching distractors to facilitate search performance (Woodman & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(2), 363-377, 2007). The current study utilized an individual-differences approach to examine why the different paradigms--which presumably tap into the same attentional construct--might support contrasting interpretations. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks, including two types of attentional guidance paradigms (see Soto et al., 2005; Woodman & Luck, 2007), a visual WM task, and an operation span task, as well as attention-related self-report assessments. Performance on the two attentional guidance paradigms did not correlate. Subsequent exploratory regression analyses revealed that memory-based guidance in each task was differentially predicted by visual WM capacity for one paradigm, and by attention-related assessment scores for the other paradigm. The current results suggest that these two paradigms--which have previously produced contrasting patterns of performance--may probe distinct aspects of attentional guidance.	f	\N
25752211	To determine the effect of mode of delivery and perineal injury on sexual function at 6 and 12 months postpartum. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary women's hospital in Melbourne, Australia. A cohort of 440 primigravid women. The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was completed at first visit (7-19 weeks of gestation), and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. A statistically significant difference in total FSFI or domain scores over time according to mode of delivery or perineal injury. In this cohort 54% of women had a normal vaginal delivery, 21% had an instrumental delivery, and 25% gave birth by caesarean section. No difference was found in total FSFI or domain scores according to mode of delivery over time between antenatal assessment and 12 months postpartum. Pain was decreased in the caesarean group only at 6 months postpartum. All groups showed pain scores at 12 months that were comparable with antenatal levels. For those who gave birth vaginally, 27% had an intact perineum, 50% had an episiotomy, and 6%, 14%, and 3% had first, second, and third-degree tears, respectively. The only differences between groups were found over time according to perineal injury at 6 months in the arousal domain. At 12 months, total FSFI and domain scores were no different to initial scores. At 12 months postpartum sexual function has returned to early pregnancy levels, irrespective of mode of delivery or perineal injury.	f	\N
25761284	Here we show that the pupillary light response reflects exogenous (involuntary) shifts of attention and inhibition of return. Participants fixated in the center of a display that was divided into a bright and a dark half. An exogenous cue attracted attention to the bright or dark side of the display. Initially, the pupil constricted when the bright, as compared to the dark, side of the display was cued, reflecting a shift of attention toward the exogenous cue. Crucially, this pattern reversed about 1 s after cue presentation. This later-occurring, relative dilation (when the bright side was cued) reflected disengagement from the previously attended location, analogous to the behavioral phenomenon of inhibition of return. Indeed, we observed a reliable correlation between "pupillary inhibition" and behavioral inhibition of return. Our results support the view that inhibition of return results from habituation to (or short-term depression of) visual input. We conclude that the pupillary light response is a complex eye movement that reflects how we selectively parse and interpret visual input.	f	\N
25768854	Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant that is commonly used in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adults. Several reports are available regarding the relationship of MPH use and sleep bruxism. We report the case of a 9-year-old boy who presented with severe awake bruxism after his second dose of sustained release form of MPH treatment, which was confirmed on rechallenge. This is the first report of its kind showing such relationship in the literature.	f	\N
25772915	Available evidences seem to suggest increasing trend in sleep deficit among teenagers worldwide, and there is limited information on this among Nigerian teenagers. This study was carried out to determine the basic sleep schedule and sleep duration among schooling teenagers in Ilorin, Nigeria. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among 20 selected public secondary schools in Ilorin, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select participating schools. A total of 1033 students participated in the study; of these 47.3% were males and 51.7% females. Students mean age (standard deviation) was 15.3 ± 1.6 years with a range of 12-19 years. Majority (76.2%) of participants co-share bed with at least one person and some (23.8%) slept alone in bed. The three leading reasons given for going to bed were: Tiredness - 31.1%, completion of house assignment - 20.5%, and parental directive - 12.4%. 10% of teenagers do make regular phone calls at night and 5.5% surf internet and use computers at night. Regular habits of daytime sleepiness were reported by 8.2% of study participants. Students' mean sleep duration during school days was 9.33 ± 2.29 h compared to 10.09 ± 1.32 h at weekend (P < 0.05). The duration of night time sleep was adequate (>9 h) in 41% of students; borderline (8-9 h) in 44.3% while 13.3% of the students had insufficient nighttime sleep duration (<8 h) P < 0.05. A substantial number of students had borderline nighttime sleep duration and so had potentials to transit into the problematic insufficient range. To prevent this, there is a need to educate schooling teenagers on the dangers associated with prolonged sleep insufficiency.	f	\N
25782397	Diurnal preference (chronotype) is a useful instrument for studying circadian biology in humans. It harbours trait-like dimensions relating to circadian period and sleep homeostasis, but also has ontogenetic components (morningness increases with age). We used the Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) in the Baependi study, a family-based cohort study based in a small town in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The population is highly admixed and has a cohesive and conservative lifestyle. 825 individuals (497 female) aged 18-89 years (average ± SD = 46.4 ± 16.3) and belonging to 112 different families participated in this study. The average MEQ score was 63.5 ± 11.2 with a significant (P < 0.0001) linear increase with age. Morningness was significantly (P < 0.0001) higher in the rural (70.2 ± 9.8) than in the municipal zone (62.6 ± 11.1), and was also significantly (P = 0.025) higher in male (64.6 ± 10.9) than in female (62.8 ± 11.2) participants. Thus, in spite of universal access to electricity, the Baependi population was strongly shifted towards morningness, particularly in the rural zone. Heritability of MEQ score was 0.48 when adjusted for sex and age, or 0.38 when adjusted for sex, age, and residential zone. The reported MEQ score heritability is more akin to those of previous twin studies than previous family studies.	f	\N
25784489	Electrical stimulation of upper limb nerves evokes a train of high-frequency wavelets (high-frequency oscillations, HFOs) on the human scalp. These HFOs are related to the influence of arousal-promoting structures on somatosensory input processing, and are generated in the primary somatosensory cortex (post-synaptic HFOs) and the terminal tracts of thalamocortical radiations (pre-synaptic HFOs). We previously reported that HFOs do not undergo habituation to repeated stimulations; here, we verified whether HFOs could be modulated by external sensitizing stimuli. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) in 15 healthy volunteers before and after sensitization training with an auditory stimulus. Pre-synaptic HFO amplitudes, reflecting somatosensory thalamic/thalamocortical activity, significantly increased after the sensitizing acoustic stimulation, whereas both the low-frequency N20 SSEP component and post-synaptic HFOs were unaffected. Cross-talk between subcortical arousal-related structures is a probable mechanism for the pre-synaptic HFO effect observed in this study. We propose that part of the ascending somatosensory input encoded in HFOs is specifically able to convey sensitized inputs. This preferential involvement in sensitization mechanisms suggests that HFOs play a critical role in the detection of potentially relevant stimuli, and act at very early stages of somatosensory input processing.	f	\N
25788036	Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results.	f	\N
25801520	Structural and Electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in right temporoparietal cortex have been associated with family history of depression (FH). Here we investigate if functional abnormalities in this area, indexed by attenuated responses to emotionally arousing stimuli, are also family-history-dependent. Neuromagnetic activity for emotional and neutral complex scenes was recorded by Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 depressed patients without, 8 depressed patients with FH, and 15 healthy controls. Emotion-sensitive neuronal steady state responses were cortical source localized and tested for group-by-emotion interactions. The group-by-emotion interaction (F(4, 80)=4.4, p=0.004) was explained by a significant modulation of right temporoparietal cortex activity by emotional arousal in controls and patients without FH. This effect was reduced in FH positive patients. The difference between patient groups remained when clinical variables such as symptom severity were accounted for. All patients were medicated, but differences between patient groups remained after accounting for medication dosage. Further, the sample size was limited, but data-driven resampling statistics showed the robustness of our effects. Finally, the sample consists of female patients only and we cannot generalize our results to male samples. Patients with FH show impaired recruitment of attention-relevant cortical circuitry by emotional stimuli. The neuroanatomical locus of this effect accords with previous reports on structural abnormalities and electrophysiological deficits at rest in individuals with FH. Our results speak to the relevance of right temporoparietal dysfunction in emotional information processing as a potential endophenotype for depression with FH.	f	\N
25801753	The aim of this study was to find out how people with epilepsy in NE Thailand feel about their levels of stress, sleep, diet, exercise habits, and sex lives using a cross-sectional design. Two hundred and three people with epilepsy (PWE) were randomly recruited from a university epilepsy clinic in Khon Kaen and then completed an interview and a questionnaire. A total of 27.6% of the patients believed that diet had an influence on their epilepsy (of those who reported changes, 41.1% stopped consuming alcohol, while 32.1% stopped drinking caffeinated beverages). A total of 47.2% of the patients exercised at least three times per week, while 52.8% exercised two times or less a week. Daytime sleeping was prevalent, with 43.3% saying that they slept during the day frequently or every day. There were 44.3% of the patients who believed that their sex lives changed after the onset of epilepsy, with decreased sexual arousal being most commonly mentioned. A total of 76.4% of the patients said that they had medium or high levels of stress, and epilepsy was listed as the most common reason for their stress (50.2%). Focusing on the problem was the most common method to reduce stress (80.3%). The findings illuminate the need to increase attention towards improving and promoting self-management of epilepsy. As a whole, diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and sex therapy can be valuable tools to improve the quality of life of people with epilepsy.	f	\N
25832193	We used contingent attentional capture to investigate whether capture in a given trial n was affected by the cue-target position relations in a preceding trial n-1. Typically, attentional capture by a cue facilitates reaction times for targets in valid conditions (with the cue and target at the same position) relative to invalid conditions (with the cue and target at different positions). Also, this validity effect holds for cues with a feature similar to the searched-for target features (i.e., matching cues), but not for cues dissimilar to the searched-for target features (i.e., nonmatching cues), a pattern termed contingent capture because capture is assumed to be contingent on the match between the cue and top-down control settings. Here, we replicated this contingent-capture pattern with cues that were nonpredictive of the target position. In addition, we showed that during search for white onset targets, red nonmatching color cues also created a validity effect if the same nonmatching cue had been used as a valid cue in trial n-1 (Exps. 1 and 2). This intertrial contingency of the nonmatching cue's validity effect was also found if the cues and targets both changed their positions from trial to trial, rendering position priming unlikely (Exp. 2). A similar intertrial contingency was found for nonmatching white onset cues, but not for matching red color cues during search for red color targets (Exp. 3). These results are discussed in light of explanations of the contingent-capture effect and of intertrial contingencies.	f	\N
25874883	It is a well-known fact today that driver sleepiness is a contributory factor in crashes. Factors considered as sleepiness contributor are mostly related to time of the day, hours being awake and hours slept. Factors contributing to active and passive fatigue are mostly focusing on the level of cognitive load. Less is known what role external factors, e.g. type of road, sound/noise, vibrations etc., have on the ability to stay awake both under conditions of sleepiness and under active or passive fatigue. The aim of this moving base driving simulator study with 19 drivers participating in a random order day and night time, was to evaluate the effect of low-frequency road noise on driver sleepiness and performance, including both long-term and short-term effects. The results support to some extent the hypothesis that road-induced interior vehicle sound affects driving performance and driver sleepiness. Increased low-frequency noise helps to reduce speed during both day- and night time driving, but also contributes to increase the number of lane crossings during night time.	f	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	f	\N
25902810	To validate the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) as a treatment effect measure in narcolepsy, and to compare the SART with the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Validation of treatment effect measurements within a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Ninety-five patients with narcolepsy with or without cataplexy. The RCT comprised a double-blind, parallel-group, multicenter trial comparing the effects of 8-w treatments with pitolisant (BF2.649), modafinil, or placebo (NCT01067222). MWT, ESS, and SART were administered at baseline and after an 8-w treatment period. The severity of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy was also assessed using the Clinical Global Impression scale (CGI-C). The SART, MWT, and ESS all had good reliability, obtained for the SART and MWT using two to three sessions in 1 day. The ability to distinguish responders from nonresponders, classified using the CGI-C score, was high for all measures, with a high performance for the SART (r = 0.61) and the ESS (r = 0.54). The Sustained Attention to Response Task is a valid and easy-to-administer measure to assess treatment effects in narcolepsy, enhanced by combining it with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.	f	\N
25939700	Memory for multiple features might be limited by the number of features, the number of objects, or both. To focus on the role of features, we tested memory for a variable number of features within a single object. Subjects studied a single ellipse that varied in four features: size, orientation, contrast, and position. We conducted two experiments that differed in how memory was tested. If performance is limited only by the number of objects to be remembered, there should be no effect of the number of relevant features within a single object. Instead, for both experiments, the proportion correct was lower when four features had to be remembered rather than one. The magnitude of these effects varied with the details of the two experiments. Although similar results have been reported for experiments using multiple objects, the present experiments are some of the first to have demonstrated such an effect for a single object. This result is inconsistent with theories in which visual memory has a discrete limit on the number of stored objects, and no limit on the stored features within an object. Instead, it seems likely that objects and features both play roles in limiting performance in memory tasks.	f	\N
25961880	It is commonly assumed that attentional inhibitory functioning decreases with age, even though empirical evidence is mixed. These inconsistencies possibly stem from methodological artifacts: distractor inhibition is typically assessed with the negative priming paradigm, which confounds inhibition and episodic retrieval. In the present study, we investigated age differences in a sequential distractor repetition paradigm (Giesen, Frings, & Rothermund, 2012) that provides independent estimates of distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval processes. Older (60+ yrs) and younger (below 30 years) adults identified target letters that were flanked by distractors (JKJ). Inhibitory processes were preserved in older adults, who showed reliable distractor repetition benefits resulting from persistent distractor inhibition; however, a significant loss of inhibition was apparent for the older subgroup of participants (65+ yrs) compared with a subgroup of young-old participants (60 to 64 years). No age differences were found for episodic retrieval processes of stimulus-response bindings that were indexed by an interaction of distractor repetition and response relation. Findings highlight the importance of dissociating between distractor inhibition and retrieval processes that are differently implicated in age-related cognitive change.	f	\N
25962854	Hearing loss often triggers an inescapable buzz (tinnitus) and causes everyday sounds to become intolerably loud (hyperacusis), but exactly where and how this occurs in the brain is unknown. To identify the neural substrate for these debilitating disorders, we induced both tinnitus and hyperacusis with an ototoxic drug (salicylate) and used behavioral, electrophysiological, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to identify the tinnitus-hyperacusis network. Salicylate depressed the neural output of the cochlea, but vigorously amplified sound-evoked neural responses in the amygdala, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex. Resting-state fMRI revealed hyperactivity in an auditory network composed of inferior colliculus, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex with side branches to cerebellum, amygdala, and reticular formation. Functional connectivity revealed enhanced coupling within the auditory network and segments of the auditory network and cerebellum, reticular formation, amygdala, and hippocampus. A testable model accounting for distress, arousal, and gating of tinnitus and hyperacusis is proposed.	f	\N
25977319	The aim of this study was to illustrate how a consideration of glance sequences to in-vehicle tasks and their associated distributions can be informative. The rapid growth in the number of nomadic technologies and in-vehicle devices has the potential to create complex, visually intensive tasks for drivers that may incur long in-vehicle glances. Such glances place drivers at increased risk of a motor vehicle crash. We used eye-glance data from a study of distraction training programs to examine the change in glance duration distributions across consecutive glances during the performance of various in-vehicle tasks. The sequential analysis across trained and untrained drivers showed that the proportion of late-sequence glances longer than a 2-s threshold among untrained drivers was almost double the number of such glances for the trained drivers, that the third and later glances were particularly problematic, and that training reduced the proportion of early- and later-sequence glances. Examining how the duration of off-road glances varies as a function of their order in a sequence of glances and the visual demands of the task can offer important insights into the change in the distracting potential of in-vehicle tasks across glances and the effects of training. The sequential analysis of in-vehicle glance data can be useful for researchers and practitioners and has implications for the development and evaluation of training programs as well as for task and interface design.	f	\N
25994341	The food habit is involved in the onset and development of lifestyle-related diseases. In this review I would like to describe a historical case of vitamin B1 deficiency, as well as our case study of fatty acid metabolism abnormality due to carnitine deficiency. In history, the army and navy personnel in Japan at the end of the 19th century received food rations based on a high-carbohydrate diet including white rice, resulting in the onset of beriberi. An epidemiological study by Kenkan Takaki revealed the relationship between the onset of beriberi and rice intake. Then, Takaki was successful in preventing the onset of beriberi by changing the diet. However, the primary cause had yet to be elucidated. Finally, Christian Eijkman established an animal model of beriberi (chickens) showing peripheral neuropathy, and he identified the existence of an anti-beriberi substance, vitamin B1. This is an example of the successful control of a disease by integrating the results of epidemiological and experimental studies. In our study using a murine model of fatty acid metabolism abnormality caused by carnitine deficiency, cardiac abnormality and fatty liver developed depending on the amount of dietary fat. In addition, the mice showed disturbance of orexin neuron activity related to the sleep-arousal system, which is involved in fatigue symptoms under fasting condition, one of the states showing enhanced fatty acid metabolism. These findings suggest that fatty acid toxicity is enhanced when the mice are more dependent on fatty acid metabolism. Almost simultaneously, a human epidemiological study showed that narcolepsy, which is caused by orexin system abnormality, is associated with the polymorphism of the gene coding for carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1B, which is involved in carnitine metabolism. To understand the pathological mechanism of fatty acid toxicity, not only an experimental approach using animal models, but also an epidemiological approach is necessary. The results will be applied to preventing and treating lifestyle-related diseases associated with fatty acid metabolism abnormality.	f	\N
26002721	Auditory selective attention is a critical skill for goal-directed behavior, especially where noisy distractions may impede focusing attention. To better understand the developmental trajectory of auditory spatial selective attention in an acoustically complex environment, in the current study we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) across five age groups: 3-5 years; 10 years; 13 years; 16 years; and young adults. Using a naturalistic dichotic listening paradigm, we characterized the ERP morphology for nonlinguistic and linguistic auditory probes embedded in attended and unattended stories. We documented robust maturational changes in auditory evoked potentials that were specific to the types of probes. Furthermore, we found a remarkable interplay between age and attention-modulation of auditory evoked potentials in terms of morphology and latency from the early years of childhood through young adulthood. The results are consistent with the view that attention can operate across age groups by modulating the amplitude of maturing auditory early-latency evoked potentials or by invoking later endogenous attention processes. Development of these processes is not uniform for probes with different acoustic properties within our acoustically dense speech-based dichotic listening task. In light of the developmental differences we demonstrate, researchers conducting future attention studies of children and adolescents should be wary of combining analyses across diverse ages.	f	\N
26003250	Strokes are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Thanks in part to better and more available diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, the vast majority of stroke patients tend to survive strokes, particularly in the industrialized world. Motor disability and cognitive changes such as aphasia and visuospatial disorders are most often considered among the major contributors to stroke burden. This chapter discusses disorders of sexual functions as another frequent sequel of strokes. Strokes generally induce hyposexuality, but in some instances they may be followed by hypersexuality. There is some evidence suggesting that lesions of either hemisphere affect sexual activities, but for different reasons: aphasia and depression after left-hemisphere lesions, a deficit in arousal and perhaps visuospatial disorders after right-hemisphere lesions. Psychologic, psychosocial, and physical factors, as well as medications, play an important role. A better understanding of the psychosocial and physiologic mechanisms underlying sexual functioning can provide insight into improving sexual activity and therefore quality of life in patients affected by strokes and other brain lesions.	f	\N
26042011	In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS-) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS- and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS- and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning.	f	\N
26042057	Emotional experience has a pervasive impact on choice behavior, yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Introducing facial-expression primes into a probabilistic learning task, we investigated how affective arousal regulates reward-related choice based on behavioral, model fitting, and feedback-related negativity (FRN) data. Sixty-six paid subjects were randomly assigned to the Neutral-Neutral (NN), Angry-Neutral (AN), and Happy-Neutral (HN) groups. A total of 960 trials were conducted. Subjects in each group were randomly exposed to half trials of the pre-determined emotional faces and another half of the neutral faces before choosing between two cards drawn from two decks with different assigned reward probabilities. Trial-by-trial data were fit with a standard reinforcement learning model using the Bayesian estimation approach. The temporal dynamics of brain activity were simultaneously recorded and analyzed using event-related potentials. Our analyses revealed that subjects in the NN group gained more reward values than those in the other two groups; they also exhibited comparatively differential estimated model-parameter values for reward prediction errors. Computing the difference wave of FRNs in reward vs. non-reward trials, we found that, compared to the NN group, subjects in the AN and HN groups had larger "General" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in no-reward trials minus FRNs in reward trials) and "Expected" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in expected reward-omission trials minus FRNs in expected reward-delivery trials), indicating an interruption in predicting reward. Further, both AN and HN groups appeared to be more sensitive to negative outcomes than the NN group. Collectively, our study suggests that affective arousal negatively regulates reward-related choice, probably through overweighting with negative feedback.	f	\N
26057772	Encoding of stressful experiences plays an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. A crucial aspect of memory encoding is binding: the "gluing" of the temporal and spatial elements of an episode into a cohesive unit. This study investigated the effect of emotional arousal on temporal binding and examined whether temporal binding varied as a function of state anxiety and/or state dissociation. Participants saw picture sequences that varied in arousal and valence. After each sequence, participants were presented with all the pictures simultaneously and had to sort the pictures in the original order. Temporal context binding was indexed by sorting accuracy. Binding was generally lower for high than low arousing pictures. Reduced binding of arousing material was specifically pronounced in participants with high state anxiety, whereas it seemed independent of state dissociation. These findings point to the relevance of impaired temporal binding as a component of aberrant memory encoding in stressful situations.	f	\N
26099122	The main aim of this study was to differentiate the magnitude of a pilot's heart rate variability (HRV) when performing assisted and unassisted flights, as well as simple and complex flight tasks. Cardiac monitoring in flights was carried out using a compact, mobile ECG recorder. A frequency analysis of the heart rate (HR) signal was performed to determine the ratio of low-frequency spectral power (LF) to high-frequency spectral power (HF). The LF/HF ratio observed in the zone (M=1.047, SD=0.059) was significantly different than the LF/HF calculated preflight (M=0.877, SD=0.043) and postflight (M=0.793, SD=0.037). There was no main effect of the flight type (unassisted zone flight vs. zone flight with an instructor) on the LF/HF parameter. However, greater psychophysiological load of a pilot was observed in the training zone flights when compared to simple circle flights (main effect of the flight type). As the LF/HF ratio turned out to be significantly higher in the zone than pre- and postflight, this parameter can be useful for predicting the risk of excessive stress and arousal of pilots during flights. Based on the LF/HF ratio we can also estimate difficulty level of flight tasks, because our research has shown higher values of this parameter in the training zone flights than in simple circle flights.	f	\N
26140258	Negative emotions can cause discomforting autonomic arousal, which can be difficult to inhibit using willpower alone. Although previous physiological studies have reported that skin pressure at certain bilateral locations reflexively inhibits sympathetic nervous system activity, few studies have tested the effect of this inhibition on emotion-related autonomic arousal in humans. I recorded skin potential response (SPR) and heart rate (HR) in healthy participants in response to loud noises presented concomitantly with or without skin pressure applied bilaterally to the sides of the chest. Weaker SPR and lower HR were observed in response to the noises accompanied by skin pressure. These findings indicate that skin pressure can be an easy and effective method to inhibit autonomic arousal related to negative emotions.	f	\N
26151610	This meta-analysis examined the effect experimental sleep restriction has on youth's attention and hyperactivity outcomes. Thirteen published studies containing 17 independent samples were included (N = 496). Random- and fixed-effects models were used to estimate pooled effect sizes and moderator effects, respectively. Results indicate that sleep-restricted youth had significantly worse attention outcomes than youth with extended sleep, but no differences were evident regarding hyperactivity. Significant moderators of this effect included age and sex. These results have important implications for both the prevention and treatment of attention problems, highlighting the need for health professionals to screen for and treat underlying sleep issues.	f	\N
26261317	Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young adults. We report robust and replicated associations of the amine compound SLC (solute-carrier) transporters gene set with the learning rate, of the collagen formation and transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity gene sets with the modulation of memory strength by negative emotional arousal, and of the L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM) interactions gene set with the repetition-based memory improvement. Furthermore, in a large functional MRI sample of 795 subjects we found that the association between L1CAM interactions and memory maintenance revealed large clusters of differences in brain activity in frontal cortical areas. Our findings provide converging evidence that distinct genetic profiles underlie specific mental processes of human episodic memory. They also provide empirical support to previous theoretical and neurobiological studies linking specific neuromodulators to the learning rate and linking neural cell adhesion molecules to memory maintenance. Furthermore, our study suggests additional memory-related genetic pathways, which may contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of human memory.	f	\N
26308302	Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) as a bridge to lung transplantation (LuTx) is a promising option for patients with end-stage lung disease on the transplant waiting list. We investigated the outcome of patients bridged to lung transplantation on ECLS technologies, mainly extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Between January 2007 and October 2013, ECLS was implanted in 30 patients with intention to bridge to LuTx. Twenty-six patients (26/30) were successfully bridged to LuTx on ECLS. The most common diagnosis was cystic fibrosis (N = 12). Venovenous ECMO was used in 10, venoarterial in 4, interventional lung assist in 5, and stepwise combination of them in 7 recipients. Two patients weaned from ECMO, and 2 patients died on ECMO on the waiting list. Median duration of ECLS was 21 days (1-81 years). Six patients were awake and spontaneously breathing during ECLS support. Thirty-day, 1-year, and 2-year survivals were 89%, 68%, and 53%, respectively, for bridged patients and 96%, 85%, and 79%, respectively, for control group (P = 0.001). Three months conditional survivals were 89% and 69% at 1 and 2 years for ECLS group, compared to 92% and 86% for control group (P = 0.03). Cystic fibrosis recipients had 82% survival rate at 1 and 2 years. All recipients bridged to LuTx on awake ECLS (N = 6) are alive with a median follow-up of 10.8 months (range, 6-21 months). Our data show significantly lower survival in this high-risk group compared to patients transplanted without preoperative ECLS. Awake and ambulatory ECLS provides the best prognosis for these high-risk patients.	f	\N
26320752	In recent years , increasing attention has been given to the development of deaf children, though few studies have included Deaf parents. The present study examined emotional availability (EA) and functions of touch used by Deaf or hearing parents with hearing or deaf infants during free play. Sixty dyads representing four hearing status groups were observed when the infants were 18 months old. Comparisons among all four groups revealed significant differences in regard to parental sensitivity and child responsiveness, with hearing mothers with deaf infants tending to score lowest in the various subcategories of EA. Significant differences were also found for attentional touch and total touch, with deaf mothers of deaf or hearing infants using both types of touch more than hearing mothers of deaf or hearing infants. The importance of support and interventions for hearing mothers with deaf infants is discussed.	f	\N
26420517	Negative non-specific (nocebo-like) effects of medications and electromagnetic fields are often described as results of mistaken attribution. The current study aimed to find empirical evidence supporting this theory. Participants completed questionnaires assessing modern health worries, health anxiety, and somatosensory amplification, were assigned to one of three conditions (placebo pill with sedative information, sham magnetic field, or control), and completed a 14-min vigilance task. Changes in physiological arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance) and reported symptoms were also measured. Finally, causal attributions concerning cognitive performance and reported symptoms were assessed. No increase in symptom reports and physiological arousal was measured in the two intervention groups. A perceived negative effect on cognitive performance was attributed to both sham conditions, and attributions were connected to modern health worries. A proportion of reported symptoms was ascribed to the placebo pill but not to the sham magnetic field. Symptom attributions were not related to any assessed psychological variables. An aroused physiological state is not necessary for the automatic causal attribution process. Negative effects attributed to medication and environmental factors can be regarded as unavoidable side effects of human cognitive-emotional functioning; they might be alleviated, but cannot be completely eradicated.	f	\N
26442340	Although alexithymia is recognized as a set of traitlike deficits in emotion processing, research suggests there are concomitant cognitive issues as well, including what appears to be an unusual pattern of enhanced working memory (WM) despite broader executive dysfunction. It is unknown whether this enhancement includes the executive elements of WM and whether executive control of WM in alexithymia differs for emotional and neutral stimuli. This study examined how alexithymia moderates patterns of interference resolution in WM with valenced and nonvalenced stimuli. Participants (N = 93) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and a recency probes WM task containing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli, with some trials containing proactive interference from previous trials. The reaction time difference between interference and noninterference trials indexed degree of interference resolution. Toronto Alexithymia Scale score moderated a within-subject effect such that, when valenced probes were used, there was less proactive interference in the positive relative to negative valence condition; this valence-based interference discrepancy was significant for a subset of highly alexithymic participants. Alexithymia did not moderate proactive interference to negative or neutral stimuli or accuracy of responses. These results suggest that, although alexithymia does not influence executive control in WM for nonemotional items, alexithymic people demonstrate an idiosyncratic response to positive stimuli that might indicate blunted reactivity.	f	\N
26447746	The Introversion/Extraversion dimension may interact with contextual interference, as random and blocked practice schedules imply distinct levels of variation. This study investigated the effect of different practice schedules in the acquisition of a motor skill in extraverts and introverts. Forty male undergraduate students (M = 24.3 yr., SD = 5.6) were classified as extraverts (n = 20) and introverts (n = 20) by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and allocated in one of two practice schedules with different levels of contextual interference: blocked (low contextual interference) and random (high contextual interference). Half of each group was assigned to a blocked practice schedule, and the other half was assigned to a random practice schedule. The design had two phases: acquisition and transfer (5 min. and 24 hr.). The participants learned variations of a sequential timing keypressing task. Each variation required the same sequence but different timing; three variations were used in acquisition, and one variation of intermediate length was used in transfer. Results for absolute error and overall timing error (root mean square error) indicated that the contextual interference effect was more pronounced for introverts. In addition, introverts who practiced according to the blocked schedule committed more errors during the 24-hr. transfer, suggesting that introverts did not appear to be challenged by a low contextual interference practice schedule.	f	\N
26468192	Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. This neural activity is linked to cognition that operates in the present or anticipates events or stimuli in the near future. We focus on deliberation and planning in the context of decision making as a cognitive process that integrates information across time. We progress to consider how temporal expectations of the future modulate perception. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition. Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition.	f	\N
26501048	People do not use condoms consistently but instead rely on intuition to identify sexual partners high at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The present study examined gender differences of intuitive impressions about HIV risk. Male and female perceivers evaluated portraits of unacquainted male and female targets regarding their risk for HIV, trait characteristics (trust, responsibility, attractiveness, valence, arousal, and health), and willingness for interaction. Male targets were perceived as more risky than female targets for both perceiver genders. Furthermore, male perceivers reported higher HIV risk perception for both male and female targets than female perceivers. Multiple regression indicated gender differences in the association between person characteristics and HIV risk. In male targets, only trustworthiness predicts HIV risk. In female targets, however, HIV risk is related to trustworthiness, attractiveness, health, valence (for male perceivers), and arousal (for female perceivers). The present findings characterize intuitive impressions of HIV risk and reveal differences according to both target and perceiver gender. Considering gender differences in intuitive judgments of HIV risk may help devise effective strategies by shifting the balance from feelings of risk toward a more rational mode of risk perception and the adoption of effective precautionary behaviors.	f	\N
21895359	Early evidence of social referencing was examined in 5½-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to 2 films of moving toys, one toy eliciting a woman's positive emotional expression and the other eliciting a negative expression under conditions of bimodal (audiovisual) or unimodal visual (silent) speech. It was predicted that intersensory redundancy provided by audiovisual (but not available in unimodal visual) events would enhance detection of the relation between emotional expressions and the corresponding toy. Consistent with predictions, only infants who received bimodal, audiovisual events detected a change in the affect-object relations, showing increased looking during a switch test in which the toy-affect pairing was reversed. Moreover, in a subsequent live preference test, they preferentially touched the 3-dimensional toy previously paired with the positive expression. These findings suggest social referencing emerges by 5½ months in the context of intersensory redundancy provided by dynamic multimodal stimulation and that even 5½-month-old infants demonstrate preferences for 3-dimensional objects on the basis of affective information depicted in videotaped events.	f	\N
20047084	Compared to high school graduates, adolescents who drop out of school are more likely to have a range of negative outcomes, including lower verbal capacities; however, the true nature of this association is not well-understood. Dropping out of school could have an important effect on reducing verbal skills, or the link between dropping out of school and diminished verbal skills could be a spurious association that is the result of unmeasured confounding variables. The current study tested these two competing perspectives by using propensity-score-matching (PSM) to unpack the association between school dropout and verbal skills among 7,317 respondents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (51% female, 49% male; 62% Caucasian, 38% minority). The results of the PSM models indicated a small yet meaningful statistically significant effect of dropout on verbal skills in adulthood even after taking into account a range of confounders. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results.	\N	\N
20236795	To determine the effectiveness of gore-tex medialization thyroplasty for the management of glottic incompetence (GI) in patients with mobile vocal folds. Twenty patients with glottic incompetence (GI) and mobile vocal folds were retrospectively analyzed after gore-tex medialization laryngoplasty. Pre- and postoperative outcome measures including grade, roughness, breathiness, asthenia, strain of the voice (GRBAS), glottal function index (GFI), and voice-related quality of life (VRQOL) were compared to detect surgical effectiveness. Two anesthetic subgroups were identified and compared: general anesthesia, via laryngeal mask airway (LMA) anesthetic, and local anesthesia. Statistically significant differences were identified between pre- and postoperative VRQOL (P<0.0001), GFI (P<0.01), and composite GRBAS (P<0.0001) after a mean follow-up time of 7.8 months. Both the LMA and the local anesthetic subgroups demonstrated similar significance across these measures. GFI and VRQOL scores demonstrate a moderate correlation (ρ=0.71). Perceptual voice quality (GRBAS) correlates slightly better with VRQOL scores (ρ=-0.6; P<0.01) than qualitative measures of glottal function (GFI) (ρ=0.43). Gore-tex thyroplasty provides reliable medium-term improvement in both perceptual and subjective voice parameters in the setting of GI with mobile vocal folds.	\N	\N
20388591	Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, and especially the Mu-rhythm over the sensorimotor cortex that relates to the activation of the mirror neuron system (MNS), were acquired from two subject groups (orchestral musicians and nonmusicians), in order to explore action representation processes involved in the perception and performance of musical pieces. Two types of stimuli were used, i.e., an auditory one consisting of an excerpt of Beethoven's fifth symphony and a visual one presenting a conductor directing an orchestra performing the same excerpt of the piece. Three tasks were conducted including auditory stimulation, audiovisual stimulation, and visual stimulation only, and the acquired signals were processed using fractal [time-dependent fractal dimension (FD) estimation] and statistical analysis (analysis of variance, Mann-Whitney). Experimental results showed significant differences between the two groups while desychronization of the Mu-rhythm, which can be linked to MNS activation, was observed during all tasks for the musicians' group, as opposed to the nonmusicians' group who exhibited similar response only when the visual stimulus was present. The mobility of the conductor was also correlated to the estimated FD signals, showing significantly higher correlation for the case of musicians compared to nonmusicians' one. The present study sheds light upon the difference in action representation in auditory perception between musicians and nonmusicians and paves the way for better comprehension of the underlying mechanisms of the MNS.	\N	\N
20447726	The purpose of the study was to compare the speech recognition capacity between listeners with and without acoustic reflex using different types of noises and intensities. We studied 18 women allocated to 2 groups: acoustic reflex present (20 ears) and absent (16 ears). They were presented with 180 disyllable words (90 to each ear), emitted randomly at a fixed intensity of 40 dB above the pure tone average hearing level. At the same time, 3 types of noises were presented ipsilaterally (white, pink, and speech), one at a time, at 3 intensities: 40, 50, and 60 dB above the pure tone average hearing level. The ages and auditory thresholds were statistically equal between the groups. There was a significant difference in mean number of hits between the 2 groups for the 3 types of noises used. There was also a significant difference in mean number of hits for noise type and intensity when white and pink noise was used at 40 and 50 dB and for all the intensities when speech was used. Acoustic reflex helps communication in high-noise environments and is more efficient for speech sounds.	\N	\N
20507830	On its 43rd anniversary the Simon effect can look back at a long and varied history. First treated as a curious observation with implications for human factors research, it slowly evolved not only into a valuable target of psychological theorizing itself but also into a handy means to investigate attentional operations, the representation of space and of one's body, the cognitive representation of intentional action, and executive control. This article discusses the major characteristics of the Simon effect and the Simon task that laid the ground for this success and reviews the major lines of research, theoretical developments, and ongoing controversies on and around the Simon Effect and the cognitive processes it reflects.	\N	\N
20557486	Predominantly, the impact of environmental noise is measured using sound level, ignoring the influence of other factors on subjective experience. The present study tested physiological responses to natural urban soundscapes, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and vector cardiogram. City-based recordings were matched in overall sound level (71 decibel A-weighted scale), but differed on ratings of pleasantness and vibrancy. Listening to soundscapes evoked significant activity in a number of auditory brain regions. Compared with soundscapes that evoked no (neutral) emotional response, those evoking a pleasant or unpleasant emotional response engaged an additional neural circuit including the right amygdala. Ratings of vibrancy had little effect overall, and brain responses were more sensitive to pleasantness than was heart rate. A novel finding is that urban soundscapes with similar loudness can have dramatically different effects on the brain's response to the environment.	\N	\N
20562170	Estrogen may be involved in schizophrenia by inhibiting serotonin-1A (5-HT(1A)) receptor function. We examined the effects of estrogen pre-treatment on modulation of loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) and mismatch negativity by the 5-HT(1A) receptor partial agonist, buspirone. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, repeated-measures design in healthy female volunteers, we observed that buspirone treatment significantly increased LDAEP slope. Estrogen increased LDAEP slope on its own, and a further LDAEP increase by buspirone was not seen after estrogen pre-treatment. Similar results were observed for mismatch negativity, where buspirone caused a small increase of latency, although not amplitude, after placebo but not estrogen pre-treatment, which enhanced mismatch negativity latency on its own. These results are in line with our previous findings on prepulse inhibition showing an inhibitory effect of estrogen on the action of buspirone. Taken together, these data suggest that estrogen may inhibit 5-HT(1A) receptor-mediated disruptions of auditory processing.	\N	\N
20570253	An increasing number of neuroimaging studies in music cognition research suggest that "language areas" are involved in the processing of musical syntax, but none of these studies clarified whether these areas are a prerequisite for normal syntax processing in music. The present electrophysiological experiment tested whether patients with lesions in Broca's area (N=6) or in the left anterior temporal lobe (N=7) exhibit deficits in the processing of structure in music compared to matched healthy controls (N=13). A chord sequence paradigm was applied, and the amplitude and scalp topography of the Early Right Anterior Negativity (ERAN) was examined, an electrophysiological marker of musical syntax processing that correlates with activity in Broca's area and its right hemisphere homotope. Left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (but not anterior superior temporal gyrus - aSTG) patients with lesions older than 4 years showed an ERAN with abnormal scalp distribution, and subtle behavioural deficits in detecting music-syntactic irregularities. In one IFG patient tested 7 months post-stroke, the ERAN was extinguished and the behavioural performance remained at chance level. These combined results suggest that the left IFG, known to be crucial for syntax processing in language, plays also a functional role in the processing of musical syntax. Hence, the present findings are consistent with the notion that Broca's area supports the processing of syntax in a rather domain-general way.	\N	\N
20672879	The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between perception and production of metrical patterns in Swedish children with language impairment (LI), in order to add to the knowledge on underlying explanations of LI. A further aim was to explore whether omissions are mainly related to prosodic aspects or to linguistic function. Children with LI omitted significantly more unstressed syllables than did children with typical language development. Exploration of the relationship between perception and production of phrasal stress patterns demonstrated that children with LI might be divided into three subgroups: Group a: children who perform better on perception than production; Group b: children who perform better on production than perception; and Group c: children with rather poor results on both perception and production.	\N	\N
20689026	To use eye tracking to investigate age differences in real-time lexical processing in quiet and in noise in light of the fact that older adults find it more difficult than younger adults to understand conversations in noisy situations. Twenty-four younger and 24 older adults followed spoken instructions referring to depicted objects, for example, "Look at the candle." Eye movements captured listeners' ability to differentiate the target noun (candle) from a similar-sounding phonological competitor (e.g., candy or sandal). Manipulations included the presence/absence of noise, the type of phonological overlap in target-competitor pairs, and the number of syllables. Having controlled for age-related differences in word recognition accuracy (by tailoring noise levels), similar online processing profiles were found for younger and older adults when targets were discriminated from competitors that shared onset sounds. Age-related differences were found when target words were differentiated from rhyming competitors and were more extensive in noise. Real-time spoken word recognition processes appear similar for younger and older adults in most conditions; however, age-related differences may be found in the discrimination of rhyming words (especially in noise), even when there are no age differences in word recognition accuracy. These results highlight the utility of eye movement methodologies for studying speech processing across the life span.	\N	\N
20689036	In this study, the authors investigated the effects of age on the use of fundamental frequency differences (ΔF(0)) in the perception of competing synthesized vowels in simulations of electroacoustic and cochlear-implant hearing. Twelve younger listeners with normal hearing and 13 older listeners with (near) normal hearing were evaluated in their use of ΔF(0) in the perception of competing synthesized vowels for 3 conditions: unprocessed synthesized vowels (UNP), envelope-vocoded synthesized vowels that simulated a cochlear implant (VOC), and synthesized vowels processed to simulate electroacoustic stimulation (EAS) hearing. Tasks included (a) multiplicity, which required listeners to identify whether a stimulus contained 1 or 2 sounds and (b) double-vowel identification, which required listeners to attach phonemic labels to the competing synthesized vowels. Multiplicity perception was facilitated by ΔF(0) in UNP and EAS but not in VOC, with no age-related deficits evident. Double-vowel identification was facilitated by ΔF(0), with ΔF(0) benefit largest in UNP, reduced in EAS, and absent in VOC. Age adversely affected overall identification and ΔF(0) benefit on the double-vowel task. Some but not all older listeners derived ΔF(0) benefit in EAS hearing. This variability may partly be due to how listeners are able to draw on higher-level processing resources in extracting and integrating cues in EAS hearing.	\N	\N
20695697	In object substitution masking (OSM) a sparse, temporally trailing 4-dot mask impairs target identification, even though it has different contours from, and does not spatially overlap with the target. Here, we demonstrate a previously unknown characteristic of OSM: Observers show reduced masking at prolonged (e.g., 640 ms) relative to intermediate mask durations (e.g., 240 ms). We propose that with prolonged exposure, the mask's visual representation is consolidated, which allows processing of the lingering target icon to be reinitiated, thereby improving performance. Our findings suggest that when the visual system is confronted with 2 temporally contiguous stimuli, although one may initially gain access to consciousness above the other, the "losing" stimulus is not irreversibly lost to awareness.	\N	\N
20810622	Multisensory events in our natural environment unfold at multiple temporal scales over extended periods of time. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated whether the brain uses transient (onset, offset) or sustained temporal codes to effectively integrate incoming visual and auditory signals within the cortical hierarchy. Subjects were presented with 1) velocity-modulated radial motion, 2) amplitude-modulated sound, or 3) an in phase combination of both in blocks of variable durations to dissociate transient and sustained blood oxygen level-dependent responses. Audiovisual interactions emerged primarily for transient onset and offset responses highlighting the importance of rapid stimulus transitions for multisensory integration. Strikingly, audiovisual interactions for onset and offset transients were dissociable at the functional and anatomical level. Low-level sensory areas integrated audiovisual inputs at stimulus onset in a superadditive fashion to enhance stimulus salience. In contrast, higher order association areas showed subadditive integration profiles at stimulus offset possibly reflecting the formation of higher order representations. In conclusion, multisensory integration emerges at multiple levels of the cortical hierarchy using different temporal codes and integration profiles. From a methodological perspective, these results highlight the limitations of conventional event related or block designs that cannot characterize these rich dynamics of audiovisual integration.	\N	\N
20814962	Auditory functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to assess neural activation in the human auditory brainstem (AB) and cortex (AC) as a function of bandwidth (BW). We recorded brain activation of 22 normal hearing listeners induced by band pass filtered pink noise stimuli with equal sound pressure level of 70 dB SPL. Tested bandwidths were 50, 500, 1,500, 3,000, 6,000, and 8,000 Hz. The center frequency was 4,000 Hz. Categorical loudness scaling had been performed in a silent booth with all of these stimuli. Loudness as a function of bandwidth followed a concave-shaped curve which reflected the influence of spectral loudness summation (SLS) for higher BW and the influence of large amplitude fluctuations for very low BW, which itself could be explained by peak-listening. While neural activation of the AB, as measured by the percent signal change from baseline (PSC), was tuned to the physical BW of the stimuli in a straight linear fashion, the trend of perceived loudness as a function of BW was reflected in several aspects by corresponding neural activation in the primary auditory cortex (PAC). Finally, from the absolute differences of the PSC between PAC and AB, gains in perceived loudness associated with SLS and the effect of large amplitude fluctuations could be predicted with an accuracy of 1-2 dB for the whole group of participants.	\N	\N
20829245	Several perisylvian brain regions show preferential activation for spoken language above and beyond other complex sounds. These "speech-selective" effects might be driven by regions' intrinsic biases for processing the acoustical or informational properties of speech. Alternatively, such speech selectivity might emerge through extensive experience in perceiving and producing speech sounds. This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study disambiguated such audiomotor expertise from speech selectivity by comparing activation for listening to speech and music in female professional violinists and actors. Audiomotor expertise effects were identified in several right and left superior temporal regions that responded to speech in all participants and music in violinists more than actresses. Regions associated with the acoustic/information content of speech were identified along the entire length of the superior temporal sulci bilaterally where activation was greater for speech than music in all participants. Finally, an effect of performing arts training was identified in bilateral premotor regions commonly activated by finger and mouth movements as well as in right hemisphere "language regions." These results distinguish the seemingly speech-specific neural responses that can be abolished and even reversed by long-term audiomotor experience.	\N	\N
20838845	We examined horizontal directional hearing in patients with acquired severe unilateral conductive hearing loss (UCHL). All patients (n = 12) had been fitted with a bone conduction device (BCD) to restore bilateral hearing. The patients were tested in the unaided (monaural) and aided (binaural) hearing condition. Five listeners without hearing loss were tested as a control group while listening with a monaural plug and earmuff, or with both ears (binaural). We randomly varied stimulus presentation levels to assess whether listeners relied on the acoustic head-shadow effect (HSE) for horizontal (azimuth) localization. Moreover, to prevent sound localization on the basis of monaural spectral shape cues from head and pinna, subjects were exposed to narrow band (1/3 octave) noises. We demonstrate that the BCD significantly improved sound localization in 8/12 of the UCHL patients. Interestingly, under monaural hearing (BCD off), we observed fairly good unaided azimuth localization performance in 4/12 of the patients. Our multiple regression analysis shows that all patients relied on the ambiguous HSE for localization. In contrast, acutely plugged control listeners did not employ the HSE. Our data confirm and further extend results of recent studies on the use of sound localization cues in chronic and acute monaural listening.	\N	\N
20858647	There have been few reports showing a correlation between hearing levels and life style in young people. In this study, we succeeded in sensitively evaluating hearing levels in 51 young male adults of 21-23 years in age by 12 k Hz extra-high-frequency auditory thresholds, which cannot be measured by usual audiometry devices for clinical use. Noise exposure, alcohol consumption and sleeping time did not affect hearing levels in young adults. Auditory thresholds of 12 kHz frequency in smokers were significantly (p < 0.05) higher than those in non-smokers, while there were no differences in 1 kHz, 4 kHz and 8 kHz frequencies of hearing levels between smokers and non-smokers. Since the Brinkman Index (BI; cigarettes/day multiplied by number of years) of smokers in this study was from 12 to 60, our results suggest that even light smoking of less than 20 cigarettes/day for 3 years can result in the development of hearing loss of 12 kHz frequency in young adults. Binary logistic regression analysis again showed a correlation between hearing loss (≥ 40 dB of auditory thresholds in 12 kHz frequency) and light smoking (12 ≤ BI ≤ 60). Thus, this study showed that auditory threshold at 12 kHz frequency could be a sensitive marker for hearing in young adults. More importantly, we for the first time provided epidemiological evidence that light smoking might affect hearing level at 12 kHz frequency and revealed a new risk of light smoking.	\N	\N
20862531	In this paper we use information theory to quantify the information in the output spike trains of modeled cochlear nucleus globular bushy cells (GBCs). GBCs are part of the sound localization pathway. They are known for their precise temporal processing, and they code amplitude modulations with high fidelity. Here we investigated the information transmission for a natural sound, a recorded vowel. We conclude that the maximum information transmission rate for a single neuron was close to 1,050 bits/s, which corresponds to a value of approximately 5.8 bits per spike. For quasi-periodic signals like voiced speech, the transmitted information saturated as word duration increased. In general, approximately 80% of the available information from the spike trains was transmitted within about 20 ms. Transmitted information for speech signals concentrated around formant frequency regions. The efficiency of neural coding was above 60% up to the highest temporal resolution we investigated (20 μs). The increase in transmitted information to that precision indicates that these neurons are able to code information with extremely high fidelity, which is required for sound localization. On the other hand, only 20% of the information was captured when the temporal resolution was reduced to 4 ms. As the temporal resolution of most speech recognition systems is limited to less than 10 ms, this massive information loss might be one of the reasons which are responsible for the lack of noise robustness of these systems.	\N	\N
20869305	The present study examined the differential effects of voice auditory feedback perturbation direction and magnitude on voice fundamental frequency (F(0)) responses and event-related potentials (ERPs) from EEG electrodes on the scalp. The voice F(0) responses and N1 and P2 components of ERPs were examined from 12 right-handed speakers when they sustained a vowel phonation and their mid-utterance voice pitch feedback was shifted ±100, ±200, and ±500 cents with 200 ms duration. Downward voice pitch feedback perturbations led to larger voice F(0) responses than upward perturbations. The amplitudes of N1 and P2 components were larger for downward compared with upward pitch-shifts for 200 and 500 cents stimulus magnitudes. Shorter N1 and P2 latencies were also associated with larger magnitudes of pitch feedback perturbations. Corresponding changes in vocal and neural responses to upward and downward voice pitch feedback perturbations suggest that the N1 and P2 components of ERPs reflect neural concomitants of the vocal responses. The findings of interactive effects between the magnitude and direction of voice feedback pitch perturbation on N1 and P2 ERP components indicate that the neural mechanisms underlying error detection and correction in voice pitch auditory feedback are differentially sensitive to both the magnitude and direction of pitch perturbations.	\N	\N
20878201	Practice can lead to dramatic improvements in the discrimination of auditory stimuli. In this study, we investigated changes of the frequency-following response (FFR), a subcortical component of the auditory evoked potentials, after a period of pitch discrimination training. Twenty-seven adult listeners were trained for 10 h on a pitch discrimination task using one of three different complex tone stimuli. One had a static pitch contour, one had a rising pitch contour, and one had a falling pitch contour. Behavioral measures of pitch discrimination and FFRs for all the stimuli were measured before and after the training phase for these participants, as well as for an untrained control group (n = 12). Trained participants showed significant improvements in pitch discrimination compared to the control group for all three trained stimuli. These improvements were partly specific for stimuli with the same pitch modulation (dynamic vs. static) and with the same pitch trajectory (rising vs. falling) as the trained stimulus. Also, the robustness of FFR neural phase locking to the sound envelope increased significantly more in trained participants compared to the control group for the static and rising contour, but not for the falling contour. Changes in FFR strength were partly specific for stimuli with the same pitch modulation (dynamic vs. static) of the trained stimulus. Changes in FFR strength, however, were not specific for stimuli with the same pitch trajectory (rising vs. falling) as the trained stimulus. These findings indicate that even relatively low-level processes in the mature auditory system are subject to experience-related change.	\N	\N
20883593	This study aimed to evaluate the effect of lengthening the transition duration of selected speech segments upon the perception of those segments in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony. Thirty individuals with auditory dys-synchrony participated in the study, along with 30 age-matched normal hearing listeners. Eight consonant-vowel syllables were used as auditory stimuli. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment one measured the 'just noticeable difference' time: the smallest prolongation of the speech sound transition duration which was noticeable by the subject. In experiment two, speech sounds were modified by lengthening the transition duration by multiples of the just noticeable difference time, and subjects' speech identification scores for the modified speech sounds were assessed. Subjects with auditory dys-synchrony demonstrated poor processing of temporal auditory information. Lengthening of speech sound transition duration improved these subjects' perception of both the placement and voicing features of the speech syllables used. These results suggest that innovative speech processing strategies which enhance temporal cues may benefit individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.	\N	\N
20884355	Developmental differences in phonological and orthographic processing of Chinese spoken words were examined in 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Rhyming and spelling judgments were made to two-character words presented sequentially in the auditory modality. Developmental comparisons between adults and both groups of children combined showed that age-related changes in activation in visuo-orthographic regions depended on a task. There were developmental increases in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the right inferior occipital gyrus in the spelling task, suggesting more extensive visuo-orthographic processing in a task that required access to these representations. Conversely, there were developmental decreases in activation in the left fusiform gyrus and left middle occipital gyrus in the rhyming task, suggesting that the development of reading is marked by reduced involvement of orthography in a spoken language task that does not require access to these orthographic representations. Developmental decreases may arise from the existence of extensive homophony (auditory words that have multiple spellings) in Chinese. In addition, we found that 11-year-olds and adults showed similar activation in the left superior temporal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing greater activation than 9-year-olds. This pattern suggests early development of perceptual representations of phonology. In contrast, 11-year-olds and 9-year-olds showed similar activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing weaker activation than adults. This pattern suggests late development of controlled retrieval and selection of lexical representations. Altogether, this study suggests differential effects of character acquisition on development of components of the language network in Chinese as compared to previous reports on alphabetic languages.	\N	\N
20888628	Mechanisms of cortical reorganization underlying the enhancement of speech processing have been poorly investigated. In the present study, we addressed changes in functional and effective connectivity induced in subjects who learned to deliberately increase activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), and improved their ability to identify emotional intonations by using a real-time fMRI Brain-Computer Interface. At the beginning of their training process, we observed a massive connectivity of the rIFG to a widespread network of frontal and temporal areas, which decreased and lateralized to the right hemisphere with practice. Volitional control of activation strengthened connectivity of this brain region to the right prefrontal cortex, whereas training increased its connectivity to bilateral precentral gyri. These findings suggest that changes of connectivity in a functionally specific manner play an important role in the enhancement of speech processing. Also, these findings support previous accounts suggesting that motor circuits play a role in the comprehension of speech.	\N	\N
20933093	The reproducibility of three different aspects of fMRI activations-namely binary activation maps, effect size and spatial distribution of local maxima-was evaluated for an auditory sentence comprehension task with high attention demand on a group of 17 subjects that were scanned on five different occasions. While in the scanner subjects were asked to listen to a series of six short everyday sentences from the CUNY sentence test. Comprehension and attention to the stimuli were monitored after each listen condition epoch by having subjects answer a series of multiple-choice questions. Statistical maps of activation for the listen condition were computed at three different levels: overall results for all imaging sessions, group-level/single-session results for each of the five imaging occasions, and single-subject/single-session results computed for each subject and each scanning occasion independently. The experimental task recruited a distributed bilateral network with processing nodes located in the lateral temporal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, medial BA6, medial occipital cortex and subcortical structures such as the putamen and the thalamus. Reproducibility of these activations at the group level was high (83.95% of the imaged volume was consistently classified as active/inactive across all five imaging sessions), indicating that sites of neuronal activity associated with auditory comprehension can reliably be detected with fMRI in healthy subjects, across repeated measures after group averaging. At the single-subject level reproducibility ranged from moderate to high, although no significant differences were found on behavioral measures across subjects or sessions. This result suggests that contextual differences-i.e., those specific to each imaging session, can modulate our ability to detect fMRI activations associated with speech comprehension in individual subjects.	\N	\N
20951812	Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to understand how the brain processes auditory input, and to track developmental change in sensory systems. Localizing ERP generators can provide invaluable insights into how and where auditory information is processed. However, age-appropriate infant brain templates have not been available to aid such developmental mapping. In this study, auditory change detection responses of brain ERPs were examined in 6-month-old infants using discrete and distributed source localization methods mapped onto age-appropriate magnetic resonance images. Infants received a passive oddball paradigm using fast-rate non-linguistic auditory stimuli (tone doublets) with the deviant incorporating a pitch change for the second tone. Data was processed using two different high-pass filters. When a 0.5 Hz filter was used, the response to the pitch change was a large frontocentral positive component. When a 3 Hz filter was applied, two temporally consecutive components associated with change detection were seen: one with negative voltage, and another with positive voltage over frontocentral areas. Both components were localized close to the auditory cortex with an additional source near to the anterior cingulate cortex. The sources for the negative response had a more tangential orientation relative to the supratemporal plane compared to the positive response, which showed a more lateral, oblique orientation. The results described here suggest that at 6 months of age infants generate similar response patterns and use analogous cortical areas to that of adults to detect changes in the auditory environment. Moreover, the source locations and orientations, together with waveform topography and morphology provide evidence in infants for feature-specific change detection followed by involuntary switching of attention.	\N	\N
20961171	The present study addresses the question whether accentuation and prosodic phrasing can have a similar function, namely, to group words in a sentence together. Participants listened to locally ambiguous sentences containing object- and subject-control verbs while ERPs were measured. In Experiment 1, these sentences contained a prosodic break, which can create a certain syntactic grouping of words, or no prosodic break. At the disambiguation, an N400 effect occurred when the disambiguation was in conflict with the syntactic grouping created by the break. We found a similar N400 effect without the break, indicating that the break did not strengthen an already existing preference. This pattern held for both object- and subject-control items. In Experiment 2, the same sentences contained a break and a pitch accent on the noun following the break. We argue that the pitch accent indicates a broad focus covering two words [see Gussenhoven, C. On the limits of focus projection in English. In P. Bosch & R. van der Sandt (Eds.), Focus: Linguistic, cognitive, and computational perspectives. Cambridge: University Press, 1999], thus grouping these words together. For object-control items, this was semantically possible, which led to a "good-enough" interpretation of the sentence. Therefore, both sentences were interpreted equally well and the N400 effect found in Experiment 1 was absent. In contrast, for subject-control items, a corresponding grouping of the words was impossible, both semantically and syntactically, leading to processing difficulty in the form of an N400 effect and a late positivity. In conclusion, accentuation can group words together on the level of information structure, leading to either a semantically "good-enough" interpretation or a processing problem when such a semantic interpretation is not possible.	\N	\N
20966383	Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) of a speaker's voice disturbs normal speech production. Various traditional theories assume that the content of the delayed feedback signal interferes with the actual production of a particular speech unit (phonemic content hypothesis). The displaced rhythm hypothesis as an alternative explanation suggests that speech disturbances arise from a disruptive rhythm that is produced by the delayed speech signal. The present experimental study directly contrasted the role of rhythm and speech content in a DAF task using speech units as stimuli. One hundred fifty-one participants read aloud 4 different sequences of double syllables that varied in phonemic content and rhythm while auditory feedback was either nondelayed or delayed by 200 or 400 ms. In line with previous studies, the authors found a peak of disturbances at a delay of about 200 ms, independent of speech rate. More important, the present results clearly support the displaced rhythm hypothesis. A speech rate dependency of this effect was also found. Rhythm seems to be a significant criterion of speech monitoring, and hence a mismatch between spoken words and auditory feedback realized by DAF induces obvious speech problems on rhythmic level regardless of phonemic discrepancy at the same time.	\N	\N
21054432	Performance improvement during an hour of auditory perceptual training is accompanied by rapid physiological changes. These changes may reflect learning or simply task repetition independent of learning. We assessed the contribution of learning and task repetition to changes in auditory evoked potentials during a difficult speech identification task and an easy tone identification task. We posited that only task repetition effects would occur in the tone task but that task repetition and learning would interact in the speech task. Speech identification improved with practice (increased sensitivity d' with a constant response bias β). This behavioral improvement coincided with a decrease in the amplitude of sensory evoked responses (N1, P2) and a decrease in the amplitude of a slow wave (peak=320 ms after onset) over the left frontal and parietal sites. Results show rapid physiological changes associated with learning, distinct from changes related to task repetition.	\N	\N
21060139	Improved speech recognition in binaurally combined acoustic-electric stimulation (otherwise known as bimodal hearing) could arise when listeners integrate speech cues from the acoustic and electric hearing. The aims of this study were (a) to identify speech cues extracted in electric hearing and residual acoustic hearing in the low-frequency region and (b) to investigate cochlear implant (CI) users' ability to integrate speech cues across frequencies. Normal-hearing (NH) and CI subjects participated in consonant and vowel identification tasks. Each subject was tested in 3 listening conditions: CI alone (vocoder speech for NH), hearing aid (HA) alone (low-pass filtered speech for NH), and both. Integration ability for each subject was evaluated using a model of optimal integration--the PreLabeling integration model (Braida, 1991). Only a few CI listeners demonstrated bimodal benefit for phoneme identification in quiet. Speech cues extracted from the CI and the HA were highly redundant for consonants but were complementary for vowels. CI listeners also exhibited reduced integration ability for both consonant and vowel identification compared with their NH counterparts. These findings suggest that reduced bimodal benefits in CI listeners are due to insufficient complementary speech cues across ears, a decrease in integration ability, or both.	\N	\N
21068039	Noise-vocoded (NV) speech is often regarded as conveying phonetic information primarily through temporal-envelope cues rather than spectral cues. However, listeners may infer the formant frequencies in the vocal-tract output-a key source of phonetic detail-from across-band differences in amplitude when speech is processed through a small number of channels. The potential utility of this spectral information was assessed for NV speech created by filtering sentences into six frequency bands, and using the amplitude envelope of each band (≤30 Hz) to modulate a matched noise-band carrier (N). Bands were paired, corresponding to F1 (≈N1 + N2), F2 (≈N3 + N4) and the higher formants (F3' ≈ N5 + N6), such that the frequency contour of each formant was implied by variations in relative amplitude between bands within the corresponding pair. Three-formant analogues (F0 = 150 Hz) of the NV stimuli were synthesized using frame-by-frame reconstruction of the frequency and amplitude of each formant. These analogues were less intelligible than the NV stimuli or analogues created using contours extracted from spectrograms of the original sentences, but more intelligible than when the frequency contours were replaced with constant (mean) values. Across-band comparisons of amplitude envelopes in NV speech can provide phonetically important information about the frequency contours of the underlying formants.	\N	\N
21086218	Two experiments investigated the role that different face regions play in a variety of social judgements that are commonly made from facial appearance (sex, age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, approachability, trustworthiness, and intelligence). These judgements lie along a continuum from those with a clear physical basis and high consequent accuracy (sex, age) to judgements that can achieve a degree of consensus between observers despite having little known validity (intelligence, trustworthiness). Results from Experiment 1 indicated that the face's internal features (eyes, nose, and mouth) provide information that is more useful for social inferences than the external features (hair, face shape, ears, and chin), especially when judging traits such as approachability and trustworthiness. Experiment 2 investigated how judgement agreement was affected when the upper head, eye, nose, or mouth regions were presented in isolation or when these regions were obscured. A different pattern of results emerged for different characteristics, indicating that different types of facial information are used in the various judgements. Moreover, the informativeness of a particular region/feature depends on whether it is presented alone or in the context of the whole face. These findings provide evidence for the importance of holistic processing in making social attributions from facial appearance.	\N	\N
21092939	The ratio of scalp-recorded brain responses occurring 50 msec after paired clicks (S2-evoked P50/S1-evoked P50) serves as a measure of sensory gating. An abnormally large ratio is commonly found in schizophrenia and is considered as a sign of reduced sensory gating or otherwise dysfunctional organization of the auditory/verbal system as a factor contributing to psychopathology and cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia. This initial randomized clinical trial compared the efficacy of two 4-week, computer-based cognitive training methods that emphasize either auditory discrimination and verbal memory or a broader range of cognitive functions in schizophrenia. Thirty-nine schizophrenia patients (ICD-F20.0 diagnosis) were assigned to Cognitive Exercises (CE) or Cognitive Package (Cogpack). The M50, the magnetoencephalographic analogue of electroencephalographic P50, and performance on verbal learning and memory tests were used to evaluate training effects. As expected, patients exhibited higher pretreatment gating ratios than 28 age-matched healthy comparison participants. Gating ratios decreased after CE but not after Cogpack. Cognitive test performance improved more after CE than after Cogpack. Appropriately specific psychological training changes the neural performance in schizophrenia, normalizing sensory and cognitive function.	\N	\N
21105829	The problem of multimodal clustering arises whenever the data are gathered with several physically different sensors. Observations from different modalities are not necessarily aligned in the sense there there is no obvious way to associate or compare them in some common space. A solution may consist in considering multiple clustering tasks independently for each modality. The main difficulty with such an approach is to guarantee that the unimodal clusterings are mutually consistent. In this letter, we show that multimodal clustering can be addressed within a novel framework: conjugate mixture models. These models exploit the explicit transformations that are often available between an unobserved parameter space (objects) and each of the observation spaces (sensors). We formulate the problem as a likelihood maximization task and derive the associated conjugate expectation-maximization algorithm. The convergence properties of the proposed algorithm are thoroughly investigated. Several local and global optimization techniques are proposed in order to increase its convergence speed. Two initialization strategies are proposed and compared. A consistent model selection criterion is proposed. The algorithm and its variants are tested and evaluated within the task of 3D localization of several speakers using both auditory and visual data.	\N	\N
21106695	To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.	\N	\N
21112404	Visual dominance refers to the observation that in bimodal environments vision often has an advantage over other senses in human. Therefore, a better memory performance for visual compared to, e.g., auditory material is assumed. However, the reason for this preferential processing and the relation to the memory formation is largely unknown. In this fMRI experiment, we manipulated cross-modal competition and attention, two factors that both modulate bimodal stimulus processing and can affect memory formation. Pictures and sounds of objects were presented simultaneously in two levels of recognisability, thus manipulating the amount of cross-modal competition. Attention was manipulated via task instruction and directed either to the visual or the auditory modality. The factorial design allowed a direct comparison of the effects between both modalities. The resulting memory performance showed that visual dominance was limited to a distinct task setting. Visual was superior to auditory object memory only when allocating attention towards the competing modality. During encoding, cross-modal competition and attention towards the opponent domain reduced fMRI signals in both neural systems, but cross-modal competition was more pronounced in the auditory system and only in auditory cortex this competition was further modulated by attention. Furthermore, neural activity reduction in auditory cortex during encoding was closely related to the behavioural auditory memory impairment. These results indicate that visual dominance emerges from a less pronounced vulnerability of the visual system against competition from the auditory domain.	\N	\N
21133642	Tonsillar hypertrophy is common in young children and affects several aspects of the speech such as distortions of the dento-alveolar consonants. The study objective was to assess /s/-articulation, perceptually and acoustically, in children with tonsillar hypertrophy and compare effects of two types of surgery, total tonsillectomy and tonsillotomy. Sixty-seven children, aged 50-65 months, on the waiting list for surgery, were randomized to tonsillectomy or tonsillotomy. The speech material was collected preoperatively and 6 months postoperatively. Two groups of age-matched children were controls. /S/-articulation was affected acoustically with lower spectral peak locations and perceptually with less distinct /s/-production before surgery, in comparison to controls. After surgery /s/-articulation was normalized perceptually, but acoustic differences remained. No significant differences between surgical methods were found.	\N	\N
21145901	The allocation of visual processing capacity is a key topic in studies and theories of visual attention. The load theory of Lavie (1995) proposes that allocation happens in two steps where processing resources are first allocated to task-relevant stimuli and secondly remaining capacity 'spills over' to task-irrelevant distractors. In contrast, the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) proposed by Bundesen (1990) assumes that allocation happens in a single step where processing capacity is allocated to all stimuli, both task-relevant and task-irrelevant, in proportion to their relative attentional weight. Here we present data from two partial report experiments where we varied the number and discriminability of the task-irrelevant stimuli (Experiment 1) and perceptual load (Experiment 2). The TVA fitted the data of the two experiments well thus favoring the simple explanation with a single step of capacity allocation. We also show that the effects of varying perceptual load can only be explained by a combined effect of allocation of processing capacity as well as limits in visual working memory. Finally, we link the results to processing capacity understood at the neural level based on the neural theory of visual attention by Bundesen et al. (2005).	\N	\N
21147178	We investigated the effects of non-native language (English) exposure on event-related potentials (ERPs) in first- and second-year (four- and five-year-old) preschool Japanese native speakers while they listened to semantically congruent and incongruent Japanese sentences. The children were divided into a non-native language exposed group (exposed group) and a group without such experiences (control group) on the basis of their exposure to non-native language. We compared the ERPs recorded from the two groups in each of the two preschool years. N400 was observed both in the first- and second-year preschoolers. Differences owing to exposure to non-native language appeared in the second-year preschoolers but not in the first-year preschoolers. In the second-year preschoolers, the N400 onset in the exposed group was shorter than that in the control group, but there was no difference in the N400 offset between the exposed and control groups. Furthermore, the scalp distribution of the N400 in the exposed group was broader than that in the control group. These results indicate that the time course and scalp distribution of semantic processing for native language sentences in young children fluctuated depending on exposure to non-native language.	\N	\N
21148089	Numerous studies have demonstrated effects of spatial attention within single sensory modalities (within-modal spatial attention) and the effect of directing attention to one sense compared with the other senses (intermodal attention) on cortical neuronal activity. Furthermore, recent studies have been revealing that the effects of spatial attention directed to a certain location in a certain sense spread to the other senses at the same location in space (cross-modal spatial attention). The present study used magnetoencephalography to examine the temporal dynamics of the effects of within-modal and cross-modal spatial and intermodal attention on cortical processes responsive to visual stimuli. Visual or tactile stimuli were randomly presented on the left or right side at a random interstimulus interval and subjects directed attention to the left or right when vision or touch was a task-relevant modality. Sensor-space analysis showed that a response around the occipitotemporal region at around 150 ms after visual stimulation was significantly enhanced by within-modal, cross-modal spatial, and intermodal attention. A later response over the right frontal region at around 200 ms was enhanced by within-modal spatial and intermodal attention, but not by cross-modal spatial attention. These effects were estimated to originate from the occipitotemporal and lateral frontal areas, respectively. Thus the results suggest different spatiotemporal dynamics of neural representations of cross-modal attention and intermodal or within-modal attention.	\N	\N
21185855	External noise paradigms have been widely used to probe different levels of visual processing (Pelli & Farell, 1999). A basic assumption of this paradigm is that the processing strategy is noise-invariant, remaining the same in low and high external noise. We tested this assumption by examining crowding in a detection task where traditionally crowding has no effect. In the first experiment, we measured detection thresholds for a vertically oriented sine wave grating (target) surrounded by four sine wave gratings (flankers) that were either vertically or horizontally oriented. At low noise levels, the detection threshold for the target was unaffected by the orientation of the flankers--there was no crowding. Surprisingly, however, there was crowding for detection at high noise levels: the threshold increased for the similarly-oriented flankers. This suggests that high noise triggered a change in processing strategy, increasing the range of space or features over which the visual signal was sampled. In a second experiment, we evaluated the impact of the spatial and temporal window of the noise on this crowding effect. Although crowding was observed for detection when the spatial and/or temporal window of the noise was localized (i.e. identical to the signal window), no crowding was observed when the noise was spatially and temporally extended (i.e. continuously displayed, full screen dynamic noise). Our results show that certain spatiotemporal distributions of external noise can elicit a change in processing strategy, invalidating the noise-invariant assumption that underlies external noise paradigms. In contrast, spatiotemporally extended noise maintains the required noise-indifference, perhaps because it matches the characteristics of the internal noise that determines the contrast threshold in low noise.	\N	\N
21187749	Sentence stress is a vital attribute of speech since it indicates the importance of specific words within an utterance. Basic acoustic correlates of stress are syllable duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (F0). Objectives of the study were to determine cochlear implant (CI) users' perception of the acoustic correlates and to uncover which cues are used for stress identification. Several experiments addressed the discrimination of changes in syllable duration, intensity, and F0 as well as stress identification based on these cues. Moreover, the discrimination of combined cues and identification of stress in conversational speech was examined. Both natural utterances and artificial manipulations of the acoustic cues were used as stimuli. Discrimination of syllable duration did not differ significantly between CI recipients and a control group of normal-hearing listeners. In contrast, CI users performed significantly worse on tasks of discrimination and stress identification based on F0 as well as on intensity. Results from these measurements were significantly correlated with the ability to identify stress in conversational speech. Discrimination performance for covarying F0 and intensity changes was more strongly correlated to identification performance than was found for discrimination of either F0 or intensity alone. Syllable duration was not related to stress identification in natural utterances. The outcome emphasizes the importance of both F0 and intensity for CI users' identification of sentence-based stress. Both cues were used separately for stress perception, but combining the cues provided extra benefit for most of the subjects.	\N	\N
21187751	The current study was designed to see how hearing-impaired individuals judge level differences between speech sounds with and without hearing amplification. It was hypothesized that hearing aid compression should adversely affect the user's ability to judge level differences. Thirty-eight hearing-impaired participants performed an adaptive tracking procedure to determine their level-discrimination thresholds for different word and sentence tokens, as well as speech-spectrum noise, with and without their hearing aids. Eight normal-hearing participants performed the same task for comparison. Level discrimination for different word and sentence tokens was more difficult than the discrimination of stationary noises. Word level discrimination was significantly more difficult than sentence level discrimination. There were no significant differences, however, between mean performance with and without hearing aids and no correlations between performance and various hearing aid measurements. There is a clear difficulty in judging the level differences between words or sentences relative to differences between broadband noises, but this difficulty was found for both hearing-impaired and normal-hearing individuals and had no relation to hearing aid compression measures. The lack of a clear adverse effect of hearing aid compression on level discrimination is suggested to be due to the low effective compression ratios of currently fit hearing aids.	\N	\N
21190394	The purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that cochlear implant (CI) users' music perception is correlated with their lexical tone perception, and the two types of perception share similar mechanisms in electric hearing. A lexical tone perception test and a pitch interval discrimination test were administered to a group of CI users and a group of normal-hearing (NH) listeners. SAMPLE STUDY: Nineteen adult CI users and 10 NH listeners who are native-Mandarin-Chinese speakers participated in the study. Tone-perception performance of the CI group was, on average, 58.3% correct (± 19.78% correct), and performance of the NH group was near perfect. The CI group had a mean threshold of 5.66 semitones (± 5.57 semitones) in pitch discrimination as compared to the threshold of 0.44 semitone from the NH group. There was a strong correlation between the CI users' tone-perception performance and their pitch discrimination threshold (r = -0.75, p < 0.001). Musical and lexical pitch perceptions are strongly correlated with each other and they might share similar mechanisms in electric hearing.	\N	\N
21206391	The round window application of the Vibrant Sound bridge, the so-called round window vibroplasty, is gaining increasing popularity for hearing rehabilitation of patients with mixed hearing loss or conductive hearing loss. In these patients, conventional hearing amplification and/or surgical restoration is either not possible or has failed because of chronic ear disease, extensive otosclerosis, or malformations. The exact mechanisms of direct cochlear stimulation via the round window membrane are not yet completely understood. It is unclear what kind and what degree of contact is required between the floating mass transducer (FMT) and the round window membrane (RWM) to elicit a functional hearing perception with the implant. We investigated the coupling efficiency between the FMT and the RWM and how the efficiency is altered by the FMT position, the degree of FMT-RWM contact, and the use of a soft tissue coupler. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary referral center in Western Australia. Patients undergoing round window vibroplasty for a mixed or conductive hearing loss otherwise not aidable. Patients underwent round window vibroplasty and received audiological and coupling analysis in the follow-up. These data were then correlated with FMT positioning and the extent of FMT-RWM interface as determined by postoperative high-resolution temporal bone computed tomography. Coupling and hearing levels in relation to FMT positioning and degree of FMT-RWM contact. Of 10 patients, 8 were available for vibroplasty behavioral threshold testing. In 2 patients, testing could not be done because of wound breakdown requiring device explantation in 1 case, and in the other case, the bone conduction thresholds dropped 2 months after implantation, thus falling out of the performance range of the device. Postoperative FMT migration occurred in 50% of the patients (3/6) with recurrent chronic ear disease and status after multiple previous ear operations. All patients, including the 3 patients requiring surgical repositioning of the FMT, attained significantly improved speech in quiet and speech in noise when compared with the preoperatively best aided performance. All patients showed significantly improved average Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Benefit scores with the use of the FMT. Direct (partial or complete) contact with the RWM resulted in good coupling efficiency; soft tissue coupling resulted in a reduced coupling efficiency.	\N	\N
21258612	This study had three goals: (1) to document the literacy skills of deaf adolescents who received cochlear implants (CIs) as preschoolers; (2) to examine reading growth from elementary grades to high school; (3) to assess the contribution of early literacy levels and phonological processing skills, among other factors, to literacy levels in high school. A battery of reading, spelling, expository writing, and phonological processing assessments were administered to 112 high school (CI-HS) students, ages 15.5 to 18.5 yrs, who had participated in a reading assessment battery in early elementary grades (CI-E), ages 8.0 to 9.9 yrs. The CI-HS students' performance was compared with either a control group of hearing peers (N = 46) or hearing norms provided by the assessment developer. Many of the CI-HS students (47 to 66%) performed within or above the average range for hearing peers on reading tests. When compared with their CI-E performance, good early readers were also good readers in high school. Importantly, the majority of CI-HS students maintained their reading levels over time compared with hearing peers, indicating that the gap in performance was, at the very least, not widening for most students. Written expression and phonological processing tasks posed a great deal of difficulty for the CI-HS students. They were poorer spellers, poorer expository writers, and displayed poorer phonological knowledge than hearing age-mates. Phonological processing skills were a critical predictor of high school literacy skills (reading, spelling, and expository writing), accounting for 39% of variance remaining after controlling for child, family, and implant characteristics. Many children who receive CIs as preschoolers achieve age-appropriate literacy levels as adolescents. However, significant delays in spelling and written expression are evident compared with hearing peers. For children with CIs, the development of phonological processing skills is not just important for early reading skills, such as decoding, but is critical for later literacy success as well.	\N	\N
21261633	Humans must often focus attention onto relevant sensory signals in the presence of simultaneous irrelevant signals. This type of attention has been explored in vision with the N2pc component, and the present study sought to find an analogous auditory effect. In Experiment 1, two 750-ms sounds were presented simultaneously, one from each of two lateral speakers. On each trial, participants indicated whether one of the two sounds was a pre-defined target. We found that targets elicited an N2ac component: a negativity in the N2 latency range at anterior contralateral electrodes. We also observed a later and more posterior contralateral positivity. Experiment 2 replicated these effects and demonstrated that they arose from competition between attended and unattended tones rather than reflecting lateralized effects of attention for individual tones. The N2ac component may provide a useful tool for studying selective attention within auditory scenes.	\N	\N
21264649	In two experiments, each including a simple reaction time (RT) task, a localization task, and a passive oddball paradigm, the physical similarity between two dichotically presented auditory stimuli was manipulated. In both experiments, a redundant signals effect (RSE), high localization performance, and a reliable mismatch negativity (MMN) was observed for largely differing stimuli, suggesting that these are coded separately in auditory memory. In contrast, no RSE and a localization rate close to chance level (experiment 1) or at chance (experiment 2) were observed for stimuli differing to a lesser degree. Crucially, for such stimuli a small (experiment 1) or no (experiment 2) MMN were observed. These MMN results indicate that such stimuli tend to fuse into a single percept and that this fusion occurs rather early within information processing.	\N	\N
21264730	Fundamental limitations in performing multiple tasks concurrently are well illustrated by the attentional blink (AB) deficit, which refers to the difficulty in reporting a second target (T2) when it is presented shortly after a first target (T1). Surprisingly, recent studies have shown that the AB, which is often thought of as a manifestation of capacity limitations in central processing, can be reduced when the AB task is performed simultaneously with concurrent distracting activities. In the present study, we sought to investigate whether such concurrency benefits would also be observed when the AB task was performed concurrently with a central demanding timing task. The AB was reduced under concurrent-task conditions, as compared with single-AB-task conditions, even though T1 performance was unaffected by the concurrent task. Moreover, shifts in decision criteria were found to be associated with the concurrency benefit effect.	\N	\N
21277208	Crowding by nearby features causes identification failures in the peripheral visual field. However, prominent visual features can sometimes fail to reach awareness, causing scenes to be incorrectly interpreted. Here we examine whether awareness of the flanking features is necessary for crowding to occur. Flankers that were physically present were rendered perceptually absent with adaptation-induced blindness. In a letter identification task, targets were presented unflanked or with up to four flanker letters. On each trial, observers reported both the number of letters they perceived and the identity of a target letter. This paradigm allowed trial-by-trial assessment of awareness and crowding and ensured that both targets and flankers were attended. Target-letter identification performance was correlated with the number of flanking letters that were perceived on a given trial, regardless of the number that were physically present. Our data demonstrate that crowding can be released when flanking elements at attended locations are suppressed from visual awareness.	\N	\N
21299272	We argue that 4 fundamental gestalt phenomena in perception apply to the control of motor action. First, a motor gestalt, like a perceptual gestalt, is holistic in the sense that it is processed as a single unit. This notion is consistent with reaction time results indicating that all gestures for a brief unit of action must be programmed prior to initiation of any part of the movement. Additional reaction time results related to initiation of longer responses are consistent with processing in terms of a sequence of indivisible motor gestalts. Some actions (e.g., many involving coordination of the hands) can be carried out effectively only if represented as a unitary gestalt. Second, a perceptual gestalt is independent of specific sensory receptors, as evidenced by perceptual constancy. In a similar manner a motor gestalt can be represented independently of specific muscular effectors, thereby allowing motor constancy. Third, just as a perceptual pattern (e.g., a Necker cube) is exclusively structured into only 1 of its possible configurations at any moment in time, processing prior to action is limited to 1 motor gestalt. Fourth, grouping in apparent motion leads to stream segregation in visual and auditory perception; this segregation is present in motor action and is dependent on the temporal rate. We discuss congruence of gestalt phenomena across perception and motor action (a) in relation to a unitary perceptual-motor code, (b) with respect to differences in the role of awareness, and (c) in conjunction with separate neural pathways for conscious perception and motor control.	\N	\N
21300112	Children's foreign-language (FL) learning is a matter of much social as well as scientific debate. Previous behavioral research indicates that starting language learning late in life can lead to problems in phonological processing. Inadequate phonological capacity may impede lexical learning and semantic processing (phonological bottleneck hypothesis). Using both behavioral and neuroimaging data, here we examine the effects of age of first exposure (AOFE) and total hours of exposure (HOE) to English, on 350 Japanese primary-school children's semantic processing of spoken English. Children's English proficiency scores and N400 event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were analyzed in multiple regression analyses. The results showed (1) that later, rather than earlier, AOFE led to higher English proficiency and larger N400 amplitudes, when HOE was controlled for; and (2) that longer HOE led to higher English proficiency and larger N400 amplitudes, whether AOFE was controlled for or not. These data highlight the important role of amount of exposure in FL learning, and cast doubt on the view that starting FL learning earlier always produces better results.	\N	\N
21308886	Anxiety Sensitivity (AS), the tendency to fear the thoughts, symptoms, and social consequences associated with the experience of anxiety, is associated with increased risk for developing anxiety disorders. Some evidence suggests that higher scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), a measure of the AS construct, are associated with activation of the anterior insular cortex during overt emotion perception. Although the ASI provides subscale scores measuring Physical, Mental Incapacitation, and Social Concerns of AS, no study has examined the relationship between these factors and regional brain activation during affect processing. We hypothesized that insular responses to fear-related stimuli would be primarily related to the Physical Concerns subscale of the ASI, particularly for a sample of subjects with specific phobias. Adult healthy controls (HC; n = 22) and individuals with specific phobia, small animal subtype (SAP; n = 17), completed the ASI and underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while engaged in a backward-masked affect perception task that presents emotional facial stimuli below the threshold of conscious perception. Groups did not differ in ASI, state or trait anxiety scores, or insula activation. Total ASI scores were positively correlated with activation in the right middle/anterior insula for the combined sample and for the HC and SAP groups separately. Multiple regression analysis revealed that the relationship between AS and insular activation was primarily accounted for by Physical Concerns only. Findings support the hypothesized role of the right anterior insula in the visceral/interoceptive aspects of AS, even in response to masked affective stimuli.	\N	\N
21315438	Using the mismatch negativity (MMN) response, we examined how Standard French and Southern French speakers access the meaning of words ending in /e/ or /ε/ vowels which are contrastive in Standard French but not in Southern French. In Standard French speakers, there was a significant difference in the amplitude of the brain response after the deviant-minus-standard subtraction between the frontocentral (FC) and right lateral (RL) recording sites for the final-/ε/ word but not the final-/e/ word. In contrast, the difference in the amplitude of the brain response between the FC and RL recording sites did not significantly vary as a function of the word's final vowel in Southern French speakers. Our findings provide evidence that access to lexical meaning in spoken word recognition depends on the speaker's native regional accent.	\N	\N
21315875	The present study examined the occurrence and content of auditory hallucinatory experiences in 41 non-clinical participants scoring high or low on the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (brief version; OLIFE-B) measure of schizotypy. Participants listened to 10 1-min recordings of white noise, some of which contained embedded concrete or abstract words, and were asked to record the words that they had heard. High scorers on the unusual experiences (UE) scale of the OLIFE-B reported hearing more words, not actually present, relative to low scorers on that measure. In addition, high UE scorers showed a bias toward making hallucinatory reports of an abstract type over a concrete type. These results suggest a bias toward more auditory hallucinatory reports in high scorers in schizotypy, and particularly to those of an abstract type.	\N	\N
21319937	A Danish version of the hearing in noise test (HINT) has been developed and evaluated in normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. The speech material originated from Nielsen & Dau (2009) where a sentence-based intelligibility equalization method was presented. In the present study, the speech material was evaluated for naturalness and a subset of sentences selected. The new sentence lists were validated, and after three weeks retested. An additional experiment investigated how recollection of sentences affected the listeners' performance. 16 NH and 16 HI listeners participated in the validation and retest. Twelve HI listeners participated in the experiment on recollection. The average speech recognition threshold in noise (SRT(N)) for the NH listeners was -2.52 dB, with an overall standard deviation of 0.87 dB. The within-subject standard deviation was similar for the NH and the HI listeners. In the retest, the SRT(N) decreased by 0.4 dB in both groups. The Danish HINT consists of 10 test lists and three practice lists each containing 20 sentences. The validation results are comparable to those of other versions of HINT. The test seems equally reliable for NH and HI listeners. After three weeks, reliable results can be obtained when sentence lists are reused with the same listeners.	\N	\N
21324531	In recent years, new speech coding strategies have been developed with the aim of improving the transmission of temporal fine structure to cochlear implant recipients. This study reports on the implementation of one such strategy (fine structure processing, FSP) in children. This was a prospective study investigating the upgrade to a new speech processor. The upgrade used a repeated measures design with an alternating order of conditions (A-B-A-B design). Twelve pre- and perilingually deaf children with MED-EL C40+ cochlear implants were enrolled in the study. Patients were upgraded from their Tempo+ speech processor, which used continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) in combination with a frequency spectrum of 200-8500 Hz, to an Opus speech processor, which used FSP with an extended frequency spectrum of 70-8500 Hz. The primary means of testing was an HSM (Hochmair, Schulz and Moser) sentence test at 65 and 80 dB in quiet. In addition, the "Mainzer Kindersprachtest" (Mainz audiometric speech test for children) was applied at 65 and 70 dB. When the new FSP speech processor was used together with the extended low frequency range, HSM sentence tests at 65 and 80 dB resulted in scores indicating statistically significant improvements of 7.1 and 9.9 percentage points, respectively. Scores in the "Mainzer Kindersprachtest" at 65 and 70 dB indicated statistically significant improvements of 9.3 and 6.1 percentage points, respectively. The present study clearly shows that children benefit from the fine structure speech coding strategy in combination with an extended frequency spectrum in the low frequencies, as is offered by the Opus speech processors. This should be taken into consideration when fitting pre- and perilingually deaf children implanted almost a decade previously.	\N	\N
21329941	Children with speech sound disorder (SSD) and reading disability (RD) have poor phonological awareness, a problem believed to arise largely from deficits in processing the sensory information in speech, specifically individual acoustic cues. However, such cues are details of acoustic structure. Recent theories suggest that listeners also need to be able to integrate those details to perceive linguistically relevant form. This study examined abilities of children with SSD, RD, and SSD+RD not only to process acoustic cues but also to recover linguistically relevant form from the speech signal. Ten- to 11-year-olds with SSD (n=17), RD (n=16), SSD+RD (n=17), and Controls (n=16) were tested to examine their sensitivity to (1) voice onset times (VOT); (2) spectral structure in fricative-vowel syllables; and (3) vocoded sentences. Children in all groups performed similarly with VOT stimuli, but children with disorders showed delays on other tasks, although the specifics of their performance varied. Children with poor phonemic awareness not only lack sensitivity to acoustic details, but are also less able to recover linguistically relevant forms. This is contrary to one of the main current theories of the relation between spoken and written language development. Readers will be able to (1) understand the role speech perception plays in phonological awareness, (2) distinguish between segmental and global structure analysis of speech perception, (3) describe differences and similarities in speech perception among children with speech sound disorder and/or reading disability, and (4) recognize the importance of broadening clinical interventions to focus on recognizing structure at all levels of speech analysis.	\N	\N
21330649	English proficiency must be considered when a bilingual individual is to be evaluated clinically with English speech material. This study describes the minimum level of self-reported English proficiency that identifies bilingual individuals who may perform on par with monolingual listeners on an English word recognition test. A total of 125 normal hearing bilingual listeners rated their English proficiency in listening, speaking, and reading on an 11-point scale. Other related linguistic variables were also obtained. A randomly selected Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 (NU-6) list (50 English monosyllabic words) was presented to all participants at 45 dB HL in quiet. Over 90% of the listeners self-rated to have at least "good" proficiency in English listening, speaking, or reading. Of these participants, more than 30% did not achieve a monolingual normative level in English as delimited by binomial distribution. Composite proficiency ratings across language domains better predicted word recognition performance than self-ratings for listening proficiency only. Combining language dominance and age of English acquisition with proficiency ratings further improved prediction specificity. Self-rated English proficiency can predict bilingual listeners' performance on the NU-6 test. For desirable sensitivity and specificity in predicting monolingual-like performance, a minimum rating of 8 out of 10 across all language domains is recommended.	\N	\N
21331781	Data are limited on the role of psychotherapy in the treatment of Ménière disease. We sought to document the effect of a psychotherapeutic technique known as autogenic training on clinical outcome in Ménière disease. Six patients with Ménière disease were studied. Retrospective chart review was conducted. All patients were refractory to conventional therapy and completed a course of autogenic training, which was offered as a complementary treatment. Autogenic training with initial psychological counseling was conducted by a clinical psychologist during 45-min sessions. Outcome measures assessed were the frequency of vertigo and functional levels 2 years after initiation of autogenic training. Functional levels were evaluated according to the 1995 guidelines of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS). As a personality measure, we used the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI), devised by Eysenck, which measures neuroticism (N), extraversion (E), and propensity to lie (L). Five of six patients showed improved functional level after three to eight sessions of psychotherapy; hearing level did not change. The score of the N scale of the MPI was closely related to the number of psychotherapy sessions. Prognosis was evaluated based on the AAO-HNS reporting guidelines, as follows: A = 3, B = 1, C = 1, F = 1. The value of N in MPI was closely related to the number of psychological counseling sessions (R = 0.97, P < 0.05). In conclusion, autogenic training may enhance the mental well-being of patients with Ménière disease and improve clinical outcome.	\N	\N
21332488	Although a deficit perceiving phonemes, as indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN), is apparent in developmental dyslexia (DD), studies have not yet addressed whether this deficit might be a result of deficient native language speech representations. The present study examines how a native-vowel prototype and an atypical vowel are discriminated by 9-year-old children with (n = 14) and without (n = 12) DD. MMN was elicited in all conditions in both groups. The control group revealed enhanced MMN to the native-vowel prototype in comparison to the atypical vowel. Children with DD did not show enhanced MMN amplitude to the native-vowel prototype, suggesting impaired tuning to native language speech representations. Furthermore, higher MMN amplitudes to the native-vowel prototype correlated with more advanced reading (r = - .47) and spelling skills (r = - .52).	\N	\N
21336137	Werner and Bargones (1991) observed that a 4-10-kHz noise band can mask a 1-kHz signal during infancy. The purpose of this study was to examine whether remote-noise masking extends into the school-aged years. Listeners were 4-6-yr-olds, 7-9-yr-olds, and adults. Detection thresholds were measured for the 1-kHz signal in quiet and in the presence of the remote-frequency noise. In separate conditions, masker level was either 40 or 60 dB SPL. On average, thresholds for the 1-kHz signal were elevated in the presence of the remote-frequency noise for 4-6-yr-olds, but not for 7-9-yr-olds or adults. Group average thresholds were similar across masker levels, indicating nonperipheral effects. Susceptibility to remote-frequency masking in children extends to 4-6 yrs of age for some children.	\N	\N
21340665	The songbird model is widely established in a number of laboratories for the investigation of the neurobiology and development of vocal learning. While vocal learning is rare in the animal kingdom, it is a trait that songbirds share with humans. The neuroanatomical and physiological organization of the brain circuitry that controls learned vocalizations has been extensively characterized, particularly in zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Recently, several powerful molecular and genomic tools have become available in this organism, making it an attractive choice for neurobiologists interested in the neural and genetic basis of a complex learned behavior. Here, we briefly review some of the main features of vocal learning and associated brain structures in zebra finches and comment on some examples that illustrate how themes related to nutrition and addiction can be explored using this model organism.	\N	\N
21346208	Research on the control of visually guided limb movements indicates that the brain learns and continuously updates an internal model that maps the relationship between motor commands and sensory feedback. A growing body of work suggests that an internal model that relates motor commands to sensory feedback also supports vocal control. There is evidence from arm-reaching studies that shows that when provided with a contextual cue, the motor system can acquire multiple internal models, which allows an animal to adapt to different perturbations in diverse contexts. In this study we show that trained singers can rapidly acquire multiple internal models regarding voice fundamental frequency (F(0)). These models accommodate different perturbations to ongoing auditory feedback. Participants heard three musical notes and reproduced each one in succession. The musical targets could serve as a contextual cue to indicate which direction (up or down) feedback would be altered on each trial; however, participants were not explicitly instructed to use this strategy. When participants were gradually exposed to altered feedback adaptation was observed immediately following vocal onset. Aftereffects were target specific and did not influence vocal productions on subsequent trials. When target notes were no longer a contextual cue, adaptation occurred during altered feedback trials and evidence for trial-by-trial adaptation was found. These findings indicate that the brain is exceptionally sensitive to the deviations between auditory feedback and the predicted consequence of a motor command during vocalization. Moreover, these results indicate that, with contextual cues, the vocal control system may maintain multiple internal models that are capable of independent modification during different tasks or environments.	\N	\N
21354285	This study investigates behavioural and objective measures of temporal auditory processing and their relation to the ability to understand speech in noise. The experiments were carried out on a homogeneous group of seven hearing-impaired listeners with normal sensitivity at low frequencies (up to 1 kHz) and steeply sloping hearing losses above 1 kHz. For comparison, data were also collected for five normal-hearing listeners. Temporal processing was addressed at low frequencies by means of psychoacoustical frequency discrimination, binaural masked detection and amplitude modulation (AM) detection. In addition, auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) to clicks and broadband rising chirps were recorded. Furthermore, speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were determined for Danish sentences in speech-shaped noise. The main findings were: (1) SRTs were neither correlated with hearing sensitivity as reflected in the audiogram nor with the AM detection thresholds which represent an envelope-based measure of temporal resolution; (2) SRTs were correlated with frequency discrimination and binaural masked detection which are associated with temporal fine-structure coding; (3) The wave-V thresholds for the chirp-evoked ABRs indicated a relation to SRTs and the ability to process temporal fine structure. Overall, the results demonstrate the importance of low-frequency temporal processing for speech reception which can be affected even if pure-tone sensitivity is close to normal.	\N	\N
21355809	This study examined listeners' endorsement of cognitive, linguistic, segmental, and suprasegmental strategies employed when listening to speakers with dysarthria. The study also examined whether strategy endorsement differed between listeners who earned the highest and lowest intelligibility scores. Speakers were eight individuals with dysarthria and cerebral palsy. Listeners were 80 individuals who transcribed speech stimuli and rated their use of each of 24 listening strategies on a 4-point scale. Results showed that cognitive and linguistic strategies were most highly endorsed. Use of listening strategies did not differ between listeners with the highest and lowest intelligibility scores. Results suggest that there may be a core of strategies common to listeners of speakers with dysarthria that may be supplemented by additional strategies, based on characteristics of the speaker and speech signal.	\N	\N
21368051	Certain features of objects or events can be represented by more than a single sensory system, such as roughness of a surface (sight, sound, and touch), the location of a speaker (audition and sight), and the rhythm or duration of an event (by all three major sensory systems). Thus, these properties can be said to be sensory-independent or amodal. A key question is whether common multisensory cortical regions process these amodal features, or does each sensory system contain its own specialized region(s) for processing common features? We tackled this issue by investigating simple duration-detection mechanisms across audition and touch; these systems were chosen because fine duration discriminations are possible in both. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the human event-related potential provides a sensitive metric of duration processing and has been elicited independently during both auditory and somatosensory investigations. Employing high-density electroencephalographic recordings in conjunction with intracranial subdural recordings, we asked whether fine duration discriminations, represented by the MMN, were generated in the same cortical regions regardless of the sensory modality being probed. Scalp recordings pointed to statistically distinct MMN topographies across senses, implying differential underlying cortical generator configurations. Intracranial recordings confirmed these noninvasive findings, showing generators of the auditory MMN along the superior temporal gyrus with no evidence of a somatosensory MMN in this region, whereas a robust somatosensory MMN was recorded from postcentral gyrus in the absence of an auditory MMN. The current data clearly argue against a common circuitry account for amodal duration processing.	\N	\N
21375597	The neural processing of auditory motion information shows a pronounced interhemispheric asymmetry. In previous electrophysiological studies, the so-called motion-onset response (MOR), a prominent auditory-evoked potential to the onset of sound motion, was stronger over the hemisphere contralateral to the side of motion. Here, effects of lateral-onset position and direction of motion on MOR contralaterality were investigated. Eighteen listeners were presented with free-field sound stimuli that, after an initial stationary phase at a lateral spatial position within the left or right hemifield, started to move either left- or rightward. The early part of the MOR, the so-called change-N1, exhibited contralaterality that depended on the lateral motion-onset position with stronger activations over the hemisphere contralateral to the side of motion onset, whereas the contralaterality of the later part of the MOR, the so-called change-P2, merely depended on the direction of motion. Cortical source localization indicated that this pattern of contralaterality primarily resulted from asymmetric activation in primary auditory cortex and insula. These findings suggest that the early and late parts of the MOR reflect different phases in auditory motion perception, supporting the notion of a modular organization of discrete processing stages.	\N	\N
21382389	Evidence from event-related potential (ERP) analyses of English spoken words suggests that the time course of English word recognition in monosyllables is cumulative. Different types of phonological competitors (i.e., rhymes and cohorts) modulate the temporal grain of ERP components differentially (Desroches, Newman, & Joanisse, 2009). The time course of Chinese monosyllabic spoken word recognition could be different from that of English due to the differences in syllable structure between the two languages (e.g., lexical tones). The present study investigated the time course of Chinese monosyllabic spoken word recognition using ERPs to record brain responses online while subjects listened to spoken words. During the experiment, participants were asked to compare a target picture with a subsequent picture by judging whether or not these two pictures belonged to the same semantic category. The spoken word was presented between the two pictures, and participants were not required to respond during its presentation. We manipulated phonological competition by presenting spoken words that either matched or mismatched the target picture in one of the following four ways: onset mismatch, rime mismatch, tone mismatch, or syllable mismatch. In contrast to the English findings, our findings showed that the three partial mismatches (onset, rime, and tone mismatches) equally modulated the amplitudes and time courses of the N400 (a negative component that peaks about 400ms after the spoken word), whereas, the syllable mismatched words elicited an earlier and stronger N400 than the three partial mismatched words. The results shed light on the important role of syllable-level awareness in Chinese spoken word recognition and also imply that the recognition of Chinese monosyllabic words might rely more on global similarity of the whole syllable structure or syllable-based holistic processing rather than phonemic segment-based processing. We interpret the differences in spoken word processing between Chinese and English listeners as being due to morphosyllabic structural differences between the two languages.	\N	\N
21382438	Emotions signal the particular relevance of situations, threatening or rewarding, and influence perception and behaviour accordingly. Research to date has predominantly investigated the impact of negative emotional stimuli. However, rapid reactions to positive emotional stimuli are similarly adaptive. Here, we tested the influence of positive emotional stimuli on attentional control, which enables reacting to conflicting stimulation. We therefore presented positive emotional and neutral words in an auditory Simon task. Reaction times revealed faster resolution of conflict when target stimuli were positive compared to neutral words. Also, emotion modulated the first conflict-sensitive event-related brain potential, a negativity at 420 ms, indicating an influence on early stages of conflict processing. These results complement recent data on negative stimuli and suggest that positive stimuli are equally salient. The rapid impact on attentional control is evolutionary highly adaptive as it reduces the time that conflict yields an organism incapable of responding to reward-signalling stimuli.	\N	\N
21385014	The objective of this study was to describe the auditory evoked response to silent gaps for a group of older adults using stimulus conditions identical to those used in psychophysical studies of gap detection. The P1-N1-P2 response to the onsets of stimuli (markers) defining a silent gap for within-channel (spectrally identical markers) and across-channel (spectrally different markers) conditions was examined using four perceptually-equated gap durations. A group of 24 older adults (mean age = 63 years) with normal hearing or minimal hearing loss participated. Older adults exhibited neural activation patterns that were qualitatively different and more frontally oriented than those observed in a previous study (Lister et al., 2007) of younger listeners. Older adults showed longer P2 latencies and larger P1 amplitudes than younger adults, suggesting relatively slower neural travel time and altered auditory inhibition/arousal by irrelevant stimuli. Older adults appeared to recruit later-occurring T-complex-like generators for gap processing, compared to earlier-occurring T-complex-like generators by the younger group. Early and continued processing of channel cues with later processing of gap cues may represent the inefficiency of the aging auditory system and may contribute to poor speech understanding in noisy, real-world listening environments.	\N	\N
21387016	Important sounds can be easily missed or misidentified in the presence of extraneous noise. We describe an auditory illusion in which a continuous ongoing tone becomes inaudible during a brief, non-masking noise burst more than one octave away, which is unexpected given the frequency resolution of human hearing. Participants strongly susceptible to this illusory discontinuity did not perceive illusory auditory continuity (in which a sound subjectively continues during a burst of masking noise) when the noises were short, yet did so at longer noise durations. Participants who were not prone to illusory discontinuity showed robust early electroencephalographic responses at 40-66 ms after noise burst onset, whereas those prone to the illusion lacked these early responses. These data suggest that short-latency neural responses to auditory scene components reflect subsequent individual differences in the parsing of auditory scenes.	\N	\N
21391255	Semantic knowledge is supported by a widely distributed neuronal network, with differential patterns of activation depending upon experimental stimulus or task demands. Despite a wide body of knowledge on semantic object processing from the visual modality, the response of this semantic network to environmental sounds remains relatively unknown. Here, we used fMRI to investigate how access to different conceptual attributes from environmental sound input modulates this semantic network. Using a range of living and manmade sounds, we scanned participants whilst they carried out an object attribute verification task. Specifically, we tested visual perceptual, encyclopedic, and categorical attributes about living and manmade objects relative to a high-level auditory perceptual baseline to investigate the differential patterns of response to these contrasting types of object-related attributes, whilst keeping stimulus input constant across conditions. Within the bilateral distributed network engaged for processing environmental sounds across all conditions, we report here a highly significant dissociation within the left hemisphere between the processing of visual perceptual and encyclopedic attributes of objects.	\N	\N
21401449	There is no significant difference in speech recognition scores obtained with the Vibrant Soundbridge and the open-fit hearing aid. However, the Vibrant Soundbridge may be superior to open-fit hearing aids in improving hearing at high frequencies (4-8 kHz). To assess whether an improvement in speech recognition conferred by Vibrant Soundbridge is more marked than that afforded by open-fit hearing aids in patients with sloping high frequency sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). This study had a self-control prospective design. Seven patients aged 21-62 years with sloping high frequency SNHL were recruited into the study. Each patient received a Vibrant Soundbridge middle ear implant (Vibrant MED-EL) and wore an open-fit hearing aid (Danavox, DOT 10). Speech recognition tests were performed according to protocols suggested by árpád Götze's speech definition test in Hungarian language. In the first session, conventional hearing thresholds (unaided pure tone thresholds) were measured. In the second session, the aided sound-field threshold, speech understanding score and functional gain obtained using middle ear implants and open-fit hearing aids were determined after programming of the devices. Regarding speech recognition scores, there were no significant differences between data obtained with the middle ear implant and those with the open-fit hearing aid.	\N	\N
21417673	The effects of asymmetric directional microphone fittings (i.e., an omnidirectional microphone on one ear and a directional microphone on the other) on speech understanding in noise and acceptance of background noise were investigated in 15 full-time hearing aid users. Subjects were fitted binaurally with four directional microphone conditions (i.e., binaural omnidirectional, right asymmetric directional, left asymmetric directional and binaural directional microphones) using Siemens Intuis Directional behind-the-ear hearing aids. Speech understanding in noise was assessed using the Hearing in Noise Test, and acceptance of background noise was assessed using the Acceptable Noise Level procedure. Speech was presented from 0° while noise was presented from 180° azimuth. The results revealed that speech understanding in noise improved when using asymmetric directional microphones compared to binaural omnidirectional microphone fittings and was not significantly hindered compared to binaural directional microphone fittings. The results also revealed that listeners accepted more background noise when fitted with asymmetric directional microphones as compared to binaural omnidirectional microphones. Lastly, the results revealed that the acceptance of noise was further increased for the binaural directional microphones when compared to the asymmetric directional microphones, maximizing listeners' willingness to accept background noise in the presence of noise. Clinical implications will be discussed.	\N	\N
21425399	Multisensory integration assists us to identify objects by providing multiple cues with respect to object category and spatial location. We used a semantic audiovisual object matching task to determine the effect of spatial congruency on response behavior and fMRI brain activation. Fifteen subjects responded in a four-alternative response paradigm, which visual quadrant contained the object best matched to the sound presented. Realistic sounds based on head-related transfer functions were presented binaurally with the simulated sound source corresponding to one of the four quadrants. Following a random sequence, the location of the sound corresponded to the quadrant containing the semantically congruent target on half the trials, whereas on other trials the sound arose from an incongruent location. We examined the effects of spatial congruency on response latencies, hit-rates and fMRI responses. Preliminary behavioral results revealed a significant effect of spatial congruency on response latency or performance for stimuli with noise added. In the fMRI experiment, spatial congruency had a significant effect on the BOLD response. A cluster in the right middle and superior temporal gyrus was more activated when the auditory sound sources were spatially congruent with the semantically matching visual stimulus. In an exploratory post-hoc analysis, in which we correlated the BOLD signal with the subjects' ability to locate the sound sources, we found a significant cluster in the left inferior frontal cortex, where the BOLD response increased with sound-source localization performance. Thus spatial congruency appears to enhance the semantic integration of audiovisual object information in these brain regions.	\N	\N
21425900	Absolute pitch is a rare pitch-naming ability with unknown etiology. Some scientists maintain that its manifestation depends solely on environmental factors, while others suggest that genetic factors contribute to it. We sought to further investigate the hypothesis that genetic factors support the acquisition of absolute pitch and to better elucidate the inheritance pattern of this trait. To this end, we conducted a twin study and a segregation analysis using data collected from a large population of absolute pitch possessors. The casewise concordance rate of 14 monozygotic twin pairs, 78.6%, was significantly different from that of 31 dizygotic twin pairs, 45.2%, assuming single ascertainment (x(2) = 5.57, 1 df, p = .018), supporting a role for genetics in the development of absolute pitch. Segregation analysis of 1463 families, assuming single ascertainment, produced a segregation ratio p(D) = .089 with SEp(D) = 0.006. Unlike an earlier segregation analysis on a small number of absolute pitch probands from musically educated families, our study indicates that absolute pitch is not inherited in a simple Mendelian fashion. Based on these data, absolute pitch is likely genetically heterogeneous, with environmental, epigenetic, and stochastic factors also perhaps contributing to its genesis. These findings are in agreement with the results of our recent linkage analysis.	\N	\N
21425948	Acute migraine could be associated with neurophysiological and cognitive changes. This study evaluates the neurophysiological changes in auditory information processing in adolescents with acute migraine by means of magnetoencephalography. The multifeature sound mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm was used to study nine adolescents with an acute migraine and nine age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Latencies and amplitudes of M100, M150, M200, and MMNm responses were evaluated. Migraine subjects had smaller M150 amplitudes than healthy subjects. The latencies of MMNm response for the frequency change were delayed in both hemispheres in migraine subjects, as compared with healthy controls. Our results indicate that the function of neural substrates, responsible for different stages of auditory information processing, is impaired during the acute migraine. The identification of underlying cortical dysfunction during an acute migraine can lead to future identification of neurophysiological biomarkers for studying acute migraine and response to treatment.	\N	\N
21426312	To examine the social cognitive vulnerabilities mediating delusion formation in children presenting with hallucinatory experiences. A sample of 259 12- and 13-year-old children, from a baseline case-control sample of children with and without auditory hallucinations (AH), were re-assessed after 5 years for presence of AH. Presence of delusions and theory of mind (ToM) were also assessed, to examine the hypothesized moderating role of ToM in delusion formation in children hearing voices. In children with AH at age 7-8 and/or 12-13 years, the risk of delusion formation was significantly higher (P interaction = 0.027) in those with lower ToM skills (OR = 4.3, 95% CI 1.9-9.9, P = 0.000), compared to those with higher ToM skills (OR 1.6, 95% CI 0.7-3.7, P = 0.26), independently from secondary school level. The results suggest that better mentalizing abilities confer protection against delusion formation in children experiencing perceptual anomalies, not reducible to general cognitive ability.	\N	\N
21429648	Dichotic listening (DL) techniques have been used extensively as a non-invasive procedure to assess language lateralization among children with and without learning disabilities (LD), and with individuals who have other auditory system related brain disorders. Results of studies using DL have indicated that language is lateralized in children with LD and that the lateralized language asymmetries do not develop after age 6 nor are they affected by gender. Observed differences in lateralized language processes between control children and those with LD were found not due to delayed cerebral dominance, but rather to deficits in selective attention. In addition, attention factors have a greater influence on auditory processing of verbal than nonverbal stimuli for children with LD, and children with LD exhibit a general processing bias to the same hemisphere unlike control children. Furthermore, employing directed attention conditions in DL experiments has played an important role in explaining learning disabled children's performance on DL tasks. We conclude that auditory perceptual asymmetries as assessed by DL with children who experience LD are the result of the interaction of hemispheric capability and attention factors.	\N	\N
21439268	Studies using event related potentials have shown that men are more likely than women to rely on semantic cues when understanding emotional speech. In a previous functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, using an affective sentence classification task, we were able to separate areas involved in semantic processing and areas involved in the processing of affective prosody (Beaucousin et al., 2007). Here we searched for sex-related differences in the neural networks active during emotional speech processing in groups of men and women. The ortholinguistic abilities of the participants did not differ when evaluated with a large battery of tests. Although the neural networks engaged by men and women during emotional sentence classification were largely overlapping, sex-dependent modulations were detected during emotional sentence classification, but not during grammatical sentence classification. Greater activity was observed in men, compared with women, in inferior frontal cortical areas involved in emotional labeling and in attentional areas. In conclusion, at equivalent linguistic abilities and performances, men activate semantic and attentional cortical areas to a larger extent than women during emotional speech processing.	\N	\N
21439350	Bone-conducted ultrasound (BCU) modulated by speech sound is recognized as speech sound and activates the auditory cortex similar to audible sound. To investigate the mechanisms of perception, the effects of stimulus duration on N1m were compared among air-conducted audible speech sound (AC speech), AC speech with carrier BCU and speech-modulated BCU in eight native Japanese with normal hearing. The Japanese vowel sound /a/ was used as a stimulus with durations of 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 and 60 ms. Comparison between AC speech with and without carrier showed that the presentation of carrier had no effect on N1m evoked by AC speech. Comparison among the three conditions showed that N1m amplitude for speech-modulated BCU differed from that for the two AC speeches. Moreover, N1m amplitude growth saturated at 40 ms for speech-modulated BCU, and at 20 ms for two AC speeches. These results suggest a difference in temporal integration of N1m between speech-modulated BCU and AC speech. Considering these results, it is reasonable to conclude that N1m evoked by speech-modulated BCU is influenced mainly by the ultrasonic component rather than demodulated audible sound. Given this finding, the notion needs to be considered that the mechanisms underlying perception and recognition of speech-modulated BCU depend on the ultrasonic component to some extent.	\N	\N
21441013	Many reports have described that individuals with Alzheimer's disease show neural breakdown in the brainstem nuclei, hippocampus and auditory cortex in the temporal lobe of the brain. However, it is still unclear whether auditory skills mediated by these areas differ across individuals with and without Alzheimer's disease and how these auditory skills are further confounded by reduction in cognitive function in individuals with AD. The aim of this study is to discover the hidden and nonlinear associations among higher-order auditory and cognitive processes in individuals with and without Alzheimer's disease through artificial neural network analysis. The analyses were based on auditory test data obtained from nine clinically confirmed Alzheimer's disease cases and nine age-matched controls. Hearing threshold sensitivity was equivalent across groups, indicating similar peripheral auditory function. Auditory function was evaluated by standardized tests of auditory closure, auditory attention, and auditory figure ground in listeners with and without Alzheimer's disease. The inputs used for analyses were cognitive status and auditory function. The dependent variables were RAU scores computed from scores of auditory tests. Artificial neural networks showed a complex relationship between the input variables (cognitive status and auditory function) that cannot be predicted simply on the basis of cognition differences between individuals with and without Alzheimer's disease. The results of this study suggest that central auditory function declines with age, regardless of changes in cognitive function.	\N	\N
21452943	In this work, we show that electrophysiological responses during pitch perception are best explained by distributed activity in a hierarchy of cortical sources and, crucially, that the effective connectivity between these sources is modulated with pitch strength. Local field potentials were recorded in two subjects from primary auditory cortex and adjacent auditory cortical areas along the axis of Heschl's gyrus (HG) while they listened to stimuli of varying pitch strength. Dynamic causal modeling was used to compare system architectures that might explain the recorded activity. The data show that representation of pitch requires an interaction between nonprimary and primary auditory cortex along HG that is consistent with the principle of predictive coding.	\N	\N
21455973	The loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP) has been described as a measure of central serotonergic activity. Single-electrode estimation and dipole source analysis (DSA) are the most utilized methods for the estimation of LDAEP. To date, it is assumed that both methods are equally reliable. Nevertheless, according to our knowledge, the advantage of either method has not yet been shown directly. The aim of our study was to compare single-electrode estimation and dipole source analysis in the determination of the LDAEP. Tones of five different intensities were presented binaurally to 10 healthy volunteers. Amplitudes of N1/P2 and LDAEP were determined at the central electrode site referenced to average and to linked mastoids and with DSA in the left and the right hemispheres. Scores were normalized (z-scores), compared, and correlated. Contrary to our expectations, we found a significant difference between scores obtained with single-electrode estimation and with DSA. The difference may be caused by confounding activation of a frontal source in the single-electrode method. The single-electrode approach cannot be equated with DSA in the determination of the LDAEP. This should be considered when comparing the results of different LDAEP studies using only one of these methods.	\N	\N
21458862	The purposes of the present study were to establish the Standard-Chinese version of Lexical Neighborhood Test (LNT) and to examine the lexical and age effects on spoken-word recognition in normal-hearing children. Six lists of monosyllabic and six lists of disyllabic words (20 words/list) were selected from the database of daily speech materials for normal-hearing (NH) children of ages 3-5 years. The lists were further divided into "easy" and "hard" halves according to the word frequency and neighborhood density in the database based on the theory of Neighborhood Activation Model (NAM). Ninety-six NH children (age ranged between 4.0 and 7.0 years) were divided into three different age groups of 1-year intervals. Speech-perception tests were conducted using the Standard-Chinese monosyllabic and disyllabic LNT. The inter-list performance was found to be equivalent and inter-rater reliability was high with 92.5-95% consistency. Results of word-recognition scores showed that the lexical effects were all significant. Children scored higher with disyllabic words than with monosyllabic words. "Easy" words scored higher than "hard" words. The word-recognition performance also increased with age in each lexical category. A multiple linear regression analysis showed that neighborhood density, age, and word frequency appeared to have increasingly more contributions to Chinese word recognition. The results of the present study indicated that performances of Chinese word recognition were influenced by word frequency, age, and neighborhood density, with word frequency playing a major role. These results were consistent with those in other languages, supporting the application of NAM in the Chinese language. The development of Standard-Chinese version of LNT and the establishment of a database of children of 4-6 years old can provide a reliable means for spoken-word recognition test in children with hearing impairment.	\N	\N
21461784	Four eyetracking experiments examined whether semantic and visual-shape representations are routinely retrieved from printed word displays and used during language-mediated visual search. Participants listened to sentences containing target words that were similar semantically or in shape to concepts invoked by concurrently displayed printed words. In Experiment 1, the displays contained semantic and shape competitors of the targets along with two unrelated words. There were significant shifts in eye gaze as targets were heard toward semantic but not toward shape competitors. In Experiments 2-4, semantic competitors were replaced with unrelated words, semantically richer sentences were presented to encourage visual imagery, or participants rated the shape similarity of the stimuli before doing the eyetracking task. In all cases, there were no immediate shifts in eye gaze to shape competitors, even though, in response to the Experiment 1 spoken materials, participants looked to these competitors when they were presented as pictures (Huettig & McQueen, 2007). There was a late shape-competitor bias (more than 2,500 ms after target onset) in all experiments. These data show that shape information is not used in online search of printed word displays (whereas it is used with picture displays). The nature of the visual environment appears to induce implicit biases toward particular modes of processing during language-mediated visual search.	\N	\N
21467806	Vital-sign checks and physical assessment have been performed by physicians and nurses among medical staff in particular. However, pharmacists must also have basic skills of vital-sign checking and physical assessment to evaluate the patient condition/drug efficacy or prevent adverse reactions to drugs. To promote the acquisition of these skills, we prepared simulation programs with an emergency-care simulator, which facilitate the reproduction of excess-dose drug administration/condition changes. We used an emergency-care simulator equipped with a personal computer. General condition was established using the blinking velocity, cardiac/respiratory sounds and blood pH as parameters. As a results, concerning drug administration, the simulation programs facilitated the reproduction of symptoms related to the excess-dose insulin administration. With respect to changes in the condition, it facilitated the reproduction of asthma, hyperglycemia, and hemorrhage. This facilitated the palpation-, visual perception-, and auditory perception-mediated understanding of changes in the patient condition through fingertips and warnings/alarms on the monitor. Evaluation of the student for these program contents increased significantly (p<0.01). These programs can be downloaded via the Internet. Experience regarding excess-dose drug administration/condition changes with an emergency-care simulator is useful for checking patients' vital signs, evaluating the drug efficacy, and confirming adverse reactions to drugs. By the practice of these programs, we can teach pharmacy students how to check for vital signs (pulse palpation, auscultation, blood pressure measurement, and electrocardiography) in a school setting, not a hospital setting. Mastering these techniques may allow pharmacy students to determine the efficacy of a drug and adverse reactions.	\N	\N
21476651	Recently, it has been suggested that the annoyance of residents at a given aircraft noise exposure level increases over the years. The objective of the present study was to verify the hypothesized trend and to identify its possible causes. To this end, the large database used to establish earlier exposure-response relationships on aircraft noise was updated with original data from several recent surveys, yielding a database with data from 34 separate airports. Multilevel grouped regression was used to determine the annoyance response per airport, after which meta-regression was used to investigate whether study characteristics could explain the heterogeneity in annoyance response between airports. A significant increase over the years was observed in annoyance at a given level of aircraft noise exposure. Furthermore, the type of annoyance scale, the type of contact, and the response percentage were found to be sources of heterogeneity. Of these, only the scale factor could statistically account for the trend, although other findings rule it out as a satisfactory explanation. No evidence was found for increased self-reported noise sensitivity. The results are of importance to the applicability of current exposure-annoyance relationships for aircraft noise and provide a basis for decisions on whether these need to be updated.	\N	\N
21476675	Key features of the voice--fundamental frequency (F(0)) and formant frequencies (Fn)--can vary extensively among individuals. Some of this variation might cue fitness-related, biosocial dimensions of speakers. Three experiments tested the independent, joint and relative effects of F(0) and Fn on listeners' assessments of the body size, masculinity (or femininity), and attractiveness of male and female speakers. Experiment 1 replicated previous findings concerning the joint and independent effects of F(0) and Fn on these assessments. Experiment 2 established frequency discrimination thresholds (or just-noticeable differences, JND's) for both vocal features to use in subsequent tests of their relative salience. JND's for F(0) and Fn were consistent in the range of 5%-6% for each sex. Experiment 3 put the two voice features in conflict by equally discriminable amounts and found that listeners consistently tracked Fn over F(0) in rating all three dimensions. Several non-exclusive possibilities for this outcome are considered, including that voice Fn provides more reliable cues to one or more dimensions and that listeners' assessments of the different dimensions are partially interdependent. Results highlight the value of first establishing JND's for discrimination of specific features of natural voices in future work examining their effects on voice-based social judgments.	\N	\N
21477130	Evaluation of clinical characteristics, bacteriology and hearing in paediatric patients with and without chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) in Luanda, Angola. Interview, clinical examination, ear-discharge culture, open air pure-tone audiometry and brainstem auditory-evoked potentials of 23 outpatients with CSOM and 23 controls in a paediatric hospital. Of the CSOM vs. control children, 35% vs. 26% had running water, 70% vs. 70% electricity, 64% vs. 0% HIV (p<0.0001) and 36% vs. 0% tuberculosis in history (p=0.002). Ten (43%) children had bilateral CSOM. The major ear-discharge pathogens were Proteus spp. (44%) and Pseudomonas (22%). Hearing impairment of >25 dB was present in 52% of CSOM-affected ears and bilateral hearing loss in 7 (30%) CSOM children vs. zero control child (p=0.009). Only one hearing-impaired child's family had previously detected the handicap. CSOM occurred in children with high co-morbidity. Persistent otorrhoea was usually caused by Proteus spp. or Pseudomonas, and often suggestive of either HIV or hearing impairment. In the developing countries, prompt diagnosis and treatment of CSOM would enhance the children's linguistic and academic development.	\N	\N
21477198	To investigate the interaction between segmental and supra-segmental stress-related information in early word learning, two experiments were conducted with 20- to 24-month-old English-learning children. In an adaptation of the object categorization study designed by Nazzi and Gopnik (2001), children were presented with pairs of novel objects whose labels differed by their initial consonant (Experiment 1) or their medial consonant (Experiment 2). Words were produced with a stress initial (trochaic) or a stress final (iambic) pattern. In both experiments successful word learning was established when the to-be-remembered contrast was embedded in a stressed syllable, but not when embedded in unstressed syllables. This was independent of the overall word pattern, trochaic or iambic, or the location of the phonemic contrast, word-initial or -medial. Results are discussed in light of the use of phonetic information in early lexical acquisition, highlighting the role of lexical stress and ambisyllabicity in early word processing.	\N	\N
21479656	It is well established that sounds can enhance visual-target detection, but the mechanisms that govern these cross-sensory effects, as well as the neural pathways involved, are largely unknown. Here, we tested behavioral predictions stemming from the neurophysiologic and neuroanatomic literature. Participants detected near-threshold visual targets presented either at central fixation or peripheral to central fixation that were sometimes paired with sounds that originated from widely misaligned locations (up to 104° from the visual target). Our results demonstrate that co-occurring sounds improve the likelihood of visual-target detection (1) regardless of retinal eccentricity and (2) despite wide audiovisual misalignments. With regard to the first point, these findings suggest that auditory facilitation of visual-target detection is unlikely to operate through previously described corticocortical pathways from auditory cortex that predominantly terminate in regions of visual cortex that process peripheral visual space. With regard to the second point, auditory facilitation of visual-target detection seems to operate through a spatially non-specific modulation of visual processing.	\N	\N
21483666	Acute stress is a stereotypical, but multimodal response to a present or imminent challenge overcharging an organism. Among the different branches of this multimodal response, the consequences of glucocorticoid secretion have been extensively investigated, mostly in connection with long-term memory (LTM). However, stress responses comprise other endocrine signaling and altered neuronal activity wholly independent of pituitary regulation. To date, knowledge of the impact of such "paracorticoidal" stress responses on higher cognitive functions is scarce. We investigated the impact of an ecological stressor on the ability to direct selective attention using event-related potentials in humans. Based on research in rodents, we assumed that a stress-induced imbalance of catecholaminergic transmission would impair this ability. The stressor consisted of a single cold pressor test. Auditory negative difference (Nd) and mismatch negativity (MMN) were recorded in a tonal dichotic listening task. A time series of such tasks confirmed an increased distractibility occurring 4-7 minutes after onset of the stressor as reflected by an attenuated Nd. Salivary cortisol began to rise 8-11 minutes after onset when no further modulations in the event-related potentials (ERP) occurred, thus precluding a causal relationship. This effect may be attributed to a stress-induced activation of mesofrontal dopaminergic projections. It may also be attributed to an activation of noradrenergic projections. Known characteristics of the modulation of ERP by different stress-related ligands were used for further disambiguation of causality. The conjuncture of an attenuated Nd and an increased MMN might be interpreted as indicating a dopaminergic influence. The selective effect on the late portion of the Nd provides another tentative clue for this. Prior studies have deliberately tracked the adrenocortical influence on cognition, as it has proven most influential with respect to LTM. However, current cortisol-optimized study designs would have failed to detect the present findings regarding attention.	\N	\N
21487700	Anxious individuals have been shown to interpret others' emotional states negatively. Since most studies have used facial expressions as emotional cues, we examined whether trait anxiety affects the recognition of emotion in a dynamic face and voice that were presented in synchrony. The face and voice cues conveyed either matched (e.g., happy face and voice) or mismatched emotions (e.g., happy face and angry voice). Participants with high or low trait anxiety were to indicate the perceived emotion using one of the cues while ignoring the other. The results showed that individuals with high trait anxiety were more likely to interpret others' emotions in a negative manner, putting more weight on the to-be-ignored angry cues. This interpretation bias was found regardless of the cue modality (i.e., face or voice). Since trait anxiety did not affect recognition of the face or voice cues presented in isolation, this interpretation bias appears to reflect an altered integration of the face and voice cues among anxious individuals.	\N	\N
21491276	In order to determine how the interior of a car should sound, automotive manufacturers often rely on obtaining data from individual evaluations of vehicle sounds. Company identity could play a role in these appraisals, particularly when individuals are comparing cars from opposite ends of the performance spectrum. This research addressed the question: does company identity influence the evaluation of automotive sounds belonging to cars of a similar performance level and from the same market segment? Participants listened to car sounds from two competing manufacturers, together with control sounds. Before listening to each sound, participants were presented with the correct company identity for that sound, the incorrect identity or were given no information about the identity of the sound. The results showed that company identity did not influence appraisals of high performance cars belonging to different manufacturers. These results have positive implications for methodologies employed to capture the perceptions of individuals. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: A challenge in automotive design is to set appropriate targets for vehicle sounds, relying on understanding subjective reactions of individuals to such sounds. This paper assesses the role of company identity in influencing these subjective reactions and will guide sound evaluation studies, in which the manufacturer is often apparent.	\N	\N
21493243	To determine whether patterns of functional connectivity of cortical regions responsible for auditory processing and executive functions differ in children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) versus their normal-hearing (NH) siblings. Prospective observational study. Academic medical center. Children with severe-to-profound UHL (9 right UHL, 7 left UHL) and 10 NH sibling controls were imaged using resting state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fcMRI). All MRI images were transformed to a single common atlas; regions of interest (ROI) were chosen based on previous literature and unpublished results. Mean regionwise correlations and conjunction analyses were performed across 34 seed ROIs to identify temporally synchronized, low-frequency spontaneous fluctuations in the resting state blood oxygenation level-dependent signal that reveal functionally related regions. Mean regionwise Student t tests found a left posterior opercular region with more correlated resting state activity with the inferior parietal lobule seed in the children with both left and right UHL than NH. In conjunction analysis, 4 regions showed different resting-state functional interactions between the NH and both UHL groups. These differences were in left medial globus pallidus, left middle temporal gyrus, right parahippocampal gyrus, and mid-cingulate cortex. These regions include areas associated with auditory processing, executive function, and memory formation. Resting state fcMRI identified differences in brain network interconnections between children with UHL and NH and may inform further investigation into the educational and behavioral difficulties experienced by children with UHL.	\N	\N
21495790	To assess factors that contribute to Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) scores in Japan. Case series with chart review. Two hundred and eighty-five tinnitus patients at tertiary referral center, who completed the Japanese version of the THI, the Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS), and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). In multiple regression analysis, the SDS score contributed the most to the THI score. The state section of the STAI score and pure tone average (PTA) at four high frequencies also contributed significantly, but to lesser degrees. The other following factors were not statistically significant: age, gender, time from the onset of tinnitus to the first clinical visit, PTA at three mid frequencies, and trait section of the STAI score. This model may account for approximately 45% of THI score variability. The THI scores may be influenced by depressive symptoms, state anxiety, and pure tone thresholds in Japan.	\N	\N
21502927	Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential that is elicited by deviant sounds that are presented along with frequent sounds in the absence of attention. Auditory MMN is generated by the comparison process between sensory memory trace of a frequent auditory event and a deviant event. It is well known that frequent sounds are encoded in memory trace and processed as a single unit within 160-170 ms. This study examined whether deviant sound would be similarly processed as a temporal unit. Twelve healthy men were presented with relatively short standard sounds and relatively long deviant sounds that contained an omitted (i.e. silent) part. Three types of deviant sounds were designed to vary in duration. The MMN amplitude was gradually enhanced from the short to long duration deviant events that contained an omitted part. In contrast, MMN latency showed no significant differences among the deviants. These findings show that deviant sounds are also processed as a unitary event.	\N	\N
21503649	Primate multisensory object perception involves distributed brain regions. To investigate the network character of these regions of the human brain, we applied data-driven group spatial independent component analysis (ICA) to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data set acquired during a passive audio-visual (AV) experiment with common object stimuli. We labeled three group-level independent component (IC) maps as auditory (A), visual (V), and AV, based on their spatial layouts and activation time courses. The overlap between these IC maps served as definition of a distributed network of multisensory candidate regions including superior temporal, ventral occipito-temporal, posterior parietal and prefrontal regions. During an independent second fMRI experiment, we explicitly tested their involvement in AV integration. Activations in nine out of these twelve regions met the max-criterion (A < AV > V) for multisensory integration. Comparison of this approach with a general linear model-based region-of-interest definition revealed its complementary value for multisensory neuroimaging. In conclusion, we estimated functional networks of uni- and multisensory functional connectivity from one dataset and validated their functional roles in an independent dataset. These findings demonstrate the particular value of ICA for multisensory neuroimaging research and using independent datasets to test hypotheses generated from a data-driven analysis.	\N	\N
21507543	Dichotic listening originally was a means of studying attention. Half a century ago Doreen Kimura parlayed the dichotic method into a noninvasive indicator of lateralized cerebral language representation. The ubiquitous right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal material was accepted as a concomitant of left-sided language lateralization and preferential conduction of right-ear messages to the left hemisphere. As evidence has accumulated over the past 50years showing the REA to be dynamic and modifiable, the concept of attention has become essential for interpreting the findings. Progress in understanding the role of attention has been manifested as a transition from efforts to document attention effects to efforts to characterize their mechanisms. We summarize the relevant evidence, trace the evolution of explanatory models, and outline contemporary accounts of the role of attention in dichotic listening.	\N	\N
21508086	Recent evidence demonstrates that perceptual rivalry rate can be modulated by perturbation of the serotonergic system. Specifically, pharmacologically lowering the availability of serotonin results in slower rivalry rates. As it has been suggested that brain serotonin is low during the interictal phase of migraine, we hypothesized that perceptual rivalry rates would be reduced in individuals with migraine. Visual and auditory perceptual rivalry measures were obtained for a group of 30 participants with migraine (15 migraine with aura, 15 migraine without aura) and 20 non-headache control individuals. Our experiments reveal fewer perceptual rivalry switches within both visual and auditory domains for our migraine without aura group, while the with-aura group performed similarly to non-headache controls. Dividing the data by headache frequency rather than headache subtype classification revealed fewer perceptual switches in those with more frequent headaches. Our data provides further support for interictal differences in brain sensory reactivity in migraine, with the observed effects being in the same direction as those caused by pharmacologically reducing brain availability of serotonin in normal observers.	\N	\N
21509624	Elderly persons frequently complain about problems with speech understanding especially in complex acoustic situations. Besides hearing impairment the decline of cognitive functions might explain these problems. In 12 normal hearing young subjects and 14 elderly listeners with extraordinarily good hearing speech perception was measured in a broad range of different acoustic situations. Cognitive functioning was evaluated with different neuropsychological tests. Despite comparable pure tone thresholds the elderly listeners revealed worse speech discrimination than the young subjects in almost all test situations. Largest differences were found in situations with fluctuating maskers and competing talkers. Most of the speech perception results revealed significant correlations with the outcome from a neuropsychological test addressing declarative verbal memory. In complex listening situations elderly persons reveal worse speech understanding than younger subjects. Differences in speech perception can partly be attributed to cognitive abilities. In particular, working memory seems to be an important factor.	\N	\N
21512805	The purpose of this study was to investigate whether multi-stimulus auditory steady-state responses were capable of estimating hearing thresholds in high-risk infants. A retrospective chart review study. Three tertiary referral centers. Infants born between January 2004 and December 2006 who met the criteria for risk factors of congenital hearing loss were enrolled in the study. While under sedation, the multi-stimulus auditory steady-state response was used to determine multi-channel auditory steady-state response thresholds for high-risk infants younger than 13 months. Conditioned play audiometry was then applied to these children at 23-48 months of age to obtain pure tone audiograms. Auditory steady-state response thresholds and pure tone thresholds were then compared. A total of 249 high-risk infants were enrolled in the study. 39 infants were lost during follow-up. The remaining 216 infants completed both examinations. The Pearson correlation coefficients (r) between the ASSR levels and pure tone thresholds were 0.88, 0.94, 0.94 and 0.97 at 500, 1,000, 2,000 and 4,000 Hz, respectively. The strength of the relationship between the auditory steady-state responses and pure tone thresholds increased with more severe degrees of hearing loss and higher frequencies. We conclude that initial multichannel ASSR thresholds measured under sedation are highly correlated with pure tone thresholds obtained 2 or 3 years later. ASSR can be used to predict the frequency-specific hearing thresholds of high-risk infants and can provide information for early hearing intervention.	\N	\N
21524014	Recent research provides evidence that individuals shift in their perception of variants depending on social characteristics attributed to the speaker.This paper reports on a speech perception experiment designed to test the degree to which the age attributed to a speaker influences the perception of vowels undergoing a chain shift. As a result of the shift, speakers from different generations produce different variants from one another. Results from the experiment indicate that a speaker's perceived age can influence vowel categorization in the expected direction. However, only older participants are influenced by perceived speaker age.This suggests that social characteristics attributed to a speaker affect speech perception differently depending on the salience of the relationship between the variant and the characteristic.The results also provide evidence of an unexpected interaction between the sex of the participant and the sex of the stimulus.The interaction is interpreted as an effect of the participants' previous exposure with male and female speakers.The results are analyzed under an exemplar model of speech production and perception where social information is indexed to acoustic information and the weight of the connection varies depending on the perceived salience of sociophonetic trends.	\N	\N
21526589	In a sample of 18 European nations, suicide rates were positively associated with the proportion of low notes in the national anthems and, albeit less strongly, with students' ratings of how gloomy and how sad the anthems sounded, supporting a hypothesis proposed by Rihmer.	\N	\N
21534716	We suggest that cochlear implantation (CI) should be a good therapeutic modality for hearing restoration in patients with common cavity malformed ears. To analyze hearing improvement from CI performed in common cavity malformed cochleae. A total of 11 patients (5 male and 6 female, mean age 4.5 ± 2.8 years) and 12 ears were enrolled in this study. During the insertion of electrodes, we used C-arm fluoroscopy to avoid intrameatal placement. We evaluated hearing improvement every 6 months and the mean follow-up period was 80.5 ± 24.1 months (53-125 months). During the operation, there were only four cases with fully inserted electrodes. Cerebrospinal fluid gushed out in two cases during the cochleostomy and postoperative meningitis occurred in two patients. One patient had to undergo reimplantation 4 years later due to device failure and recurrent meningitis. During the 48 months follow-up hearing evaluation, the ability of hearing increased along with the age. The final average MAIS, CAP, SIR, and open set one- and two-syllable word scores were 90.3 ± 18.1%, 4.9 ± 1.6, 3.1 ± 0.9, 24.1 ± 25.9%, and 48.6 ± 38.7%, respectively.	\N	\N
21537615	Profound hearing loss is a disability that affects personality and when it involves teenagers before language acquisition, these bio-psychosocial conflicts can be exacerbated, requiring careful evaluation and choice of them for cochlear implant. To evaluate speech perception by adolescents with profound hearing loss, users of cochlear implants. Prospective. Twenty-five individuals with severe or profound pre-lingual hearing loss who underwent cochlear implantation during adolescence, between 10 to 17 years and 11 months, who went through speech perception tests before the implant and 2 years after device activation. For comparison and analysis we used the results from tests of four choice, recognition of vowels and recognition of sentences in a closed setting and the open environment. The average percentage of correct answers in the four choice test before the implant was 46.9% and after 24 months of device use, this value went up to 86.1% in the vowels recognition test, the average difference was 45.13% to 83.13% and the sentences recognition test together in closed and open settings was 19.3% to 60.6% and 1.08% to 20.47% respectively. All patients, although with mixed results, achieved statistical improvement in all speech tests that were employed.	\N	\N
21545766	This paper presents longitudinal case studies of children who received (cochlear implants) CIs and a controlled sample of children with normal hearing (NH). Phoneme discrimination (i.e., /sa-ma/, /a-i/, /a-u/, /u-i/, /ta-da/, /pa-ka/) was assessed prior to receiving CIs and monthly for 3 mo following CI activation. Case studies. Three cochlear implant recipients and seven NH control participants were recruited through the University of Colorado Hospital and the University of Colorado, Boulder. The study utilized the visual reinforcement audiometry and interactive play assessment of speech pattern contrasts (VRASPAC) algorithm. A comparison of scoring was conducted using Cohen's kappa to determine interrater reliability. Findings from this study revealed that CI recipients could discriminate at least three out of five phoneme contrasts at mastery level (≥90%) by 2 mo of device use. None of the CI recipients reached mastery prior to implantation. Following 3 mo of CI use there was no difference in contrast discrimination performance between the CI users and their NH age-matched peers (with the exception of /pa-ka/ for one CI user. The CI users in this case study, who were implanted between 12 and 16 mo of age, were able to master the phoneme contrasts regardless of bilateral or unilateral CI, socioeconomic status, or language spoken at home.	\N	\N
21552274	Responses of neurons that integrate multiple sensory inputs are traditionally characterized in terms of a set of empirical principles. However, a simple computational framework that accounts for these empirical features of multisensory integration has not been established. We propose that divisive normalization, acting at the stage of multisensory integration, can account for many of the empirical principles of multisensory integration shown by single neurons, such as the principle of inverse effectiveness and the spatial principle. This model, which uses a simple functional operation (normalization) for which there is considerable experimental support, also accounts for the recent observation that the mathematical rule by which multisensory neurons combine their inputs changes with cue reliability. The normalization model, which makes a strong testable prediction regarding cross-modal suppression, may therefore provide a simple unifying computational account of the important features of multisensory integration by neurons.	\N	\N
21553997	Using a novel variant of dichotic selective listening, we examined the control of auditory selective attention. In our task, subjects had to respond selectively to one of two simultaneously presented auditory stimuli (number words), always spoken by a female and a male speaker, by performing a numerical size categorization. The gender of the task-relevant speaker could change, as indicated by a visual cue prior to auditory stimulus onset. Three experiments show clear performance costs with instructed attention switches. Experiment 2 varied the cuing interval to examine advance preparation for an attention switch. Experiment 3 additionally isolated auditory switch costs from visual cue priming by using two cues for each gender, so that gender repetition could be indicated by a changed cue. Experiment 2 showed that switch costs decreased with prolonged cuing intervals, but Experiment 3 revealed that preparation did not affect auditory switch costs but only visual cue priming. Moreover, incongruent numerical categories in competing auditory stimuli produced interference and substantially increased error rates, suggesting continued processing of task-relevant information that often leads to responding to the incorrect auditory source. Together, the data show clear limitations in advance preparation of auditory attention switches and suggest a considerable degree of inertia in intentional control of auditory selection criteria.	\N	\N
21559468	In humans, emotions from music serve important communicative roles. Despite a growing interest in the neural basis of music perception, action and emotion, the majority of previous studies in this area have focused on the auditory aspects of music performances. Here we investigate how the brain processes the emotions elicited by audiovisual music performances. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, and in Experiment 1 we defined the areas responding to audiovisual (musician's movements with music), visual (musician's movements only), and auditory emotional (music only) displays. Subsequently a region of interest analysis was performed to examine if any of the areas detected in Experiment 1 showed greater activation for emotionally mismatching performances (combining the musician's movements with mismatching emotional sound) than for emotionally matching music performances (combining the musician's movements with matching emotional sound) as presented in Experiment 2 to the same participants. The insula and the left thalamus were found to respond consistently to visual, auditory and audiovisual emotional information and to have increased activation for emotionally mismatching displays in comparison with emotionally matching displays. In contrast, the right thalamus was found to respond to audiovisual emotional displays and to have similar activation for emotionally matching and mismatching displays. These results suggest that the insula and left thalamus have an active role in detecting emotional correspondence between auditory and visual information during music performances, whereas the right thalamus has a different role.	\N	\N
21564122	We studied whether a multifeature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm using naturally produced speech stimuli is feasible for studies of auditory discrimination accuracy of adult participants. A naturally produced trisyllabic pseudoword was used in the paradigm, and MMNs were recorded to changes that were acoustic (changes in fundamental frequency or intensity) or potentially phonological (changes in vowel identity or vowel duration). All the different changes were presented in three different word segments (initial, middle, or final syllable). All changes elicited an MMN response, but the vowel duration change elicited a different response pattern than the other deviant types. Changes in vowel duration and identity also had an effect on MMN lateralization. Our results show that assessing speech sound discrimination of several features in word context is possible in a short recording time (30 min) with the multifeature paradigm.	\N	\N
21568161	Although receptive priming has long been used as a way to examine lexical access in adults, few studies have applied this method to children and rarely in an auditory modality. We compared auditory associative priming in children and adults. A testing battery and a Lexical Decision (LD) task was administered to 42 adults and 27 children (8;1-10; 11 years-old) from Spain. They listened to Spanish word pairs (semantically related/unrelated word pairs and word-pseudoword pairs), and tone pairs. Then participants pressed one key for word pairs, and another for pairs with a word and a pseudoword. They also had to press the two keys alternatively for tone pairs as a basic auditory control. Both groups of participants, children and adults, exhibited semantic priming, with significantly faster Reaction Times (RTs) to semantically related word pairs than to unrelated pairs and to the two word-pseudoword sets. The priming effect was twice as large in the adults compared to children, and the children (not the adults) were significantly slower in their response to word-pseudoword pairs than to the unrelated word pairs. Moreover, accuracy was somewhat higher in adults than children for each word pair type, but especially in the word-pseudoword pairs. As expected, children were significantly slower than adults in the RTs for all stimulus types, and their RTs decreased significantly from 8 to 10 years of age and they also decreased in relation to some of their language abilities development (e.g., relative clauses comprehension). In both age groups, the Reaction Time average for tone pairs was lower than for speech pairs, but only all adults obtained 100% accuracy (which was slightly lower in children). Auditory processing and semantic networks are still developing in 8-10 year old children.	\N	\N
21568376	The corruption of intonation contours has detrimental effects on sentence-based speech recognition in normal-hearing listeners Binns and Culling [(2007). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 122, 1765-1776]. This paper examines whether this finding also applies to cochlear implant (CI) recipients. The subjects' F0-discrimination and speech perception in the presence of noise were measured, using sentences with regular and inverted F0-contours. The results revealed that speech recognition for regular contours was significantly better than for inverted contours. This difference was related to the subjects' F0-discrimination providing further evidence that the perception of intonation patterns is important for the CI-mediated speech recognition in noise.	\N	\N
21568411	This study examined the time course of cochlear suppression using a tone-burst suppressor to measure decrement of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs). Seven normal-hearing subjects with ages ranging from 19 to 28 yr participated in the study. Each subject had audiometric thresholds ≤ 15 dB HL [re ANSI (2004) Specifications for Audiometers] for standard octave and inter-octave frequencies from 0.25 to 8 kHz. DPOAEs were elicited by primary tones with f(2) = 4.0 kHz and f(1) = 3.333 kHz (f(2)/f(1) = 1.2). For the f(2), L(2) combination, suppression was measured for three suppressor frequencies: One suppressor below f(2) (3.834 kHz) and two above f(2) (4.166 and 4.282 kHz) at three levels (55, 60, and 65 dB SPL). DPOAE decrement as a function of L(3) for the tone-burst suppressor was similar to decrements obtained with longer duration suppressors. Onset- and setoff- latencies were ≤ 4 ms, in agreement with previous physiological findings in auditory-nerve fiber studies that suggest suppression results from a nearly instantaneous compression of the waveform. Persistence of suppression was absent for the below-frequency suppressor (f(3) = 3.834 kHz) and was ≤ 3 ms for the two above-frequency suppressors (f(3) = 4.166 and 4.282 kHz).	\N	\N
21568423	The octave or Deutsch illusion occurs when two tones, separated by about one octave, are presented simultaneously but alternating between ears, such that when the low tone is presented to the left ear the high tone is presented to the right ear and vice versa. Most subjects hear a single tone that alternates both between ears and in pitch; i.e., they hear a low pitched tone in one ear alternating with a high pitched tone in the other ear. The present study examined whether the illusion can be elicited by aperiodic signals consisting of low-frequency band-pass filtered noises with overlapping spectra. The amount of spectral overlap was held constant, but the high- and low-frequency content of the signals was systematically varied. The majority of subjects perceived an auditory illusion in terms of a dominant ear for pitch and lateralization by frequency, as proposed by Deutsch [(1975a) Sci. Am. 233, 92-104]. Furthermore, the salience of the illusion increased as the high frequency of the content in the signal increased. Since no harmonics were present in the stimuli, it is highly unlikely that this illusion is perceived on the basis of binaural diplacusis or harmonic binaural fusion.	\N	\N
21569617	After a prolonged exposure to a paired presentation of different types of signals (e.g., color and motion), one of the signals (color) becomes a driver for the other signal (motion). This phenomenon, which is known as contingent motion aftereffect, indicates that the brain can establish new neural representations even in the adult's brain. However, contingent motion aftereffect has been reported only in visual or auditory domain. Here, we demonstrate that a visual motion aftereffect can be contingent on a specific sound. Dynamic random dots moving in an alternating right or left direction were presented to the participants. Each direction of motion was accompanied by an auditory tone of a unique and specific frequency. After a 3-minutes exposure, the tones began to exert marked influence on the visual motion perception, and the percentage of dots required to trigger motion perception systematically changed depending on the tones. Furthermore, this effect lasted for at least 2 days. These results indicate that a new neural representation can be rapidly established between auditory and visual modalities.	\N	\N
21598839	This study examined the relationship between proactive learning in hypnosis, post-hypnotic suggestion, and academic performance. Participants (N = 56) were randomly assigned to a control group or a treatment group. The treatment group was hypnotized and read a passage while in hypnosis. Concurrently, they were given a post-hypnotic suggestion, which attempted to aid recognition and performance on a test immediately following the hypnosis session. Both groups completed a multiple-choice test based on the aforementioned passage. An analysis of covariance discerned the effect of proactive learning and post-hypnotic suggestion on test performance, while controlling for the variance introduced by scholastic aptitude as measured by the ACT. Results indicated that the hypnosis sessions predicted significantly impaired test performance.	\N	\N
21599613	To develop and evaluate the Mandarin speech signal content on the acceptable noise level (ANL) test in listeners with normal hearing in mainland China. The Mandarin ANL tests were conducted using three different sets of Mandarin running speech materials which were chosen from textbooks for primary school, secondary school, and high school, respectively. For each discourse, two ANL measurements were obtained and averaged for each experimental condition using ANL test procedures. Thirty-one normal-hearing listeners participated in this study. There were significant differences for ANLs among the normal-hearing listeners, but no differences were found for MCLs and ANLs for the three sets of test materials. The Pearson correlations suggested significant correlations between MCL and ANL among the three test materials; also the results showed that the correlation coefficient between MCL-ANL of the primary material was much better than other two materials. (1) The contents of different Mandarin running speeches may not affect the acceptable noise level in Mandarin normal-hearing listeners; (2) The running speech selected from the primary school ought to be used as the Mandarin acceptable noise level test material to evaluate the outcomes of hearing aid fitting.	\N	\N
21604474	To enhance speech recognition in noise, as well as tone recognition, we presented a new kind of speech coding strategy, called one-octave wavelet transform zero-crossing stimulation (WTZS), for cochlear implants based on amplitude and frequency modulation. We selected 15 volunteers with normal hearing ability to carry out hearing simulation experiments by picking up the amplitude (amplitude modulation, AM), zero-crossings (frequency modulation, FM) and gradient parameters from processed speech signal in the domain of one-octave wavelet transform to synthesize the stimulating pulstile series. The experimental results demonstrated that the phonetic recognition in quiet surroundings with amplitude modulation only strategy (CIS) is similar to that of amplitude and frequency modulations strategies (FAME and WTZS), while the tone perception of CIS is inferior to that of FAME and WTZS strategies. However, in noisy environment, the phonetic recognition, tone perception, as well as sentence recognition of WTZS strategy are better than those of CIS and FAME strategies. WTZS strategy, utilizing amplitude (AM), zero-crossings (FM) and gradient parameters to synthesize stimulus, can enhance the phonetic and tonal language recognition in noise environment effectively, and could be used in cochlear implant system for speech processor design after arithmetic optimization.	\N	\N
21613467	There is an increasing interest to integrate electrophysiological and hemodynamic measures for characterizing spatial and temporal aspects of cortical processing. However, an informative combination of responses that have markedly different sensitivities to the underlying neural activity is not straightforward, especially in complex cognitive tasks. Here, we used parametric stimulus manipulation in magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) recordings on the same subjects, to study effects of noise on processing of spoken words and environmental sounds. The added noise influenced MEG response strengths in the bilateral supratemporal auditory cortex, at different times for the different stimulus types. Specifically for spoken words, the effect of noise on the electrophysiological response was remarkably nonlinear. Therefore, we used the single-subject MEG responses to construct parametrization for fMRI data analysis and obtained notably higher sensitivity than with conventional stimulus-based parametrization. fMRI results showed that partly different temporal areas were involved in noise-sensitive processing of words and environmental sounds. These results indicate that cortical processing of sounds in background noise is stimulus specific in both timing and location and provide a new functionally meaningful platform for combining information obtained with electrophysiological and hemodynamic measures of brain function.	\N	\N
21613485	Growing evidence from electrophysiological data in animal and human studies suggests that multisensory interaction is not exclusively a higher-order process, but also takes place in primary sensory cortices. Such early multisensory interaction is thought to be mediated by means of phase resetting. The presentation of a stimulus to one sensory modality resets the phase of ongoing oscillations in another modality such that processing in the latter modality is modulated. In humans, evidence for such a mechanism is still sparse. In the current study, the influence of an auditory stimulus on visual processing was investigated by measuring the electroencephalogram (EEG) and behavioral responses of humans to visual, auditory, and audiovisual stimulation with varying stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA). We observed three distinct oscillatory EEG responses in our data. An initial gamma-band response around 50 Hz was followed by a beta-band response around 25 Hz, and a theta response around 6 Hz. The latter was enhanced in response to cross-modal stimuli as compared to either unimodal stimuli. Interestingly, the beta response to unimodal auditory stimuli was dominant in electrodes over visual areas. The SOA between auditory and visual stimuli--albeit not consciously perceived--had a modulatory impact on the multisensory evoked beta-band responses; i.e., the amplitude depended on SOA in a sinusoidal fashion, suggesting a phase reset. These findings further support the notion that parameters of brain oscillations such as amplitude and phase are essential predictors of subsequent brain responses and might be one of the mechanisms underlying multisensory integration.	\N	\N
21615286	Research into speech perception by nonhuman animals can be crucially informative in assessing whether specific perceptual phenomena in humans have evolved to decode speech, or reflect more general traits. Birds share with humans not only the capacity to use complex vocalizations for communication but also many characteristics of its underlying developmental and mechanistic processes; thus, birds are a particularly interesting group for comparative study. This review first discusses commonalities between birds and humans in perception of speech sounds. Several psychoacoustic studies have shown striking parallels in seemingly speech-specific perceptual phenomena, such as categorical perception of voice-onset-time variation, categorization of consonants that lack phonetic invariance, and compensation for coarticulation. Such findings are often regarded as evidence for the idea that the objects of human speech perception are auditory or acoustic events rather than articulations. Next, I highlight recent research on the production side of avian communication that has revealed the existence of vocal tract filtering and articulation in bird species-specific vocalization, which has traditionally been considered a hallmark of human speech production. Together, findings in birds show that many of characteristics of human speech perception are not uniquely human but also that a comparative approach to the question of what are the objects of perception--articulatory or auditory events--requires careful consideration of species-specific vocal production mechanisms.	\N	\N
21616132	Presbycusis, or age-related hearing loss is a growing problem as the general population ages. In this longitudinal study, the influence of noise or styrene exposure on presbycusis was investigated in Brown Norway rats. Animals were exposed at 6 months of age, either to a band noise centered at 8 kHz at a Lex,8h = 85 dB (86.2 dB SPL for 6 h), or to 300 ppm of styrene for 6 h per day, five days per week, for four weeks. Cubic distortion product otoacoustic emissions (2f1-f2 DPOAEs) were used to test the capacity of the auditory receptor over the lifespan of the animals. 2f1-f2DPOAE measurements are easy to implement and efficiently track the age-related deterioration of mid- and high-frequencies. They are good indicators of temporary auditory threshold shift, especially with a level of primaries close to 60 dB SPL. Post-exposure hearing defects are best identified using moderate, rather than high, levels of primaries. Like many aging humans, aging rats lose sensitivity to high-frequencies faster than to medium-frequencies. Although the results obtained with the styrene exposure were not entirely conclusive, histopathological data showed the presbycusis process to be enhanced. Noise-exposed rats exhibit a loss of spiral ganglion cells from 12 months and a 7 dB drop in 2f1-f2DPOAEs at 24 months, indicating that even moderate-intensity noise can accelerate the presbycusis process. Even though the results obtained with the styrene exposure are less conclusive, the histopathological data show an enhancement of the presbycusis process.	\N	\N
21630061	Since air-conducted (AC) and clinical (mastoid) bone-conducted (BC) sounds interact in the cochlea (e.g. pitch, cancellation, masking, beats), it has been thought that both AC and BC stimulations lead to a mechanical wave in the cochlea. However, there are also "non-osseous" forms of BC, i.e. auditory sensation produced when the clinical bone vibrator is applied to "non-osseous" soft tissue sites. In the present study, such "non-osseous" sites were identified (e.g. eye, cheek, neck) and they interacted with AC and osseous BC (pitch matching, beats, masking), indicating that all of these forms of auditory stimulation converge in the cochlea, producing the same pattern of mechanical activity, leading to their interactions.	\N	\N
21632920	The integration of multisensory information has been shown to be guided by spatial and temporal proximity, as well as to be influenced by attention. Here we used neural measures of the multisensory spread of attention to investigate the spatial and temporal linking of synchronous versus near-synchronous auditory and visual events. Human participants attended selectively to one of two lateralized visual-stimulus streams while task-irrelevant tones were presented centrally. Electrophysiological measures of brain activity showed that tones occurring simultaneously or delayed by 100 ms were temporally linked to an attended visual stimulus, as reflected by robust cross-modal spreading-of-attention activity, but not when delayed by 300 ms. The neural data also indicated a ventriloquist-like spatial linking of the auditory to the attended visual stimuli, but only when occurring simultaneously. These neurophysiological results thus provide unique insight into the temporal and spatial principles of multisensory feature integration and the fundamental role attention plays in such integration.	\N	\N
21632945	Contemporary models of the neural system that supports reading propose that activity in a ventral occipitotemporal area (vOT) drives activity in higher-order language areas, for example, those in the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and anterior superior temporal sulcus (aSTS). We used fMRI with dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to investigate evidence for other routes from visual cortex to the left temporal lobe language areas. First we identified activations in posterior inferior occipital (iO) and vOT areas that were more activated for silent reading than listening to words and sentences; and in pSTS and aSTS areas that were commonly activated for reading relative to false-fonts and listening to words relative to reversed words. Second, in three different DCM analyses, we tested whether visual processing of words modulates activity from the following: (1) iO→vOT, iO→pSTS, both, or neither; (2) vOT→pSTS, iO→pSTS, both or neither; and (3) pSTS→aSTS, vOT→aSTS, both, or neither. We found that reading words increased connectivity (1) from iO to both pSTS and vOT; (2) to pSTS from both iO and vOT; and (3) to aSTS from both vOT and pSTS. These results highlight three potential processing streams in the occipitotemporal cortex: iO→pSTS→aSTS; iO→vOT→aSTS; and iO→vOT→pSTS→aSTS. We discuss these results in terms of cognitive models of reading and propose that efficient reading relies on the integrity of all these pathways.	\N	\N
21637344	Previous cue integration studies have examined continuous perceptual dimensions (e.g., size) and have shown that human cue integration is well described by a normative model in which cues are weighted in proportion to their sensory reliability, as estimated from single-cue performance. However, this normative model may not be applicable to categorical perceptual dimensions (e.g., phonemes). In tasks defined over categorical perceptual dimensions, optimal cue weights should depend not only on the sensory variance affecting the perception of each cue but also on the environmental variance inherent in each task-relevant category. Here, we present a computational and experimental investigation of cue integration in a categorical audio-visual (articulatory) speech perception task. Our results show that human performance during audio-visual phonemic labeling is qualitatively consistent with the behavior of a Bayes-optimal observer. Specifically, we show that the participants in our task are sensitive, on a trial-by-trial basis, to the sensory uncertainty associated with the auditory and visual cues, during phonemic categorization. In addition, we show that while sensory uncertainty is a significant factor in determining cue weights, it is not the only one and participants' performance is consistent with an optimal model in which environmental, within category variability also plays a role in determining cue weights. Furthermore, we show that in our task, the sensory variability affecting the visual modality during cue-combination is not well estimated from single-cue performance, but can be estimated from multi-cue performance. The findings and computational principles described here represent a principled first step towards characterizing the mechanisms underlying human cue integration in categorical tasks.	\N	\N
21638105	In two experiments, we examined the impact of the degree of match between sequential auditory perceptual organization processes and the demands of a short-term memory task (memory for order vs. item information). When a spoken sequence of digits was presented so as to promote its perceptual partitioning into two distinct streams by conveying it in alternating female (F) and male (M) voices (FMFMFMFM)--thereby disturbing the perception of true temporal order--recall of item order was greatly impaired (as compared to recall of item identity). Moreover, an order error type consistent with the formation of voice-based streams was committed more quickly in the alternating-voice condition (Exp. 1). In contrast, when the perceptual organization of the sequence mapped well onto an optimal two-group serial rehearsal strategy--by presenting the two voices in discrete clusters (FFFFMMMM)--order, but not item, recall was enhanced (Exp. 2). The results are consistent with the view that the degree of compatibility between perceptual and deliberate sequencing processes is a key determinant of serial short-term memory performance. Alternative accounts of talker variability effects in short-term memory, based on the concept of a dedicated phonological short-term store and a capacity-limited focus of attention, are also reviewed.	\N	\N
21646423	To determine the rate of word learning for children with hearing loss (HL) in quiet and in noise compared to normal-hearing (NH) peers. The effects of digital noise reduction (DNR) were examined for children with HL. Forty-one children with NH and 26 children with HL were grouped by age (8-9 years and 11-12 years). The children learned novel words associated with novel objects through a process of trial and error. Functions relating performance across trials were calculated for each child in each listening condition and were compared. Significant effects were observed for age (older > younger) in the children with NH and listening condition (quiet > noise) in the children with HL. Significant effects of hearing status were also observed across groups (NH > HL), indicating that the children with HL required more trials to learn the new words. However, word learning improved significantly in noise with the use of DNR for the older but not for the younger children with HL. Hearing aid history and signal-to-noise ratio did not contribute to performance. Word learning was significantly reduced in younger children, in noise, and in the presence of hearing loss. Age-related benefits of DNR were apparent for children over 10 years of age.	\N	\N
21646931	The perception of pitch has recently gained attention. At present, clinical audiologic tests to assess this are hardly available. This article reports on the development of a clinical test using harmonic intonation (HI) and disharmonic intonation (DI). Prospective collection of normative data and pilot study in hearing-impaired subjects. Tertiary referral center. Normative data were collected from 90 normal-hearing subjects recruited from 3 different language backgrounds. The pilot study was conducted on 18 hearing-impaired individuals who were selected into 3 pathologic groups: high-frequency hearing loss (HF), low-frequency hearing loss (LF), and cochlear implant users (CI). Normative data collection and exploratory diagnostics by means of the newly constructed HI/DI tests using intonation patterns to find the just noticeable difference (JND) for pitch discrimination in low-frequency harmonic complex sounds presented in a same-different task. JND for pitch discrimination using HI/DI tests in the hearing population and pathologic groups. Normative data are presented in 5 parameter statistics and box-and-whisker plots showing median JNDs of 2 (HI) and 3 Hz (DI). The results on both tests are statistically abnormal in LF and CI subjects, whereas they are not significantly abnormal in the HF group. The HI and DI tests allow the clinical assessment of low-frequency pitch perception. The data obtained in this study define the normal zone for both tests. Preliminary results indicate possible abnormal TFS perception in some hearing-impaired subjects.	\N	\N
21664147	Homonyms, i.e. ambiguous words like 'score', have different meanings in different contexts. Previous research indicates that all potential meanings of a homonym are first accessed in parallel before one of the meanings is selected in a competitive race. If these processes are automatic, these processes of selection should even be observed when homonyms are shown subliminally. This study measured the time course of subliminal and supraliminal priming by homonyms with a frequent (dominant) and a rare (subordinate) meaning in a neutral context, using a lexical decision task. In the subliminal condition, priming across prime-target asynchronies ranging from 100 ms to 1.5 s indicated that the dominant meaning of homonyms was facilitated and the subordinate meaning was inhibited. This indicates that selection of meaning was much faster with subliminal presentation than with supraliminal presentation. Awareness of a prime might decelerate an otherwise rapid selection process.	\N	\N
21666515	The cortical processing of musical sounds is influenced by listeners' sensitivity to the structural regularities of music, and particularly by sensitivity to harmonic relationships. As subcortical and cortical processing dynamically interact to shape auditory perception in an experience-dependent manner, we asked whether subcortical processing of musical sounds would be sensitive to harmonic relationships. We examined auditory brainstem responses to a chord that was preceded either by a harmonically related chord, by an unrelated chord, or was repeated. We observed higher spectral response magnitudes in the related than in the unrelated or repeated conditions, for both musician and nonmusician listeners. Our results suggest that listeners' implicit knowledge of musical regularities influences subcortical auditory processing.	\N	\N
21669238	The fast detection of novel or deviant stimuli is a striking property of the auditory processing which reflects basic organizational principles of the auditory system and at the same time is of high practical significance. In human electrophysiology, deviance detection has been related to the occurrence of the mismatch negativity (MMN)--a component of the event-related potential (ERP) evoked 100 to 250 ms after the occurrence of a rare irregular sound. Recently, it has been shown in animal studies that a considerable portion of neurons in the auditory pathway exhibits a property called stimulus-specific adaptation enabling them to encode inter-sound relationships and to discharge at higher rates to rare changes in the acoustic stimulation. These neural responses have been linked to the deviant-evoked potential measured at the human scalp, but such responses occur at lower levels anatomically (e.g. the primary auditory cortex as well as the inferior colliculi) and are elicited earlier (20-30 ms after sound onset) in comparison to MMN. Further, they are not considerable enough in size to be interpreted as a direct neural correlate of the MMN. We review here a series of recent findings that provides a first step toward filling this gap between animal and human recordings by showing that comparably early modulations due to a sound's deviancy can be observed in humans, particularly in the middle-latency portion of the ERP within the first 50 ms after sound onset. The existence of those early indices of deviance detection preceding the well-studied MMN component strongly supports the idea that the encoding of regularities and the detection of violations is a basic principle of human auditory processing acting on multiple levels. This sustains the notion of a hierarchically organized novelty and deviance detection system in the human auditory system.	\N	\N
21680846	The attentional effects triggered by emotional stimuli in humans have been substantially investigated, but little is known about the impact of affective valence on the processing of meaning. Here, we used a cross-modal priming paradigm involving visually presented adjective-noun dyads and environmental sounds of controlled affective valence to test the contributions of conceptual relatedness and emotional congruence to priming. Participants undergoing event-related potential recording indicated whether target environmental sounds were related in meaning to adjective-noun dyads presented as primes. We tested spontaneous emotional priming by manipulating the congruence between the affective valence of the adjective in the prime and that of the sound. While the N400 was significantly reduced in amplitude by both conceptual relatedness and emotional congruence, there was no interaction between the 2 factors. The same pattern of results was found when participants judged the emotional congruence between environmental sounds and adjective-noun dyads. These results support the hypothesis that conceptual and emotional processes are functionally independent regardless of the specific cognitive focus of the comprehender.	\N	\N
21682421	Cross-channel envelope correlations are hypothesized to influence speech intelligibility, particularly in adverse conditions. Acoustic analyses suggest speech envelope correlations differ for syllabic and phonemic ranges of modulation frequency. The influence of cochlear filtering was examined here by predicting cross-channel envelope correlations in different speech modulation ranges for normal and impaired auditory-nerve (AN) responses. Neural cross-correlation coefficients quantified across-fiber envelope coding in syllabic (0-5 Hz), phonemic (5-64 Hz), and periodicity (64-300 Hz) modulation ranges. Spike trains were generated from a physiologically based AN model. Correlations were also computed using the model with selective hair-cell damage. Neural predictions revealed that envelope cross-correlation decreased with increased characteristic-frequency separation for all modulation ranges (with greater syllabic-envelope correlation than phonemic or periodicity). Syllabic envelope was highly correlated across many spectral channels, whereas phonemic and periodicity envelopes were correlated mainly between adjacent channels. Outer-hair-cell impairment increased the degree of cross-channel correlation for phonemic and periodicity ranges for speech in quiet and in noise, thereby reducing the number of independent neural information channels for envelope coding. In contrast, outer-hair-cell impairment was predicted to decrease cross-channel correlation for syllabic envelopes in noise, which may partially account for the reduced ability of hearing-impaired listeners to segregate speech in complex backgrounds.	\N	\N
21683500	Responses to threat occur via two known independent processing routes. We propose that early, reflexive processing is predominantly tuned to the detection of congruent combinations of facial cues that signal threat, whereas later, reflective processing is predominantly tuned to incongruent combinations of threat. To test this prediction, we examined responses to threat-gaze expression pairs (anger versus fear expression by direct versus averted gaze). We report on two functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, one employing prolonged presentations (2s) of threat-gaze pairs to allow for reflective processing (Study 1), and one employing severely restricted (33 ms), backward masked presentations of threat-gaze pairs to isolate reflexive neural responding (Study 2). Our findings offer initial support for the conclusion that early, reflexive responses to threat are predominantly tuned to congruent threat-gaze pairings, whereas later reflective responses are predominantly tuned to ambiguous threat-gaze pairings. These findings highlight a distinct dual function in threat perception.	\N	\N
21683995	Electrophysiological studies investigating similarities between music and language perception have relied exclusively on the signal averaging technique, which does not adequately represent oscillatory aspects of electrical brain activity that are relevant for higher cognition. The current study investigated the patterns of brain oscillations during simultaneous processing of music and language using visually presented sentences and auditorily presented chord sequences. Music-syntactically regular or irregular chord functions were presented in sync with syntactically or semantically correct or incorrect words. Irregular chord functions (presented simultaneously with a syntactically correct word) produced an early (150-250 ms) spectral power decrease over anterior frontal regions in the theta band (5-7 Hz) and a late (350-700 ms) power increase in both the delta and the theta band (2-7 Hz) over parietal regions. Syntactically incorrect words (presented simultaneously with a regular chord) elicited a similar late power increase in delta-theta band over parietal sites, but no early effect. Interestingly, the late effect was significantly diminished when the language-syntactic and music-syntactic irregularities occurred at the same time. Further, the presence of a semantic violation occurring simultaneously with regular chords produced a significant increase in later delta-theta power at posterior regions; this effect was marginally decreased when the identical semantic violation occurred simultaneously with a music syntactical violation. Altogether, these results show that low frequency oscillatory networks get activated during the syntactic processing of both music and language, and further, these networks may possibly be shared.	\N	\N
21689048	The purpose of this study was to develop a music quality rating test battery (MQRTB) and pilot test it by comparing appraisal ratings from cochlear implant (CI) recipients using the fine-structure processing (FSP) and high-definition continuous interleaved sampling (HDCIS) speech processing strategies. The development of the MQRTB involved three stages: (1) Selection of test items for the MQRTB; (2) Verification of its length and complexity with normally-hearing individuals; and (3) Pilot testing with CI recipients. Part 1 involved 65 adult listeners, Part 2 involved 10 normally-hearing adults, and Part 3 involved five adult MED-EL CI recipients. The MQRTB consisted of ten songs, with ratings made on scales assessing pleasantness, naturalness, richness, fullness, sharpness, and roughness. Results of the pilot study, which compared FSP and HDCIS for music, indicated that acclimatization to a strategy had a significant effect on ratings (p < 0.05). When acclimatized to FSP, the group rated FSP as closer to 'exactly as I want it to sound' than HDCIS (p < 0.05), and that HDCIS sounded significantly sharper and rougher than FSP. However when acclimatized to HDCIS, there were no significant differences between ratings. There was no effect of song familiarity or genre on ratings. Overall the results suggest that the use of FSP as the default strategy for MED-EL recipients would have a positive effect on music appreciation, and that the MQRTB is an effective tool for assessing music sound quality.	\N	\N
21692141	The aim of this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was to identify human brain areas that are sensitive to the direction of auditory motion. Such directional sensitivity was assessed in a hypothesis-free manner by analyzing fMRI response patterns across the entire brain volume using a spherical-searchlight approach. In addition, we assessed directional sensitivity in three predefined brain areas that have been associated with auditory motion perception in previous neuroimaging studies. These were the primary auditory cortex, the planum temporale and the visual motion complex (hMT/V5+). Our whole-brain analysis revealed that the direction of sound-source movement could be decoded from fMRI response patterns in the right auditory cortex and in a high-level visual area located in the right lateral occipital cortex. Our region-of-interest-based analysis showed that the decoding of the direction of auditory motion was most reliable with activation patterns of the left and right planum temporale. Auditory motion direction could not be decoded from activation patterns in hMT/V5+. These findings provide further evidence for the planum temporale playing a central role in supporting auditory motion perception. In addition, our findings suggest a cross-modal transfer of directional information to high-level visual cortex in healthy humans.	\N	\N
21701947	Phenomena in a variety of verbal tasks--for example, masked priming, lexical decision, and word naming--are typically explained in terms of similarity between word-forms. Despite the apparent commonalities between these sets of phenomena, the representations and similarity measures used to account for them are not often related. To show how this gap might be bridged, we build on the work of Hannagan, Dupoux, and Christophe, Cognitive Science 35:79-118, (2011) to explore several methods of representing visual word-forms using holographic reduced representations and to evaluate them on their ability to account for a wide range of effects in masked form priming, as well as data from lexical decision and word naming. A representation that assumes that word-internal letter groups are encoded relative to word-terminal letter groups is found to predict qualitative patterns in masked priming, as well as lexical decision and naming latencies. We then show how this representation can be integrated with the BEAGLE model of lexical semantics (Jones & Mewhort, Psychological Review 114:1-37, 2007) to enable the model to encompass a wider range of verbal tasks.	\N	\N
21707205	In reaction time research, there has been an increasing appreciation that response-initiation processes are sensitive to recent experience and, in particular, the difficulty of previous trials. From this perspective, the authors propose an explanation for a perplexing property of masked priming: Although primes are not consciously identified, facilitation of target processing by a related prime is magnified in a block containing a high proportion of related primes and a low proportion of unrelated primes relative to a block containing the opposite mix (Bodner & Masson, 2001). In the present study, this phenomenon is explored with a parity (even/odd) decision task in which a prime (e.g., 2) precedes a target that can be either congruent (e.g., 4) or incongruent (e.g., 3). It is shown that the effect of congruence proportion with masked primes cannot be explained in terms of the blockwise prime-target contingency. Specifically, with masked primes, there is no congruency disadvantage in a block containing a high proportion of incongruent primes, but there is a congruency advantage when the block contains an equal proportion of congruent and incongruent primes. In qualitative contrast, visible primes are sensitive to the blockwise prime-target contingency. The authors explain the relatedness proportion effect found with masked primes in terms of a model according to which response-initiation processes adapt to the statistical structure of the environment, specifically the difficulty of recent trials. This account is supported with an analysis at the level of individual trials using the linear mixed effects model.	\N	\N
21707266	We report a single case study of a synesthete (PS) who has complex visual experiences from sounds, including human voices. Different vowel sounds from different speakers and modified to be of different pitch (f0) were presented to PS and controls who were asked to draw an (abstract) visual image of the sound noting colors, sizes, and locations. PS tended to be more consistent over time than controls. For both PS and controls, the pitch of the vowel influenced the choice of luminance (higher pitch being lighter) and vertical position (higher pitch being higher in space). However, the gender of the speaker influenced the size of the 'image' independently of pitch (vowels from males being larger).	\N	\N
21710713	To investigate the contralateral suppressions of transient evoked otoacoustic emissions (TEOAE) in diabetes mellitus patients with normal hearing. The pure tone audiometry, acoustic immittance and TEOAE tests were performed in 30 diabetes mellitus patients with normal hearing and 30 healthy controls. The efferent system functions were evaluated by contralateral suppression of TEOAE. There were no significant differences of pure tone thresholds and amplitudes of TEOAE between the two groups. The contralateral suppressions of TEOAE in diabetes mellitus patients were significantly lower than that in controls (P<0.05 at 2000 and 4000 Hz respectively). The nerve functions of central nerve system can be damaged in diabetes mellitus patients with normal hearing.	\N	\N
21714708	We investigated if linguistic complexity contributes to the variation of the speech reception threshold in noise (SRTN) and thus should be employed as an additional design criterion in sentence tests used for audiometry. Three test lists were established with sentences from the Göttingen sentence test ( Kollmeier & Wesselkamp, 1997 ). One list contained linguistically simple sentences, the other two lists contained sentences with two types of linguistic complexity. For each listener the SRTN was determined for each list. Younger and older listeners with normal hearing and older listeners with hearing impairment were tested. Younger listeners with normal hearing showed significantly worse SRTNs on the complex lists than on the simple list. This difference could not be found for either of the older groups. The effect of linguistic complexity on speech recognition seems to depend on age and/or hearing status. Hence, pending further research, linguistic complexity seems less relevant as a sentence test design criterion for clinical-audiological purposes, but we argue that a test with larger variation in linguistic complexity across sentences might show a relation between linguistic complexity and speech recognition even in a clinical population.	\N	\N
21719027	Web based speech training for dysarthric speakers, such as E-learning based Speech Therapy (EST), puts considerable demands on auditory discrimination abilities. To discuss the development and the evaluation of an auditory discrimination test (ADT) for the assessment of auditory speech discrimination skills in Dutch adult dysarthric speakers as a prelude to EST. Five ADT subtests were developed, each addressing a vital speech dimension in speech therapy: articulation (segmental elements), intensity, overall pitch, speech rate and intonation. A healthy control group of 36 participants performed a 'same-different task' in each subtest. ADT items yielding scores of at least 80% but below 100% correctly responding healthy controls were considered sensitive to diminished auditory discrimination. Subsequently, the ADT was carried out by 14 neurological patients with dysarthric speech and 14 matched healthy controls. Score percentages, sensitivity indices and reaction times (ms) on only sensitive items were compared. The majority of the ADT items met the 'minimal 80% to below 100% criterion' in the healthy control group. The neurological participants performed lower on all outcome measures across all subtests than the healthy controls, although not all of these differences achieved statistical significance. The results of the healthy control group show that the majority of the ADT items meet our criterion for sensitivity to diminished auditory discrimination. The poorer performance of dysarthric patients across all subtests supports the sensitivity of the ADT. However, further research involving larger and more homogeneous groups of neurological patients is required. Readers will be encouraged to (1) identify potential factors that may hinder web based speech training and (2) estimate the value of assessing auditory discrimination skills as a vital condition for (web based) speech training in dysarthric patients.	\N	\N
21723130	Human voices play a fundamental role in social communication, and areas of the adult "social brain" show specialization for processing voices and their emotional content (superior temporal sulcus, inferior prefrontal cortex, premotor cortical regions, amygdala, and insula). However, it is unclear when this specialization develops. Functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) studies suggest that the infant temporal cortex does not differentiate speech from music or backward speech, but a prior study with functional near-infrared spectroscopy revealed preferential activation for human voices in 7-month-olds, in a more posterior location of the temporal cortex than in adults. However, the brain networks involved in processing nonspeech human vocalizations in early development are still unknown. To address this issue, in the present fMRI study, 3- to 7-month-olds were presented with adult nonspeech vocalizations (emotionally neutral, emotionally positive, and emotionally negative) and nonvocal environmental sounds. Infants displayed significant differential activation in the anterior portion of the temporal cortex, similarly to adults. Moreover, sad vocalizations modulated the activity of brain regions involved in processing affective stimuli such as the orbitofrontal cortex and insula. These results suggest remarkably early functional specialization for processing human voice and negative emotions.	\N	\N
21723376	Older human listeners demonstrate perceptual deficits in temporal processing even when audibility has been controlled. These age-related auditory deficits in temporal processing are thought to originate in the central auditory pathway. Precise temporal processing is necessary to detect and discriminate auditory cues such as modulation frequency, modulation depth and envelope shape which are critical for perception of speech and environmental sounds. This study aims to further understanding of temporal processing in aging using non-invasive electrophysiological measurements. Amplitude modulation following responses (AMFRs) and frequency modulation following responses (FMFRs) were recorded from aged (92-95-weeks old) and young (9-12-weeks old) Fischer-344 (F-344) rats for sinusoidally amplitude modulated (sAM) tones, sinusoidally frequency modulated (sFM) tones and ramped and damped amplitude modulation (AM) stimuli which differ in their envelope shapes. The modulation depth for the sAM and sFM stimuli and envelope shape for the ramped and damped stimuli were systematically varied. There was a monotonic decrease in AMFR and FMFR amplitudes with decreases in modulation depth across age for sAM and sFM stimuli. There was no significant difference between the response amplitudes of the young and aged animals for the largest modulation depths. However, a reduction in modulation depth resulted in a significant decrease in the response amplitudes and higher modulation detection thresholds for sAM and sFM stimuli with age. The aged animals showed significantly lower response amplitudes for ramped stimuli but not for damped stimuli. Cross correlating the responses with the ramped, symmetric, or damped stimulus envelopes revealed a decreased fidelity in encoding envelope shapes with age. These results indicate that age related temporal processing deficits become apparent only with reduced modulation depths or when discriminating envelope shapes. This has implications for psychophysical or diagnostic testing as well as for constraining potential cellular and network mechanisms responsible for these deficits.	\N	\N
21724244	In a neuroimaging study focusing on young bilinguals, we explored the brains of bilingual and monolingual babies across two age groups (younger 4-6 months, older 10-12 months), using fNIRS in a new event-related design, as babies processed linguistic phonetic (Native English, Non-Native Hindi) and non-linguistic Tone stimuli. We found that phonetic processing in bilingual and monolingual babies is accomplished with the same language-specific brain areas classically observed in adults, including the left superior temporal gyrus (associated with phonetic processing) and the left inferior frontal cortex (associated with the search and retrieval of information about meanings, and syntactic and phonological patterning), with intriguing developmental timing differences: left superior temporal gyrus activation was observed early and remained stably active over time, while left inferior frontal cortex showed greater increase in neural activation in older babies notably at the precise age when babies' enter the universal first-word milestone, thus revealing a first-time focal brain correlate that may mediate a universal behavioral milestone in early human language acquisition. A difference was observed in the older bilingual babies' resilient neural and behavioral sensitivity to Non-Native phonetic contrasts at a time when monolingual babies can no longer make such discriminations. We advance the "Perceptual Wedge Hypothesis" as one possible explanation for how exposure to greater than one language may alter neural and language processing in ways that we suggest are advantageous to language users. The brains of bilinguals and multilinguals may provide the most powerful window into the full neural "extent and variability" that our human species' language processing brain areas could potentially achieve.	\N	\N
21728463	Gestalt phenomena are often so powerful that mere demonstrations can confirm their existence, but Gestalts have proven hard to define and measure. Here we outline a theory of basic Gestalts (TBG) that defines Gestalts as emergent features (EFs). The logic relies on discovering wholes that are more discriminable than are the parts from which they are built. These wholes contain EFs that can act as basic features in human vision. As context is added to a visual stimulus, a hierarchy of EFs appears. Starting with a single dot and adding a second yields the first two potential EFs: the proximity (distance) and orientation (angle) between the two dots. A third dot introduces two more potential EFs: symmetry and linearity; a fourth dot produces surroundedness. This hierarchy may extend to collinearity, parallelism, closure, and more. We use the magnitude of Configural Superiority Effects to measure the salience of EFs on a common scale, potentially letting us compare the strengths of various grouping principles. TBG appears promising, with our initial experiments establishing and quantifying at least three basic EFs in human vision.	\N	\N
21730860	Auditory temporal processing frequently appears more affected in old subjects than would be predicted by the degree of peripheral hearing loss, pointing to an age-dependent central processing deficit. In parallel, an age-dependent decline of inhibitory function has been demonstrated in the auditory pathway, suggesting a causal relationship between temporal processing and inhibition. Gabapentin has been specifically synthesized as a potential gamma-amino-butyric-acid (GABA) mimetic with the capability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Gabapentin treatment ameliorated tinnitus in a rat model and improved tinnitus annoyance in humans with acoustic trauma. Consequently, the present study evaluated the effect of gabapentin on auditory temporal processing in the gerbil model. Psychometric functions were collected for different test paradigms. (A) "Gap detection": The detection of a gap in the middle of a 800 msec broadband noise pulse was determined either at 15 or at 30 dB SL. (B) "Forward masking": The detection of a 20 msec probe stimulus following 2.5 msec after a 400 msec 40 dB SPL masker was determined with masker and probe frequency at 2.85 kHz. The effect of gabapentin was evaluated by collecting gap detection and forward masking functions before, during, and after treating gerbils with gabapentin doses of 115 or 350 mg/kg/day administered via drinking water. Data under different experimental conditions were collected for groups of 3 to 5 young (<2 years) and 6 to 10 old (>2 years) gerbils. Two-way analyses of variance for the factors age groups and treatment groups with subsequent pairwise comparisons for significant effects were used for the statistical evaluation of the data. For gap detection, mean thresholds were significantly increased in the group of old as compared with the young gerbils at 30 dB SL (young 2.0 msec; old 3.2 msec) and at 15 dB SL (young 2.9 msec; old 9.1 msec). Gabapentin had no significant effect on gap detection, and there was no significant interaction between age group and gabapentin treatment. Mean thresholds in the forward masking paradigm were significantly elevated in old (45.5 dB SPL) as compared with young (35.0 dB SPL) gerbils. Overall, gabapentin had no significant effect on masked thresholds; however, there was a significant interaction between treatment and age. Subsequent pairwise comparisons revealed no significant effect on masked thresholds in old gerbils but showed significantly elevated thresholds of young gerbils during 350 mg/kg gabapentin (38.3 dB SPL) compared with thresholds obtained in young gerbils before (32.3 dB SPL) and after (33.5 dB SPL) treatment. Gabapentin did not exert a therapeutic effect on impaired gap detection and forward masking in old gerbils. The lack of an effect of gabapentin on impaired auditory temporal processing in old gerbils and the finding of elevated masked thresholds in young gerbils can be reconciled with reports of only moderate GABAergic effects compared with other drugs (e.g., comparing elevation of GABA levels in the brain by gabapentin and vigabatrin) and effects due to binding of gabapentin to alpha-2-delta units of voltage-gated calcium channels.	\N	\N
21732223	Increasing the target-field luminance aids detection for a simultaneously presented black target disc and a black masking annulus. At an intermediate interval separating the onset of the target from the mask, increasing the target-field luminance reduces target detection. This decrease in performance occurs with both temporal and spatial forced choice tasks. With a spatial forced choice, an observer's performance can fall below chance. We associate below-chance performance with a brightness reversal of the black target disc, such that the target disc appears brighter than its surround. The occurrence of brightness reversals follows from our model of the Broca-Sulzer effect, and nonmonotone masking functions result from a generalization of luminance summation.	\N	\N
21736456	The aim of this study was to examine the influence of musical expertise in 9-year-old children on passive (as reflected by MMN) and active (as reflected by discrimination accuracy) processing of speech sounds. Musician and nonmusician children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards and deviants in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and VOT. Both the passive and the active processing of duration and VOT deviants were enhanced in musician compared with nonmusician children. Moreover, although no effect was found on the passive processing of frequency, active frequency discrimination was enhanced in musician children. These findings are discussed in terms of common processing of acoustic features in music and speech and of positive transfer of training from music to the more abstract phonological representations of speech units (syllables).	\N	\N
21736927	We used a new virtual program in two experiments to prepare subjects to perform the Morris water task (www.nesplora.com). The subjects were Psychology students; they were trained to locate a safe platform amidst the presence of four pinpoint landmarks spaced around the edge of the pool (i.e., two landmarks relatively near the platform and two landmarks relatively distant away from it). At the end of the training phase, we administered one test trial without the platform and recorded the amount of time that the students had spent in the platform quadrant. In Experiment 1, we conducted the test trial in the presence of one or two of the distant landmarks. When only one landmark was present during testing, performance fell to chance. However, the men outperformed the women when the two distant landmarks were both present. Experiment 2 replicated the previous results and extended it by showing that no sex differences exist when the searching process is based on the near landmarks. Both the men and the women had similarly good performances when the landmarks were present both individually and together. When present together, an addition effect was found. Far landmark tests favor configural learning processes, whereas near landmark tests favor elemental learning. Our findings suggest that other factors in addition to the use of directional cues can underlie the sex differences in the spatial learning process. Thus, we expand upon previous research in the field.	\N	\N
21752361	A controversial issue in the cognitive neuroscience of language is the question whether independent lexical representations need to be included in cognitive models. Recent models claim to account for the available data without including phonological or orthographic lexicons. These models base their lexical decision ("Is it a word or not?") either on familiarity of the input string or alternatively, on semantic information. These two alternatives were evaluated in a series of experiments with an individual suffering from word-meaning deafness. This is a rare disorder of auditory word comprehension which affects mapping of a word's phonology to its meaning. The participant, BB, was unaffected by the 'word-likeness' of nonwords with comparable accuracy for plausible and abstruse nonwords. She was further able to make lexical decisions despite her severe impairment in comprehending the word's meaning. Lexical and semantic processing were assessed on an item-specific basis providing a methodological advancement over previous studies. The comprehension tasks involved word-picture matching as well as definition tasks. The results suggest that BB's lexical decisions are based neither on familiarity of the input string nor on semantic information, which was largely unavailable. The only alternative are lexical representations on which she could base her decisions.	\N	\N
21753000	Feeling the beat and meter is fundamental to the experience of music. However, how these periodicities are represented in the brain remains largely unknown. Here, we test whether this function emerges from the entrainment of neurons resonating to the beat and meter. We recorded the electroencephalogram while participants listened to a musical beat and imagined a binary or a ternary meter on this beat (i.e., a march or a waltz). We found that the beat elicits a sustained periodic EEG response tuned to the beat frequency. Most importantly, we found that meter imagery elicits an additional frequency tuned to the corresponding metric interpretation of this beat. These results provide compelling evidence that neural entrainment to beat and meter can be captured directly in the electroencephalogram. More generally, our results suggest that music constitutes a unique context to explore entrainment phenomena in dynamic cognitive processing at the level of neural networks.	\N	\N
21756455	Cochlear implant (CI) devices are the choice of treatment for individuals with severe to profound hearing loss. The CI devices provide the opportunity for children who are deaf to perceive sound by electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve, with the goal of optimizing oral communication. A natural benefit of acquiring hearing using CIs is the ability to hear, and perhaps enjoy, music. Music is a non-verbal auditory stimulus and a powerful tool for transmitting emotion. Identifying emotional cues is an important part of normal social development and communication and thus music may play an important role in establishing these skills during development. To date, it is not known whether children who use cochlear implants to hear can identify the emotional content carried in music. Our objective in the present study was to determine whether children who have been deaf from infancy and are experienced CI users have acquired the ability to identify emotion in musical phrases. Study participants were 18 CI users (ages 7-13 years) who received right unilateral CIs (mean age at CI activation of 2.9 years) and 18 age-and gender-matched controls. Participants were asked to judge 32 brief musical excerpts as happy or sad by pointing to simple graphics of a smiling or frowning face. Children using CIs were able to correctly distinguish happy versus sad music well above chance levels, but performed more poorly on this task than their peers with typical hearing. Age at CI activation and time since CI activation were both uncorrelated with outcome measures. Children with CIs show the ability to perceive emotion in music but do so less accurately than typically hearing peers.	\N	\N
21756504	To describe the rate of occurrence of unsuspected decrease in sensitivity of the sound processor microphone and to evaluate its effect on the patient's audiological performance in terms of reduction in speech recognition scores. Speech processor microphones were tested by connecting the speech processor acoustic monitor circuit to a hearing aid analyzer. The response curves were compared with those obtained from fully working microphones. During a 6-month investigation period, microphone response curves were measured from a group of cochlear implant recipients who had not reported any problems. Despite the absence of any subjective problem, some microphones were found to show a loss of sensitivity. Their users, aged between 4 and 67 years, were tested both with the defective and a working microphone in order to calculate the correlation between the degree of microphone failure and the decline in audiological performance. To quantify the effect of microphone failure, patients' speech recognition skills were measured by live voice connected discourse tracking series administered in different conditions and by recorded sentences lists. A total of 120 apparently fully functioning sound processors were tested in the investigation: 33 (27.5%) were affected by a subjectively unreported sensitivity decrease. Speech-tracking scores correlated significantly with the loss of microphone sensitivity in all test conditions (r = 0.69-0.77, P < 0.05). A high degree of correlation was also found for speech audiometry tests (r = 0.70-0.73, P < 0.05). Microphone sensitivity loss affected speech recognition skills, especially without lip reading and in the presence of background noise. The results indicate that any reduction in sound processor microphone sensitivity causes a degree of hearing decline that negatively affects the cochlear recipient's clinical performance. Microphone faults are often unreported events, and their occurrence rate is underestimated. To establish that the microphone is providing correct input to the speech processor a standard control procedure, including technical and clinical checks, is needed in clinical practice.	\N	\N
21756841	The overall goal of the current study was to examine the relationships among uncompensated admittance (Ya) at ambient pressure extracted from tympanograms, energy reflectance (ER) measures at ambient pressure from wideband acoustic transfer functions (WATF), and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs). If WATF measures of Ya are comparable to tympanometric measures of Ya at ambient pressure, it would be further evidence that the two systems provide comparable information at ambient pressure. Such a relationship could be used as a cross-check or validation for WATF measures and support the use of WATFs in lieu of tympanograms in some applications. Finally, if WATF measures of Ya and/or ER at DPOAE stimulus frequencies can account for some of the variability observed in DPOAE levels and/or signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in ears with normal hearing, the relationships could be used to improve hearing screening procedures. The hypotheses were as follows: (1) measures of Ya at ambient pressure are significantly correlated as measured with tympanometric and WATF procedures and (2) measures of Ya and ER at DPOAE stimulus frequencies are significantly correlated with DPOAE level and SNR. Repeated measures in human adults. Forty ears of 20 adults with normal hearing and middle ear function were included in the final sample. Tympanograms were obtained using probe frequencies of 226, 678, and 1000 Hz; WATFs were obtained using a click probe, and DPOAEs were elicited with f2's of 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. A repeated measures analysis of variance (RM-ANOVA) was completed to identify significant differences between ears and among probe frequencies for Ya measured at ambient pressure from the Tympstar and for Ya measured at the three closest frequencies on the WATFs. Lines were fit to the comparison of Ya from the Tympstar and WATF, and percent variance accounted for (r2) was calculated. Ya and ER were extracted at all stimulus frequencies that were used to elicit DPOAEs and were compared to DPOAE levels and SNRs. RM-ANOVAs were completed to identify any significant differences in DPOAE level and SNR between ears and among f2 conditions. Lines were fit to the comparison of Ya and ER measures at f1 and f2 with the DPOAE levels and SNRs. The relationship between behavioral air conduction threshold at each f2 and DPOAE level (and SNR) was examined with regression analysis. Ya was significantly correlated between the tympanometric and WATF measures at all three probe-tone frequencies. Ya and ER at f1 and f2 were significantly correlated with DPOAE level for f2 = 4000 Hz. The implications are as follows: (1) WATFs, which can be obtained with the same probe microphone system as DPOAEs, could be used as a supplement to tympanometry in a diagnostic test battery, and the relationship between Ya measured on the two systems could be used for verification, and (2) Ya and ER measures from WATFs at both DPOAE stimulus frequencies account for some of the variability observed in DPOAE levels at f2 = 4000 Hz in normal ears.	\N	\N
21760512	Good test-retest reliability of high frequency (≥ 8 kHz) pure-tone audiometry (HFPTA) is essential to detect significant changes in hearing threshold caused by ototoxicity. While the test-retest reliability of HFPTA in adults has been extensively studied, such investigations in children are scant. This study aimed to evaluate the test-retest reliability of the HFPTA in normal-hearing children with particular reference to the criteria for ototoxicity. Participants were 125 children aged between 4 and 13 yr, with normal hearing in the 0.25 to 4 kHz range and normal tympanometric findings. The participants were divided into three age groups, 4 to 6 yr (16M; 16F); 7 to 9 yr (22M; 30F); and 10 to 13 yr (24M; 17F), for investigating possible age effects in the test-retest reliability of HFPTA. The instrumentation for the HFPTA procedure was an Interacoustics AC40 audiometer with Koss R/80 high-frequency headphones, calibrated to meet Australian standards. Hearing thresholds at 8, 9, 10, 11.2, 12.5, 14, and 16 kHz were measured in a sound-treated chamber using a modified Hughson-Westlake procedure with a 5 dB step size. Testing began with an ear and test frequency selected at random; the subsequent test frequencies were randomly selected. After acquisition of hearing threshold data at all frequencies, the other ear was tested using the same procedure. After the first HFPTA test, the headphones were removed and carefully replaced. A second HFPTA test was performed with the ear order reversed. The order of testing the ear for the next participant was reversed. Good test-retest reliability of HFPTA was achieved with no significant difference in mean HFPTA thresholds across test and retest conditions for all age groups. An age effect in the test-retest reliability of HFPTA was evident with the 4- to 6-yr-old, 7- to 9-yr-old, and 10- to 13-yr-old children demonstrating normal variability of thresholds (within ±10 dB) in 89.9%, 93.0%, and 97% of ears tested, respectively. When the variability of test-retest thresholds was assessed at each frequency, the 4 to 6 yr group showed significantly lower percentage of normal variability at 14 kHz. In identifying significant deterioration of hearing thresholds across test-retest conditions in relation to the ASHA (1994) ototoxicity criteria, the three age groups (youngest to oldest) demonstrated false-positive rates of 24.6%, 11%, and 7.6%, respectively. : Overall, this study demonstrated high test-retest reliability of HFPTA in all but the 4 to 6 yr group. With a false-positive rate of 24.6% for ototoxicity for the youngest group, it is recommended that the HFPTA should not be used alone in assessing the possibility of a genuine threshold shift for this age group. If possible, the HFPTA should be supplemented with an objective test of auditory function to confirm the diagnosis. For children aged 7 yr or older, the HFPTA test is promising as a useful tool to identify hearing impairment in the extended high-frequency range (>8 kHz). However, interpretation of HFPTA findings in serial testing for monitoring hearing in a child should be made with due attention being given to the frequency of the stimulus, age of the child, and the associated nonzero false-positive rates.	\N	\N
21763342	During the last decades music neuroscience has become a rapidly growing field within the area of neuroscience. Music is particularly well suited for studying neuronal plasticity in the human brain because musical training is more complex and multimodal than most other daily life activities, and because prospective and professional musicians usually pursue the training with high and long-lasting commitment. Therefore, music has increasingly been used as a tool for the investigation of human cognition and its underlying brain mechanisms. Music relates to many brain functions like perception, action, cognition, emotion, learning and memory and therefore music is an ideal tool to investigate how the human brain is working and how different brain functions interact. Novel findings have been obtained in the field of induced cortical plasticity by musical training. The positive effects, which music in its various forms has in the healthy human brain are not only important in the framework of basic neuroscience, but they also will strongly affect the practices in neuro-rehabilitation.	\N	\N
21769535	Previous work has demonstrated that the ability to keep track of moving objects is improved when the objects have unique visual features, such as color or shape. In the present study, we investigated how orientation information is used during the tracking of objects. Orientation is an interesting feature to explore in moving objects because it is directional and is often informative of the direction of motion. Most objects move forward, in the direction they are oriented. In the present experiments, participants tracked a subset of moving isosceles triangles whose orientations were constant, related, or unrelated to the direction of motion. In the standard multiple object tracking (MOT) task, tracking performance improved when orientations were unique and remained constant, but not when orientation and direction of motion were aligned. In the target recovery task, in which MOT was interrupted by a brief blanking of the display, performance did improve when orientation and direction were aligned. In the final experiment, results showed that orientation was not used before the blank to predict future target locations, but was instead used after the blank. We concluded that people use orientation to compare a stored representation to target position for recovery of lost targets.	\N	\N
21771217	There is strong evidence that bilinguals have a deficit in speech perception for their second language compared with monolingual speakers under unfavourable listening conditions (e.g., noise or reverberation), despite performing similarly to monolingual speakers under quiet conditions. This deficit persists for speakers highly proficient in their second language and is greater in those who learned the language later in life. These findings have important educational implications because the number of multilingual children is increasing worldwide, and many of these children are being taught in their non-native language under poor classroom acoustic conditions. The performance of monolingual, bilingual and trilingual speakers on an English speech perception task was examined in both quiet and noisy conditions. Trilingual performance was compared with that of monolingual and bilingual speakers. Monolingual speakers of English and early bilingual and trilingual speakers (i.e., acquired English as a second/third language before the age of 6 years) were recruited. Their fluency in English was tested by interview and by a questionnaire assessing their knowledge and use of the language. Audiological evaluation confirmed normal hearing in all participants. English speech perception was tested in quiet and in different levels of noise (50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 dB SPL) using the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) Test. Bilingual and trilingual listeners performed similarly to monolingual listeners in quiet conditions, but their performance declined more rapidly in noise and was significantly poorer at 65 and 70 dB SPL. Trilingual listeners performed less well than bilinguals at these noise levels, but not significantly so. A subgroup of five bilingual speakers who learned Arabic and English simultaneously since birth were poorer at higher levels of noise than monolinguals, but not significantly so. The results replicate previous findings of poorer speech perception in noise with bilingual speakers compared with monolinguals and extend the findings to trilingual speakers.	\N	\N
21786870	The ability to obtain reliable phonetic information from a talker's face during speech perception is an important skill. However, lip-reading abilities vary considerably across individuals. There is currently a lack of normative data on lip-reading abilities in young normal-hearing listeners. This letter describes results obtained from a visual-only sentence recognition experiment using CUNY sentences and provides the mean number of words correct and the standard deviation for different sentence lengths. Additionally, the method for calculating T-scores is provided to facilitate the conversion between raw and standardized scores. This metric can be utilized by clinicians and researchers in lip-reading studies. This statistic provides a useful benchmark for determining whether an individual's lip-reading score falls within the normal range, or whether it is above or below this range.	\N	\N
21786905	Spectral ripple discrimination thresholds were measured in 15 cochlear-implant users with broadband (350-5600 Hz) and octave-band noise stimuli. The results were compared with spatial tuning curve (STC) bandwidths previously obtained from the same subjects. Spatial tuning curve bandwidths did not correlate significantly with broadband spectral ripple discrimination thresholds but did correlate significantly with ripple discrimination thresholds when the rippled noise was confined to an octave-wide passband, centered on the STC's probe electrode frequency allocation. Ripple discrimination thresholds were also measured for octave-band stimuli in four contiguous octaves, with center frequencies from 500 Hz to 4000 Hz. Substantial variations in thresholds with center frequency were found in individuals, but no general trends of increasing or decreasing resolution from apex to base were observed in the pooled data. Neither ripple nor STC measures correlated consistently with speech measures in noise and quiet in the sample of subjects in this study. Overall, the results suggest that spectral ripple discrimination measures provide a reasonable measure of spectral resolution that correlates well with more direct, but more time-consuming, measures of spectral resolution, but that such measures do not always provide a clear and robust predictor of performance in speech perception tasks.	\N	\N
21790494	Three experiments tested how the physical format and information content of forward and backward masks affected the extent of visual pattern masking. This involved using different types of forward and backward masks with target discrimination measured by percentage correct in the first experiment (with a fixed target duration) and by an adaptive threshold procedure in the last two. The rationale behind the manipulation of the content of the masks stemmed from masking theories emphasizing attentional and/or conceptual factors rather than visual ones. Experiment 1 used word masks and showed that masking was reduced (a masking reduction effect) when the forward and backward masks were the same word (although in different case) compared to when the masks were different words. Experiment 2 tested the extent to which a reduction in masking might occur due to the physical similarity between the forward and backward masks by comparing the effect of the same content of the masks in the same versus different case. The result showed a significant reduction in masking for same content masks but no significant effect of case. The last experiment examined whether the reduction in masking effect would be observed with nonword masks--that is, having no high-level representation. No reduction in masking was found from same compared to different nonword masks (Experiment 3). These results support the view that the conscious perception of a rapidly displayed target stimulus is in part determined by high-level perceptual/cognitive factors concerned with masking stimulus grouping and attention.	\N	\N
21796943	The spray drying technique was used to obtain the roxithromycin containing microcapsules with high taste masking efficiency. Eudragit L30D-55 was chosen as a barrier coating. The taste was evaluated by an electronic tongue, and taste-masking effect in water lasted at least several dozen hours.	\N	\N
21799207	We investigated training-related improvements in listening in noise and the biological mechanisms mediating these improvements. Training-related malleability was examined using a program that incorporates cognitively based listening exercises to improve speech-in-noise perception. Before and after training, auditory brainstem responses to a speech syllable were recorded in quiet and multitalker noise from adults who ranged in their speech-in-noise perceptual ability. Controls did not undergo training but were tested at intervals equivalent to the trained subjects. Trained subjects exhibited significant improvements in speech-in-noise perception that were retained 6 months later. Subcortical responses in noise demonstrated training-related enhancements in the encoding of pitch-related cues (the fundamental frequency and the second harmonic), particularly for the time-varying portion of the syllable that is most vulnerable to perceptual disruption (the formant transition region). Subjects with the largest strength of pitch encoding at pretest showed the greatest perceptual improvement. Controls exhibited neither neurophysiological nor perceptual changes. We provide the first demonstration that short-term training can improve the neural representation of cues important for speech-in-noise perception. These results implicate and delineate biological mechanisms contributing to learning success, and they provide a conceptual advance to our understanding of the kind of training experiences that can influence sensory processing in adulthood.	\N	\N
21801242	We investigated the effect of long-term musical training on the time course of development of neuronal representations within the auditory cortex by means of magnetoencephalography. In musicians but not in nonmusicians, pre-attentive encoding of a complex regularity within a tone sequence was evident by a constant increase of the pattern mismatch negativity within < 10 min. The group difference was more pronounced in the left hemisphere, indicating stronger plastic changes in its structures supporting temporal analysis and sound pattern encoding. The results suggest an effect of long-term musical training on short-term auditory learning processes. This has implications not only for cognitive neuroscience in showing how short-term and long-term neuronal plasticity can interact within the auditory cortex, but also for educational and clinical applications of implicit auditory learning where beneficial effects of (musical) experience might be exploited.	\N	\N
21805200	It has recently been shown that spatially uninformative sounds can cause a visual stimulus to pop out from an array of similar distractor stimuli when that sound is presented in temporal proximity to a feature change in the visual stimulus. Until now, this effect has predominantly been demonstrated by using stationary stimuli. Here, we extended these results by showing that auditory stimuli can also improve the sensitivity of visual motion change detection. To accomplish this, we presented moving visual stimuli (small dots) on a computer screen. At a random moment during a trial, one of these stimuli could abruptly move in an orthogonal direction. Participants' task was to indicate whether such an abrupt motion change occurred or not by making a corresponding button press. If a sound (a short 1,000 Hz tone pip) co-occurred with the abrupt motion change, participants were able to detect this motion change more frequently than when the sound was not present. Using measures derived from signal detection theory, we were able to demonstrate that the effect on accuracy was due to increased sensitivity rather than to changes in response bias.	\N	\N
21817932	The transmission of fine structure information to cochlear implant users is an expanding area of research. Previous studies comparing the fine structure processing (FSP) speech coding strategy to the envelope-based continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy indicated improved speech perception when using the fine structure strategy. Those investigations were performed with an extended frequency spectrum in the low frequencies together with the fine structure strategy. The current study addresses the question whether these improvements are due to the presentation of fine structure per se or rather the extended frequency spectrum. Hence, this cross over study compares the two strategies using an identical frequency spectrum. Randomized crossover study. 31 patients were randomly assigned to two groups. One group was fitted with a CIS map for 4 weeks, tested and subsequently fitted with a FSP map for 4 weeks. The other group followed the same pattern in reverse. Test material consisted of sentence tests in noise, monosyllables in quiet and melody recognition. No statistical significance was noted between the different speech coding strategies at an identical frequency spectrum. This study shows that there is no difference in speech perception with FSP compared to CIS at an extended frequency spectrum. Therefore, the extended frequency spectrum in the low frequencies might explain a benefit of FSP observed in previous studies.	\N	\N
21818631	When a single brief flash is accompanied by two auditory beeps, participants often report perceiving two flashes. The present experiment examined whether the perception of illusory redundant flashes can result in faster responses as compared to the perception of a single flash, because previous research has shown such a redundancy gain for physical stimuli. To this end, participants were asked to respond as rapidly as possible to the onset of any flash. Following their response, they additionally indicated whether they perceived a single flash or a double flash. Most importantly, we observed significant shorter reaction times in response to redundant flashes, irrespective of whether they were physically presented or illusorily perceived. Taken together, our results suggest that an illusory percept can affect simple reaction time in much the same manner as the corresponding physical stimulation.	\N	\N
21826003	A number of clinical measures of directivity, including the front-to-back ratio (FBR) and front-to-side ratio (FSR), have been suggested to audiologists to monitor the functionality of hearing aids with directional microphones. These suggestions, however, are based on the assumption that directivity measured clinically changes monotonically when compared with changes measured using the directivity index (DI) and perceptual directional benefit. The objective of the present study was to empirically examine this assumption. In addition, the reliability of the clinical directivity measure was estimated to establish a referral threshold for defective directional microphone hearing aids. The directivity of the directional microphones of two behind-the-ear hearing aids was systematically degraded by plugging the microphone ports. The directivity was measured using four clinical measures: the FBR and FSR performed in the test chamber of a hearing aid analyzer and in sound field. Each measure was repeated four times in each directivity-degraded condition. The degraded directivity was also assessed using the DI measure in an anechoic chamber. The perceptual directional benefit in each directivity-degraded condition was obtained by testing 10 hearing-impaired adults in a sound field with diffuse noise using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT). The results of the DI and HINT measures showed strong correlation between the two FSRs (test chamber and sound field), while the two FBRs showed no correlation. The directivity generated by the FBRs could remain unchanged even when the directional microphone had lost more than 50% of its directivity. The results further indicated that the measures performed in the sound field were more reliable than those performed in the test chamber. Based on the results of the reliability measures, a 30% change in directivity was suggested as the referral threshold signifying defective directional systems. Because the FSR predicts the DI and HINT measurements more accurately than does the FBR, it is suggested that clinicians use the FSR to monitor hearing aid directivity. By using the FSR measure and informed by the suggested referral threshold, clinicians would be able to correctly identify defective directional microphone hearing aids at an early stage, rather than at a point when the directivity has been diminished completely or even reversed.	\N	\N
21826552	Strong cross-modal interactions exist between visual and auditory processing. The relative contributions of perceptual versus decision-related processes to such interactions are only beginning to be understood. We used methodological and statistical approaches to control for potential decision-related contributions such as response interference, decisional criterion shift, and strategy selection. Participants were presented with rising-, falling-, and constant-amplitude sounds and were asked to detect change (increase or decrease) in sound amplitude while ignoring an irrelevant visual cue of a disk that grew, shrank, or stayed constant in size. Across two experiments, testing context was manipulated by varying the grouping of visual cues during testing, and cross-modal congruency showed independent perceptual and decision-related effects. Whereas a change in testing context greatly affected criterion shifts, cross-modal effects on perceptual sensitivity remained relatively consistent. In general, participants were more sensitive to increases in sound amplitude and less sensitive to sounds paired with dynamic visual cues. As compared with incongruent visual cues, congruent cues enhanced detection of amplitude decreases, but not increases. These findings suggest that the relative contributions of perceptual and decisional processing and the impacts of these processes on cross-modal interactions can vary significantly depending on asymmetries in within-modal processing, as well as consistencies in cross-modal dynamics.	\N	\N
21833562	A bone-anchored hearing aid (Baha) is used in patients with single-sided sensorineural deafness (SSD) to overcome the head shadow effect. Of all the patients with SSD, treated at our hospital, 196 patients used a Baha on trial between November 2001 and April 2010. The objective of this study is to evaluate what factors determine the decision of a SSD patient whether or not to opt for a Baha device following a Baha trial period. 196 patients with SSD were enrolled for a trial period of 2 weeks at the Antwerp University Hospital, a tertiary referral centre. 93% of these patients suffered from an acquired hearing loss. 44% of all the patients (87/196) chose to wear a Baha device after the trail period, either on an abutment or on a headband. The collected data were analysed to determine correlations between the decision of a patient following a Baha trial period on the one hand, and Fletcher Index ipsi- and contralaterally, bone conduction hearing thresholds at the better hearing ear, aetiology, age at the start of the trial period, duration of hearing loss at the start of the trial period and the type of device used during the trial period, on the other hand. Although 66% of all the patients (109/196) declined the Baha after a trial, reasons not to choose a Baha were diverse and no crucial factors could be found that determine the success of a Baha trial period. Lack of improvement concerning speech understanding in noise was the most important reason mentioned by patients who declined the Baha. The authors advocate that all patients, suffering from SSD, should be offered the opportunity to try a Baha device as no factors could be found that determine the decision of a patient following the trial period.	\N	\N
21844339	"Normal hearing" is typically defined by threshold audibility, even though everyday communication relies on extracting key features of easily audible sound, not on sound detection. Anecdotally, many normal-hearing listeners report difficulty communicating in settings where there are competing sound sources, but the reasons for such difficulties are debated: Do these difficulties originate from deficits in cognitive processing, or differences in peripheral, sensory encoding? Here we show that listeners with clinically normal thresholds exhibit very large individual differences on a task requiring them to focus spatial selective auditory attention to understand one speech stream when there are similar, competing speech streams coming from other directions. These individual differences in selective auditory attention ability are unrelated to age, reading span (a measure of cognitive function), and minor differences in absolute hearing threshold; however, selective attention ability correlates with the ability to detect simple frequency modulation in a clearly audible tone. Importantly, we also find that selective attention performance correlates with physiological measures of how well the periodic, temporal structure of sounds above the threshold of audibility are encoded in early, subcortical portions of the auditory pathway. These results suggest that the fidelity of early sensory encoding of the temporal structure in suprathreshold sounds influences the ability to communicate in challenging settings. Tests like these may help tease apart how peripheral and central deficits contribute to communication impairments, ultimately leading to new approaches to combat the social isolation that often ensues.	\N	\N
21860975	The electrical stimulation generated by the Cochlear Implant (CI) may improve the neural synchrony and hence contribute to the development of auditory skills in patients with Auditory Neuropathy/Auditory Dyssynchrony (AN/AD). Prospective cohort cross-sectional study to evaluate the auditory performance and the characteristics of the electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) in 18 children with AN/AD and cochlear implants. The auditory perception was evaluated by sound field thresholds and speech perception tests. To evaluate ECAP's characteristics, the threshold and amplitude of neural response were evaluated at 80 Hz and 35 Hz. No significant statistical difference was found concerning the development of auditory skills. The ECAP's characteristics differences at 80 and 35 Hz stimulation rate were also not statistically significant. The CI was seen as an efficient resource to develop auditory skills in 94% of the AN/AD patients studied. The auditory perception benefits and the possibility to measure ECAP showed that the electrical stimulation could compensate for the neural dyssynchrony caused by the AN/AD. However, a unique clinical procedure cannot be proposed at this point. Therefore, a careful and complete evaluation of each AN/AD patient before recommending a Cochlear Implant is advised. Clinical Trials: NCT01023932.	\N	\N
21860978	Hearing has an important role in human development and social adaptation in blind people. To evaluate the performance of temporal auditory processing in blind people; to characterize the temporal resolution ability; to characterize the temporal ordinance ability and to compare the performance of the study population in the applied tests. Fifteen blind adults participated in this study. A cross-sectional study was undertaken; approval was obtained from the Pernambuco Catholic University Ethics Committee, no. 003/2008. Temporal auditory processing was excellent--the average composed threshold in the original RGDT version was 4. 98 ms; it was 50 ms for all frequencies in the expanded version. PPS and DPS results ranged from 95% to 100%. There were no quantitative differences in the comparison of tests; but oral reports suggested that the original RGDT original version was more difficult. The study sample performed well in temporal auditory processing; it also performed well in temporal resolution and ordinance abilities.	\N	\N
21862680	To evaluate potential contributions of broadband spectral integration in the perception of static vowels. Specifically, can the auditory system infer formant frequency information from changes in the intensity weighting across harmonics when the formant itself is missing? Does this type of integration produce the same results in the lower (first formant [F1]) and higher (second formant [F2]) regions? Does the spacing between the spectral components affect a listener's ability to integrate the acoustic cues? Twenty young listeners with normal hearing identified synthesized vowel-like stimuli created for adjustments in the F1 region (/Λ/-/α/, /i/-/ε/) and in the F2 region (/Λ/-/æ/). There were 2 types of stimuli: (a) 2-formant tokens and (b) tokens in which 1 formant was removed and 2 pairs of sine waves were inserted below and above the missing formant; the intensities of these harmonics were modified to cause variations in their spectral center of gravity (COG). The COG effects were tested over a wide range of frequencies. Obtained patterns were consistent with calculated changes to the spectral COG, in both the F1 and F2 regions. The spacing of the sine waves did not affect listeners' responses. The auditory system may perform broadband integration as a type of auditory wideband spectral analysis.	\N	\N
21877769	This study investigated the ability to use temporal-envelope (E) cues in a consonant identification task when presented within one or two frequency bands. Syllables were split into five bands spanning the range 70-7300 Hz with each band processed to preserve E cues and degrade temporal fine-structure cues. Identification scores were measured for normal-hearing listeners in quiet for individual processed bands and for pairs of bands. Consistent patterns of results were obtained in both the single- and dual-band conditions: identification scores increased systematically with band center frequency, showing that E cues in the higher bands (1.8-7.3 kHz) convey greater information.	\N	\N
21877806	A functional simulation of hearing loss was evaluated in its ability to reproduce the temporal masking functions for eight listeners with mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss. Each audiometric loss was simulated in a group of age-matched normal-hearing listeners through a combination of spectrally-shaped masking noise and multi-band expansion. Temporal-masking functions were obtained in both groups of listeners using a forward-masking paradigm in which the level of a 110-ms masker required to just mask a 10-ms fixed-level probe (5-10 dB SL) was measured as a function of the time delay between the masker offset and probe onset. At each of four probe frequencies (500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz), temporal-masking functions were obtained using maskers that were 0.55, 1.0, and 1.15 times the probe frequency. The slopes and y-intercepts of the masking functions were not significantly different for listeners with real and simulated hearing loss. The y-intercepts were positively correlated with level of hearing loss while the slopes were negatively correlated. The ratio of the slopes obtained with the low-frequency maskers relative to the on-frequency maskers was similar for both groups of listeners and indicated a smaller compressive effect than that observed in normal-hearing listeners.	\N	\N
21877812	The auditory system takes advantage of early reflections (ERs) in a room by integrating them with the direct sound (DS) and thereby increasing the effective speech level. In the present paper the benefit from realistic ERs on speech intelligibility in diffuse speech-shaped noise was investigated for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Monaural and binaural speech intelligibility tests were performed in a virtual auditory environment where the spectral characteristics of ERs from a simulated room could be preserved. The useful ER energy was derived from the speech intelligibility results and the efficiency of the ERs was determined as the ratio of the useful ER energy to the total ER energy. Even though ER energy contributed to speech intelligibility, DS energy was always more efficient, leading to better speech intelligibility for both groups of listeners. The efficiency loss for the ERs was mainly ascribed to their altered spectrum compared to the DS and to the filtering by the torso, head, and pinna. No binaural processing other than a binaural summation effect could be observed.	\N	\N
21878379	Otoacoustic emission (OAE) amplitude can be reduced by acoustic stimulation. This effect is produced by the medial olivocochlear (MOC) reflex. Past studies have shown that the MOC reflex is related to listening in noise and attention. In the present study, the relationship between strength of the contralateral MOC reflex and masked threshold was investigated in 19 adults. Detection thresholds were determined for 1000-Hz, 300-ms tone presented simultaneously with one repetition of a 300-ms masker in an ongoing train of masker bursts. Three masking conditions were tested: 1) broadband noise 2) a fixed-frequency 4-tone complex masker and 3) a random-frequency 4-tone complex masker. Broadband noise was expected to produce energetic masking and the tonal maskers were expected to produce informational masking in some listeners. DPOAEs were recorded at fine frequency intervals from 500 to 4000 Hz, with and without contralateral acoustic stimulation. MOC reflex strength was estimated as a reduction in baseline level and a shift in frequency of DPOAE fine-structure maxima near 1000-Hz. MOC reflex and psychophysical testing were completed in separate sessions. Individuals with poorer thresholds in broadband noise and in random-frequency maskers were found to have stronger MOC reflexes.	\N	\N
21886362	Event-related potential (ERPs) provide an exquisite means to monitor the extent of processing of external stimulus input during sleep. The processing of relatively high intensity stimuli has been well documented. Sleep normally occurs in much less noisy environments. The present study therefore employed ERPs to examine the extent of processing of very low intensity (near-hearing threshold) stimuli. Brief duration 1000 Hz auditory tone bursts varying in intensity at random from -5 to +45 dB from normative hearing level (nHL) in 10 dB steps were presented every 1.5 to 2.5 s when the subject was awake and reading a book and again during all-night sleep. n = 10 healthy young adults. In the waking state, the auditory stimuli elicited a negative-going deflection, N1, peaking at about 100 ms, followed by a smaller positivity, P2, peaking at about 180 ms. N1-P2 gradually decreased in amplitude with decreases in stimulus intensity and remained visible at near-hearing threshold levels. During NREM sleep, the amplitude of N1 was at baseline level and was reduced to only 15% to 20% of its waking amplitude during REM sleep. P2 was much larger in sleep than in wakefulness. Importantly, during sleep, P2 could be reliably elicited by the auditory stimuli to within 15 dB of threshold. During NREM, a large amplitude negativity peaking at about 350 ms was elicited by the higher intensity stimuli. This N350 was much reduced in amplitude during REM sleep. A significant N350 was not, however, elicited when stimuli intensity levels were below 25 dB nHL. Auditory stimuli that are only slightly above hearing threshold appear to be processed extensively during a 200 to 400 ms interval in both NREM and REM sleep. The nature of this processing is, however, very different compared to the waking state.	\N	\N
21889805	Auditory training has been advocated as a management strategy for children with hearing, listening or language difficulties. Because poor speech-in-noise perception is commonly reported, previous research has focused on the use of complex (word/sentence) stimuli as auditory training material to improve sentence-in-noise perception. However, some evidence suggests that engagement with the training stimuli is more important than the type of stimuli used for training. The aim of this experiment was to assess if sentence-in-noise perception could be improved using simpler auditory training stimuli. We recruited 41 typically developing, normal-hearing children aged 8-10 years divided into four groups. Groups 1-3 trained over 4 weeks (12 × 30 min sessions) on either: (1) pure-tone frequency discrimination (FD), (2) FD in a modulated noise (FDN) or, (3) mono-syllabic words in a modulated noise (WN). Group 4 was an untrained Control. In the training tasks, either tone frequency (Group 1), or tone (Group 2) or speech (Group 3) level was varied adaptively. All children completed pre- and post-training tests of sentence perception in modulated (SMN) and unmodulated (SUN) noise and a probe measure of each training task. All trained groups improved significantly on the trained tasks. Transfer of training occurred between FDN training and FD, WN and SMN testing, and between WN training and SMN testing. A significant performance suppression on the SUN test resulted from FD and FDN training. The pattern of training-induced improvement, relative to Controls, suggests that transfer of training is more likely when some stimulus dimensions (tone frequency, speech, modulated noise) are shared between training tasks and outcomes. This and the finding of suppressed post-training performance, relative to Controls, between tasks not sharing a stimulus dimension both favour the use of outcome-specific material for auditory training.	\N	\N
21895071	Human listening tests were conducted to investigate if participants could distinguish between samples of target echoes and clutter obtained from a broadband active sonar experiment. For each echo, the listeners assigned a rating based on how confident they were that it was a target echo or clutter. The measure of performance was the area under the binormal receiver-operating-characteristic (ROC) curve, A(z). The mean performance was A(z)=0.95 ± 0.04 when signals were presented with their full available acoustic bandwidth of approximately 0-2 kHz. It was A(z)=0.77 ± 0.08 when the bandwidth was reduced to 0.5-2 kHz. The error bounds are stated as 95% confidence intervals. These results show that the listeners could definitely hear differences, but their performance was significantly degraded when the low-frequency signal information was removed. The performance of an automatic aural classifier was compared against this human-performance baseline. Results of statistical tests showed that it outperformed 2 of 13 listeners and 5 of 9 human listeners in the full-bandwidth and reduced-bandwidth tests, respectively, and performed similarly to the other listeners. Given its performance, the automatic aural classifier may prove beneficial to Navy sonar systems.	\N	\N
21895094	In cochlear implants (CIs), simultaneous or sequential stimulation of adjacent electrodes can produce intermediate pitch percepts between those of the component electrodes. However, it is unclear whether simultaneous and sequential virtual channels (VCs) can be discriminated. In this study, CI users were asked to discriminate simultaneous and sequential VCs; discrimination was measured for monopolar (MP) and bipolar + 1 stimulation (BP + 1), i.e., relatively broad and focused stimulation modes. For sequential VCs, the interpulse interval (IPI) varied between 0.0 and 1.8 ms. All stimuli were presented at comfortably loud, loudness-balanced levels at a 250 pulse per second per electrode (ppse) stimulation rate. On average, CI subjects were able to reliably discriminate between sequential and simultaneous VCs. While there was no significant effect of IPI or stimulation mode on VC discrimination, some subjects exhibited better VC discrimination with BP + 1 stimulation. Subjects' discrimination between sequential and simultaneous VCs was correlated with electrode discrimination, suggesting that spatial selectivity may influence perception of sequential VCs. To maintain equal loudness, sequential VC amplitudes were nearly double those of simultaneous VCs, presumably resulting in a broader spread of excitation. These results suggest that perceptual differences between simultaneous and sequential VCs might be explained by differences in the spread of excitation.	\N	\N
21895095	Three experiments were designed to examine temporal envelope processing by cochlear implant (CI) listeners. In experiment 1, the hypothesis that listeners' modulation sensitivity would in part determine their ability to discriminate between temporal modulation rates was examined. Temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs) obtained in an amplitude modulation detection (AMD) task were compared to threshold functions obtained in an amplitude modulation rate discrimination (AMRD) task. Statistically significant nonlinear correlations were observed between the two measures. In experiment 2, results of loudness-balancing showed small increases in the loudness of modulated over unmodulated stimuli beyond a modulation depth of 16%. Results of experiment 3 indicated small but statistically significant effects of level-roving on the overall gain of the TMTF, but no impact of level-roving on the average shape of the TMTF across subjects. This suggested that level-roving simply increased the task difficulty for most listeners, but did not indicate increased use of intensity cues under more challenging conditions. Data obtained with one subject, however, suggested that the most sensitive listeners may derive some benefit from intensity cues in these tasks. Overall, results indicated that intensity cues did not play an important role in temporal envelope processing by the average CI listener.	\N	\N
21912929	Previous research examining cross-modal conflicts in object recognition has often made use of animal vocalizations and images, which may be considered natural and ecologically valid, thus strengthening the association in the congruent condition. The current research tested whether the same cross-modal conflict would exist for man-made object sounds as well as comparing the speed and accuracy of auditory processing across the two object categories. Participants were required to attend to a sound paired with a visual stimulus and then respond to a verification item (e.g., "Dog?"). Sounds were congruent (same object), neutral (unidentifiable image), or incongruent (different object) with the images presented. In the congruent and neutral condition, animals were recognized significantly faster and with greater accuracy than man-made objects. It was hypothesized that in the incongruent condition, no difference in reaction time or error rate would be found between animals and man-made objects. This prediction was not supported, indicating that the association between an object's sound and image may not be that disparate when comparing animals to man-made objects. The findings further support cross-modal conflict research for both the animal and man-made object category. The most important finding, however, was that auditory processing is enhanced for living compared to nonliving objects, a difference only previously found in visual processing. Implications relevant to both the neuropsychological literature and sound research are discussed.	\N	\N
21913927	In prior studies, we have used a conditional linkage between rare deviations in a regular sound pattern to determine if the auditory system can use the first deviation to anticipate the probable features of the second deviation (i.e., make a conditional inference). This study was designed to test two hypotheses about why the mismatch negativity (MMN) to a duration deviant sound seems more susceptible to conditional inference effects. The MMNs to duration and frequency glide deviant sounds were significantly smaller when their occurrence was conditionally linked to the identity of a prior deviant as opposed to when they occurred randomly in a sequence. Results provide support for the learned conditional inference interpretation of reduced MMN size to linked deviants. We discuss alternate explanations and conclude that conditional inference studies could provide insight into the dynamics of probability-based prediction in the auditory system.	\N	\N
21920411	Tinnitus is described as an auditory perception in the absence of any external sound source. Tinnitus loudness has been correlated to sustained high frequency gamma-band activity in auditory cortex. It remains unknown whether unilateral tinnitus is always generated in the left auditory cortex, irrespective of the side on which the tinnitus is perceived, or in the contralateral auditory cortex. In order to solve this enigma source localized electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of a homogenous group of unilateral left and right-sided tinnitus patients presenting with noise-like tinnitus was analyzed. Based on a region of interest analysis, the most important result of this study is that tinnitus lateralization depended on the gamma-band activity of the contralateral parahippocampal area. As for the auditory cortex no differences were found between left-sided and right-sided tinnitus patients. However, in comparison to a control group both left and right-sided tinnitus patients had an increased gamma-band activity in both the left and right primary and secondary auditory cortex. Thus whereas in tinnitus the primary and secondary auditory cortices of both sides are characterized by increased gamma-band activity, the side on which the tinnitus is perceived relates to gamma-band activity in the contralateral parahippocampal area.	\N	\N
21926628	The purpose of this study was to determine the reliability of the electrophysiological binaural beat steady state response as a gauge of temporal fine structure coding, particularly as it relates to the aging auditory system. The hypothesis was that the response would be more robust in a lower, than in a higher, frequency region and in younger, than in older, adults. Two experiments were undertaken. The first measured the 40 Hz binaural beat steady state response elicited by tone pairs in two frequency regions: lower (390 and 430 Hz tone pair) and higher (810 and 850 Hz tone pair). Frequency following responses (FFRs) evoked by the tones were also recorded. Ten young adults with normal hearing participated. The second experiment measured the binaural beat and FFRs in older adults but only in the lower frequency region. Fourteen older adults with relatively normal hearing participated. Response metrics in both experiments included response component signal-to-noise ratio (F statistic) and magnitude-squared coherence. Experiment 1 showed that FFRs were elicited in both frequency regions but were more robust in the lower frequency region. Binaural beat responses elicited by the lower frequency pair of tones showed greater amplitude fluctuation within a participant than the respective FFRs. Experiment 2 showed that older adults exhibited similar FFRs to younger adults, but proportionally fewer older participants showed binaural beat responses. Age differences in onset responses were also observed. The lower prevalence of the binaural beat response in older adults, despite the presence of FFRs, provides tentative support for the sensitivity of this measure to age-related deficits in temporal processing. However, the lability of the binaural beat response advocates caution in its use as an objective measure of fine structure coding.	\N	\N
21928934	An experiment is reported that investigates the relation between the suffix effect and the effect of irrelevant sound on the serial recall of short sequences of spoken material. The main issue was whether there is an effect of irrelevant sound under articulatory suppression in the presence of a spoken suffix. As in Hanley and Bakopoulou (2003), the irrelevant sound comprised speech that was presented during the retention interval. When a spoken suffix appeared at the end of the list, a significant effect of irrelevant sound remained when participants were able to rehearse list items. However, it disappeared under articulatory suppression. The effects of irrelevant sound remained significant under suppression when the suffix was an auditory tone but was confined to the final position of the serial position curve. These results parallel those reported by Jones, Macken, and Nicholls (2004) and Jones, Hughes, and Macken (2006) when they examined the effect of articulatory suppression on the phonological similarity effect. The results are consistent with Jones et al.'s (2006, 2004) view that an acoustic-perceptual representation of the terminal list items is the source of the effects of irrelevant sound and phonological similarity when they occur in the presence of articulatory suppression.	\N	\N
21928935	Serial recall from working memory is known to be impaired by the presence of irrelevant background speech, but several prior studies have concluded that the magnitude of the impairment is independent of the phonological relationship between to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-ignored (TBI) sources of information. In the present study, we examined the influence of between-stream phonological similarity in serial recall while attending to a heretofore uncontrolled variable, the phonetic feature. We found that TBI items sharing many phonetic features with TBR items produced significantly stronger working-memory impairments than TBI items with minimal phonetic feature overlap. In addition, participants were more likely to report remembering incorrect items that incorporated phonological characteristics of the TBI stream in the high-overlap condition. These findings provide evidence for subphonemic between-stream interactions and suggest that multiple parallel processes contribute to the irrelevant speech effect. We propose that a 2-component model, which combines the assumptions of process- and content-based accounts for the irrelevant speech effect, offers the best explanation for these findings.	\N	\N
21930137	In daily communication, we often use indirect speech to convey our intention. However, little is known about the brain mechanisms that underlie the comprehension of indirect speech. In this study, we conducted a functional MRI experiment using a scenario reading task to compare the neural activity induced by an indirect reply (a type of indirect speech) and a literal sentence. Participants read a short scenario consisting of three sentences. The first two sentences explained the situation of the protagonists, whereas the third sentence had an indirect, literal, or unconnected meaning. The indirect reply condition primarily activated the bilateral fronto-temporal networks (Brodmann's Areas (BA) 47 and 21) and the dorso-medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). In the literal sentence condition, only the left fronto-temporal network (BA 45 and 21) and the dmPFC (posterior region) were activated. In addition, we found greater activation resulting from comprehension of an indirect reply than from literal sentence comprehension in the dmPFC, the left middle frontal area (BA 9), the bilateral inferior frontal area (BA 9/47), and the right middle temporal area (BA 21). Our findings indicate that the right and left fronto-temporal networks play a crucial role in detecting contextual violations, whereas the medial frontal cortex is important for generating inferences to make sense of remarks within a context.	\N	\N
21932257	To examine how musical expertise tunes the brain to subtle metric anomalies in an ecological musical context, we presented piano compositions ending on standard and deviant cadences (endings) to expert pianists and musical laymen, while high-density EEG was recorded. Temporal expectancies were manipulated by substituting standard "masculine" cadences at metrically strong positions with deviant, metrically unaccented, "feminine" cadences. Experts detected metrically deviant cadences better than laymen. Analyses of event-related potentials demonstrated that an early P3a-like component (~150-300 ms), elicited by musical closure, was significantly enhanced at frontal and parietal electrodes in response to deviant endings in experts, whereas a reduced response to deviance occurred in laymen. Putative neuronal sources contributing to the modulation of this component were localized in a network of brain regions including bilateral supplementary motor areas, middle and posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, associative visual areas, as well as in the right amygdala and insula. In all these regions, experts showed enhanced responses to metric deviance. Later effects demonstrated enhanced activations within the same brain network, as well as higher processing speed for experts. These results suggest that early brain responses to metric deviance in experts may rely on motor representations mediated by the supplementary motor area and motor cingulate regions, in addition to areas involved in self-referential imagery and relevance detection. Such motor representations could play a role in temporal sensory prediction evolved from musical training and suggests that rhythm evokes action more strongly in highly trained instrumentalists.	\N	\N
21934538	The processing of case-marking and argument structures was investigated in children at the age of 3 years, 4 years and 6 months, and 6 years. Two event-related potential (ERP) experiments were conducted in a case-marked language, i.e. German, comparing the processing of (a) double-nominative violations with subject-initial structures and (b) double-accusative violations with object-initial structures. It is known that for both violation types, adults display a biphasic N400/P600 ERP response, reflecting thematic-semantic, and syntactic processes. For double-nominative violations, 3-year-old children already show an adult-like processing pattern revealing their abilities to repair the tested structure. For double-accusative violations, ERP results indicate developmental processing differences with even 6-year-old children not showing an adult pattern. This suggests a late development of the complete function of the accusative case.	\N	\N
21936745	To evaluate the feasibility, the duration and results of sedation by intrarectal pentobarbital and oral alimemazine for auditory brain stem responses (ABR) and auditory steady-state responses (ASSR) recordings in children aged 2 to 5 years. Prospective study. 180 consecutive children aged 2 to 5 years, referred for language retardation and/or behavioral problems, who could not be tested by behavioral methods, underwent ABR and ASSR recordings. The children who did not spontaneously nap were sedated by intrarectal pentobarbital eventually potentiated by oral alimemazine. A spontaneous nap was obtained in only 23 cases, 72 children received only pentobarbital, and 85 received both pentobarbital and alimemazine. Even so, recording was impossible in 16 cases, and interrupted before completion of the ASSR recordings in 45 cases. Children went to sleep in average 64 min +/- 40. The average recording time for the ABR was 20 minutes, and for the ASSR 25 minutes. Sedation by pentobarbital, eventually completed by oral alimemazine, allows ABR and/or ASSR recordings in 89.8% of the children who did not nap in the recording room, and is therefore a good alternative to general anesthesia in these children.	\N	\N
21940982	The goal of this study was to assess the functional utility of transient noise reduction (TNR) algorithms available in hearing aids via speech intelligibility and user preferences. Two pairs of hearing aids, 1 pair each from Siemens and Unitron, were programmed for 17 hearing impaired individuals after a hearing evaluation. Intelligibility was measured for each participant for sentences presented in quiet, with 2 types of transient noise, multitalker babble, and in a combination of each type of transient noise and multitalker babble. Each condition was tested with TNR activated and TNR deactivated in a counterbalanced, single-blinded format. Subjective ratings of overall speech understanding, comfort, and sound quality were obtained for each condition. A significant improvement in speech intelligibility was measured with the TNR activated when speech was presented in multitalker babble, in the presence of chair clang transient noises, and when combining these noises. Activation of the TNR algorithm did not result in significant improvements for any of the subjective ratings. While improvements were limited to certain conditions, specifically those with the chair clang transient and/or multitalker babble, TNR appears to offer an incremental step in improving the listening experience for hearing aid users.	\N	\N
21945467	The different response characteristics of the different auditory cortical responses under conventional central masking conditions were examined by comparing the effects of contralateral white noise on the cortical component of 40-Hz auditory steady state fields (ASSFs) and the N100 m component in auditory evoked fields (AEFs) for tone bursts using a helmet-shaped magnetoencephalography system in 8 healthy volunteers (7 males, mean age 32.6 years). The ASSFs were elicited by monaural 1000 Hz amplitude modulation tones at 80 dB SPL, with the amplitude modulated at 39 Hz. The AEFs were elicited by monaural 1000 Hz tone bursts of 60 ms duration (rise and fall times of 10 ms, plateau time of 40 ms) at 80 dB SPL. The results indicated that continuous white noise at 70 dB SPL presented to the contralateral ear did not suppress the N100 m response in either hemisphere, but significantly reduced the amplitude of the 40-Hz ASSF in both hemispheres with asymmetry in that suppression of the 40-Hz ASSF was greater in the right hemisphere. Different effects of contralateral white noise on these two responses may reflect different functional auditory processes in the cortices.	\N	\N
21954871	This study examined the development of uncertainty monitoring in early childhood. Specifically, this study tested the prediction that preschoolers can reflect on their sense of certainty about the likely accuracy of their decisions, and it examined whether this ability differs across domains. Three-, 4-, and 5-year-olds (N = 74) completed a perceptual identification and a lexical identification task in which they reported whether they were certain or uncertain about their answers. Results showed that even 3-year-olds provided confidence judgments that discriminated accurate from inaccurate responses, but this discrimination increased with age. Furthermore, results suggest that 3-year-olds primarily rely on response latency to assess certainty, whereas older preschoolers do not. Overall, these findings suggest that uncertainty monitoring emerges and develops during the preschool years.	\N	\N
21962945	While grammatical aspects of language are preserved, executive deficits are prominent in Lewy body spectrum disorder (LBSD), including Parkinson's disease (PD), Parkinson's dementia (PDD) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). We examined executive control during sentence processing in LBSD by assessing temporary structural ambiguities. Using an on-line word detection procedure, patients heard sentences with a syntactic structure that has high-compatibility or low-compatibility with the main verb's statistically preferred syntactic structure, and half of the sentences were lengthened strategically between the onset of the ambiguity and its resolution. We found selectively slowed processing of lengthened ambiguous sentences in the PDD/DLB subgroup. This correlated with impairments on measures of executive control. Regression analyses related the working memory deficit during ambiguous sentence processing to significant cortical thinning in frontal and parietal regions. These findings emphasize the role of prefrontal disease in the executive limitations that interfere with processing ambiguous sentences in LBSD.	\N	\N
21967269	Six experiments studied relative frequency judgment and recall of sequentially presented items drawn from 2 distinct categories (i.e., city and animal). The experiments show that judged frequencies of categories of sequentially encountered stimuli are affected by certain properties of the sequence configuration. We found (a) a first-run effect whereby people overestimated the frequency of a given category when that category was the first repeated category to occur in the sequence and (b) a dissociation between judgments and recall; respondents may judge 1 event more likely than the other and yet recall more instances of the latter. Specifically, the distribution of recalled items does not correspond to the frequency estimates for the event categories, indicating that participants do not make frequency judgments by sampling their memory for individual items as implied by other accounts such as the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973) and the availability process model (Hastie & Park, 1986). We interpret these findings as reflecting the operation of a judgment heuristic sensitive to sequential patterns and offer an account for the relationship between memory and judged frequencies of sequentially encountered stimuli.	\N	\N
21973363	Spectral-ripple discrimination has been used widely for psychoacoustical studies in normal-hearing, hearing-impaired, and cochlear implant listeners. The present study investigated the perceptual mechanism for spectral-ripple discrimination in cochlear implant listeners. The main goal of this study was to determine whether cochlear implant listeners use a local intensity cue or global spectral shape for spectral-ripple discrimination. The effect of electrode separation on spectral-ripple discrimination was also evaluated. Results showed that it is highly unlikely that cochlear implant listeners depend on a local intensity cue for spectral-ripple discrimination. A phenomenological model of spectral-ripple discrimination, as an "ideal observer," showed that a perceptual mechanism based on discrimination of a single intensity difference cannot account for performance of cochlear implant listeners. Spectral modulation depth and electrode separation were found to significantly affect spectral-ripple discrimination. The evidence supports the hypothesis that spectral-ripple discrimination involves integrating information from multiple channels.	\N	\N
21974502	Thresholds of vowel formant discrimination for F1 and F2 of isolated vowels with full and partial vowel spectra were measured for normal-hearing listeners at fixed and roving speech levels. Performance of formant discrimination was significantly better for fixed levels than for roving levels with both full and partial spectra. The effect of vowel spectral range was present only for roving levels, but not for fixed levels. These results, consistent with studies of profile analysis, indicated different perceptual mechanisms for listeners to discriminate vowel formant frequency at fixed and roving levels.	\N	\N
21986211	Hearing loss is routinely estimated from the audiogram, even though this measure gives only a rough approximation of hearing. Indeed, cochlear regions functioning poorly, if at all, called dead regions, are not detected by a simple audiogram. To detect cochlear dead regions, additional measurements of psychophysical tuning curves or thresholds in background noise (TEN test) are required. A first aim of this study was to assess the presence of dead regions after impulse noise trauma using psychophysical tuning curves. The procedure we used was based on a compromise between the need to collect reliable estimates of psychophysical tuning curves and the limited time available to obtain these estimates in a hospital setting. Psychophysical tuning curves were measured using simultaneous masking with a 2-alternative forced choice paradigm, where the target was randomly placed in one of the two masker presentations. It is well known that some components of noise-induced hearing loss are reversible. A second aim of this study was to examine the potential recovery of dead regions after acoustic trauma. A third issue addressed in this article was the relationship between noise-induced dead regions and tinnitus. We found that 70% of the subjects had dead regions after noise trauma, while 88% reported tinnitus. Moreover, we found that the extent of dead regions probably diminished in about 50% of subjects, which highlights the ability of the human auditory system to recover from noise-induced hearing loss.	\N	\N
21993050	Prescriptive methods have been at the core of modern hearing aid fittings for the past several decades. Every decade or so, there have been revisions to existing methods and/or the emergence of new methods that become widely used. In 2001 Byrne et al provided a comparison of insertion gain for generic prescriptive methods available at that time. The purpose of this article was to compare National Acoustic Laboratories-Non-linear 1 (NAL-NL1), National Acoustic Laboratories-Non-linear 2 (NAL-NL2), Desired Sensation Level Multistage Input/Output (DSL m[i/o]), and Cambridge Method for Loudness Equalization 2-High-Frequency (CAMEQ2-HF) prescriptive methods for adults on the amplification characteristics of prescribed insertion gain and compression ratio. Following the differences observed in prescribed insertion gain among the four prescriptive methods, analyses of predicted specific loudness, overall loudness, and bandwidth of cochlear excitation and effective audibility as well as speech intelligibility of the international long-term average speech spectrum (ILTASS) at an average conversational input level were completed. These analyses allow for the discussion of similarities and differences among the present-day prescriptive methods. The impact of insertion gain differences among the methods is examined for seven hypothetical hearing loss configurations using models of loudness perception and speech intelligibility. Hearing loss configurations for adults of various types and degrees were selected, five of which represent sensorineural impairment and were used by Byrne et al; the other two hearing losses provide an example of mixed and conductive impairment. Prescribed insertion gain data were calculated in 1/3-octave frequency bands for each of the seven hearing losses from the software application of each prescriptive method over multiple input levels. The insertion gain data along with a diffuse field-to-eardrum transfer function were used to calculate output levels at the eardrums of the hypothetical listeners. Levels of hearing loss and output were then used in the Moore and Glasberg loudness model and the ANSI S3.5-1997 Speech Intelligibility Index model. NAL-NL2 and DSL m[i/o] provided comparable overall loudness of approximately 8 sones for the five sensorineural hearing losses for a 65 dB SPL ILTASS input. This loudness was notably less than that perceived by a normal-hearing person for the same input signal, 18.6 sones. NAL-NL2 and DSL m[i/o] also provided comparable predicted speech intelligibility in quiet and noise. CAMEQ2-HF provided a greater average loudness, similar to NAL-NL1, with more high-frequency bandwidth but no significant improvement to predicted speech intelligibility. Definite variation in prescribed insertion gain was present among the prescriptive methods. These differences when averaged across the hearing losses were, by and large, negligible with regard to predicted speech intelligibility at normal conversational speech levels. With regard to loudness, DSL m[i/o] and NAL-NL2 provided the least overall loudness, followed by CAMEQ2-HF and NAL-NL1 providing the most loudness. CAMEQ2-HF provided the most audibility at high frequencies; even so, the audibility became less effective for improving speech intelligibility as hearing loss severity increased.	\N	\N
22013241	Interactions between auditory and somatosensory information are relevant to the neural processing of speech since speech processes and certainly speech production involves both auditory information and inputs that arise from the muscles and tissues of the vocal tract. We previously demonstrated that somatosensory inputs associated with facial skin deformation alter the perceptual processing of speech sounds. We show here that the reverse is also true, that speech sounds alter the perception of facial somatosensory inputs. As a somatosensory task, we used a robotic device to create patterns of facial skin deformation that would normally accompany speech production. We found that the perception of the facial skin deformation was altered by speech sounds in a manner that reflects the way in which auditory and somatosensory effects are linked in speech production. The modulation of orofacial somatosensory processing by auditory inputs was specific to speech and likewise to facial skin deformation. Somatosensory judgments were not affected when the skin deformation was delivered to the forearm or palm or when the facial skin deformation accompanied nonspeech sounds. The perceptual modulation that we observed in conjunction with speech sounds shows that speech sounds specifically affect neural processing in the facial somatosensory system and suggest the involvement of the somatosensory system in both the production and perceptual processing of speech.	\N	\N
22023487	The aim of this study was to assess differences between real ear insertion gains (REIG) measured with the modified pressure concurrent equalization (MPCE) and modified pressure stored equalization (MPSE) methods for open fittings in a typical audiology patient population. REIGs were compared for the two methods using a warble tone sweep at 65 dB SPL. The differences between the two methods at 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 kHz were recorded. Eighty-three ears of a consecutive sample of 48 candidates for open-fit hearing aids were included. The mean difference between MPSE and MPCE REIGs was less than 1 dB at all frequencies. Analysis of variance showed that the main effect of method was not significant, and there was no significant interaction between method and frequency. The results for the MPSE and MPCE methods did not differ significantly for the patients with mild-to-moderate hearing losses tested here, for whom REIGs were generally less than 20 dB. Further research is needed to identify the REIG values at which the differences between MPCE and MPSE methods become clinically significant.	\N	\N
22030970	Frontonasal dysplasia (FND) is a rare malformative complex affecting the frontal portion of the face, the eyes and the nose; it may occur singly or associated with other clinical signs. No systematic studies describing hearing in this condition were found. To evaluate hearing sensitivity and sound stimulus conduction from cochlea to brainstem in patients with clinical signs of FND. 21 patients with isolated or syndromic FND were submitted to a clinical (otological/vestibular antecedents and otoscopy) and instrumental (pure tone and speech audiometry, tympanometry and brainstem auditory evoked response) hearing evaluation. A clinical, cross-sectional observational prospective study. Hearing thresholds were normal in 15 (70%) patients, abnormal in 5 (25%), mostly with conductive hearing loss; one patient did not cooperate with testing. The tympanometric curve was type A in 30 (72%) ears, type C in 5 (12%), type As in 4 (9%) and type B in 3 (7%). The auditory brainstem response (ABR) showed no abnormalities. Patients with FND showed no abnormalities in the auditory system from cochlea to brainstem in this study. Mild conductive hearing loss found in some is probably related to cleft palate. Further evaluation of hearing pathways at higher levels is recommended.	\N	\N
22030972	Accurate information about type, degree, and configuration of hearing loss are necessary for successful audiological early interventions. Auditory brainstem response with tone burst stimuli (TB ABR) and auditory steady-state response (ASSR) exams provide this information. To analyze the clinical applicability of TB ABR and ASSR at 2 kHz in infants, comparing responses in full-term and premature neonates. The study was cross-sectional, clinical and experimental. Subjects consisted of 17 premature infants and 19 full-term infants. TB ABR and ASSR exams at 2000 Hz were done during natural sleep. The electrophysiological minimum response obtained with TB ABR was 32.4 dBnHL (52.4 dBSPL); the ASSR minimum was 13.8 dBHL (26.4 dBSPL). The exams required 21.1 min and 22 min, respectively. Premature and full-term infant responses showed no statistically significant differences, except for auditory steady-state response duration. Both exams have clinical applicability at 2 kHz in infants, with 20 min of duration, on average. In general, there are no differences between premature and full-term individuals.	\N	\N
22033983	We are constantly exposed to our own face and voice, and we identify our own faces and voices as familiar. However, the influence of self-identity upon self-speech perception is still uncertain. Speech perception is a synthesis of both auditory and visual inputs; although we hear our own voice when we speak, we rarely see the dynamic movements of our own face. If visual speech and identity are processed independently, no processing advantage would obtain in viewing one's own highly familiar face. In the present experiment, the relative contributions of facial and vocal inputs to speech perception were evaluated with an audiovisual illusion. Our results indicate that auditory self-speech conveys a processing advantage, whereas visual self-speech does not. The data thereby support a model of visual speech as dynamic movement processed separately from speaker recognition.	\N	\N
22035565	Frequency modulation (FM) is an important building block of communication signals for animals and human. Attempts to predict the response of central neurons to FM sounds have not been very successful, though achieving successful results could bring insights regarding the underlying neural mechanisms. Here we proposed a new method to predict responses of FM-sensitive neurons in the auditory midbrain. First we recorded single unit responses in anesthetized rats using a random FM tone to construct their spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs). Training of neurons in the artificial neural network to respond to a second random FM tone was based on the temporal information derived from the STRF. Specifically, the time window covered by the presumed trigger feature and its delay time to spike occurrence were used to train a finite impulse response neural network (FIRNN) to respond to this random FM. Finally we tested the model performance in predicting the response to another similar FM stimuli (third random FM tone). We found good performance in predicting the time of responses if not also the response magnitudes. Furthermore, the weighting function of the FIRNN showed temporal 'bumps' suggesting temporal integration of synaptic inputs from different frequency laminae. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Neural Coding.	\N	\N
22037719	The aim of this study was to investigate audio-vestibular function in patients with essential tremor. Twenty-three patients with essential tremor (46 ears) and 21 health control subjects (42 ears) were included in the present study. Patients and comparison subjects were matched for age and gender. All patient and control subjects underwent pure tone audiometric test, tympanogram, transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions and auditory brainstem response. Vestibular system was evaluated by bitermal caloric test. Comparison of variables between the groups was performed. Investigation of the relationship between parameters about ET disease and hearing levels were also studied. Pure tone thresholds significantly differed between patients and controls in 250 and 500 Hz frequencies (p < 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference in 1,000, 2,000, 4,000, and 6,000 Hz frequencies in essential tremor patients in comparison to the control subjects. A correlation between tremor severity and audiometric scores in low frequencies was not found. In addition, statistical analysis did not demonstrate a correlation between audiometric scores and tremor duration. The otoacoustic emission responses were found significantly different in patient and control group. The latencies of waves I, V and I-V inter-peak latencies on the ABR were not different between the groups. Our findings indicated that, abnormalities are due to cochlea rather than the retro cochlear pathology which is responsible for hearing loss associated with essential tremor.	\N	\N
22056210	When speaking or producing music, people rely in part on auditory feedback - the sounds associated with the performed action. Three experiments investigated the degree to which alterations of auditory feedback (AAF) during music performances influence the experience of agency (i.e., the sense that your actions led to auditory events) and the possible link between agency and the disruptive effect of AAF on production. Participants performed short novel melodies from memory on a keyboard. Auditory feedback during performances was manipulated with respect to its pitch contents and/or its synchrony with actions. Participants rated their experience of agency after each trial. In all experiments, AAF reduced judgments of agency across conditions. Performance was most disrupted (measured by error rates and slowing) when AAF led to an ambiguous experience of agency, suggesting that there may be some causal relationship between agency and disruption. However, analyses revealed that these two effects were probably independent. A control experiment verified that performers can make veridical judgments of agency.	\N	\N
22057984	Binaural hearing in cochlear implant (CI) users can be achieved either by bilateral implantation or bimodally with a contralateral hearing aid (HA). Binaural-bimodal hearing has the advantage of complementing the high-frequency electric information from the CI by low-frequency acoustic information from the HA. We examined the contribution of a contralateral HA in 25 adult implantees to their perception of fundamental frequency-cued speech characteristics (initial consonant voicing, intonation, and emotions). Testing with CI alone, HA alone, and bimodal hearing showed that all three characteristics were best perceived under the bimodal condition. Significant differences were recorded between bimodal and HA conditions in the initial voicing test, between bimodal and CI conditions in the intonation test, and between both bimodal and CI conditions and between bimodal and HA conditions in the emotion-in-speech test. These findings confirmed that such binaural-bimodal hearing enhances perception of these speech characteristics and suggest that implantees with residual hearing in the contralateral ear may benefit from a HA in that ear.	\N	\N
22067074	The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) describes reduced verbal short-term memory during irrelevant changing-state sounds which consist of different and distinct auditory tokens. Steady-state sounds lack such changing-state features and do not impair performance. An EEG experiment (N=16) explored the distinguishing neurophysiological aspects of detrimental changing-state speech (3-token sequence) compared to ineffective steady-state speech (1-token sequence) on serial recall performance. We analyzed evoked and induced activity related to the memory items as well as spectral activity during the retention phase. The main finding is that the behavioral sound effect was exclusively reflected by attenuated token-induced gamma activation most pronounced between 50-60 Hz and 50-100 ms post-stimulus onset. Changing-state speech seems to disrupt a behaviorally relevant ongoing process during target presentation (e.g., the serial binding of the items).	\N	\N
22073929	The majority of the patients with unilateral auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (UANSD) were pediatric and mostly showed a great degree of hearing loss when diagnosed. Abnormal auditory brainstem response (ABR) and preserved otoacoustic emissions (OAEs) and/or cochlear microphonics (CM) were important features to differentiate it from common sensorineural deafness and central nerve hearing loss. To identify the clinical characteristics of patients with UANSD. This was a retrospective study involving 14 patients diagnosed as having UANSD between 2004 and 2010 in the Chinese PLA Hospital. In all, 50% of the cases were males (1:1 sex ratio) and the average age of onset was 4.1 years. Of the 14 affected ears with UANSD in these cases, 6 were left-sided, while 8 were right-sided. Of the 14 contralateral ears, 4 presented with sensorineural hearing loss, while the other 10 showed normal hearing. The degree of hearing loss in the 14 affected ears varied, including moderate in 1, moderately severe in 4, severe in 5, and profound in 4. ABRs were absent in the 14 affected ears, while the OAEs, and/or CM were present.	\N	\N
22074449	Stapedotomy is, in our opinion, the technique of choice in stapes surgery. The precision of this technique allows clinicians to perform the surgical procedure in day surgery under local anesthesia. There is a strong emphasis on increasing the number of elective day surgery cases, especially in the patients' best interest, as it decreases the likelihood of late cancellation and hospital-acquired morbidity. A prospective study was performed to determine whether stapes surgery for otosclerosis could be performed safely in an outpatient setting. We present a series of stapes surgery cases for otosclerosis performed on a day-case basis. We performed a classic stapedotomy in 9 patients, a reverse classic step stapedotomy in 2 patients, a partial reverse classic step stapedotomy in 11 patients, and a hemi-stapedectomy in two patients. Three of 24 patients (12.5%) treated with classic stapedotomy, 1 patient with partial reverse classic step stapedotomy, and 1 patient with hemi-stapedectomy were formally admitted to the hospital after surgery (length of stay, 23 h). The indications were vertigo (two patients) and asthenia (one patient). These patients were treated under general anesthesia. Two of these patients resided more than 250 km away from the hospital.	\N	\N
22082232	The present study investigated the lexical representations underlying the production of English schwa words. Two types of schwa words were compared: words with a schwa in poststress position (e.g., mackerel), whose schwa and reduced variants differ in a categorical way, and words with a schwa in prestress position (e.g., salami), whose variants differ in a noncategorical way. Participants named pseudohomophones and matched pseudowords corresponding to schwa and reduced variants of these words. Results revealed an advantage for pseudohomophones over matched pseudowords for both variants of poststress schwa words but only for schwa variants of prestress schwa words. As the pseudohomophone advantage is assumed to reflect the activation of a phonologically matching stored phonological representation, these results suggest that both variants of poststress schwa words are lexically represented while only schwa variants of prestress schwa words are. This result extends the proposal that words with two categorically distinct variants are stored in the production lexicon with 2 representations to another language and demonstrates that this 2-lexeme account does not generalize to pronunciation variants differing from one another in a noncategorical fashion. This finding challenges one of the widely shared assumption of generative models of word production: that content words have only 1 phonological representation. On the other hand, it provides further evidence in favor of another fundamental assumption of these models: that lexical representations are abstract sets of segments rather than fully detailed exemplars.	\N	\N
22087888	To examine the role of perceived gender on fricative identification, a study was conducted in which listeners identified /s/-/∫/ and /s/-/θ/ continua combined with vowels produced by a man and a woman. These were acoustically modified to be consistent with different-sized vocal tracts (VT), and were presented with pictures of men or women. Listeners identified more tokens of /s/ in the /s/-/∫/ and more tokens of /θ/ in the /s/-/θ/ continuum when these sounds were combined with men's vowels, with vowels consistent with a 17 cm VT, and with pictures of men. Results support the hypothesis that listeners incorporate information about talker gender during fricative perception.	\N	\N
22087912	Cochlear hearing loss is often associated with a loss of basilar-membrane (BM) compression, which in turn may contribute to degraded processing of suprathreshold stimuli. Behavioral estimates of compression may therefore be useful as long as they are valid over a wide range of levels and frequencies. Additivity of forward masking (AFM) may provide such a measure, but research to date lacks normative data from normal-hearing (NH) listeners at high sound levels, which is necessary to evaluate data from hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. The present study measured AFM in six NH listeners for signal frequencies of 500, 1500, and 4000 Hz in the presence of background noise, designed to elevate signal thresholds to levels similar to those experienced by HI listeners. Results consistent with compressive BM responses were found for all six listeners at 500 Hz, five listeners at 1500 Hz, but only two listeners at 4000 Hz. Further measurements in the absence of background noise also indicated a lack of consistent compression at 4000 Hz at higher signal levels, in contrast to earlier results collected at lower levels. A better understanding of this issue will be required before AFM can be used as a general behavioral estimate of BM compression.	\N	\N
22087920	The factors influencing the stream segregation of discrete tones and the perceived continuity of discrete tones as continuing through an interrupting masker are well understood as separate phenomena. Two experiments tested whether perceived continuity can influence the build-up of stream segregation by manipulating the perception of continuity during an induction sequence and measuring streaming in a subsequent test sequence comprising three triplets of low and high frequency tones (LHL-[ellipsis (horizontal)]). For experiment 1, a 1.2-s standard induction sequence comprising six 100-ms L-tones strongly promoted segregation, whereas a single extended L-inducer (1.1 s plus 100-ms silence) did not. Segregation was similar to that following the single extended inducer when perceived continuity was evoked by inserting noise bursts between the individual tones. Reported segregation increased when the noise level was reduced such that perceived continuity no longer occurred. Experiment 2 presented a 1.3-s continuous inducer created by bridging the 100-ms silence between an extended L-inducer and the first test-sequence tone. This configuration strongly promoted segregation. Segregation was also increased by filling the silence after the extended inducer with noise, such that it was perceived like a bridging inducer. Like physical continuity, perceived continuity can promote or reduce test-sequence streaming, depending on stimulus context.	\N	\N
22087922	This work was aimed at determining whether binaural interference occurs in electric hearing, and if so, whether it occurs as a consequence of perceptual grouping (central explanation) or if it is related to the spread of excitation in the cochlea (peripheral explanation). Six bilateral cochlear-implant listeners completed a series of experiments in which they judged the lateral position of a target pulse train, lateralized via interaural time or level differences, in the presence of an interfering diotic pulse train. The target and interferer were presented at widely separated electrode pairs (one basal and one apical). The results are broadly similar to those reported for acoustic hearing. All listeners but one showed significant binaural interference in at least one of the stimulus conditions. In all cases of interference, a robust recovery was observed when the interferer was presented as part of an ongoing stream of identical pulse trains, suggesting that the interference was at least partly centrally mediated. Overall, the results suggest that both simultaneous and sequential grouping mechanisms operate in electric hearing, at least for stimuli with a wide tonotopic separation.	\N	\N
22087923	The present study examined the effect of combined spectral and temporal enhancement on speech recognition by cochlear-implant (CI) users in quiet and in noise. The spectral enhancement was achieved by expanding the short-term Fourier amplitudes in the input signal. Additionally, a variation of the Transient Emphasis Spectral Maxima (TESM) strategy was applied to enhance the short-duration consonant cues that are otherwise suppressed when processed with spectral expansion. Nine CI users were tested on phoneme recognition tasks and ten CI users were tested on sentence recognition tasks both in quiet and in steady, speech-spectrum-shaped noise. Vowel and consonant recognition in noise were significantly improved with spectral expansion combined with TESM. Sentence recognition improved with both spectral expansion and spectral expansion combined with TESM. The amount of improvement varied with individual CI users. Overall the present results suggest that customized processing is needed to optimize performance according to not only individual users but also listening conditions.	\N	\N
22093438	In auditory-visual synaesthesia, all kinds of sound can induce additional visual experiences. To identify the brain regions mainly involved in this form of synaesthesia, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used during non-linguistic sound perception (chords and pure tones) in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes. Synaesthetes showed increased activation in the left inferior parietal cortex (IPC), an area involved in multimodal integration, feature binding and attention guidance. No significant group-differences could be detected in area V4, which is known to be related to colour vision and form processing. The results support the idea of the parietal cortex acting as sensory nexus area in auditory-visual synaesthesia, and as a common neural correlate for different types of synaesthesia.	\N	\N
22095215	The behavioral and neurofunctional consequences of blindness often include performance enhancements and recruitment of occipital regions for nonvisual tasks. How the neuroanatomical changes resulting from this sensory loss relate to these functional changes is, however, less clear. Previous studies using cortical thickness (CT) measures have shown thicker occipital cortex in early-blind (EB) individuals compared with sighted controls. We hypothesized that this finding reflects the crossmodal plasticity often observed in blind individuals and thus could reflect behavioral adaptations. To address this issue, CT measures in blind (early and late) and sighted subjects were obtained along with several auditory behavioral measures in an attempt to relate behavioral and neuroanatomical changes. Group contrasts confirmed previous results in showing thicker occipital cortex in the EB. Regression analyses between CT measures across the whole brain of all blind individuals with the behavioral scores from 2 tasks in which EB subjects were superior (pitch and melody discrimination) showed that CT of occipital areas was directly related to behavioral enhancements. These findings constitute a compelling demonstration that anatomical changes in occipital areas are directly related to heightened behavioral abilities in the blind and hence support the idea that these anatomical features reflect adaptive compensatory plasticity.	\N	\N
22097102	Daily life in today's society is filled with moments of high state anxiety. State anxiety is the amount of anxiety one is experiencing in the present moment; it is not a personality trait. Many people need simple, cost-effective ways to self-regulate themselves so they can sleep, be more productive, and attend to their activities of daily life. Therefore, the present study questioned whether listening to a steady beat will decrease feelings of state anxiety in healthy subjects. Participants (N=36) between the ages of 20 and 50 volunteered for the study. During this study, experimental anxiety was induced and the Visual Analog Scale served as the measurement tool for both tests. Subjects in the control group sat in silence, while subjects in the experimental group listened to a steady beat of 66 beats per minute. The results of an independent-samples t test indicated significant differences between the groups on the posttest measure, t (34)=2.41, p=.02. Subjects who listened to the steady beat reported less anxiety than subjects who sat in silence. This study suggests that steady beat alone can reduce state anxiety, thus providing a cost-effective and accessible means for self-regulation in the midst of high state anxiety.	\N	\N
22101495	The purpose of the present study was to establish whether the validity effect produced by masked eye gaze cues should be attributed to strictly reflexive mechanisms or to volitional top-down mechanisms. While we find that masked eye gaze cues are effective in producing a validity effect in a central cueing paradigm, we also find that the efficacy of masked gaze cues is sharply constrained by the experimental context. Specifically, masked gaze cues only produced a validity effect when they appeared in the context of unmasked and predictive gaze cues. Unmasked gaze cues, in contrast, produced reliable validity effects across a range of experimental contexts, including Experiment 4 where 80% of the cues were invalid (counter-predictive). Taken together, these results suggest that the effective processing of masked gaze cues requires volitional control, whereas the processing of unmasked (clearly visible) gaze cues appears to benefit from both reflexive and top-down mechanisms.	\N	\N
22102362	The neural events that lead to successful or failed detection of suprathreshold sounds are not well established. In this experiment, event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) were recorded while participants performed two tasks: a primary difficult duration judgment task on a sequence of tones presented to one ear, and a secondary target detection task on an auditory oddball stream presented to the other ear. The paradigm was designed to elicit competition and variability in detection of auditory targets despite identical input. Successful detection of auditory targets was associated mainly with greater fMRI activity in superior parietal cortex and thalamus. In the ERPs, successful detection was linked with a larger fronto-central negativity at 200-400 ms, and a later centro-posterior positivity. Failure to detect targets was associated with greater fMRI signal in the default mode network, a significantly smaller electrical fronto-central negativity and no late positivity. These findings demonstrate that variability in auditory detection is related to modulation of activity in multimodal parietal and frontal networks active ∼ 200 ms after target onset. Results are consistent with a limited capacity and late selection view of attention.	\N	\N
22107896	Auditory perception and learning take place during the third trimester of gestation. Fetuses and newborns who lack typical auditory experience can go on to develop typical socioemotional attachment and language, given a supportive environment. For hospitalized preterm infants in developmentally sensitive neonatal intensive care units, detrimental effects of deviant early auditory experience may be remediated by later experience, but much is unknown about the causes of language deficits of prematurity. Prenatal auditory stimulation programs that incorporate audio speakers against the maternal belly should be discouraged because of possible overstimulation effects on the developing auditory system and sleep/wake state organization.	\N	\N
22108539	Tracing the temporal structure of acoustic events is crucial in order to efficiently adapt to dynamic changes in the environment. In turn, regularity in temporal structure may facilitate tracing of the acoustic signal and its likely spatial source. However, temporal processing in audition extends beyond a domain-general facilitatory function. Temporal regularity and temporal order of auditory events correspond to contextually extracted, statistically sampled relations among sounds. These relations are the backbone of prediction in audition, determining both when an event is likely to occur (temporal structure) and also what type of event can be expected at a specific point in time (formal structure, e.g. spectral information). Here, we develop a model of temporal processing in audition and speech that involves a division of labor between the cerebellum and the basal ganglia in tracing acoustic events in time. As for the cerebellum and its associated thalamo-cortical connections, we refer to its role in the automatic encoding of event-based temporal structure with high temporal precision, while the basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical system engages in the attention-dependent evaluation of longer-range intervals. Recent electrophysiological and neurofunctional evidence suggests that neocortical processing of spectral structure relies on concurrent extraction of event-based temporal information. We propose that spectrotemporal predictive processes may be facilitated by subcortical coding of relevant changes in sound energy as temporal event markers.	\N	\N
22111542	The objectives were: (1) to examine the effects of a directional microphone with different directivity patterns and different microphone combinations on wind noise levels at the hearing aid output; and (2) to derive strategies appropriate for hearing aid selection and future designs. The in-situ frequency responses of a behind-the-ear hearing aid (BTE1) were matched when the hearing aid was programmed to dipole, hypercardioid, cardioids, or adaptive microphone mode. The in-situ frequency responses of another hearing aid (BTE2) were matched among an omnidirectional microphone (OMNI), an adaptive directional microphone (ADM), and a combination of an omnidirectional microphone at low frequencies and an adaptive directional microphone at high frequencies (MIXED). Flow noise was recorded at flow velocities of 0, 4.5, 9.0, and 13.5 m/s. Measurements were repeated for the hypercardioid pattern of BTE1. Flow noise recorded using directional microphones with four directivity patterns and using OMNI, ADM, and MIXED. Directional microphones with different directivity patterns generated similar flow noise levels. ADM yielded higher overall levels than OMNI and MIXED, which had similar overall levels. The adaptive directional microphone is the most versatile microphone for use in wind. The mixed microphone mode is a viable wind noise reduction option.	\N	\N
22115685	Cochlear implants have become a viable treatment option for individuals who present with severe to profound hearing loss. While there are several parameters that affect the successful use of this technology, quality programming of the cochlear implant system is crucial. This review chapter focuses on general device programming techniques, programming techniques specific to children, objective programming techniques, a brief overview of programming parameters of the currently commercially available multichannel systems, and managing patient complaints and device failures. The chapter also provides what the authors believe the future may hold for new programming techniques.	\N	\N
22119935	The loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential (LDAEP) is considered a noninvasive in vivo marker of central serotonergic functioning in humans. Nevertheless, results of genetic association studies point towards a modulation of this biomarker by dopaminergic neurotransmission. We examined the effect of dopaminergic modulation on the LDAEP using L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (levodopa)/benserazide (Madopar®) as a challenge agent in healthy volunteers. A double-blind placebo-controlled challenge design was chosen. Forty-two healthy participants (21 females and 21 males) underwent two LDAEP measurements, following a baseline LDAEP measurement either placebo or levodopa (levodopa 200 mg/benserazide 50 mg) were given orally. Changes in the amplitude and dipole source activity of the N1/P2 intensities (60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 dB) were analyzed. The participants of neither the levodopa nor the placebo group showed any significant LDAEP alterations compared to the baseline measurement. The test-retest reliability (Cronbachs Alpha) between baseline and intervention was 0.966 in the verum group and 0.759 in the placebo group, respectively. The administration of levodopa showed no effect on the LDAEP. These findings are in line with other trials using dopamine receptor agonists.	\N	\N
22122114	In this article we report on listener categorization of meaningful environmental sounds. A starting point for this study was the phenomenological taxonomy proposed by Gaver (1993b). In the first experimental study, 15 participants classified 60 environmental sounds and indicated the properties shared by the sounds in each class. In a second experimental study, 30 participants classified and described 56 sounds exclusively made by solid objects. The participants were required to concentrate on the actions causing the sounds independent of the sound source. The classifications were analyzed with a specific hierarchical cluster technique that accounted for possible cross-classifications, and the verbalizations were submitted to statistical lexical analyses. The results of the first study highlighted 4 main categories of sounds: solids, liquids, gases, and machines. The results of the second study indicated a distinction between discrete interactions (e.g., impacts) and continuous interactions (e.g., tearing) and suggested that actions and objects were not independent organizational principles. We propose a general structure of environmental sound categorization based on the sounds' temporal patterning, which has practical implications for the automatic classification of environmental sounds.	\N	\N
22122401	To assess the potential risk of hearing loss to young listeners, due to the use of personal listening devices (PLDs). The study included two parts: (1) A self-report questionnaire on music listening habits, and (2) Physical measurements of preferred listening levels, in quiet and in everyday background noise. Young teenagers aged 13 to 17 years. Part 1 included 289 participants with mean age of 14 years. Part 2 included 11 and 74 participants (2A and 2B) with a mean age of 15 years. Eleven listened to PLDs in quiet conditions (2A) and 74 in everyday background noise (2B). Questionnaire main findings indicated that most of the participants reported high or very high volume settings and demonstrated low awareness towards loud music listening consequences. Physical measurements corrected for diffuse field indicated mean preferred listening levels of: 82 (SD = 9) dBA in quiet, and 89 (SD = 9) dBA in the presence of background noise. The potential risk to hearing of PLDs users was calculated using the 8 hour equivalent level. More than 25% of the participants in the noisy condition were found to be at risk according to occupational damage risk criteria NIOSH, 1998.	\N	\N
22123457	Evidence for cortical sensory activation in the human fetus at the beginning of the third trimester of pregnancy was provided in a recent imaging study. Although hearing is functional before birth, it is not clear whether recognition of the mother's voice is learned in utero or rapidly following delivery. We developed an original fMRI procedure that allows for the specific exploration of fetal brain response to auditory stimuli. This procedure provides the first in vivo evidence for the development of maternal voice recognition in utero between 33 and 34 weeks of gestation. This methodology could have crucial implications in the study of fetal cognition.	\N	\N
22133495	A role for the cerebellum in cognition has been proposed based on studies suggesting a profile of cognitive deficits due to cerebellar stroke. Such studies are limited in the determination of the detailed organisation of cerebellar subregions that are critical for different aspects of cognition. In this study we examined the correlation between cognitive performance and cerebellar integrity in a specific degeneration of the cerebellar cortex: Spinocerebellar Ataxia type 6 (SCA6). The results demonstrate a critical relationship between verbal working memory and grey matter density in superior (bilateral lobules VI and crus I of lobule VII) and inferior (bilateral lobules VIIIa and VIIIb, and right lobule IX) parts of the cerebellum. We demonstrate that distinct cerebellar regions subserve different components of the prevalent psychological model for verbal working memory based on a phonological loop. The work confirms the involvement of the cerebellum in verbal working memory and defines specific subsystems for this within the cerebellum.	\N	\N
22137677	We assessed the relationship between brain structure and function in 10 individuals with specific language impairment (SLI), compared to six unaffected siblings, and 16 unrelated control participants with typical language. Voxel-based morphometry indicated that grey matter in the SLI group, relative to controls, was increased in the left inferior frontal cortex and decreased in the right caudate nucleus and superior temporal cortex bilaterally. The unaffected siblings also showed reduced grey matter in the caudate nucleus relative to controls. In an auditory covert naming task, the SLI group showed reduced activation in the left inferior frontal cortex, right putamen, and in the superior temporal cortex bilaterally. Despite spatially coincident structural and functional abnormalities in frontal and temporal areas, the relationships between structure and function in these regions were different. These findings suggest multiple structural and functional abnormalities in SLI that are differently associated with receptive and expressive language processing.	\N	\N
22143297	To demonstrate whether there are differences in the outcomes of children with cochlear implants using the techniques between mastoidectomy with posterior tympanotomy (MPTA) and suprameatal approach (SMA). A total of 44 congenitally deaf children who underwent cochlear implantation before the age of 5 years at the Sixth Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao tong University from January 2005 to March 2008 were included in this study. Children with severe mental retardation or with cochlear malformations were excluded. Each group had 22 patients; however, 4 patients in the SMA group and 5 in the MPTA group were not included in this study because the assessments for these patients were not available. All children were assessed before surgery and 6, 12, and 24 months after surgery with Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR). Each assessment was given by the child's speech therapist in the familiar environment of the child's home or school. At each interval, the CAP and SIR scores of each group were compared. For the both groups, CAP and SIR scores increased with the time of implant usage during the follow-up period after implantation. However, there were no significant differences in scores of CAP and SIR at the 4 time points between the SMA group and the MPTA group. Intelligible speech and auditory performance of children with cochlear implantation using the SMA were good. There were no differences between children implanted with the SMA technique versus the MPTA technique.	\N	\N
22155324	Temporal congruency promotes perceptual binding of multisensory inputs. Here, we used EEG frequency-tagging to track cortical activities elicited by auditory and visual inputs separately, in the form of steady-state evoked potentials (SS-EPs). We tested whether SS-EPs could reveal a dynamic coupling of cortical activities related to the binding of auditory and visual inputs conveying synchronous vs. non-synchronous temporal periodicities, or beats. The temporally congruent audiovisual condition elicited markedly enhanced auditory and visual SS-EPs, as compared to the incongruent condition. Furthermore, an increased inter-trial phase coherence of both SS-EPs was observed in that condition. Taken together, these observations indicate that temporal congruency enhances the processing of multisensory inputs at sensory-specific stages of cortical processing, possibly through a dynamic binding by synchrony of the elicited activities and/or improved dynamic attending. Moreover, we show that EEG frequency-tagging with SS-EPs constitutes an effective tool to explore the neural dynamics of multisensory integration in the human brain.	\N	\N
22163041	Insects often communicate by sound in mixed species choruses; like humans and many vertebrates in crowded social environments they thus have to solve cocktail-party-like problems in order to ensure successful communication with conspecifics. This is even more a problem in species-rich environments like tropical rainforests, where background noise levels of up to 60 dB SPL have been measured. Using neurophysiological methods we investigated the effect of natural background noise (masker) on signal detection thresholds in two tropical cricket species Paroecanthus podagrosus and Diatrypa sp., both in the laboratory and outdoors. We identified three 'bottom-up' mechanisms which contribute to an excellent neuronal representation of conspecific signals despite the masking background. First, the sharply tuned frequency selectivity of the receiver reduces the amount of masking energy around the species-specific calling song frequency. Laboratory experiments yielded an average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of -8 dB, when masker and signal were broadcast from the same side. Secondly, displacing the masker by 180° from the signal improved SNRs by further 6 to 9 dB, a phenomenon known as spatial release from masking. Surprisingly, experiments carried out directly in the nocturnal rainforest yielded SNRs of about -23 dB compared with those in the laboratory with the same masker, where SNRs reached only -14.5 and -16 dB in both species. Finally, a neuronal gain control mechanism enhances the contrast between the responses to signals and the masker, by inhibition of neuronal activity in interstimulus intervals. Thus, conventional speaker playbacks in the lab apparently do not properly reconstruct the masking noise situation in a spatially realistic manner, since under real world conditions multiple sound sources are spatially distributed in space. Our results also indicate that without knowledge of the receiver properties and the spatial release mechanisms the detrimental effect of noise may be strongly overestimated.	\N	\N
22166679	To evaluate the effect of different lipid fractions on auditory brainstem evoked responses in hyperlipidaemia. We conducted a single institution (medical college), prospective, cross-sectional study of 25 hyperlipidaemic patients and 25 normolipidaemic controls, all with a normal hearing threshold on pure tone audiometry. Brainstem evoked response audiometry results were recorded in both groups. The hyperlipidaemic group were further divided into two subgroups, based on the serum value of each lipid fraction: those with less than and those with greater than the mean serum value. These two subgroups were further compared with the control group. The hyperlipidaemic and normolipidaemic groups had statistically significant differences for all audiometry waves apart from the wave I and the III-V interpeak latencies. The subgroups had a statistically significant difference in brainstem evoked responses. We found a statistically significant association between low-density lipoproteins and many waveforms in the hyperlipidaemic group. We found that low-density lipoproteins were significantly associated with many waveforms in hyperlipidaemic patients. Thus, low-density lipoproteins may be important in auditory dysfunction.	\N	\N
22171054	Oscillatory entrainment mechanisms are invoked during attentional processing of rhythmically occurring stimuli, whereby their phase alignment regulates the excitability state of neurons coding for anticipated inputs. These mechanisms have been examined in the delta band (1-3 Hz), where entrainment frequency matches the stimulation rate. Here, we investigated entrainment for subdelta rhythmic stimulation, recording from intracranial electrodes over human auditory cortex during an intersensory audiovisual task. Audiovisual stimuli were presented at 0.67 Hz while participants detected targets within one sensory stream and ignored the other. It was found that entrainment operated at twice the stimulation rate (1.33 Hz), and this was reflected by higher amplitude values in the FFT spectrum, cyclic modulation of alpha-amplitude, and phase-amplitude coupling between delta phase and alpha power. In addition, we found that alpha-amplitude was relatively increased in auditory cortex coincident with to-be-ignored auditory stimuli during attention to vision. Thus, the data suggest that entrainment mechanisms operate within a delimited passband such that for subdelta task rhythms, oscillatory harmonics are invoked. The phase of these delta-entrained oscillations modulates alpha-band power. This may in turn increase or decrease responsiveness to relevant and irrelevant stimuli, respectively.	\N	\N
22171970	Coupling of thalamocortical networks through synchronous oscillations at gamma frequencies (30-80 Hz) has been suggested as a mechanism for binding of auditory sensory information into an object representation, which then becomes accessible for perception and cognition. This study investigated whether contralateral noise interferes with this step of central auditory processing. Neuromagnetic 40-Hz oscillations were examined in young healthy participants while they listened to amplitude-modulated sound in one ear and a multi-talker masking noise in the contralateral ear. Participants were engaged in a gap-detection task, for which their behavioural performance declined under masking. The amplitude modulation of the stimulus elicited steady 40-Hz oscillations with sources in bilateral auditory cortices. Analysis of the temporal dynamics of phase synchrony between source activity and the stimulus revealed two oscillatory components; the first was indicated by an instant onset in phase synchrony with the stimulus while the second showed a 200-ms time constant of gradual increase in phase synchrony after phase resetting by the gap. Masking abolished only the second component. This coincided with masking-related decrease of the P2 wave of the transient auditory-evoked responses whereas the N1 wave, reflecting early sensory processing, was unaffected. Given that the P2 response has been associated with object representation, we propose that the first 40-Hz component is related to representation of low-level sensory input whereas the second is related to internal auditory processing in thalamocortical networks. The observed modulation of oscillatory activity is discussed as reflecting a neural mechanism critical for speech understanding in noise.	\N	\N
22172546	Wernicke's aphasia is a condition which results in severely disrupted language comprehension following a lesion to the left temporo-parietal region. A phonological analysis deficit has traditionally been held to be at the root of the comprehension impairment in Wernicke's aphasia, a view consistent with current functional neuroimaging which finds areas in the superior temporal cortex responsive to phonological stimuli. However behavioural evidence to support the link between a phonological analysis deficit and auditory comprehension has not been yet shown. This study extends seminal work by Blumstein, Baker, and Goodglass (1977) to investigate the relationship between acoustic-phonological perception, measured through phonological discrimination, and auditory comprehension in a case series of Wernicke's aphasia participants. A novel adaptive phonological discrimination task was used to obtain reliable thresholds of the phonological perceptual distance required between nonwords before they could be discriminated. Wernicke's aphasia participants showed significantly elevated thresholds compared to age and hearing matched control participants. Acoustic-phonological thresholds correlated strongly with auditory comprehension abilities in Wernicke's aphasia. In contrast, nonverbal semantic skills showed no relationship with auditory comprehension. The results are evaluated in the context of recent neurobiological models of language and suggest that impaired acoustic-phonological perception underlies the comprehension impairment in Wernicke's aphasia and favour models of language which propose a leftward asymmetry in phonological analysis.	\N	\N
22176307	The parents' evaluation of aural/oral performance of children (PEACH) scale was developed to assess the effectiveness of amplification for children, based on a systematic use of parents' observations of children's performance in real-world environments. The purpose of the present study was to adapt the PEACH scale into the Malay language, and to collect normative data on a group of children with normal hearing. The participants were parents of 74 children aged between 3 months and 13 years of age. Parents were requested to observe their children's auditory/oral behavior in everyday life and to record their observations in the PEACH booklet. High internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.93) and item-total correlation were found (0.52-0.85). Similar to the published norms for English-speaking children, near-perfect scores were achieved by Malaysian children around 40 months of age. The adapted version can be used to evaluate amplification for children in the Malay speaking environment. The normative curve relating age to scores for the Malay PEACH can be used as a reference against which functional aural/oral performance of hearing-impaired Malaysian children can be evaluated.	\N	\N
22177319	To compare the audiologic outcome and feasibility of bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) and external auditory canal reconstruction (EACR) surgeries in pediatric patients presenting a congenital aural atresia (CAA). A retrospective chart review of 40 patients operated in our tertiary pediatric care center between 2002 and 2010 was performed. 20 patients underwent EACR, whereas another 20 patients were implanted with a BAHA device. Air conduction (AC), bone conduction (BC), pure tone average (PTA) and speech discrimination score (SDS) were compared preoperatively, and hearing gain (HG) postoperatively at 6 and at 12 months at frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 Hz. Operative time, complications and associated microtia were documented as well. EACR patients were graded retrospectively upon Jahrsdoerfer's classification. Preoperative AC were significantly different between groups, at 500, 1000 and 2000 Hz but not at 4000 Hz. BAHA group compared postoperatively to EACR group showed significantly a superior HG of 46.9 ± 7.0 dB (p<0.001) and of 39.8(7) ± 7.2(6.9)dB (p<0.001) at 6 months and at 1 year, respectively. Moreover, aided air thresholds from the EACR group revealed an audiologic status similar to those of the BAHA group patients, at 6 months and one year postoperatively. Both groups had a similar evolution of their BC, as well as of the incidence of complications. We report one case of transient facial paralysis in the EACR group. Total operative time is significantly lower (p<0.001) for a BAHA implantation (56 ± 21 min) than for EACR surgery (216 ± 174 min). No preoperative or postoperative correlation (Pearson correlation test; p>0.05) was found between patient's Jahrsdoerfer's score and their audiologic outcome. HG does not seem to be influenced by the presence of microtia. EACR, although constituting an attractive option, does not give acceptable results alone. It can however, when combined to conventional air conduction hearing aids, provide excellent audiologic outcomes comparable to BAHA. BAHA implantation is a reliable, safe and efficient therapeutic option that allows a significantly better audiologic outcome when compared to unaided EACR for patients with CAA.	\N	\N
22178340	Determine the prevalence of 35delG mutation in GJB2 gene in patients with prelingual deafness of no defined etiology whose underwent cochlear implant in the Otolaryngology Department at the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre and compare the speech recognition index using an open-set of sentences according to the presence or absence of the 35delG mutation. Cross-sectional study nested in a cohort. Were analyzed 37 patients with indeterminate etiology for deafness that underwent to cochlear implant. DNA was extracted and the mutations were studied using Polymerase Chain Reaction followed by gene sequencing. The prevalence of 35delG mutation was 11%. The speech recognition index was 72% in the group with 35delG mutation, and 30% in the group without this mutation (p>0.05). Prevalence of 35delG mutation in this study confirmed findings in the Brazilian literature. There was a clinically significant difference in hearing performance in patients with 35delG. Absence of statistical significance in this result might be attributed to the small number of patients with 35delG in our sample.	\N	\N
22178454	When speech is interrupted by noise, listeners often perceptually "fill-in" the degraded signal, giving an illusion of continuity and improving intelligibility. This phenomenon involves a neural process in which the auditory cortex (AC) response to onsets and offsets of acoustic interruptions is suppressed. Since meaningful visual cues behaviorally enhance this illusory filling-in, we hypothesized that during the illusion, lip movements congruent with acoustic speech should elicit a weaker AC response to interruptions relative to static (no movements) or incongruent visual speech. AC response to interruptions was measured as the power and inter-trial phase consistency of the auditory evoked theta band (4-8 Hz) activity of the electroencephalogram (EEG) and the N1 and P2 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs). A reduction in the N1 and P2 amplitudes and in theta phase-consistency reflected the perceptual illusion at the onset and/or offset of interruptions regardless of visual condition. These results suggest that the brain engages filling-in mechanisms throughout the interruption, which repairs degraded speech lasting up to ~250 ms following the onset of the degradation. Behaviorally, participants perceived speech continuity over longer interruptions for congruent compared to incongruent or static audiovisual streams. However, this specific behavioral profile was not mirrored in the neural markers of interest. We conclude that lip-reading enhances illusory perception of degraded speech not by altering the quality of the AC response, but by delaying it during degradations so that longer interruptions can be tolerated.	\N	\N
22178980	When hearing thresholds are measured with high-frequency resolution there is a pseudo-periodic variation in thresholds across frequency of up to 15-20dB. This variation is called threshold fine structure (previously referred to as threshold microstructure). Consequently, estimates of auditory status based on threshold measures can depend greatly on the specific frequency evaluated. The impact of threshold fine structure on the prediction of auditory status was examined by measuring detection thresholds of pure tones (providing an indication of threshold fine structure) and comparing them with thresholds obtained using linear sweeps, sinusoidally frequency modulated tones, and narrow-band noise. Spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs) were also obtained to confirm the established relationship between threshold fine structure and SOAEs. Thresholds obtained using linear sweeps and narrow-band noise provided stable threshold estimates indicating that such threshold estimates were less influenced by threshold fine structure. Consequently, thresholds obtained with these stimuli may provide estimates of cochlear status less dependent of the exact frequency being evaluated, permitting better prediction of performance on other psychoacoustic measures (such as cochlear tuning and loudness perception) and the properties of their more objective measures (such as otoacoustic emissions).	\N	\N
22180019	The purpose of the study was to determine why perceived spatial separation provides a greater release from informational masking in Chinese than English when target sentences in each of the languages are masked by other talkers speaking the same language. Monolingual speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese listened to semantically anomalous sentences in their own language when 1 of 3 maskers was present (speech-spectrum noise, a 2-talker speech masker in the same language, and a 2-talker speech masker in the other language). Both groups benefitted equally from spatial separation when the maskers were speech-spectrum noise or cross-language. Chinese listeners benefitted less from spatial separation than did English listeners when a same-language masker was used. Performance was scored in terms of the number of target words correctly identified; because Chinese target words were composed of 2 "stand-alone" morphemes, the authors also scored Chinese target words as correct when either of the morphemes was correctly identified. When this was done, Chinese and English listeners benefitted equally from spatial separation in all conditions. These results support a model in which release from informational masking in both monolingual English and Chinese listeners occurs because spatial separation facilitates morpheme access in both languages.	\N	\N
22183905	To evaluate the long-term results and predictive factors of a good outcome with the use of a total ossicular replacement prosthesis in children. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. The study included 114 children (116 ears). A total of 116 ears underwent total ossicular chain reconstruction with a titanium prosthesis. Cartilage was always used for tympanic membrane reconstruction. Audiological results were evaluated according to the guidelines of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Predictive factors of audiological results were determined. Logistic regression and χ(2) tests were used for statistical analysis. The mean age at surgery was 9.8 years. Ossiculoplasty was performed during second-look surgery in 91 ears (78.4%) and during another stage in 25 ears (21.6%). The first-stage procedure was always performed for cholesteatoma. Audiometric results were available for 116 ears at 1 year, for 89 ears (76.7%) at 2 years, and for 42 ears (36.2%) at 5 years. Closure of the average air-bone gap (ABG) to within 20 dB was achieved in 65 ears (56%) at 1 year. The mean (SD) preoperative and postoperative (at 1 year) ABGs were 41.0 (9.5) dB and 22.4 (12.6) dB, respectively. There were no cases of extrusion, but 17 luxations of the prosthesis were confirmed by computed tomography. Luxation occurred on average at 31.4 months. Only three 4000-Hz degradations of bone conduction were reported, with no dead ears. We examined 3 predictive factors of auditory results: preoperative ABG, footplate status, and postoperative otoscopic findings. Total ossiculoplasty is a reliable technique in children. Long-term hearing outcomes are stable and satisfactory, but luxation can occur at any time. Preoperative ABG and footplate status are negative predictive factors of auditory results.	\N	\N
22196341	It has recently been conjectured that dyslexia arises from abnormal auditory sampling. What sampling rate is altered and how it affects reading remains unclear. We hypothesized that by impairing phonemic parsing abnormal low-gamma sampling could yield phonemic representations of unusual format and disrupt phonological processing and verbal memory. Using magnetoencephalography and behavioral tests, we show in dyslexic subjects a reduced left-hemisphere bias for phonemic processing, reflected in less entrainment to ≈30 Hz acoustic modulations in left auditory cortex. This deficit correlates with measures of phonological processing and rapid naming. We further observed enhanced cortical entrainment at rates beyond 40 Hz in dyslexics and show that this particularity is associated with a verbal memory deficit. These data suggest that a single auditory anomaly, i.e., phonemic oversampling in left auditory cortex, accounts for three main facets of the linguistic deficit in dyslexia.	\N	\N
22196745	Prosody can be expressed not only by modification to the timing, stress and intonation of auditory speech but also by modifying visual speech. Studies have shown that the production of visual cues to prosody is highly variable (both within and across speakers), however behavioural studies have shown that perceivers can effectively use such visual cues. The latter result suggests that people are sensitive to the type of prosody expressed despite cue variability. The current study investigated the extent to which perceivers can match visual cues to prosody from different speakers and from different face regions. Participants were presented two pairs of sentences (consisting of the same segmental content) and were required to decide which pair had the same prosody. Experiment 1 tested visual and auditory cues from the same speaker and Experiment 2 from different speakers. Experiment 3 used visual cues from the upper and the lower face of the same talker and Experiment 4 from different speakers. The results showed that perceivers could accurately match prosody even when signals were produced by different speakers. Furthermore, perceivers were able to match the prosodic cues both within and across modalities regardless of the face area presented. This ability to match prosody from very different visual cues suggests that perceivers cope with variation in the production of visual prosody by flexibly mapping specific tokens to abstract prosodic types.	\N	\N
22199181	In perception studies, it is common to use vowel stimuli from standardized recordings or synthetic stimuli created using values from well-known published research. Although the use of standardized stimuli is convenient, unconsidered dialect and regional accent differences may introduce confounding effects. The goal of this study was to examine the effect of regional accent variation on vowel identification. The authors analyzed formant values of 8 monophthong vowels produced by 12 talkers from the region where the research took place and compared them with standardized vowels. Fifteen listeners with normal hearing identified synthesized vowels presented in varying levels of noise and at varying spectral distances from the local-dialect values. Acoustically, local vowels differed from standardized vowels, and distance varied across vowels. Perceptually, there was a robust effect of accent similarity such that identification was reduced for vowels at greater distances from local values. Researchers and clinicians should take care in choosing stimuli for perception experiments. It is recommended that regionally validated vowels be used instead of relying on standardized vowels in vowel perception tasks.	\N	\N
22199197	The current study measured, objectively and subjectively, how changes in speech rate affect recognition of English passages in bilingual listeners. Ten native monolingual, 20 English-dominant bilingual, and 20 non-English-dominant bilingual listeners repeated target words in English passages at five speech rates (unprocessed, two expanded, and two compressed), in quiet and in noise. For noise conditions, performance was measured at a signal-to-noise ratio that was determined through an adaptive procedure to avoid ceiling and floor effects. Listeners also made subjective judgments of speech rate, speech clarity, and performance confidence. In noise, stepwise improvement was observed as rate slowed down. A similar effect was not found in quiet. This pattern in performance was largely comparable across listener groups but was most robust in English-dominant listeners. Changes in speech rate and presence of noise significantly affected listeners' subjective ratings; however, no intergroup differences were observed for any of the subjective ratings. Bilingual listeners benefited from slow speech rates, more evidently so in noise than in quiet. Their performance, however, did not reach a monolingual level, even at the most favorable rate. Nonetheless, all listeners reported comparable confidence when processing temporally manipulated English passages.	\N	\N
22207311	We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irrespective of whether the speaker was Dutch or German, looking preferences for target words with /θ/ matched the preferences for producing /s/ variants in German speakers and /t/ variants in Dutch speakers (as determined via the production task), while a control group of English participants showed no such preferences. The perceptually most similar and most confusable /f/ variant (as determined via the discrimination task) was never preferred as a match for /θ/. These results suggest that linguistic experience with L2 pronunciations facilitates recognition of variants in an L2, with effects of frequency outweighing effects of perceptual similarity.	\N	\N
22212698	Auditory-evoked potentials represent the response of the auditory pathway to an auditory stimulus. Specific language impairment (SLI) children have delayed language development with difficulties in both understanding and producing spoken language. Hence, the purpose of this study was to determine whether a group of children with SLI had abnormal changes in the auditory middle latency response (AMLR). AMLR was obtained for 19 SLI children and they were studied and compared to normal. Audiological assessment and speech language tests were done for the study group. The results revealed no significant statistical differences between SLI children and the normal with regard to AMLR (P > 0.05). Our results suggest that children with SLI do not have abnormal auditory system response at the level measured by AMLR casting doubt on affection of the hypnotized origin of AMLR, mainly primary auditory cortex, as a cause for delayed language development in those children.	\N	\N
22212767	The LiSN & Learn auditory training software was developed specifically to improve binaural processing skills in children with suspected central auditory processing disorder who were diagnosed as having a spatial processing disorder (SPD). SPD is defined here as a condition whereby individuals are deficient in their ability to use binaural cues to selectively attend to sounds arriving from one direction while simultaneously suppressing sounds arriving from another. As a result, children with SPD have difficulty understanding speech in noisy environments, such as in the classroom. To develop and evaluate the LiSN & Learn auditory training software for children diagnosed with the Listening in Spatialized Noise-Sentences Test (LiSN-S) as having an SPD. The LiSN-S is an adaptive speech-in-noise test designed to differentially diagnose spatial and pitch-processing deficits in children with suspected central auditory processing disorder. Participants were nine children (aged between 6 yr, 9 mo, and 11 yr, 4 mo) who performed outside normal limits on the LiSN-S. In a pre-post study of treatment outcomes, participants trained on the LiSN & Learn for 15 min per day for 12 weeks. Participants acted as their own control. Participants were assessed on the LiSN-S, as well as tests of attention and memory and a self-report questionnaire of listening ability. Performance on all tasks was reassessed after 3 mo where no further training occurred. The LiSN & Learn produces a three-dimensional auditory environment under headphones on the user's home computer. The child's task was to identify a word from a target sentence presented in background noise. A weighted up-down adaptive procedure was used to adjust the signal level of the target based on the participant's response. On average, speech reception thresholds on the LiSN & Learn improved by 10 dB over the course of training. As hypothesized, there were significant improvements in posttraining performance on the LiSN-S conditions where the target and distracter stimuli are spatially separated and which specifically evaluate binaural processing ability (p ranging from <.003 to .0001, η2 ranging from 0.694 to 0.873). In contrast, there was no improvement on the LiSN-S control conditions where the target and distracter stimuli emanate from the same direction (p ranging from .07 to .86, η2 ranging from 0.362 to 0.004). Significant improvements were found posttraining on measures of memory, on one measure of attention, and on self-reported ratings of listening ability. There were no significant differences between post- and 3 mo posttraining scores on any of the assessment tools. The initial LiSN & Learn study has shown that children as young as 6 yr of age are able to complete the training (although some coaxing was needed in a minority of cases). Both parents and children have reported benefits from the training, and feedback from the trial has resulted in extra features being added to the software. In order to further evaluate the efficacy of LiSN & Learn to remediate binaural processing deficits in children a clinical trial is currently under way utilizing a randomized blinded control group design.	\N	\N
22212768	The Australian version of the Listening in Spatialized Noise-Sentences Test (LiSN-S) was originally developed to assess auditory stream segregation skills in children aged 6 to 11 yr with suspected central auditory processing disorder. The LiSN-S creates a three-dimensional auditory environment under headphones. A simple repetition-response protocol is used to assess a listener's speech reception threshold (SRT) for target sentences presented in competing speech maskers. Performance is measured as the improvement in SRT in decibels gained when either pitch, spatial, or both pitch and spatial cues are incorporated in the maskers. To collect additional normative data on the Australian LiSN-S for adolescents and adults up to 60 yr of age, to analyze the effects of age on LiSN-S performance, to examine retest reliability in the older population, and to extrapolate findings from the Australian data so that the North American version of the test can also be used clinically with older adults. In a descriptive design, normative and test-retest reliability data were collected from adolescents and adults and combined with previously published data from Australian children aged 6 to 11 yr. One hundred thirty-two participants with normal hearing aged 12 yr, 0 mo, to 60 yr, 7 mo, took part in the normative data study. Fifty-five participants returned between 2 and 4 mo after the initial assessment for retesting. Analysis of variance revealed a significant effect of age on LiSN-S performance (p < .01 for all LiSN-S measures, ηp2 ranging from 0.16 to 0.54). On the low and high cue SRT measures, planned contrasts revealed significant differences between adults and children aged 13 yr and younger, as well as between 50- to 60-yr-olds and younger adults aged 18-29 yr. Whereas there were significant differences between adults and children on the talker, spatial, and total advantage measures, there were no significant differences in performance in adults aged 18-60 yr. There was a small but significant improvement on retest ranging from 0.5 to 1.2 dB across the four LiSN-S test conditions (p ranging from .01 to <.001). However, there was no significant difference between test and retest on the advantage measures (p ranging from .143 to .768). Test-retest differences across all LiSN-S measures were significantly correlated (r ranging from 0.2 to 0.7, p ranging from .023 to <.00000001) and did not differ as a function of age (p ranging from .178 to .980). As there was no significant difference among adults aged 18-60 yr on the LiSN-S talker, spatial, and total advantage measures, it appears that the decline in ability to understand speech in noise experienced by 50- to 60-yr-olds is not related to their ability to use either spatial or pitch cues. This result suggests that some other factor/s contributes to the decline in speech perception in noise experienced by older adults that is reported in the literature and was demonstrated in this study on the LiSN-S low and high cue SRT measures.	\N	\N
22213908	Contrasting results have been reported regarding the phonetic acquisition of bilinguals. A lack of discrimination has been observed for certain native contrasts in 8-month-old Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 2003a), though not in French-English bilingual infants (Burns, Yoshida, Hill & Werker, 2007; Sundara, Polka & Molnar, 2008). At present, the data for Catalan-Spanish bilinguals constitute an exception in the early language acquisition literature. This study contributes new findings that show that Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants do not lose the capacity to discriminate native contrasts. We used an adaptation of the anticipatory eye movement paradigm (AEM; McMurray & Aslin, 2004) to explore this question. In two experiments we tested the ability of infants from Catalan and Spanish monolingual families and from Catalan-Spanish bilingual families to discriminate a Spanish-Catalan common and a Catalan-specific vowel contrast. Results from both experiments revealed that Catalan-Spanish bilingual infants showed the same discrimination abilities as those shown by their monolingual peers, even in a phonetic contrast that had not been discriminated in previous studies. Our results demonstrate that discrimination can be observed in 8-month-old bilingual infants when tested with a measure not based on recovery of attention. The high ratio of cognates in Spanish and Catalan may underlie the reason why bilinguals failed to discriminate the native vowels when tested with the familiarization-preference procedure but succeeded with the AEM paradigm.	\N	\N
22216557	The purpose of this research was twofold: firstly, to develop a music perception test (MPT) for hearing-aid users, and secondly, to evaluate the influence of non-linear frequency compression (NFC) on music perception with the use of the self-compiled test. This article focuses on the description of the development and validation of the MPT. To date, the main direction in frequency-lowering hearing-aid studies has been in relation to speech perception abilities. As hearing-aid technology has improved, interest has grown in musical perception as a dimension that could improve hearing-aid users' quality of life. The MPT was designed to evaluate different aspects of rhythm, timbre, pitch and melody. The development of the MPT could be described as design-based. Phase 1 of the study included test development and recording, while phase 2 entailed presentation of stimuli to normal hearing listeners (n = 15) and hearing-aid users (n = 4). Based on the findings of phase 2, item analysis was performed to eliminate or change stimuli that resulted in high error rates. During phase 3 the adapted version of the test was performed on a smaller group of normal hearing listeners (n = 4) and 20 hearing-aid users. Results proved that adults with normal hearing as well as adults using hearing aids were able to complete all the sub-tests of the MPT, although hearing-aid users scored lower on the various sub-tests than normal hearing listeners. For the rhythm section of the MPT normal hearing listeners scored on average 93.8% versus 75.5% of hearing-aid users; for the timbre section the scores were 83% versus 62.3% respectively. Normal hearing listeners obtained an average score of 86.3% for the pitch section and 88.2% for the melody section, compared with the 70.8% and 61.9% respectively obtained by hearing-aid users. This implies that the MPT can be used successfully for assessment of music perception in hearing-aid users within the South African context and may therefore result in more effective hearing-aid fittings taking place. The test can be used as a counselling tool to assist audiologists and patients in understanding the problems they experience regarding music perception, and might be used for future musical training in areas where participants experience problems in customising individual fittings.	\N	\N
22217385	Various recent studies attest that reading involves creating an implicit prosodic representation of the written text which may systematically affect the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in sentence comprehension. Research up to now suggests that implicit prosody itself depends on a partial syntactic analysis of the text, raising the question of whether implicit prosody contributes to the parsing process, or whether it merely interprets the syntactic analysis. The present reading experiments examine the influence of stress-based linguistic rhythm on the resolution of local lexical-syntactic ambiguities in German. Both speech production data from unprepared oral reading and eye-tracking results from silent reading demonstrate that readers favor syntactic analyses that allow for a prosodic representation in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate rhythmically. The findings contribute evidence confirming immediate and guiding effects of linguistic rhythm on the earliest stages of syntactic parsing in reading.	\N	\N
22221469	Auditory sustained responses have been recently suggested to reflect neural processing of speech sounds in the auditory cortex. As periodic fluctuations below the pitch range are important for speech perception, it is necessary to investigate how low frequency periodic sounds are processed in the human auditory cortex. Auditory sustained responses have been shown to be sensitive to temporal regularity but the relationship between the amplitudes of auditory evoked sustained responses and the repetitive rates of auditory inputs remains elusive. As the temporal and spectral features of sounds enhance different components of sustained responses, previous studies with click trains and vowel stimuli presented diverging results. In order to investigate the effect of repetition rate on cortical responses, we analyzed the auditory sustained fields evoked by periodic and aperiodic noises using magnetoencephalography. Sustained fields were elicited by white noise and repeating frozen noise stimuli with repetition rates of 5-, 10-, 50-, 200- and 500 Hz. The sustained field amplitudes were significantly larger for all the periodic stimuli than for white noise. Although the sustained field amplitudes showed a rising and falling pattern within the repetition rate range, the response amplitudes to 5 Hz repetition rate were significantly larger than to 500 Hz. The enhanced sustained field responses to periodic noises show that cortical sensitivity to periodic sounds is maintained for a wide range of repetition rates. Persistence of periodicity sensitivity below the pitch range suggests that in addition to processing the fundamental frequency of voice, sustained field generators can also resolve low frequency temporal modulations in speech envelope.	\N	\N
22224482	We reported a case of an elderly female patient affected by musical hallucinations (MHs) as the unique symptom of a right temporal ischemic stroke. A functional magnetic resonance imaging examination was performed in the patient and in five age- and sex-matched normal controls (NC) to detect the complex neural substrate subserving MHs in such a context. Although an activation pattern involving the primary auditory cortex and the temporal associative areas bilaterally was found in the patient and NC, a significant increased activation mostly located in right temporal cortex (in the ischemic area), was observed in the patient. Further functional neuroimaging studies should be performed to detect the complex neural pathways underlying MHs and to find out differences between these hallucinations and real music perception.	\N	\N
22227006	Aging disrupts neural timing, reducing the nervous system's ability to precisely encode sound. Given that the neural representation of temporal features is strengthened with musical training in young adults, can musical training offset the negative impact of aging on neural processing? By comparing auditory brainstem timing in younger and older musicians and nonmusicians to a consonant-vowel speech sound /da/. we document a musician's resilience to age-related delays in neural timing.	\N	\N
22232409	To compare the development of phonological skills in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay and to examine whether kindergarten phonological skills could discriminate these 2 groups. In a longitudinal study, 8 children with SLI and literacy delay, 10 children with SLI and normal literacy, and 14 typically developing children were studied from the last year of kindergarten to the start of Grade 3. A wide range of phonological tasks (phonological awareness [PA], verbal short-term memory [vSTM], and rapid automatized naming [RAN]) were administered yearly. The SLI group with literacy delay scored significantly lower than the typically developing children on almost all phonological tasks in all grades, whereas the SLI group with normal literacy scored significantly lower only on demanding PA and vSTM tasks. A combination of kindergarten PA and RAN skills could correctly classify 75% of the children with SLI. By including vSTM, the discriminatory value did not increase. Children with SLI and normal literacy at age 8;1 [years;months] continued to have difficulties with demanding PA and vSTM tasks. Children with SLI and poor PA and RAN in kindergarten were at high risk of developing literacy problems in a transparent orthography.	\N	\N
22237762	The objective of the study was to compare the performance of cochlear implantation between post-meningitic and non-meningitic patients, and to evaluate the impact on hearing outcome of technical advances in cochlear implant technology. Retrospective chart review was used as the study design. Twenty adults with post-meningitic profound hearing loss receiving unilateral or bilateral cochlear implants between 1990 and 2008 were tested. Results were compared to a control group of 46 adults implanted for a non-meningitic hearing loss, with the same pre-operative speech scores. Speech scores were poorer in post-meningitic patients compared to those of control group, whatever the duration after implantation (p < 0.0001). Speech scores of subjects implanted and fitted before 2001 were compared to those of subjects implanted after 2001, with the same duration of hearing loss. Performance improved with implants and processors available after 2001, with a magnitude of improvement higher in post-meningitic patients (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.05 in post-meningitic and control groups, respectively, two-way ANOVA). Consequently, speech scores of post-meningitic patients implanted after 2001 achieved those of control subjects (two-way ANOVA). Advances in cochlear implant technology and coding strategy improve hearing outcome in post-meningitic adult patients, who now achieve similar performance as those of non-meningitic patients.	\N	\N
22246139	Dynamic-range compression is routinely used in bilaterally fitted hearing devices. The objective of this study was to investigate how compression applied independently at each ear affects spatial perception in normal-hearing listeners and to relate the effects to changes in binaural cues caused by the compression for different types of sound. A semantic-differential method was used to measure the spatial attributes of sounds. Eleven normal-hearing participants responded to questions addressing certainty of location, diffuseness, movement, image splits, and externalization of sounds. Responses were given on seven-point scales between pairs of opposing terms. Stimuli included speech and a range of synthetic sounds with varying characteristics. Head-related transfer functions were used to simulate a source at an azimuth of -60° or +60°. Three processing conditions were compared: (1) an unprocessed reference condition; (2) fast-acting, wide-dynamic-range compression operating independently at each ear; and (3) imposition of a static bias in interaural level difference (ILD) equivalent to that generated by the compression under steady state conditions. All processing was applied in a high-frequency channel above 2 kHz. The three processing conditions were compared separately in two bandwidth conditions: a high-pass condition in which the high-frequency channel was presented to listeners in isolation and a full-bandwidth condition in which the high-frequency channel was recombined with the unprocessed low-frequency channel. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to group related questions based on similarity of participants' responses. This led to the calculation of composite scores for four spatial attributes: "diffuseness," "movement," "image split," and "externalization." Compared with the unprocessed condition, fast-acting compression significantly increased diffuseness, movement, and image-split scores and significantly reduced externalization scores. The effects of compression were greater when listeners heard the high-frequency channel in isolation than when it was recombined with the unprocessed low-frequency channel. The effects were apparent only for sounds containing gradual onsets and offsets, including speech. Dynamic compression had a much more pronounced effect on the spatial attributes of sounds than imposition of a static bias in ILD. Fast-acting compression at high frequencies operating independently at each ear can adversely affect the spatial attributes of sounds in normal-hearing listeners by increasing diffuseness, increasing or giving rise to a sense of movement, causing images to split, and affecting the externalization of sounds. The effects are reduced, but not eliminated, when listeners have access to undisturbed low-frequency cues. Sounds containing gradual onsets and offsets, including speech, are most affected. The effects arise primarily as a result of relatively slow changes in ILD that are generated as the sound level at one or both ears crosses the compression threshold. The results may have implications for the use of compression in bilaterally fitted hearing devices, specifically in relation to spatial perception in dynamic situations.	\N	\N
22248574	Feedback connections among auditory cortical regions may play an important functional role in processing naturalistic speech, which is typically considered a problem solved through serial feed-forward processing stages. Here, we used fMRI to investigate whether activity within primary auditory cortex (PAC) is sensitive to the perceived clarity of degraded sentences. A region-of-interest analysis using probabilistic cytoarchitectonic maps of PAC revealed a modulation of activity, in the most primary-like subregion (area Te1.0), related to the intelligibility of naturalistic speech stimuli that cannot be driven by stimulus differences. Importantly, this effect was unique to those conditions accompanied by a perceptual increase in clarity. Connectivity analyses suggested sources of input to PAC are higher-order temporal, frontal and motor regions. These findings are incompatible with feed-forward models of speech perception, and suggest that this problem belongs amongst modern perceptual frameworks in which the brain actively predicts sensory input, rather than just passively receiving it.	\N	\N
22251287	Previous behavioural research suggests that infants possess phonologically detailed representations of the vowels and consonants in familiar words. These tasks examine infants' sensitivity to mispronunciations of a target label in the presence of a target and distracter image. Sensitivity to the mispronunciation may, therefore, be contaminated by the degree of mismatch between the distracter label and the heard mispronounced label. Event-related potential (ERP) studies allow investigation of infants' sensitivity to the relationship between a heard label (correct or mispronounced) and the referent alone using single picture trials. ERPs also provide information about the timing of lexico-phonological activation in infant word recognition. The current study examined 14-month-olds' sensitivity to vowel mispronunciations of familiar words using ERP data from single picture trials. Infants were presented with familiar images followed by a correct pronunciation of its label, a vowel mispronunciation or a phonologically unrelated non-word. The results support and extend previous behavioural findings that 14-month-olds are sensitive to mispronunciations of the vowels in familiar words using an ERP task. We suggest that the presence of pictorial context reinforces infants' sensitivity to mispronunciations of words, and that mispronunciation sensitivity may rely on infants accessing the cross-modal associations between word forms and their meanings.	\N	\N
22256834	This study investigated the impact of an established behavioural dysarthria treatment on acoustic and perceptual measures of speech in two adults with Down syndrome (DS) and dysarthria to obtain preliminary measures of treatment effect, effect size and treatment feasibility. A single-subject A-B-A experimental design was used to measure the effects of the Lee Silverman Voice treatment (LSVT®) on speech in two adults with DS and dysarthria. Dependent measures included vocal sound pressure level (dB SPL), phonatory stability and listener intelligibility scores. Statistically significant improvements (p < 0.05) in vocal dB SPL and phonatory stability were present following treatment in both participants. Speech intelligibility scores improved in one of the two participants. These data suggest that people with DS and dysarthria can respond positively to intensive speech treatment such as LSVT. Further investigations are needed to develop speech treatments specific to DS.	\N	\N
22265373	We discuss experimental support for the existence of a corollary discharge signal of attention movement control and its formulation in terms of the corollary discharge of attention model of attention movement (CODAM). The data is from fMRI, MEG and EEG activity observed about 200 ms after stimulus onset in various attention paradigms and in which the activity is mainly sited in parietal and extra-striate visual areas. Moreover the data arises from neural activity observed before report of a subject's experience occurs. The overall experimental support for the existence of a copy of the attention movement control signal generates, it is suggested, a viable route to explore the relation between this signal and human consciousness, as concluded in the paper.	\N	\N
22280585	Despite many studies investigating auditory spatial impressions in rooms, few have addressed the impact of simultaneous visual cues on localization and the perception of spaciousness. The current research presents an immersive audiovisual environment in which participants were instructed to make auditory width judgments in dynamic bi-modal settings. The results of these psychophysical tests suggest the importance of congruent audio visual presentation to the ecological interpretation of an auditory scene. Supporting data were accumulated in five rooms of ascending volumes and varying reverberation times. Participants were given an audiovisual matching test in which they were instructed to pan the auditory width of a performing ensemble to a varying set of audio and visual cues in rooms. Results show that both auditory and visual factors affect the collected responses and that the two sensory modalities coincide in distinct interactions. The greatest differences between the panned audio stimuli given a fixed visual width were found in the physical space with the largest volume and the greatest source distance. These results suggest, in this specific instance, a predominance of auditory cues in the spatial analysis of the bi-modal scene.	\N	\N
22280586	When speech is in competition with interfering sources in rooms, monaural indicators of intelligibility fail to take account of the listener's abilities to separate target speech from interfering sounds using the binaural system. In order to incorporate these segregation abilities and their susceptibility to reverberation, Lavandier and Culling [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 387-399 (2010)] proposed a model which combines effects of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking. A computationally efficient version of this model is evaluated here under more realistic conditions that include head shadow, multiple stationary noise sources, and real-room acoustics. Three experiments are presented in which speech reception thresholds were measured in the presence of one to three interferers using real-room listening over headphones, simulated by convolving anechoic stimuli with binaural room impulse-responses measured with dummy-head transducers in five rooms. Without fitting any parameter of the model, there was close correspondence between measured and predicted differences in threshold across all tested conditions. The model's components of better-ear listening and binaural unmasking were validated both in isolation and in combination. The computational efficiency of this prediction method allows the generation of complex "intelligibility maps" from room designs.	\N	\N
22280718	The high soprano range was investigated by acoustic and electroglottographic measurements of 12 sopranos and high-speed endoscopy of one of these. A single laryngeal transition was observed on glissandi above the primo passaggio. It supports the existence of two distinct laryngeal mechanisms in the high soprano range: M2 and M3, underlying head and whistle registers. The laryngeal transition occurred gradually over several tones within the interval D#5-D6. It occurred over a wider range and was completed at a higher pitch for trained than untrained sopranos. The upper limit of the laryngeal transition during glissandi was accompanied by pitch jumps or instabilities, but, for most singers, it did not coincide with the upper limit of R1:f(0) tuning (i.e., tuning the first resonance to the fundamental frequency). However, pitch jumps could also be associated with changes in resonance tuning. Four singers demonstrated an overlap range over which they could sing with a full head or fluty resonant quality. Glottal behaviors underlying these two qualities were similar to the M2 and M3 mechanisms respectively. Pitch jumps and discontinuous glottal and spectral changes characteristic of a M2-M3 laryngeal transition were observed on decrescendi produced within this overlap range.	\N	\N
22289805	Human speech perception is highly resilient to acoustic distortions. In addition to distortions from external sound sources, degradation of the acoustic structure of the sound itself can substantially reduce the intelligibility of speech. The degradation of the internal structure of speech happens, for example, when the digital representation of the signal is impoverished by reducing its amplitude resolution. Further, the perception of speech is also influenced by whether the distortion is transient, coinciding with speech, or is heard continuously in the background. However, the complex effects of the acoustic structure and continuity of the distortion on the cortical processing of degraded speech are unclear. In the present magnetoencephalography study, we investigated how the cortical processing of degraded speech sounds as measured through the auditory N1m response is affected by variation of both the distortion type (internal, external) and the continuity of distortion (transient, continuous). We found that when the distortion was continuous, the N1m was significantly delayed, regardless of the type of distortion. The N1m amplitude, in turn, was affected only when speech sounds were degraded with transient internal distortion, which resulted in larger response amplitudes. The results suggest that external and internal distortions of speech result in divergent patterns of activity in the auditory cortex, and that the effects are modulated by the temporal continuity of the distortion.	\N	\N
22292057	To the extent that sensorineural systems are efficient, redundancy should be extracted to optimize transmission of information, but perceptual evidence for this has been limited. Stilp and colleagues recently reported efficient coding of robust correlation (r = .97) among complex acoustic attributes (attack/decay, spectral shape) in novel sounds. Discrimination of sounds orthogonal to the correlation was initially inferior but later comparable to that of sounds obeying the correlation. These effects were attenuated for less-correlated stimuli (r = .54) for reasons that are unclear. Here, statistical properties of correlation among acoustic attributes essential for perceptual organization are investigated. Overall, simple strength of the principal correlation is inadequate to predict listener performance. Initial superiority of discrimination for statistically consistent sound pairs was relatively insensitive to decreased physical acoustic/psychoacoustic range of evidence supporting the correlation, and to more frequent presentations of the same orthogonal test pairs. However, increased range supporting an orthogonal dimension has substantial effects upon perceptual organization. Connectionist simulations and Eigenvalues from closed-form calculations of principal components analysis (PCA) reveal that perceptual organization is near-optimally weighted to shared versus unshared covariance in experienced sound distributions. Implications of reduced perceptual dimensionality for speech perception and plausible neural substrates are discussed.	\N	\N
22292257	To investigate the effect of regular scuba diving on the hearing thresholds of sport divers who have no history of noise exposure or ear-related accidents. Comprehensive topographic examination of the peripheral hearing system of sport divers. Cross-sectional study. General sport diving community. 81 sport divers with a mean of 300 dives each were compared to a control group of 81 non-divers. Participants were classified into three age groups. Examination included microscopic otoscopy, tympanometry, pure-tone audiometry (PTA) including air and bone conduction, speech audiometry and otoacoustic emissions (OAE). PTA suggested significant differences of the hearing thresholds at several frequencies between sport divers and non-divers in all age groups, although a Bonferroni correction for multiple testing was applied. Interestingly, the results were contradictory. Divers obtained better hearing results in air conduction, whereas non-divers showed better results in bone conduction. Speech audiometry and OAE did not reveal significant differences. There are no published studies of the peripheral cochlear system of divers that have used a combination of PTA, speech audiometry and OAE. All studies suggesting hearing impairment in divers were based on PTA and might have been influenced by a lack of accuracy of PTA. Our results suggest that diving does not adversely affect the hearing system of sport divers. A thorough test battery of audiological methods implying PTA, speech audiometry and OAE may contribute to offer more reliable results to answer the question of whether commercial or military divers are at higher risk for hearing detoriation.	\N	\N
22293014	More than 100 years ago, Huey (1908/1968) indicated that the upper part of words was more relevant for perception than the lower part. Here we examined whether mutilated words, in their upper/lower portions (e.g., ), can automatically access their word units in the mental lexicon. To that end, we conducted four masked repetition priming experiments with the lexical decision task. Results showed that mutilated primes produced a sizeable masked repetition priming effect. Furthermore, the magnitude of the masked repetition priming effect was greater when the upper part of the primes was preserved than when the lower portion was preserved-this was the case not only when the mutilated words were presented in lower case but also when the mutilated words were presented in upper case. Taken together, these findings suggest that the front-end of computational models of visual-word recognition should be modified to provide a more realistic account at the level of letter features.	\N	\N
22305992	To form a unified percept of our environment, the human brain integrates information within and across the senses. This MEG study investigated interactions within and between sensory modalities using a frequency analysis of steady-state responses that are elicited time-locked to periodically modulated stimuli. Critically, in the frequency domain, interactions between sensory signals are indexed by crossmodulation terms (i.e. the sums and differences of the fundamental frequencies). The 3 × 2 factorial design, manipulated (1) modality: auditory, visual or audiovisual (2) steady-state modulation: the auditory and visual signals were modulated only in one sensory feature (e.g. visual gratings modulated in luminance at 6 Hz) or in two features (e.g. tones modulated in frequency at 40 Hz & amplitude at 0.2 Hz). This design enabled us to investigate crossmodulation frequencies that are elicited when two stimulus features are modulated concurrently (i) in one sensory modality or (ii) in auditory and visual modalities. In support of within-modality integration, we reliably identified crossmodulation frequencies when two stimulus features in one sensory modality were modulated at different frequencies. In contrast, no crossmodulation frequencies were identified when information needed to be combined from auditory and visual modalities. The absence of audiovisual crossmodulation frequencies suggests that the previously reported audiovisual interactions in primary sensory areas may mediate low level spatiotemporal coincidence detection that is prominent for stimulus transients but less relevant for sustained SSR responses. In conclusion, our results indicate that information in SSRs is integrated over multiple time scales within but not across sensory modalities at the primary cortical level.	\N	\N
22306805	In human communication, direct speech (e.g., Mary said, "I'm hungry") is perceived as more vivid than indirect speech (e.g., Mary said that she was hungry). This vividness distinction has previously been found to underlie silent reading of quotations: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that direct speech elicited higher brain activity in the temporal voice areas (TVA) of the auditory cortex than indirect speech, consistent with an "inner voice" experience in reading direct speech. Here we show that listening to monotonously spoken direct versus indirect speech quotations also engenders differential TVA activity. This suggests that individuals engage in top-down simulations or imagery of enriched supra-segmental acoustic representations while listening to monotonous direct speech. The findings shed new light on the acoustic nature of the "inner voice" in understanding direct speech.	\N	\N
22310087	To review outcomes following paediatric cholesteatoma surgery performed between 1999 and 2009 in a tertiary paediatric ENT unit. Retrospective case note review. A total of 137 mastoid procedures were recorded. Fifty-four per cent of children were observed to have disease involving the entire middle-ear cleft and mastoid complex. The revision rate was 25 per cent. Time to recurrence was one to three years in 17 patients, three to six years in five patients, and six to nine years in three cases. Eight of 25 revision cases demonstrated spontaneous improvement in air conduction thresholds following primary surgery. A high facial ridge and inadequate meatoplasty correlated highly with disease recurrence. Children tend to present with aggressive disease. Disease extent and ossicular chain involvement are associated with a higher risk of recurrent disease. Spontaneous improvement in hearing thresholds following cholesteatoma surgery should alert the clinician to recurrent disease.	\N	\N
22310374	The use of cochlear implants in the rehabilitation of hearing-impaired patients is now widely established and offers great benefits for children. To evaluate these benefits, the Evaluation of Auditory Responses to Speech (EARS®) assessment tool was designed in 1995. The objectives of this study were to assess the auditory perceptual skills in a large paediatric population over time, as well as to provide standardised values. An international multicentre study was conducted in 35 clinics from 1996 to 2009. During this period, 765 children were assessed with the EARS in 10 test intervals: pre-operative, first fitting and then 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after the first fitting and annually thereafter, up to a maximum period of 5 years. The auditory skills improved significantly over time for all speech perception tests and questionnaires as well as between single test intervals: pre-operative to 6 months, 6 months to 1 year and 1 year to 2 years. Standardised values of the children stratified according to their age at implantation were calculated. The auditory perceptual skills significantly improved over time. The standardised values will help professionals set therapeutic goals and counsel parents accordingly.	\N	\N
22314920	Although cochlear implant (CI) users frequently report deterioration of sound quality when listening to music, few methods exist to quantify these subjective claims. 1) To design a novel research method for quantifying sound quality perception in CI users during music listening; 2) To validate this method by assessing one attribute of music perception, bass frequency perception, which is hypothesized to be relevant to overall musical sound quality perception. Limitations in bass frequency perception contribute to CI-mediated sound quality deteriorations. The proposed method will quantify this deterioration by measuring CI users' impaired ability to make sound quality discriminations among musical stimuli with variable amounts of bass frequency removal. A method commonly used in the audio industry (multiple stimulus with hidden reference and anchor [MUSHRA]) was adapted for CI users, referred to as CI-MUSHRA. CI users and normal hearing controls were presented with 7 sound quality versions of a musical segment: 5 high pass filter cutoff versions (200-, 400-, 600-, 800-, 1000-Hz) with decreasing amounts of bass information, an unaltered version ("hidden reference"), and a highly altered version (1,000-1,200 Hz band pass filter; "anchor"). Participants provided sound quality ratings between 0 (very poor) and 100 (excellent) for each version; ratings reflected differences in perceived sound quality among stimuli. CI users had greater difficulty making overall sound quality discriminations as a function of bass frequency loss than normal hearing controls, as demonstrated by a significantly weaker correlation between bass frequency content and sound quality ratings. In particular, CI users could not perceive sound quality difference among stimuli missing up to 400 Hz of bass frequency information. Bass frequency impairments contribute to sound quality deteriorations during music listening for CI users. CI-MUSHRA provided a systematic and quantitative assessment of this reduced sound quality. Although the effects of bass frequency removal were studied here, we advocate CI-MUSHRA as a user-friendly and versatile research tool to measure the effects of a wide range of acoustic manipulations on sound quality perception in CI users.	\N	\N
22316007	To measure the acceptable noise level (ANL) with and without noise reduction algorithms (NRAs), and to predict ΔANL, i.e. the difference in acceptable noise level with and without NRAs. The ANL test was applied to three NRAs. Furthermore, the measured ΔANL was predicted using several methods based on either the calculation of the signal-to-noise ratio or correlation methods of the processed signals with an unprocessed reference signal. Ten normal-hearing and eleven hearing-impaired subjects accomplished the ANL test. In general, the ANL test could determine an increased acceptance of noise with some NRAs. However, great inter-individual differences also resulted that were attributed to audible distortions when an NRA was used. Prediction of the mean measured DANL was possible, but individual prediction of DANL failed due to inter-individual differences. Mean DANL was predicted more accurately for hearing-impaired subjects when individual hearing loss was taken into account. The ANL test is a suitable tool for measuring the advantage of one NRA. A prediction of the measured individual ΔANL failed. However, mean DANL could be predicted with some methods. Furthermore, the individual hearing loss should be taken into account for a more accurate prediction for hearing-impaired subjects.	\N	\N
22325920	Factors affecting perceptions of occupational suitability were examined for speakers who stutter and speakers who do not stutter. In Experiment 1, 58 adults who do not stutter heard one of two audio recordings (less severe stuttering, more severe stuttering) of a speaker who stuttered. Participants rated the speaker's communicative functioning, personal attributes, and suitability for 32 occupations, along with perceptions of the occupations' speaking demands and educational requirements. Perceived speaking demand strongly affected occupational suitability ratings at both levels of stuttering severity. In Experiment 2, 58 additional adults who do not stutter heard a recording of another adult in one of two conditions (fluent speech, pseudo-stuttering), and provided the same ratings as in Experiment 1. In the pseudo-stuttering condition, participants' perceptions of occupational speaking demand again had a strong effect on occupational suitability ratings. In the fluent condition, suitability ratings were affected primarily by perceived educational demand; perceived speaking demand was of secondary importance. Across all participants in Experiment 2, occupational suitability ratings were associated with ratings of the speaker's personal attributes and communicative functioning. In both experiments, speakers who stuttered received lower suitability ratings for high speaking demand occupations than for low speaking demand occupations. Ratings for many high speaking occupations, however, fell just below the midpoint of the occupational suitability scale, suggesting that participants viewed these occupations as less appropriate, but not necessarily inappropriate, for people who stutter. Overall, the findings support the hypothesis that people who stutter may face occupational stereotyping and/or role entrapment in work settings. At the end of this activity the reader will be able to (a) summarize main findings on research related to the work-related experiences of people who stutter, (b) describe factors that affect perceptions of which occupations are best suited for speakers who stutter and speakers who do not stutter, and (c) discuss how findings from the present study relate to previous findings on occupational advice for people who stutter.	\N	\N
22326589	The present study was aimed at investigating the relationship between the mismatch negativity (MMN) and psychoacoustical effects of sequential streaming on comodulation masking release (CMR). The influence of sequential streaming on CMR was investigated using a psychoacoustical alternative forced-choice procedure and electroencephalography (EEG) for the same group of subjects. The psychoacoustical data showed, that adding precursors comprising of only off-signal-frequency maskers abolished the CMR. Complementary EEG data showed an MMN irrespective of the masker envelope correlation across frequency when only the off-signal-frequency masker components were present. The addition of such precursors promotes a separation of the on- and off-frequency masker components into distinct auditory objects preventing the auditory system from using comodulation as an additional cue. A frequency-specific adaptation changing the representation of the flanking bands in the streaming conditions may also contribute to the reduction of CMR in the stream conditions, however, it is unlikely that adaptation is the primary reason for the streaming effect. A neurophysiological correlate of sequential streaming was found in EEG data using MMN, but the magnitude of the MMN was not correlated with the audibility of the signal in CMR experiments. Dipole source analysis indicated different cortical regions involved in processing auditory streaming and modulation detection. In particular, neural sources for processing auditory streaming include cortical regions involved in decision-making.	\N	\N
22326590	The primary goal of this study was to characterize the variability in auditory-nerve temporal response patterns obtained with the electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) within and across a relatively large group of cochlear-implant recipients. ECAPs were recorded in response to each of 21 pulses in a pulse train for five rates (900, 1200, 1800, 2400, and 3500 pps) and three cochlear regions (basal, middle, and apical). An alternating amplitude pattern was typically observed across the pulse train for slower rates, reflecting refractory properties of individual nerve fibers. For faster rates, the alternation ceased and overall amplitudes were substantially lower relative to the first pulse in the train, reflecting cross-fiber desynchronization. The following specific parameters were examined: (1) the rate at which the alternating pattern ceased (termed stochastic rate), (2) the alternation depth and the rate at which the maximum alternation occurred, and (3) the average normalized ECAP amplitude across the pulse train (measure of overall adaptation/desynchronization). Data from 29 ears showed that stochastic rates for the group spanned the entire range of rates tested. The majority of subjects (79%) had different stochastic rates across the three cochlear regions. The stochastic rate occurred most frequently at 2400 pps for basal and middle electrodes, and at 3500 pps for apical electrodes. Stimulus level was significantly correlated with stochastic rate, where higher levels yielded faster stochastic rates. The maximum alternation depth averaged 19% of the amplitude for the first pulse. Maximum alternation occurred most often at 1800 pps for basal and apical electrodes, and at 1200 pps for middle electrodes. These differences suggest some independence between alternation depth and stochastic rate. Finally, the overall amount of adaptation or desynchronization ranged from 63% (for 900 pps) to 23% (for 3500 pps) of the amplitude for the first pulse. Differences in temporal response properties across the cochlea within subjects may have implications for developing new speech-processing strategies that employ varied rates across the array.	\N	\N
22326591	There is evidence that humans represent numbers in the form of a mental number line (MNL). Here we show that the MNL modulates the representation of visual and haptic space both in healthy individuals and right-brain-damaged patients, both with and without left unilateral spatial neglect (USN). Participants were asked to estimate the midpoint of visually or haptically explored rods while listening to task-irrelevant stimuli: a small digit ("2"), a large digit ("8"), or a non-numerical auditory stimulus ("blah"). In a control silent condition, the bisection error of USN patients was biased rightwards (namely, the marker of USN) only in the visual modality. Regardless of the direction of the bisection error committed in silent trials, listening to the small digit shifted the perceived midline leftwards, and listening to the large digit shifted the perceived midline rightwards, compared to a control condition in which a neutral syllable ("blah") was presented. The shift induced by listening to numbers occurred independently of the modality of response (i.e., both in vision and haptics), and in every group of participants. Interestingly, the effect of auditory numbers processing on space estimation was overall larger for haptically than for visually explored space in all participants. In conclusion, the present data show that listening to irrelevant numbers affects space perception also in patients with left USN, indicating that the spatial representation and attention processes disrupted by USN are not involved in these numerical magnitude-spatial effects.	\N	\N
22326876	Individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia show deficiencies of basic neurophysiological sorting mechanisms. This study further investigated this issue, focusing on the two phenomena, laterality of coding and auditory forward masking. A specific audiometric method for use in psychiatry was the measuring set up to register brain stem audiograms (ABRs). A sample of 49 schizophrenic patients was compared with three control groups consisting of healthy reference subjects (n=49), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients (n=29), Asperger syndrome (AS) patients (n=13) and drug-induced psychotic patients (n=14). Schizophrenic patients showed significant abnormal laterality of brainstem activity in wave II of the auditory brainstem response (ABR) in comparison with all other study groups. Forward masking effects in the superior olive complex were coded significantly differently by schizophrenic patients compared to control groups except for the AS group. The results suggest deficits in the coding of auditory stimuli in the lower parts of the auditory pathway in schizophrenia and indicate that increased peripheral lateral asymmetry and forward masking aberrances could be neurophysiological markers for the disorder.	\N	\N
22327619	Visual cues are known to aid auditory processing when they provide direct information about signal content, as in lip reading. However, some studies hint that visual cues also aid auditory perception by guiding attention to the target in a mixture of similar sounds. The current study directly tests this idea for complex, nonspeech auditory signals, using a visual cue providing only timing information about the target. Listeners were asked to identify a target zebra finch bird song played at a random time within a longer, competing masker. Two different maskers were used: noise and a chorus of competing bird songs. On half of all trials, a visual cue indicated the timing of the target within the masker. For the noise masker, the visual cue did not affect performance when target and masker were from the same location, but improved performance when target and masker were in different locations. In contrast, for the chorus masker, visual cues improved performance only when target and masker were perceived as coming from the same direction. These results suggest that simple visual cues for when to listen improve target identification by enhancing sounds near the threshold of audibility when the target is energetically masked and by enhancing segregation when it is difficult to direct selective attention to the target. Visual cues help little when target and masker already differ in attributes that enable listeners to engage selective auditory attention effectively, including differences in spectrotemporal structure and in perceived location.	\N	\N
22329567	To determine the optimal seating position in a noisy classroom for students with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) without any auditory rehabilitation as compared to normal-hearing adults and student peers. Speech discrimination scores (SDS) for babble noise at distances of 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m from a speaker were measured in a simulated classroom measuring 300 m3 (reverberation time = 0.43 s). Students with UHL (n = 25, 10-19 years old), normal-hearing students (n = 25), and normal-hearing adults (n = 25). The SDS for the normal-hearing adults at the 3, 4, 6, 8, and 10 m distances were 90.0±6.4%, 84.7±7.9%, 80.6±10.0%, 75.5±12.6%, and 68.8±13.0%, respectively. Those for the normal-hearing students were 90.1±6.2%, 78.1±9.4%, 66.4±10.7%, 61.8±11.2%, and 60.8±10.9%. Those for the UHL group were 81.7±9.0%, 70.2±12.4%, 62.1±17.2%, 52.4±17.1%, and 48.9±17.9%. The UHL group needed a seating position of 4.35 m to achieve an equivalent mean SDS as those for normal-hearing adults seated at 10 m. Likewise, the UHL group needed to be seated at 6.27 m to have an equivalent SDS as the normal-hearing students seated at 10 m. Students with UHL in noisy classrooms require seating ranging from 4.35 m to no further than 6.27 m away from a teacher to obtain a SDS comparable to normal hearing adults and student peers.	\N	\N
22337493	Complete psychometric functions for phoneme and word recognition scores at 8 signal-to-noise ratios from -15 dB to 20 dB were generated for the first 10, 20, and 25, as well as all 50, three-word presentations of the Tri-Word or Computer Assisted Speech Recognition Assessment (CASRA) Test (Gelfand, 1998) based on the results of 12 normal-hearing young adult participants from the original study. The psychometric functions for both phoneme and word scores were very similar and essentially overlapping for all set sizes. Performance on the shortened tests accounted for 98.8% to 99.5% of the full (50-set) test variance with phoneme scoring, and 95.8% to 99.2% of the full test variance with word scoring. Shortening the tests accounted for little if any of the variance in the slopes of the functions. The psychometric functions for abbreviated versions of the Tri-Word speech recognition test using 10, 20, and 25 presentation sets were described and are comparable to those of the original 50-presentation approach for both phoneme and word scoring in healthy, normal-hearing, young adult participants.	\N	\N
22341758	The neural mechanisms used in tone rises and falls in Mandarin were investigated. Nine participants were scanned while they named one-character pictures that required rising or falling tone responses in Mandarin: the left insula and right putamen showed stronger activation between rising and falling tones; the left brainstem showed weaker activation between rising and falling tones. Connectivity analysis showed that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem which was present in rising tones was absent in falling tones. Additionally, there was a significant difference between the connection from the insula to the laryngeal motor cortex which was negative in rising tones but positive in falling tones. These results suggest that the significant projection from the laryngeal motor cortex to the brainstem used in rising tones was not active in falling tones. The connection from the left insula to the laryngeal motor cortex that differs between rising and falling tones may control whether the rise mechanism is active or not.	\N	\N
22343068	Interaural intensity disparities (IIDs), the cues all animals use to localize high frequency sounds, are initially processed in the lateral superior olive (LSO) by a subtractive process where inputs from one ear excite and inputs from the other ear inhibit LSO neurons. Such cells are called excitatory-inhibitory (EI) neurons and are prominent not only in the LSO but also in higher nuclei, which include the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus (DNLL) and inferior colliculus (IC). The IC is of particular interest since its EI cells receive diverse innervation patterns from a large number of lower nuclei, which include the DNLLs and LSOs, and thus comprise a population with diverse binaural properties. The first part of this review focuses on the circuits that create EI cells in the LSO, DNLL and IC. The second section then turns to the responses evoked by dynamic IIDs that change over time, as with multiple sounds that emanate from different regions of space or moving sound sources. I show that many EI neurons in the IC respond to dynamic IIDs in ways that are not predictable from their responses to static IIDs, IIDs presented one at a time. In the final section, results from in vivo whole cell recording in the IC are presented and address the connectional basis for the responsiveness to dynamic IIDs. The principal conclusion is that EI cells comprise a diverse population. The diversity is created by the particular set of inputs each EI type receives and is expressed in the differences in the responses to dynamic IIDs that are generated by those inputs. These results show that the construction of EI neurons in the IC imparts features that not only encode the location of an individual sound source, but also that allow animals to determine the direction of a moving sound and to focus and localize a single sound in midst of many sounds, as typically occurs in the daily lives of all animals.	\N	\N
22344314	To assess the effects of spatial frequency and phase alignment of mask components in pattern masking, target threshold vs. mask contrast (TvC) functions for a sine-wave grating (S) target were measured for five types of mask: a sine-wave grating (S), a square-wave grating (Q), a missing fundamental square-wave grating (M), harmonic complexes consisting of phase-scrambled harmonics of a square wave (Qp), and harmonic complexes consisting of phase-scrambled harmonics of a missing fundamental square wave (Mp). Target and masks had the same fundamental frequency (0.46 cpd) and the target was added in phase with the fundamental frequency component of the mask. Under monocular viewing conditions, the strength of masking depends on phase relationships among mask spatial frequencies far removed from that of the target, at least 3 times the target frequency, only when there are common target and mask spatial frequencies. Under dichoptic viewing conditions, S and Q masks produced similar masking to each other and the phase-scrambled masks (Qp and Mp) produced less masking. The results suggest that pattern masking is spatial frequency broadband in nature and sensitive to the phase alignments of spatial components.	\N	\N
22352523	Knowledge-based speech recognition systems extract acoustic cues from the signal to identify speech characteristics. For channel-deteriorated telephone speech, acoustic cues, especially those for stop consonant place, are expected to be degraded or absent. To investigate the use of knowledge-based methods in degraded environments, feature extrapolation of acoustic-phonetic features based on Gaussian mixture models is examined. This process is applied to a stop place detection module that uses burst release and vowel onset cues for consonant-vowel tokens of English. Results show that classification performance is enhanced in telephone channel-degraded speech, with extrapolated acoustic-phonetic features reaching or exceeding performance using estimated Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). Results also show acoustic-phonetic features may be combined with MFCCs for best performance, suggesting these features provide information complementary to MFCCs.	\N	\N
22352610	Recent acoustic descriptions have shown that Spanish and Portuguese vowels are produced differently in Europe and Latin America. The present study investigates whether comparable between-variety differences exist in vowel perception. Spanish, Peruvian, Portuguese, and Brazilian listeners were tested in a vowel identification task with stimuli sampled from the whole vowel space. The mean perceived first (F1) and second formant (F2) of every vowel category were compared across varieties. For both languages, perception exhibited the same between-variety differences as production for F1 but not F2, which suggests correspondence between produced F1 and perceived vowel height but not between F2 and frontness.	\N	\N
22352612	It is hypothesized that in sine-wave replicas of natural speech, lexical tone recognition would be severely impaired due to the loss of F0 information, but the linguistic information at the sentence level could be retrieved even with limited tone information. Forty-one native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking listeners participated in the experiments. Results showed that sine-wave tone-recognition performance was on average only 32.7% correct. However, sine-wave sentence-recognition performance was very accurate, approximately 92% correct on average. Therefore the functional load of lexical tones on sentence recognition is limited, and the high-level recognition of sine-wave sentences is likely attributed to the perceptual organization that is influenced by top-down processes.	\N	\N
22352622	The combined effect of low-pass filtering (cut-off frequencies between 500 and 3000 Hz) and periodic interruptions (1.5 and 10 Hz) on speech intelligibility was investigated. When combined, intelligibility was lower than each manipulation alone, even in some conditions where there was no effect from a single manipulation (such as the fast interruption rate of 10 Hz). By using young normal-hearing listeners, potential suprathreshold deficits and aging effects that may occur due to hearing impairment were eliminated. Thus, the results imply that reduced audibility of high-frequency speech components may partially explain the reduced intelligibility of interrupted speech in hearing impaired persons.	\N	\N
22352624	In the context of binaural audio rendering, choosing the best head-related transfer function (HRTF) for an individual from large databases poses several problems. This study proposes a method to reduce the size of a given HRTF database. Participants, 45 in total, were asked to rate the quality of binaural synthesis for 46 HRTFs. The lack of reciprocity in the ratings was noted. Results were used to create a perceptually optimized HRTF subset which satisfied all participants' judgments. The subset was validated using localization tests on a separate group of subjects with results showing reduced errors when subjects were given their best choice, rather than their worst choice HRTF.	\N	\N
22353565	Exposure to synchronous but spatially discordant auditory and visual inputs produces adaptive recalibration of the respective localization processes, which manifest themselves in measurable aftereffects. Here we report two experiments that examined the time course of visual recalibration of apparent sound location in order to establish the build-up and dissipation of recalibration. In Experiment 1 participants performed a sound localization task before and during exposure to an auditory-visual discrepancy. In Experiment 2, participants performed a sound localization task before and after 60, 180 or 300 exposures to the discrepancy and aftereffects were measured across a series of post-adaptation sound localization trials. The results show that recalibration is very fast. Substantial aftereffects are obtained after only 18-24 exposures and asymptote appears to be reached between 60 and 180 exposures. The rate of adaptation was independent of the size of the discrepancy. The retention of the aftereffect was strong, as we found no dissipation, not even after as few as 60 exposure trials.	\N	\N
22356177	Talkers hyperarticulate vowels when communicating with listeners that require increased speech intelligibility. Vowel hyperarticulation is said to be motivated by knowledge of the listener's linguistic needs because it typically occurs in speech to infants, foreigners and hearing-impaired listeners, but not to non-verbal pets. However, the degree to which vowel hyperarticulation is determined by feedback from the listener is surprisingly less well understood. This study examines whether mothers' speech input is driven by knowledge of the infant's linguistic competence, or by the infant's feedback cues. Specifically, we manipulated (i) mothers' knowledge of whether they believed their infants could hear them or not, and (ii) the audibility of the speech signal available to the infant (full or partial audibility, or inaudible). Remarkably, vowel hyperarticulation was completely unaffected by mothers' knowledge; instead, there was a reduction in the degree of hyperarticulation such that vowels were hyperarticulated to the greatest extent in the full audibility condition, there was reduced hyperarticulation in the partially audible condition, and no hyperarticulation in the inaudible condition. Thus, while it might be considered adaptive to hyperarticulate speech to the hearing-impaired adult or infant, when these two factors (infant and hearing difficulty) are coupled, vowel hyperarticulation is sacrificed. Our results imply that infant feedback drives talker behavior and raise implications for intervention strategies used with carers of hearing-impaired infants.	\N	\N
22359341	To date, the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of absolute pitch (AP) have remained elusive. In the present fMRI study, we investigated verbal and tonal perception and working memory in musicians with and without absolute pitch. Stimuli were sine wave tones and syllables (names of the scale tones) presented simultaneously. Participants listened to sequences of five stimuli, and then rehearsed internally either the syllables or the tones. Finally participants indicated whether a test stimulus had been presented during the sequence. For an auditory stroop task, half of the tonal sequences were congruent (frequencies of tones corresponded to syllables which were the names of the scale tones) and half were incongruent (frequencies of tones did not correspond to syllables). Results indicate that first, verbal and tonal perception overlap strongly in the left superior temporal gyrus/sulcus (STG/STS) in AP musicians only. Second, AP is associated with the categorical perception of tones. Third, the left STG/STS is activated in AP musicians only for the detection of verbal-tonal incongruencies in the auditory stroop task. Finally, verbal labelling of tones in AP musicians seems to be automatic. Overall, a unique feature of AP appears to be the similarity between verbal and tonal perception.	\N	\N
22361102	The ability of infants to develop recognition of a common stress pattern that is language specific has been tested mainly in trochaic languages with a strong-weak (SW) stress pattern. The goals of the present study were: (a) to test Hebrew-learning infants on their stress pattern preference in the Hebrew language, for which the weak-strong (WS) stress pattern is the common one, and (b) to test whether the infants would generalize any preference for the common stress pattern in Hebrew to English words, which belong to a different rhythmic class. Fifty-six 9-month-old Hebrew-learning infants were tested on their preference for SW and WS stress patterns using Hebrew and English bisyllabic words with the head-turn preference procedure. The infants showed preference for WS Hebrew words but not for SW English words. Hebrew-learning infants recognize the common stress pattern in their native language, supporting language-specific distributional learning by infants. This recognition, however, is not generalized to a foreign language with different prosodic characteristics.	\N	\N
22361320	The aim of this study was to determine which level-dependent hearing aid digital signal-processing strategy (DSP) participants preferred when listening to music and/or performing a speech-in-noise task. Two receiver-in-the-ear hearing aids were compared: one using 32-channel adaptive dynamic range optimization (ADRO) and the other wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) incorporating dual fast (4 channel) and slow (15 channel) processing. The manufacturers' first-fit settings based on participants' audiograms were used in both cases. Results were obtained from 18 participants on a quick speech-in-noise (QuickSIN; Killion, Niquette, Gudmundsen, Revit, & Banerjee, 2004) task and for 3 music listening conditions (classical, jazz, and rock). Participants preferred the quality of music and performed better at the QuickSIN task using the hearing aids with ADRO processing. A potential reason for the better performance of the ADRO hearing aids was less fluctuation in output with change in sound dynamics. ADRO processing has advantages for both music quality and speech recognition in noise over the multichannel WDRC processing that was used in the study. Further evaluations of which DSP aspects contribute to listener preference are required.	\N	\N
22362394	Schizophrenia is associated with deficits in the ability to perceive emotion based on tone of voice. The basis for this deficit remains unclear, however, and relevant assessment batteries remain limited. The authors evaluated performance in schizophrenia on a novel voice emotion recognition battery with well-characterized physical features, relative to impairments in more general emotional and cognitive functioning. The authors studied a primary sample of 92 patients and 73 comparison subjects. Stimuli were characterized according to both intended emotion and acoustic features (e.g., pitch, intensity) that contributed to the emotional percept. Parallel measures of visual emotion recognition, pitch perception, general cognition, and overall outcome were obtained. More limited measures were obtained in an independent replication sample of 36 patients, 31 age-matched comparison subjects, and 188 general comparison subjects. Patients showed statistically significant large-effect-size deficits in voice emotion recognition (d=1.1) and were preferentially impaired in recognition of emotion based on pitch features but not intensity features. Emotion recognition deficits were significantly correlated with pitch perception impairments both across (r=0.56) and within (r=0.47) groups. Path analysis showed both sensory-specific and general cognitive contributions to auditory emotion recognition deficits in schizophrenia. Similar patterns of results were observed in the replication sample. The results demonstrate that patients with schizophrenia show a significant deficit in the ability to recognize emotion based on tone of voice and that this deficit is related to impairment in detecting the underlying acoustic features, such as change in pitch, required for auditory emotion recognition. This study provides tools for, and highlights the need for, greater attention to physical features of stimuli used in studying social cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders.	\N	\N
22366255	The aim of this study was to test a multimodal event-related potential (ERP) paradigm in chronic solvent encephalopathy (CSE) to develop a sensitive method for the clinical diagnostics to CSE. The study comprised 11 CSE patients and 13 healthy controls. We used three tasks: an auditory odd-ball (AUD), a visual detection (VIS), and a recognition memory (MEM) task. The auditory and visual stimuli were presented in single- and dual-task conditions. The auditory P300 amplitude in single-task condition was smaller in the patient group than in the control group at the parietal (Pz) but not at the frontal midline electrode location. The auditory P300 response in the dual task condition AUD+VIS was unrecognizable in 8 of 11 patients and in 1 of 13 controls and in the AUD+MEM condition in 10 of 11 patients and in 4 of 13 controls. In the AUD+MEM condition, the auditory P300 amplitude at Pz was smaller in the patient group than in the control group. Reaction time for auditory stimuli in both dual conditions as well as for visual stimuli in AUD+VIS condition were in the patient group prolonged. The ERP results indicate that CSE patients present with slowed performance speed and difficulties in allocation of attention. Based on ERP results, the disturbance in brain activity in CSE seems to affect posterior aspects of the frontoparietal continuity. The multimodal paradigm seems promising as a tool for the clinical diagnostics of CSE.	\N	\N
22367093	A major focus of recent attempts to enhance cochlear implant (CI) systems has been to increase the rate at which pulses are delivered to the electrode array. One basis for these attempts has been the expectation that faster stimulation rates would lead to an enhanced representation of temporal modulation information. However, there is recent physiological and behavioral evidence to suggest that the reverse may be the case. Here, the effects of stimulation rate on the perception of amplitude modulation were assessed using both modulation detection and modulation frequency discrimination tasks for a range of pulse rates extending considerably higher than the highest rate tested in previous studies and for different speech-relevant modulation frequencies. Detection of sinusoidal amplitude modulation was assessed in five CI users using monopolar pulse trains presented to a single electrode at rates of 482, 723, 1447, 2894, and 5787 pulses per second (pps). Adaptive procedures were used to find the minimal detectable modulation depth at modulation frequencies of 10 and 100 Hz and at carrier levels of 25%, 50%, and 75% of the electrode's dynamic range. Discrimination of modulation frequency was examined for the same range of pulse rates for the highest carrier level. Similar adaptive procedures determined the minimum increase in modulation frequency that could be detected relative to reference modulation frequencies of 10, 100, and 200 Hz. In both tasks, level roving was implemented to minimize possible loudness cues. Consistent with previous evidence, modulation detection thresholds were better for higher carrier levels and lower modulation frequencies. When modulation depth at threshold was expressed in terms of the ratio of the depth of the modulation and the carrier level in dB (i.e., 20 log m), performance was significantly better at lower pulse rates. However, when modulation depth was expressed relative to dynamic range, the effect of pulse rate was no longer significant, reflecting the fact that dynamic range increases with pulse rate. Modulation frequency discrimination clearly worsened with increasing modulation frequency, but there was no significant effect of pulse rate. In contrast to some recent evidence, no clearly harmful effect of higher pulse rates on modulation perception was found. However, even with very fast stimulation rates, tested over a wide range of modulation frequencies and with two different tasks, there is no evidence of benefit from faster stimulation rates in the perception of amplitude modulation.	\N	\N
22384211	Recent behavioral neuroscience research revealed that elementary reactive behavior can be improved in the case of cross-modal sensory interactions thanks to underlying multisensory integration mechanisms. Can this benefit be generalized to an ongoing coordination of movements under severe physical constraints? We choose a juggling task to examine this question. A central issue well-known in juggling lies in establishing and maintaining a specific temporal coordination among balls, hands, eyes and posture. Here, we tested whether providing additional timing information about the balls and hands motions by using external sound and tactile periodic stimulations, the later presented at the wrists, improved the behavior of jugglers. One specific combination of auditory and tactile metronome led to a decrease of the spatiotemporal variability of the juggler's performance: a simple sound associated to left and right tactile cues presented antiphase to each other, which corresponded to the temporal pattern of hands movement in the juggling task. A contrario, no improvements were obtained in the case of other auditory and tactile combinations. We even found a degraded performance when tactile events were presented alone. The nervous system thus appears able to integrate in efficient way environmental information brought by different sensory modalities, but only if the information specified matches specific features of the coordination pattern. We discuss the possible implications of these results for the understanding of the neuronal integration process implied in audio-tactile interaction in the context of complex voluntary movement, and considering the well-known gating effect of movement on vibrotactile perception.	\N	\N
22401989	We used structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and voxel based morphometry (VBM) to investigate whether the efficiency of word processing in the non-native language (lexical efficiency) and the number of non-native languages spoken (2+ versus 1) were related to local differences in the brain structure of bilingual and multilingual speakers. We dissociate two different correlates for non-native language processing. Firstly, multilinguals who spoke 2 or more non-native languages had higher grey matter density in the right posterior supramarginal gyrus compared to bilinguals who only spoke one non-native language. This is interpreted in relation to previous studies that have shown that grey matter density in this region is related to the number of words learnt in bilinguals relative to monolinguals and in monolingual adolescents with high versus low vocabulary. Our second result was that, in bilinguals, grey matter density in the left pars opercularis was positively related to lexical efficiency in second language use, as measured by the speed and accuracy of lexical decisions and the number of words produced in a timed verbal fluency task. Grey matter in the same region was also negatively related to the age at which the second language was acquired. This is interpreted in terms of previous findings that associated the left pars opercularis with phonetic expertise in the native language.	\N	\N
22406661	Detection performance is impaired for a visual target presented in an apparent motion (AM) trajectory, and this AM interference weakens when orientation information is inconsistent between the target and AM stimuli. These indicate that the target is perceptually suppressed by internal object representations of AM stimuli established along the AM trajectory. Here, we showed that transient sounds presented together with AM stimuli could enhance the magnitude of AM interference. Furthermore, this auditory effect attenuated when frequencies of the sounds were inconsistent during AM. We also confirmed that the sounds wholly elevated the magnitude of AM interference irrespective of the inconsistency in orientation information between the target and AM stimuli when the saliency of the sounds was maintained. These results suggest that sounds can contribute to the robust establishment and spatiotemporal maintenance of the internal object representation of an AM stimulus.	\N	\N
22410729	To compare temporal aspects of peripheral neural responses and central auditory perception between groups of younger adult and elderly cochlear implant users. Cohort study. Academic hospital and cochlear implant center. Adult cochlear implant users aged 28 to 57 years in the younger group (n = 5) and 61 to 89 years (n = 9) in the elderly group. All subjects used Advanced Bionics devices. Diagnostic. Time constants of neural (i.e., electrically evoked compound action potentials [ECAPs]) and perceptual recovery from forward masking. Interstimulus intervals (ISIs) were varied in both experiments. ECAP recovery rates were equivalent between groups, and no correlation was found between ECAP recovery and age. No correlations were found between ECAP recovery and speech perception. Psychophysical recovery was significantly slower in the elderly compared with the younger subjects (p < 0.0005), with a significant effect of age (R2 = 0.70, p < 0.0005). At the longest ISI (240 ms), elderly subjects experienced a mean maximum threshold shift of 35.2% (relative to 1 ms ISI) versus 14.8% for younger subjects. There was a significant positive relationship between psychophysical recovery and consonant-nucleus-consonant word scores (R2 = 0.62, p < 0.001), although no relationship was found with Hearing in Noise Test sentences. These findings suggest that difficulties observed in speech perception by elderly CI users may be due to age-related changes in the central rather than peripheral auditory system. With further study, these results may provide information to allow clinicians to assess patients' temporal processing abilities and facilitate setting program parameters that will maximize their auditory perceptual experience with a cochlear implant.	\N	\N
22411592	Gender priming studies have demonstrated facilitation of noun production following pre-activation of a target noun's grammatical gender. Findings provide support for models in which syntactic information relating to words is stored within the lexicon and activated during lexical retrieval. Priming effects are observed in the context of determiner plus noun phrase production. Few studies demonstrate gender priming effects in bare noun production (i.e., nouns in isolation). We investigated the effects of English determiner primes on bare mass and count noun production. In two experiments, participants named pictures after exposure to primes involving congruent, incongruent and neutral determiners. Facilitation of noun production by congruent and neutral determiner primes was found in both experiments. The results suggest that noun phrase syntax is activated in lexical retrieval, even when not explicitly required for production. Post hoc analysis of the relative frequency of congruent and incongruent prime-target pairs provides support for a frequency-based interpretation of the data.	\N	\N
22423705	The frequency response and sensitivity of the ER-3A and ER-2 insert earphones are measured in the occluded-ear simulator using three ear canal extensions. Compared to the other two extensions, the DB 0370 (Brüel & Kjær), which is recommended by the international standards, introduces a significant resonance peak around 4500 Hz. The ER-3A has an amplitude response like a band-pass filter (1400 Hz, 6 dB/octave -4000 Hz, -36 dB/octave), and a group delay with "ripples" of up to ±0.5 ms, while the ER-2 has an amplitude response, and a group delay which are flat and smooth up to above 10000 Hz. Both earphones are used to record auditory brainstem responses, ABRs, from 22 normal-hearing ears in response to two chirps and a click at levels from 20 to 80 dB nHL. While the click-ABRs are slightly larger for ER-2 than for ER-3A, the chirp-ABRs are much larger for ER-2 than for ER-3A at levels below 60 dB nHL. With a simulated amplitude response of the ER-3A and the smooth group delay of the ER-2 it is shown that the increased chirp-ABR amplitude with the ER-2 is caused by its broader amplitude response and not by its smoother group delay.	\N	\N
22426232	Rapid information processing in the human brain is vital to survival in a highly dynamic environment. The key tool humans use to exchange information is spoken language, but the exact speed of the neuronal mechanisms underpinning speech comprehension is still unknown. Here we investigate the time course of neuro-lexical processing by analyzing neuromagnetic brain activity elicited in response to psycholinguistically and acoustically matched groups of words and pseudowords. We show an ultra-early dissociation in cortical activation elicited by these stimulus types, emerging ∼50 ms after acoustic information required for word identification first becomes available. This dissociation is the earliest brain signature of lexical processing of words so far reported, and may help explain the evolutionary advantage of human spoken language.	\N	\N
22436117	Assessment of interaural asymmetry (IA) on dichotic listening tests becomes challenging when accuracy on one or both ears are at ceiling. Cognitive task demands are often increased to avoid this situation, raising the possibility that non-auditory-specific processes will further influence IA estimation. To investigate the utility of low-pass filtered dichotic speech stimuli (dichotic filtered words [DFWs]) as a potential auditory-specific technique for increasing task difficulty in the dichotic listening paradigm. A prospective experimental study investigating differences in IA observed for a group of young adults on three dichotic listening tasks differentiated on the basis of stimulus type (unfiltered words, DFWs) and/or mode of test administration (divided attention [DIV]; directed attention [DIR]). Thirty-two adults between 18 and 34 yr of age participated in the study. Accuracy scores on each ear and normalized values of IA (via laterality index) served as dependent measures evaluated in a repeated-measures ANOVA design. Correlation and regression analyses were carried out to investigate potential relationships between participants' behavioral accuracy to experimental stimuli and the magnitude of observed IA. Behavioral profiles of IA were constructed for each participant. Using a traditional DIV test mode, DFW stimuli produced a significantly larger right-ear advantage (REA) as compared to unfiltered speech. The magnitude of the average REA to DFW stimuli was not statistically different between DIV and DIR test modes for the group. Inspection of individual performances, however, revealed that out of the participants who demonstrated meaningful IA during DIV, approximately half produced the same or greater amount of IA during DIR whereas half showed a relative decrease. Participants' accuracy to left-sided stimuli was most related to the magnitude of observed IA across tasks. The utility of low-pass filtered speech may be helpful in the evaluation of IA obtained during dichotic testing.	\N	\N
22436413	The aim of this study was to report speech performance in quiet and in noise, sound localization with cochlear implanted children bilaterally. Their performances were compared also in unilateral conditions. In addition, speech and language evaluation was analyzed. Twenty-three children implanted with Neurelec Digisonic SP devices in 3 tertiary centres were tested on a battery of speech perception tests in quiet and in noise. Localization was assessed by lateralization tasks (90° and 30°). Progress in speech and language development and subjective assessment of benefit were assessed using several rating scales and questionnaires (categories of auditory perception, speech intelligibility rating, family participating rating scale). Children scored better when tested in bilateral conditions rather than in unilateral conditions. In quiet, the mean scores for the poorer and better side were 52% and 73%, respectively. In the bilateral condition, the mean score increased to 83%. In noise, the mean scores were 39% and 57% respectively, which increased to a mean of 70% in the bilateral condition. Nine children (<9 years) completed the ±90° lateralization task. For both unilateral conditions performance was not significantly different from chance level. In the bilateral condition, the mean score was 86%. The ±30° lateralization score was completed by eight of the older children (>9 years). The scores in the unilateral conditions were closed to chance level, but significantly better in the bilateral condition (mean of 86%). Performances in bilateral conditions were significantly better than in unilateral conditions on speech perception in quiet and in noise. Localization was significantly better when tested in the bilateral condition for ±90° lateralization task for the younger children and the ±30° task for the older children. All these results supported the hypothesis than bilateral cochlear implantation is more beneficial than unilateral implantation in children.	\N	\N
22436438	It has been demonstrated that written and spoken language processing are tightly linked. Here we focus on the development of this relationship at the time children start reading and writing. We hypothesize that the newly acquired knowledge about graphemes shapes lexical access in neural spoken word recognition. A group of preliterate children (six years old) and two groups of beginning readers (six and eight years old) were tested in a spoken word identification task. Using word onset priming we compared behavioural and neural facilitation for target words in identical prime-target pairs (e.g., mon-monster) and in prime target pairs that varied in the first speech sound (e.g., non-monster, Variation condition). In both groups of beginning readers priming was less effective in the Variation condition than in the Identity condition. This was indexed by less behavioural facilitation and enhanced P350 amplitudes in the event related potentials (ERPs). In the group of preliterate children, by contrast, both conditions did not differ. Together these results reveal that lexical access in beginning readers is based on more acoustic detail than lexical access in preliterate children. The results are discussed in the light of bidirectional speech and print interactions in readers.	\N	\N
22445915	Developmental dyslexia is associated with impaired speech-in-noise perception. The goal of the present research was to further characterize this deficit in dyslexic adults. In order to specify the mechanisms and processing strategies used by adults with dyslexia during speech-in-noise perception, we explored the influence of background type, presenting single target-words against backgrounds made of cocktail party sounds, modulated speech-derived noise or stationary noise. We also evaluated the effect of three listening configurations differing in terms of the amount of spatial processing required. In a monaural condition, signal and noise were presented to the same ear while in a dichotic situation, target and concurrent sound were presented to two different ears, finally in a spatialised configuration, target and competing signals were presented as if they originated from slightly differing positions in the auditory scene. Our results confirm the presence of a speech-in-noise perception deficit in dyslexic adults, in particular when the competing signal is also speech, and when both signals are presented to the same ear, an observation potentially relating to phonological accounts of dyslexia. However, adult dyslexics demonstrated better levels of spatial release of masking than normal reading controls when the background was speech, suggesting that they are well able to rely on denoising strategies based on spatial auditory scene analysis strategies.	\N	\N
22465105	Increased early identification of hearing loss has led to infants younger than 24 months of age being implanted with cochlear implants. The objective of this study was to assess early speech development in children implanted with a cochlear implant before 24 months of age using the German questionnaire Elternfragebogen für Risikokinder 2 (ELFRA-2), and to compare these results to normative data of the ELFRA-2 in order to determine any performance differences. Two groups of children were included in this study. The first group included 6 children with a mean age at implantation of 11 months (range: 8-14 months). These children were tested by their parents or caretakers with the ELFRA-2 at the chronological age of 24 months. The second group included 9 children with a mean age at implantation of 13 months (range: 6-20 months) who were tested with the ELFRA-2 after 24 months of cochlear implant use. Comparison analyses of children tested with the ELFRA-2 demonstrated a statistically significant difference in all ELFRA-2 scales between children with cochlear implants (CIs) at the chronological age of 24 months and the norm group (productive vocabulary: p=0.002; syntax: p=0.003; and morphology: p<0.001), and no significant difference between children with CIs at 24 months of device use and the norm group in all scales (productive vocabulary: p=0.335; syntax: p=0.965; and morphology: p=0.304). Children implanted before 24 months of age reach a speech production level after 24 months of device use that is comparable to that of their normal hearing peers.	\N	\N
22477057	Response interference (or response conflict) refers to the phenomenon whereby response times to a target stimulus are longer in the presence of distractor stimuli that indicate contrary motor responses. Response interference has been observed even when the distractor stimuli cannot be discriminated above chance levels. These results raise the question of whether response interference might be driven automatically by the physical distractor stimuli, independently of one's subjective perception of the distractors. Using a modified version of the Eriksen flanker task, we applied metacontrast masks to the flanker stimuli and measured their subjective visibility after each trial. We found converging lines of evidence that the subjective perception of flankers contributed to response interference, over and above the contribution of automatic processing of the stimulus itself. A factorial analysis revealed that the objective, physical congruency of target and flankers and the subjective, perceptual congruency of target and flankers make additive, noninteracting contributions to target response interference, suggesting that the two interference effects originate from independent levels or stages of cognitive processing.	\N	\N
22480024	The majority of research on prosody in conversation to date has focused on exploring the role of individual prosodic features, such as certain types of pitch accent, pitch register or voice quality, for the accomplishment of specified social actions. From this research the picture emerges that when it comes to the implementation of specific actions at specific sequential locations conversationalists employ prosodic features systematically, but also with considerable variation, and indeed flexibility. This paper suggests a further line of enquiry, which pursues a wider, more fundamental role of prosody for interaction, and which does not focus on individual prosodic practices or features, but on participants' collaborative use of prosody for the implementation of one of the most basic interactional decisions: whether to continue a previously established action trajectory, or whether to start a new one. The data and findings of recent research make it clear that prosody, and in fact talk-in-interaction as such, is not appropriately defined by reference to individual features, speakers, locations and actions alone, but must be approached as a resource and negotiating strategy for social interaction. Prosody, therefore, must be described according to its role for both the accomplishment, and the coordination of actions across turns and participants.	\N	\N
22484251	It has been argued that the human visual system is optimized for identification of broadband objects embedded in stimuli possessing orientation averaged power spectra fall-offs that obey the 1/f(β) relationship typically observed in natural scene imagery (i.e., β=2.0 on logarithmic axes). Here, we were interested in whether individual spatial channels leading to recognition are functionally optimized for narrowband targets when masked by noise possessing naturalistic image statistics (β=2.0). The current study therefore explores the impact of variable β noise masks on the identification of narrowband target stimuli ranging in spatial complexity, while simultaneously controlling for physical or perceived differences between the masks. The results show that β=2.0 noise masks produce the largest identification thresholds regardless of target complexity, and thus do not seem to yield functionally optimized channel processing. The differential masking effects are discussed in the context of contrast gain control.	\N	\N
22485043	To examine the role of morphology in verbal working memory. Forty nine children, all native speakers of Arabic from the same region and of the same dialect, performed a Listening Word Span Task, whereby they had to recall Arabic uninflected words (i.e., base words), inflected words with regular (possessive) morphology, or inflected words with irregular (broken plural) morphology. Each of these words was at the end of a sentence (henceforth, target word). The participant's task was to listen to a series of sentences and then recall the target words. Recall of inflected words was significantly poorer than uninflected words, and recall of words with regular morphology was significantly poorer than recall of words with irregular morphology. These findings, albeit preliminary, suggest a role of morphology in verbal working memory. They also suggest that, at least in Arabic, regular morphological forms are decomposed into their component elements and hence impose an extra load on the central executive and episodic buffer components of working memory. Furthermore, in concert with findings from other studies, they suggest that the effect of morphology on working memory is probably language-specific. The clinical implications of the present findings are addressed.	\N	\N
22488914	The relationship between the evoked responses (ERPs/ERFs) and the event-related changes in EEG/MEG power that can be observed during sentence-level language comprehension is as yet unclear. This study addresses a possible relationship between MEG power changes and the N400m component of the event-related field. Whole-head MEG was recorded while subjects listened to spoken sentences with incongruent (IC) or congruent (C) sentence endings. A clear N400m was observed over the left hemisphere, and was larger for the IC sentences than for the C sentences. A time-frequency analysis of power revealed a decrease in alpha and beta power over the left hemisphere in roughly the same time range as the N400m for the IC relative to the C condition. A linear regression analysis revealed a positive linear relationship between N400m and beta power for the IC condition, not for the C condition. No such linear relation was found between N400m and alpha power for either condition. The sources of the beta decrease were estimated in the LIFG, a region known to be involved in semantic unification operations. One source of the N400m was estimated in the left superior temporal region, which has been related to lexical retrieval. We interpret our data within a framework in which beta oscillations are inversely related to the engagement of task-relevant brain networks. The source reconstructions of the beta power suppression and the N400m effect support the notion of a dynamic communication between the LIFG and the left superior temporal region during language comprehension.	\N	\N
22501035	Masked detection thresholds can often be improved by introducing coherent masker amplitude modulation across frequency, a phenomenon referred to as comodulation masking release (CMR). While CMR can be large for detection, it is smaller for supra-threshold tasks, such as intensity discrimination. In this experiment, frequency discrimination for a 1000-Hz tone near threshold was found to be poorer in an amplitude-modulated than a steady bandpass noise. These results parallel previous findings for intensity discrimination. Although this study examined the relatively simple task of frequency discrimination, the results may have implications for more complex tasks, such as speech recognition in fluctuating noise.	\N	\N
22502488	Simultaneous, on-frequency masking is commonly assumed to be linear with increasing noise intensity. However, some evidence suggests that, expressed in terms of signal-to-noise ratio changes with background level changes, masking slopes can vary from 0 dB/dB. These results and evidence from a large sample of subjects with normal and impaired hearing demonstrate level-dependent changes in masking, large individual differences in masking among subjects with similar thresholds in quiet, and significant correlations of masking slope with other estimates of auditory function measured in the same backgrounds.	\N	\N
22503556	Several studies show that the perception of occlusion may affect various aspects of motion perception. Here we present data indicating that occlusion cues also influence the visual interpolation of sampled motion. Normally, sampled motion stimuli are perceived as less smooth and jerkier when the spatial gaps between successive presentations of the "moving" target stimulus increase. Adding surfaces occluding the spatial gaps, however, we found that the perceived smoothness of motion was not only better, but also independent of the gap width. We argue that this effect occurs because the visual system attributes the interruptions in the motion path to occlusion rather than to the moving object itself.	\N	\N
22503904	Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is an illusory phenomenon, in which a static target surrounded by moving distracters is perceived to disappear. We determined the electrocorticographic (ECoG) correlates of MIB. While undergoing intracranial ECoG recording, a patient with focal epilepsy was instructed to report the transitions of a visual target, which was designed to illusorily or physically disappear and reappear. We then determined the neural modulations associated with illusory and physical transitions of the target. We also tested whether the phase of local delta activity could predict exclusively illusory transitions. High-gamma activity at 80-150 Hz was attenuated in the fusiform region prior to the reports of illusory and real visual target disappearance. Conversely, such high-gamma activity was augmented prior to the report of real target reappearance. Exclusively around illusory disappearance but not around real one, the delta phases in the fusiform region showed a highly skewed distribution with preference of the negative peak. Neuronal modulations in the fusiform region may be involved in visual awareness, while spontaneous fluctuations of neural states entrained on delta rhythm may be involved in generation of MIB. Our study increases our understanding of the mechanisms of visual awareness.	\N	\N
22505222	Scholars have documented similarities in the way voice and music convey emotions. By using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we explored whether these similarities imply overlapping processing substrates. We asked participants to trace changes in either the emotion or pitch of vocalizations and music using a joystick. Compared to music, vocalizations more strongly activated superior and middle temporal cortex, cuneus, and precuneus. However, despite these differences, overlapping rather than differing regions emerged when comparing emotion with pitch tracing for music and vocalizations, respectively. Relative to pitch tracing, emotion tracing activated medial superior frontal and anterior cingulate cortex regardless of stimulus type. Additionally, we observed emotion specific effects in primary and secondary auditory cortex as well as in medial frontal cortex that were comparable for voice and music. Together these results indicate that similar mechanisms support emotional inferences from vocalizations and music and that these mechanisms tap on a general system involved in social cognition.	\N	\N
22509533	It has been proposed that OAEs be classified not on the basis of the stimuli used to evoke them, but on the mechanisms that produce them (Shera and Guinan, 1999). One branch of this taxonomy focuses on a coherent reflection model and explicitly describes interrelationships between spontaneous emissions (SOAEs) and stimulus-frequency emissions (SFOAEs). The present study empirically examines SOAEs and SFOAEs from individual ears within the context of model predictions, using a low stimulus level (20 dB SPL) to evoke SFOAEs. Emissions were recorded from ears of normal-hearing young adults, both with and without prominent SOAE activity. When spontaneous activity was observed, SFOAEs demonstrated a localized increase about the SOAE peaks. The converse was not necessarily true though, i.e., robust SFOAEs could be measured where no SOAE peaks were observed. There was no significant difference in SFOAE phase-gradient delays between those with and without observable SOAE activity. However, delays were larger for a 20 dB SPL stimulus level than those previously reported for 40 dB SPL. The total amount of SFOAE phase accumulation occurring between adjacent SOAE peaks tended to cluster about an integral number of cycles. Overall, the present data appear congruous with predictions stemming from the coherent reflection model and support the notion that such comparisons ideally are made with emissions evoked using relatively lower stimulus levels.	\N	\N
22509989	This study investigated the effect of short-term visual deprivation on auditory steady-state response (ASSR) to amplitude-modulated tones. Magnetoencephalography data were acquired while subjects performed an auditory detection task under both monaural and dichotic presentation conditions. Analyses were performed on the spectral power, mean amplitudes and dipole positions of the ASSR at the onset of blindfolding, as well as after 2, 4 and 6 h of visual deprivation. Results show a modulation of the spectral power of the ASSR at the frequencies that were present in the stimulus after 6 h of sensory deprivation, and this was especially true for the dichotic condition. Moreover, participants showed two spectral peaks in the occipital cortex at the end of the visual deprivation period, a phenomenon normally observed in the auditory cortex. Our results shed light not only on the timeline associated with short-term crossmodal recruitment of input-deprived sensory cortices but also demonstrate that the visual cortex can display auditory cortex-like functioning in response to the ASSR. Importantly, our results also highlight the importance of taking into consideration individual differences when investigating crossmodal plastic phenomena. Indeed, the occipital spectral peaks were only observed in half the subjects following short-term deprivation.	\N	\N
22511853	Several studies have reported optimal population decoding of sensory responses in two-alternative visual discrimination tasks. Such decoding involves integrating noisy neural responses into a more reliable representation of the likelihood that the stimuli under consideration evoked the observed responses. Importantly, an ideal observer must be able to evaluate likelihood with high precision and only consider the likelihood of the two relevant stimuli involved in the discrimination task. We report a new perceptual bias suggesting that observers read out the likelihood representation with remarkably low precision when discriminating grating spatial frequencies. Using spectrally filtered noise, we induced an asymmetry in the likelihood function of spatial frequency. This manipulation mainly affects the likelihood of spatial frequencies that are irrelevant to the task at hand. Nevertheless, we find a significant shift in perceived grating frequency, indicating that observers evaluate likelihoods of a broad range of irrelevant frequencies and discard prior knowledge of stimulus alternatives when performing two-alternative discrimination.	\N	\N
22513340	Both functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related brain potential (ERP) studies have shown that verbal working memory plays an important role during sentence processing. There is growing evidence from outside of sentence processing that human alpha oscillations (7-13 Hz) play a critical role in working memory. This study aims to link this to the sentence processing domain. Time-frequency analyses and source localization were performed on electroencephalography (EEG) data that were recorded during the processing of auditorily presented sentences involving either a short or a long distance between an argument (subject or object) and the respective sentence-final verb. We reasoned that oscillatory activity in the alpha band should increase during sentences with longer argument-verb distances, since decreased temporal proximity should result in increased memory demands. When verbal working memory-intensive long-dependency sentences were compared to short-dependency sentences, a sustained oscillatory enhancement at 10 Hz was found during storage prior to the sentence-final verb, turning into a transient power increase in the beta band (13-20 Hz) at the sentence-final verb. The sources of the alpha oscillations were localized to bilaterally occipital and left parietal cortices. Only the source activity in the left parietal cortex was negatively correlated with verbal working memory abilities. These findings indicate that the parsimonious role of alpha oscillations in domain-general working memory can be extended to language, that is, sentence processing. We suggest that the function of left parietal cortex underlying verbal working memory storage during sentence processing is to inhibit the premature release of verbal information that will subsequently be integrated.	\N	\N
22517303	Professional and community concerns about the potentially dangerous noise levels for common leisure activities has led to increased interest on providing hearing health information to participants. However, noise reduction programmes aimed at leisure activities (such as music listening) face a unique difficulty. The noise source that is earmarked for reduction by hearing health professionals is often the same one that is viewed as pleasurable by participants. Furthermore, these activities often exist within a social setting, with additional peer influences that may influence behavior. The current study aimed to gain a better understanding of social-based factors that may influence an individual's motivation to engage in positive hearing health behaviors. Four hundred and eighty-four participants completed questionnaires examining their perceptions of the hearing risk associated with listening to music listening and asking for estimates of their own and their peer's music listening behaviors. Participants were generally aware of the potential risk posed by listening to personal stereo players (PSPs) and the volumes likely to be most dangerous. Approximately one in five participants reported using listening volumes at levels perceived to be dangerous, an incidence rate in keeping with other studies measuring actual PSP use. However, participants showed less awareness of peers' behavior, consistently overestimating the volumes at which they believed their friends listened. Misperceptions of social norms relating to listening behavior may decrease individuals' perceptions of susceptibility to hearing damage. The consequences of hearing health promotion are discussed, along with suggestions relating to the development of new programs.	\N	\N
22521874	Although activity in premotor and motor cortices is commonly observed in neuroimaging studies of spoken language processing, the degree to which this activity is an obligatory part of everyday speech comprehension remains unclear. We hypothesised that rather than being a unitary phenomenon, the neural response to speech perception in motor regions would differ across listeners as a function of individual cognitive ability. To examine this possibility, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural processes supporting speech perception by comparing active listening to pseudowords with matched tasks that involved reading aloud or repetition, all compared to acoustically matched control stimuli and matched baseline tasks. At a whole-brain level there was no evidence for recruitment of regions in premotor or motor cortex during speech perception. A focused region of interest analysis similarly failed to identify significant effects, although a subset of regions approached significance, with notable variability across participants. We then used performance on a battery of behavioural tests that assessed meta-phonological and verbal short-term memory abilities to investigate the reasons for this variability, and found that individual differences in particular in low phonotactic probability pseudoword repetition predicted participants' neural activation within regions in premotor and motor cortices during speech perception. We conclude that normal listeners vary in the degree to which they recruit premotor and motor cortex as a function of short-term memory ability. This is consistent with a resource-allocation approach in which recruitment of the dorsal speech processing pathway depends on both individual abilities and specific task demands.	\N	\N
22522927	Humans possess a remarkable ability to attend to a single speaker's voice in a multi-talker background. How the auditory system manages to extract intelligible speech under such acoustically complex and adverse listening conditions is not known, and, indeed, it is not clear how attended speech is internally represented. Here, using multi-electrode surface recordings from the cortex of subjects engaged in a listening task with two simultaneous speakers, we demonstrate that population responses in non-primary human auditory cortex encode critical features of attended speech: speech spectrograms reconstructed based on cortical responses to the mixture of speakers reveal the salient spectral and temporal features of the attended speaker, as if subjects were listening to that speaker alone. A simple classifier trained solely on examples of single speakers can decode both attended words and speaker identity. We find that task performance is well predicted by a rapid increase in attention-modulated neural selectivity across both single-electrode and population-level cortical responses. These findings demonstrate that the cortical representation of speech does not merely reflect the external acoustic environment, but instead gives rise to the perceptual aspects relevant for the listener's intended goal.	\N	\N
22524352	In various paradigms of modern neurosciences of music, experts of Western classical music have displayed superior brain architecture when compared with individuals without explicit training in music. In this paper, we show that chord violations embedded in musical cadences were neurally processed in a facilitated manner also by musicians trained in Finnish folk music. This result, obtained by using early right anterior negativity (ERAN) as an index of harmony processing, suggests that tonal processing is advanced in folk musicians by their long-term exposure to both Western and non-Western music.	\N	\N
22524356	Recent research has shown that music training enhances music-related sensorimotor associations, such as the relationship between a key press on the keyboard and its associated musical pitch (auditory feedback). Such results suggest that the role of auditory feedback in performance may be based on learned associations that are task specific. Here, results from various studies will be presented that suggest that the real state of affairs is more complex. Several recent studies have shown similar effects of altered auditory feedback during piano performance for pianists and individuals with no piano training. Other recent research suggests dramatic differences between pianists and nonmusicians concerning the influence of auditory feedback on melody switching that suggest greater influence of auditory feedback among nonmusicians than pianists. Taken together, results suggest that musical training refines preexisting sensorimotor associations.	\N	\N
22524361	This paper examines the role of mental imagery in music performance. Self-reports by musicians, and various other sources of anecdotal evidence, suggest that covert auditory, motor, and/or visual imagery facilitate multiple aspects of music performance. The cognitive and motor mechanisms that underlie such imagery include working memory, action simulation, and internal models. Together these mechanisms support the generation of anticipatory images that enable thorough action planning and movement execution that is characterized by efficiency, temporal precision, and biomechanical economy. In ensemble performance, anticipatory imagery may facilitate interpersonal coordination by enhancing online predictions about others' action timing. Overlap in brain regions subserving auditory imagery and temporal prediction is consistent with this view. It is concluded that individual differences in anticipatory imagery may be a source of variation in expressive performance excellence and the quality of ensemble cohesion. Engaging in effortful musical imagery is therefore justified when artistic perfection is the goal.	\N	\N
22524378	Congenital amusia is a neurodevelopmental disorder of musical perception and production. Much research has focused on characterizing the deficits within this special population; however, it is also important from both a psychological and educational perspective to determine which aspects of the disorder may be subject to change because this will also constrain theorizing about the nature of the disorder, as well as facilitating possible future remediation programs. In this small-scale study, a professional singing teacher used a broad-brush intervention approach with five individuals diagnosed with congenital amusia. The compensatory elements were designed to enhance vocal efficiency and health, singing technique, musical understanding, pitch perception, and production. Improvements were observed in most individuals in perception, indexed via the Montreal Battery for the Evaluation of Amusia scale subtest and in the vocal performance of familiar songs. The workshop setting gave a unique opportunity for observation and discussion to inform further investigations of this disorder.	\N	\N
22525854	When people experience an unchanging sensory input for a long period of time, their perception tends to switch stochastically and unavoidably between alternative interpretations of the sensation; a phenomenon known as perceptual bi-stability or multi-stability. The huge variability in the experimental data obtained in such paradigms makes it difficult to distinguish typical patterns of behaviour, or to identify differences between switching patterns. Here we propose a new approach to characterising switching behaviour based upon the extraction of transition matrices from the data, which provide a compact representation that is well-understood mathematically. On the basis of this representation we can characterise patterns of perceptual switching, visualise and simulate typical switching patterns, and calculate the likelihood of observing a particular switching pattern. The proposed method can support comparisons between different observers, experimental conditions and even experiments. We demonstrate the insights offered by this approach using examples from our experiments investigating multi-stability in auditory streaming. However, the methodology is generic and thus widely applicable in studies of multi-stability in any domain.	\N	\N
22534571	Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from Spanish-English bilinguals (N=10) to test pre-attentive speech discrimination in two language contexts. ERPs were recorded while participants silently read magazines in English or Spanish. Two speech contrast conditions were recorded in each language context. In the phonemic in English condition, the speech sounds represented two different phonemic categories in English, but represented the same phonemic category in Spanish. In the phonemic in Spanish condition, the speech sounds represented two different phonemic categories in Spanish, but represented the same phonemic categories in English. Results showed pre-attentive discrimination when the acoustics/phonetics of the speech sounds match the language context (e.g., phonemic in English condition during the English language context). The results suggest that language contexts can affect pre-attentive auditory change detection. Specifically, bilinguals' mental processing of stop consonants relies on contextual linguistic information.	\N	\N
22537033	To develop, optimize, and evaluate a new Spanish sentence test in noise. The test comprises a basic matrix of ten names, verbs, numerals, nouns, and adjectives. From this matrix, test lists of ten sentences with an equal syntactical structure can be formed at random, with each list containing the whole speech material. The speech material represents the phoneme distribution of the Spanish language. The test was optimized for measuring speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in noise by adjusting the presentation levels of the individual words. Subsequently, the test was evaluated by independent measurements investigating the training effects, the comparability of test lists, open-set vs. closed-set test format, and performance of listeners of different Spanish varieties. In total, 68 normal-hearing native Spanish-speaking listeners. SRTs measured using an adaptive procedure were 6.2 ± 0.8 dB SNR for the open-set and 7.2 ± 0.7 dB SNR for the closed-set test format. The residual training effect was less than 1 dB after using two double-lists before data collection. No significant differences were found for listeners of different Spanish varieties indicating that the test is applicable to Spanish as well as Latin American listeners. Test lists can be used interchangeably.	\N	\N
22541369	Neuroimaging studies of English suggest that speech comprehension engages two interdependent systems: a bilateral fronto-temporal network responsible for general perceptual and cognitive processing, and a specialised left-lateralised network supporting specifically linguistic processing. Using fMRI we test this hypothesis in Polish, a Slavic language with rich and diverse morphology. We manipulated general perceptual complexity (presence or absence of an onset-embedded stem, e.g. kotlet 'cutlet' vs. kot 'cat') and specifically linguistic complexity (presence of an inflectional affix, e.g. dom 'house, Nom' vs. dom-u 'house, Gen'). Non-linguistic complexity activated a bilateral network, as in English, but we found no differences between inflected and uninflected nouns. Instead, all types of words activated left inferior frontal areas, suggesting that all Polish words can be considered linguistically 'complex' in processing terms. The results support a dual network hypothesis, but highlight differences between languages like English and Polish, and underline the importance of cross-linguistic comparisons.	\N	\N
22542727	Impaired auditory sensitivity to amplitude rise time (ART) has been suggested to be a primary deficit in developmental dyslexia. The present study investigates whether impaired ART-sensitivity at a pre-reading age precedes and predicts later emerging reading problems in a sample of Dutch children. An oddball paradigm, with a deviant that differed from the standard stimulus in ART, was administered to 41-month-old children (30 genetically at-risk for developmental dyslexia and 14 controls) with concurrent EEG measurement. A second deviant that differed from the standard stimulus in frequency served as a control deviant. Grade two reading scores were used to divide the at-risks in a typical-reading and a dyslexic subgroup. We found that both ART- and frequency processing were related to later reading skill. We however also found that irrespective of reading level, the at-risks in general showed impaired basic auditory processing when compared to controls and that it was impossible to discriminate between the at-risk groups on basis of both auditory measures. A relatively higher quality of early expressive syntactic skills in the typical-reading at-risk group might indicate a protective factor against negative effects of impaired auditory processing on reading development. Based on these results we argue that ART- and frequency-processing measures, although they are related to reading skill, lack the power to be considered single-cause predictors of developmental dyslexia. More likely, they are genetically driven risk factors that may add to cumulative effects on processes that are critical for learning to read.	\N	\N
22543320	The purpose of this study was to determine daily noise doses and 8-hour time weighted averages for rock band musicians, crew members, and spectators during a typical rehearsal and performance using both Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) measurement criteria. Personal noise dosimetry was completed on five members of a rock band during one 2-hr rehearsal and one 4-hr performance. Time-weighted averages (TWA) and daily dose values were calculated using both OSHA and NIOSH criteria and compared to industry guidelines for enrollment in hearing conservation programs and the use of hearing protection devices. TWA values ranged from 84.3 to 90.4 dBA (OSHA) and from 90.0 to 96.4 dBA (NIOSH) during the rehearsal. The same values ranged from 91.0 to 99.7 dBA (OSHA) and 94.0 to 102.8 dBA (NIOSH) for the performance. During the rehearsal, daily noise doses ranged from 45.54% to 106.7% (OSHA) and from 317.74% to 1396.07% (NIOSH). During the performance, doses ranged from 114.66% to 382.49% (OSHA) and from 793.31% to 5970.15% (NIOSH). The musicians in this study were exposed to dangerously high levels of noise and should be enrolled in a hearing conservation programs. Hearing protection devices should be worn, especially during performances. The OSHA measurement criteria yielded values significantly more conservative than those produced by NIOSH criteria. Audiologists should counsel musician-patients about the hazards of excessive noise (music) exposure and how to protect their hearing.	\N	\N
22559370	The "combined-stimulation advantage" refers to an improvement in speech recognition when cochlear-implant or vocoded stimulation is supplemented by low-frequency acoustic information. Previous studies have been interpreted as evidence for "super-additive" or "synergistic" effects in the combination of low-frequency and electric or vocoded speech information by human listeners. However, this conclusion was based on predictions of performance obtained using a suboptimal high-threshold model of information combination. The present study shows that a different model, based on Gaussian signal detection theory, can predict surprisingly large combined-stimulation advantages, even when performance with either information source alone is close to chance, without involving any synergistic interaction. A reanalysis of published data using this model reveals that previous results, which have been interpreted as evidence for super-additive effects in perception of combined speech stimuli, are actually consistent with a more parsimonious explanation, according to which the combined-stimulation advantage reflects an optimal combination of two independent sources of information. The present results do not rule out the possible existence of synergistic effects in combined stimulation; however, they emphasize the possibility that the combined-stimulation advantages observed in some studies can be explained simply by non-interactive combination of two information sources.	\N	\N
22559371	Preliminary data [M. Epstein and M. Florentine, Ear. Hear. 30, 234-237 (2009)] obtained using speech stimuli from a visually present talker heard via loudspeakers in a sound-attenuating chamber indicate little difference in loudness when listening with one or two ears (i.e., significantly reduced binaural loudness summation, BLS), which is known as "binaural loudness constancy." These data challenge current understanding drawn from laboratory measurements that indicate a tone presented binaurally is louder than the same tone presented monaurally. Twelve normal listeners were presented recorded spondees, monaurally and binaurally across a wide range of levels via earphones and a loudspeaker with and without visual cues. Statistical analyses of binaural-to-monaural ratios of magnitude estimates indicate that the amount of BLS is significantly less for speech presented via a loudspeaker with visual cues than for stimuli with any other combination of test parameters (i.e., speech presented via earphones or a loudspeaker without visual cues, and speech presented via earphones with visual cues). These results indicate that the loudness of a visually present talker in daily environments is little affected by switching between binaural and monaural listening. This supports the phenomenon of binaural loudness constancy and underscores the importance of ecological validity in loudness research.	\N	\N
22559380	Speech perception requires the integration of information from multiple phonetic and phonological dimensions. A sizable literature exists on the relationships between multiple phonetic dimensions and single phonological dimensions (e.g., spectral and temporal cues to stop consonant voicing). A much smaller body of work addresses relationships between phonological dimensions, and much of this has focused on sequences of phones. However, strong assumptions about the relevant set of acoustic cues and/or the (in)dependence between dimensions limit previous findings in important ways. Recent methodological developments in the general recognition theory framework enable tests of a number of these assumptions and provide a more complete model of distinct perceptual and decisional processes in speech sound identification. A hierarchical Bayesian Gaussian general recognition theory model was fit to data from two experiments investigating identification of English labial stop and fricative consonants in onset (syllable initial) and coda (syllable final) position. The results underscore the importance of distinguishing between conceptually distinct processing levels and indicate that, for individual subjects and at the group level, integration of phonological information is partially independent with respect to perception and that patterns of independence and interaction vary with syllable position.	\N	\N
22559460	Peruvian Spanish (PS) and Iberian Spanish (IS) learners were tested on their ability to categorically discriminate and identify Dutch vowels. It was predicted that the acoustic differences between the vowel productions of the two dialects, which compare differently to Dutch vowels, would manifest in differential L2 perception for listeners of these two dialects. The results show that although PS learners had higher general L2 proficiency, IS learners were more accurate at discriminating all five contrasts and at identifying six of the L2 Dutch vowels. These findings confirm that acoustic differences in native vowel production lead to differential L2 vowel perception.	\N	\N
22563091	Linguistic variables alone cannot fully account for bilingual listeners' perception of English-running speech. In the present study, the authors investigated how linguistic and attitudinal factors, in combination, affect bilingual processing of temporally degraded English passages in quiet and in noise. Thirty-six bilinguals with various linguistic and attitudinal characteristics participated in the study. Bilingual individuals completed questionnaires that assessed their language background, willingness to communicate (WTC), and self-perceived communication competency (SPCC) in English. Participants listened to English passage pairs from the Connected Speech Test, presented at 45 dB HL at 3 rates (unprocessed, expanded, compressed), in quiet and in noise. Language proficiency measures were the most significant linguistic variables, accounting for the largest amount of variance in performance across most conditions. Both WTC and SPCC were associated with performance and contributed to regression models. Subscales assessing listeners' WTC and SPCC in a group were more predictive of performance than communication in an interpersonal or public setting. Performance in noise was more difficult to predict than in quiet. Performance with compression was more difficult to predict than with expansion. To fully understand bilingual clients' perception of English speech, hearing professionals should consider their attitudinal characteristics in addition to language background.	\N	\N
22564903	To evaluate whether a hypothesis suggesting that apraxia of speech results from phonological overspecification could be relevant for childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). High-density EEG was recorded from 5 children with CAS and 5 matched controls, ages 5-8 years, with and without CAS, as they listened to randomized sequences of CV syllables in two oddball paradigms: phonemic (/ba/, /pa/) and allophonic (/pa/, /p(h)a/). In the phonemic contrast condition, mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to oddball sounds were observed for the typically developing (comparison) group but not the CAS group, although a component similar to an immature mismatch response was apparent. The allophonic contrast did not elicit MMN responses in the comparison group, but in the CAS group, an MMN-like response was observed. The authors propose that these preliminary findings are consistent with a view of CAS as a disorder that not only affects motor planning but also has a phonological component.	\N	\N
22565049	Primary facial nerve tumors (FNTs) present in varying ways. In this study, the authors present their institutional experience with the management of facial nerve tumors, including their recommendations for available therapies such as observation, microsurgical decompression or removal, and stereotactic radiation. They emphasize the auditory and facial nerve function outcomes. Retrospective case review. Tertiary referral center. Retrospective review of all cases of FNT seen at the authors' tertiary care academic medical center over a 10-year period (2002-2011). The clinical presentation, treatment modality, and outcome parameters of cochlear and facial nerve function were assessed. Twelve patients were identified. House-Brackmann grades on presentation were 4 grade I, 2 grade II, 2 grade III, 1 grade IV, and 3 grade V, with 2 grade V patients declining to grade VI shortly after presentation. Seven patients presented with serviceable hearing and 4 with nonserviceable hearing. Treatment options/arms included observation with serial clinicoradiological review (2 cases), stereotactic radiation with the CyberKnife (3 cases), wide fallopian canal decompression (3 cases), microsurgical excision and repair (3 cases), and biopsy followed by observation (1 case). At the end of the review period, facial nerve function was stable in 8 patients, improved in 3, and declined in 1, and none had documented worsening of hearing based on American Academy of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery Foundation classification. Management of FNT is largely based on the clinicoradiological picture. Each treatment arm is different, but overall auditory and facial function can be maintained.	\N	\N
22571290	Vocal emblems, such as shh and brr, are speech sounds that have linguistic and nonlinguistic features; thus, it is unclear how they are processed in the brain. Five adult dextral individuals with left-brain damage and moderate-severe Wernicke's aphasia, five adult dextral individuals with right-brain damage, and five Controls participated in two tasks: (1) matching vocal emblems to photographs ('picture task') and (2) matching vocal emblems to verbal translations ('phrase task'). Cross-group statistical analyses on items on which the Controls performed at ceiling revealed lower accuracy by the group with left-brain damage (than by Controls) on both tasks, and lower accuracy by the group with right-brain damage (than by Controls) on the picture task. Additionally, the group with left-brain damage performed significantly less accurately than the group with right-brain damage on the phrase task only. Findings suggest that comprehension of vocal emblems recruits more left- than right-hemisphere processing.	\N	\N
22584037	Music is an ancient and ubiquitous form of human expression. One important component for which music is sought after is its aesthetic value, whose appreciation has typically been associated with largely learned, culturally determined factors, such as education, exposure, and social pressure. However, neuroscientific evidence shows that the aesthetic response to music is often associated with automatic, physically- and biologically-grounded events, such as shivers, chills, increased heart rate, and motor synchronization, suggesting the existence of an underlying biological platform upon which contextual factors may act. Drawing on philosophical notions and neuroscientific evidence, I argue that, although there is no denying that social and cultural context play a substantial role in shaping the aesthetic response to music, these act upon largely universal, biological mechanisms involved with neural processing. I propose that the simultaneous presence of culturally-influenced and biologically-determined contributions to the aesthetic response to music epitomizes Baumgarten's equation of sensory perception with taste. Taking the argument one step further, I suggest that the heavily embodied aesthetic response to music bridges the cleavage between the two discrepant meanings-the one referring to sensory perception, the other referring to judgments of taste-traditionally attributed to the word "aesthetics" in the sciences and the humanities.	\N	\N
22588234	To identify whether speech recognition outcomes are influenced by the choice of ear for cochlear implantation in adults with bilateral hearing loss who use a hearing aid in 1 ear but have long-term auditory deprivation in the other. Retrospective matched cohort study. Speech recognition results were examined in 30 adults with monaural sound deprivation. Fifteen received the implant in the sound-deprived ear and 15 in the aided ear. Tertiary referral centers with active cochlear implant programs. Adults with bilateral hearing loss and a minimum of 15 years of monaural sound deprivation who received a cochlear implant after meeting the traditional implantation criteria of the referral centers. Cochlear implantation with devices approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Paired comparisons of postoperative monosyllabic word recognition scores obtained with the implant alone and in the usual listening condition (CI alone or bimodal). With the cochlear implant alone, individuals who received the implant in a sound-deprived ear obtained poorer scores than individuals who received the implant in the aided ear. There was no significant difference, however, in speech recognition results for the 2 groups when tested in their usual listening condition. In particular, poorer speech recognition scores were obtained with the cochlear implant alone by individuals using bimodal hearing. Similar clinical outcomes of cochlear implantation can be achieved by adults with a long-term monaural sound deprivation when comparing the usual listening condition, irrespective of whether the implant is in the sound-deprived or in the aided ear.	\N	\N
22588270	This study aimed to characterize horizontal plane sound localization in interfering noise at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and to compare performance across normal-hearing listeners and users of unilateral and bilateral cochlear implants (CIs). CI users report difficulties with listening in noisy environments. Although their difficulties with speech understanding have been investigated in several studies, the ability to localize sounds in background noise has not extensively been examined, despite the benefits of binaural hearing being greatest in noisy situations. Sound localization is a measure of binaural processing and is thus well suited to assessing the benefit of bilateral implantation. The results will inform clinicians and implant manufacturers how to focus their efforts to improve localization with CIs in noisy situations. Six normal-hearing listeners, four unilateral, and 10 bilateral CI users indicated the perceived location of sound sources using a light pointer method. Target sounds were noise pulses played from one of 11 loudspeakers placed between -80 and +80 degrees in the frontal horizontal plane in the free field. Localization was assessed in quiet and in diffuse background noise at SNRs between +10 and -7 dB. Speech reception thresholds were measured and their relation to the localization results examined. Localization performance declined with decreasing SNR: target sounds were perceived closer to the median plane and the standard deviation of responses increased. Localization performance across groups was compared using a measure of "Spatial Resolvability" (SR). This measure gives the angular separation between two sound sources that would enable an ideal observer to correctly distinguish them 69.1% of the time. For all participants SR increased with decreasing SNR, that is, at low SNRs the spatial separation between sound sources remained distinguishable only when it was larger. Normal-hearing participants performed best, with SR between 1.4 and 5.1 degrees in quiet. Bilateral CI users showed SR between 8.3 and 43.6 degrees in quiet, corresponding approximately to the spatial resolution of normal-hearing listeners at an SNR of -5 dB. Most bilateral CI users had lost the ability to correctly determine which side the sound came from at an SNR of -3 dB. Overall, the SNR had to be at least +7 dB to achieve localization performance near to that in quiet for all bilateral CI users. No significant correlation was found between spatial resolution and speech reception thresholds, but the speech processor sensitivity setting did significantly affect performance. Unilateral CI users showed the most severe localization problems, with only two of four participants being able to correctly determine which side sounds came from in quiet. This study is the first to examine sound localization with CIs at various SNRs and to compare it with normal hearing. The results confirm that localization with CIs is strongly disrupted in noisy situations. Bilateral CIs were shown to be clearly superior over unilateral CIs for localization in quiet and in noisy situations. With bilateral CIs, localization declined at moderately high absolute noise levels (>63 dB SPL), suggesting that an extension of the acoustic-dynamic range to higher levels would be beneficial. The absence of a relation between speech reception thresholds and spatial resolution highlights the need for additional clinical tests to assess the binaural benefit of a second implant.	\N	\N
22591493	Recent oddball studies showed that auditory change detection responses exist in the first 50 ms after sound onset, upstream of mismatch negativity (MMN). We examined if these early responses could be elicited by feature-specific changes, meaning changes in the value of one attribute of a stimulus, regardless of whether other attributes of the stimulus are changing or not. We used a multifeature paradigm with four types of deviants: frequency, duration, intensity, and interaural time difference. In the middle latency range, only frequency deviants led to an enhanced Nb response. All four feature changes generated significant MMNs. Our results indicate that human brain is capable of detecting a feature-specific change for frequency attributes in the middle latency. The different levels of information being encoded in two separate event-related potential time ranges support the notion of a hierarchical organization of auditory deviance detection.	\N	\N
22606932	We describe the audiometric results following surgery in a consecutive series of patients with a congenital ossicular middle ear disorder that was associated with a mobile stapes footplate. We performed a retrospective analysis of patient charts from a tertiary referral center. A total of 23 patients (23 ears) underwent exploratory tympanotomy and ossicular reconstruction between 1986 and 2001. The main outcome measure was the audiometric results. Overall, we observed a mean gain in air conduction pure tone average of 17 dB (from 47 dB to 30 dB), a sensorineural deterioration of 3 dB, and a mean postoperative air-bone gap of 19 dB (mean preoperative air-bone gap of 38 dB). The air-bone gap closure was 20 dB or less in 15 of the 23 cases (65%), in agreement with the few results reported in the literature. Moreover, the audiometric results remained stable. In the syndromic group, the mean gain in air conduction was only 13 dB, which was worse than that observed for the nonsyndromic ears. Surgery for congenital ossicular chain anomalies with a concomitant mobile stapes footplate provides positive audiometric outcomes. Most ears had some sensorineural impairment (10 to 20 dB), which influenced the final hearing level attained after surgery. Preoperative assessment is mandatory to search for syndromal diagnoses, which might be important for patient counseling and prognosis.	\N	\N
22609773	This study investigated the bandwidth of phase sensitivity. Subjects discriminated amplitude-modulated tones (AM), and quasi-frequency-modulated tones (QFM) in a two-interval, forced-choice task. An adaptive threshold procedure was used to estimate the modulation depth needed to discriminate the stimuli as a function of carrier and modulation frequency. Non-monotonicities in threshold-bandwidth functions were often observed at higher modulation frequencies. The results are discussed in terms of two potential cues: (1) waveform envelope, (2) cubic distortion products. In order to degrade the information obtained from auditory distortions, the phase for the carrier frequency was randomly sampled from a uniform distribution, which diminished the non-monotonicities with minimal effect at lower modulation frequencies. Model simulations demonstrated that phase randomization degrades distortion product cues with only a modest effect on temporal cues. Final results show that maximum bandwidths for phase sensitivity (BW(max)) were not proportional to carrier frequencies.	\N	\N
22615475	In this study, the authors evaluated the effect of frequency compression hearing aids on speech perception ability and the time course and magnitude of acclimatization-related changes. Participants included children ages 11-18 years. Speech perception ability was evaluated over well-controlled baseline, treatment, and withdrawal study phases. Study-worn hearing aids were individually fitted to all participants. The authors evaluated speech perception ability using outcomes of speech detection (/s/ and /[symbol in text]/ sounds), /s-[symbol in text]/ discrimination, and plural and consonant recognition. Indices of change were discussed on a case-by-case basis across all study phases. Significant treatment effects were measured for all cases, on at least one measure, with some listeners displaying significant acclimatization trends following a trial of frequency compression. Findings suggest that frequency compression provided varying outcomes, both in benefit and acclimatization, across listeners. For some, a period of acclimatization was necessary before change could be measured. For others, performance remained stable over the time course under evaluation, suggesting that some but not all children will experience improved speech recognition ability after a period of frequency compression hearing aid use.	\N	\N
22615939	In natural audio-visual environments, a change in depth is usually correlated with a change in loudness. In the present study, we investigated whether correlating changes in disparity and loudness would provide a functional advantage in binding disparity and sound amplitude in a visual search paradigm. To test this hypothesis, we used a method similar to that used by van der Burg et al. to show that non-spatial transient (square-wave) modulations of loudness can drastically improve spatial visual search for a correlated luminance modulation. We used dynamic random-dot stereogram displays to produce pure disparity modulations. Target and distractors were small disparity-defined squares (either 6 or 10 in total). Each square moved back and forth in depth in front of the background plane at different phases. The target's depth modulation was synchronized with an amplitude-modulated auditory tone. Visual and auditory modulations were always congruent (both sine-wave or square-wave). In a speeded search task, five observers were asked to identify the target as quickly as possible. Results show a significant improvement in visual search times in the square-wave condition compared to the sine condition, suggesting that transient auditory information can efficiently drive visual search in the disparity domain. In a second experiment, participants performed the same task in the absence of sound and showed a clear set-size effect in both modulation conditions. In a third experiment, we correlated the sound with a distractor instead of the target. This produced longer search times, indicating that the correlation is not easily ignored.	\N	\N
22616091	Sound localization in the horizontal (azimuth) plane relies mainly on interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs). Both are distorted in listeners with acquired unilateral conductive hearing loss (UCHL), reducing their ability to localize sound. Several studies demonstrated that UCHL listeners had some ability to localize sound in azimuth. To test whether listeners with acquired UCHL use strongly perturbed binaural difference cues, we measured localization while they listened with a sound-attenuating earmuff over their impaired ear. We also tested the potential use of monaural pinna-induced spectral-shape cues for localization in azimuth and elevation, by filling the cavities of the pinna of their better-hearing ear with a mould. These conditions were tested while a bone-conduction device (BCD), fitted to all UCHL listeners in order to provide hearing from the impaired side, was turned off. We varied stimulus presentation levels to investigate whether UCHL listeners were using sound level as an azimuth cue. Furthermore, we examined whether horizontal sound-localization abilities improved when listeners used their BCD. Ten control listeners without hearing loss demonstrated a significant decrease in their localization abilities when they listened with a monaural plug and muff. In 4/13 UCHL listeners we observed good horizontal localization of 65 dB SPL broadband noises with their BCD turned off. Localization was strongly impaired when the impaired ear was covered with the muff. The mould in the good ear of listeners with UCHL deteriorated the localization of broadband sounds presented at 45 dB SPL. This demonstrates that they used pinna cues to localize sounds presented at low levels. Our data demonstrate that UCHL listeners have learned to adapt their localization strategies under a wide variety of hearing conditions and that sound-localization abilities improved with their BCD turned on.	\N	\N
22617829	Lateral prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia work together to mediate working memory and top-down regulation of cognition. This circuit regulates the balance and interactions between automatic and high-order control responses. Using ultra-high-field high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (7T-fMRI), the present study examined the role of subcortical structures in cognitive control during language processing. Participants were asked to judge the grammaticality of unambiguous, ungrammatical and ambiguous sentences. Grammatical unambiguous sentences should elicit an automatic response, while ambiguous and ungrammatical sentences should conflict with the automatic response and, hence, require a high-order control response. Within the control response domain, ambiguity and ungrammaticality represent two different dimensions of conflict resolution, while for a temporarily ambiguous sentence a correct interpretation is available, that is not the case for ungrammatical sentences. Our results reveal an anterior-posterior axis in the dorsomedial striatum with more rostral regions supporting higher levels of cognitive processing. This functional architecture mirrors the rostrocaudal hierarchical organization evidenced within the lateral prefrontal cortex.	\N	\N
22621261	Categorical perception, an increased sensitivity to between- compared with within-category contrasts, is a stable property of native speech perception that emerges as language matures. Although recent research suggests that categorical responses to speech sounds can be found in left prefrontal as well as temporo-parietal areas, it is unclear how the neural system develops heightened sensitivity to between-category contrasts. In the current study, two groups of adult participants were trained to categorize speech sounds taken from a dental/retroflex/velar continuum according to two different boundary locations. Behavioral results suggest that for successful learners, categorization training led to increased discrimination accuracy for between-category contrasts with no concomitant increase for within-category contrasts. Neural responses to the learned category schemes were measured using a short-interval habituation design during fMRI scanning. Whereas both inferior frontal and temporal regions showed sensitivity to phonetic contrasts sampled from the continuum, only the bilateral middle frontal gyri exhibited a pattern consistent with encoding of the learned category scheme. Taken together, these results support a view in which top-down information about category membership may reshape perceptual sensitivities via attention or executive mechanisms in the frontal lobes.	\N	\N
22646315	The study investigated the effect of immediate feedback in training listeners to perceive subtle differences in voice quality, a perceptual skill that is important for speech-language pathologists. Sixty naive listeners were randomly assigned to a feedback group (Group F), a no feedback group (Group NF), and a no training group acting as a control group (Group C). The task was to evaluate the severity of a perceptual voice quality (breathiness) by using a reference-matching paradigm. All participants took part in three rating sessions (pre-training, 2 days after training and 1 week after training). Group F and Group NF participated in a training session immediately after the first rating session, where Group F practiced with immediate feedback given and Group NF practice with no immediate feedback given. The results showed that Group F and Group NF had significant improvement after training, but Group F did not retain the improvement in the third rating session. The use of a reference-matching training paradigm without giving frequent immediate feedback is suggested for auditory-perceptual voice evaluation training. The most effective frequency of immediate feedback is yet to be determined.	\N	\N
22648604	The "pip-and-pop effect" refers to the facilitation of search for a visual target (a horizontal or vertical bar whose color changes frequently) among multiple visual distractors (tilted bars also changing color unpredictably) by the presentation of a spatially uninformative auditory cue synchronized with the color change of the visual target. In the present study, the visual stimuli in the search display changed brightness instead of color, and the crossmodal congruency between the pitch of the auditory cue and the brightness of the visual target was manipulated. When cue presence and cue congruency were randomly varied between trials (Experiment 1), both congruent cues (low-frequency tones synchronized with dark target states or high-frequency tones synchronized with bright target states) and incongruent cues (the reversed mapping) facilitated visual search performance equally, relative to a no-cue baseline condition. However, when cue congruency was blocked and the participants were informed about the pitch-brightness mapping in the cue-present blocks (Experiment 2), performance was significantly enhanced when the cue and target were crossmodally congruent as compared to when they were incongruent. These results therefore suggest that the crossmodal congruency between auditory pitch and visual brightness can influence performance in the pip-and-pop task by means of top-down facilitation.	\N	\N
22659285	The health impacts of environmental noise are a growing concern amongst both the general public and policy-makers in Europe. Environmental noise - especially from road transportation - is widely accepted as an important environmental impact factor that can be taken as a start for the process of evaluating the impact of annoyance on the exposed urban population. Extensive urbanisation and the increase of road transport define the main driving forces for the environmental noise exposure of the population. In urban conditions, it is rather common, regarding road transportation noise, to hear from people that, especially, PTW (Powered Two Wheelers) are annoying, and many times are actually the most annoying environmental noise sources introducing a degradation of the urban environment. In this research, in Athens city centre, both scooters and motorbikes operation patterns are analysed, in the basis of their environmental impact through ad-hoc tests to establish if specific features of their emitted noise are annoying and affect the quality of life. It resulted that PTW are a relevant cause of specific environmental annoyance on pedestrians when low background noise levels and sparse traffic flow allow identifying the PTW. Based on the results of a measurement campaign, both L(max) and roughness indices are identified as characteristic noise signatures of the PTW. Results are compared to laboratory studies on annoyance found in literature and to a specific set of interviews with a large number of pedestrians in selected sites. Annoyance caused by scooters and motorbikes is analysed in the findings and conclusions.	\N	\N
22659582	How do perceivers apply knowledge to instances they have never experienced before? On one hand, listeners might use idealized representations that do not contain specific details. On the other, they might recognize and process information based on more detailed memory representations. The current study examined the latter possibility with respect to musical meter perception, previously thought to be computed based on highly-idealized (isochronous) internal representations. In six experiments, listeners heard sets of metrically-ambiguous melodies. Each melody was played in a simultaneous musical context with unambiguous metrical cues (3/4 or 6/8). Cross-melody similarity was manipulated by pairing certain cues-timbre (musical instrument) and motif content (2-6-note patterns)-with each meter, or distributing cues across meters. After multiple exposures, listeners heard each melody without context, and judged metrical continuations (all Experiments) or familiarity (Experiments 5-6). Responses were assessed for "metrical restoration"-the tendency to make metrical judgments that fit the melody's previously-heard metrical context. Cross-melody similarity affected the presence and degree of metrical restoration, and timbre affected familiarity. Results suggest that metrical processing may be calculated based on fairly detailed representations rather than idealized isochronous pulses, and is dissociated somewhat from familiarity judgments. Implications for theories of meter perception are discussed.	\N	\N
22666424	Sensory attenuation refers to the observation that self-generated stimuli are attenuated, both in terms of their phenomenology and their cortical response compared to the same stimuli when generated externally. Accordingly, it has been assumed that sensory attenuation might help individuals to determine whether a sensory event was caused by themselves or not. In the present study, we investigated whether this dependency is reciprocal, namely whether sensory attenuation is modulated by prior beliefs of authorship. Participants had to judge the loudness of auditory effects that they believed were either self-generated or triggered by another person. However, in reality, the sounds were always triggered by the participants' actions. Participants perceived the tones' loudness attenuated when they believed that the sounds were self-generated compared to when they believed that they were generated by another person. Sensory attenuation is considered to contribute to the emergence of people's belief of authorship. Our results suggest that sensory attenuation is also a consequence of prior belief about the causal link between an action and a sensory change in the environment.	\N	\N
22667466	Cochlear microphonic (CM) measurements may potentially become a supplementary approach to otoacoustic emission (OAE) measurements for assessing low-frequency cochlear functions in the clinic. The objective of this study was to investigate the measurement of CMs in subjects with high-frequency hearing loss. Currently, CMs can be measured using electrocochleography (ECochG or ECoG) techniques. Both CMs and OAEs are cochlear responses, while auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) are not. However, there are inherent limitations associated with OAE measurements such as acoustic noise, which can conceal low-frequency OAEs measured in the clinic. However, CM measurements may not have these limitations. CMs were measured in human subjects using an ear canal electrode. The CMs were compared between the high-frequency hearing loss group and the normal-hearing control group. Distortion product OAEs (DPOAEs) and audiogram were also measured. The DPOAE and audiogram measurements indicate that the subjects were correctly selected for the two groups. Low-frequency CM waveforms (CMWs) can be measured using ear canal electrodes in high-frequency hearing loss subjects. The difference in amplitudes of CMWs between the high-frequency hearing loss group and the normal-hearing group is insignificant at low frequencies but significant at high frequencies.	\N	\N
22670350	Quinn and Watt (2006 Perception 35 267-280) showed that the optimal tempi for pieces of music (ie the appropriate speed for a melody) vary from melody to melody. The current study tested if such tempi responses depend on previous stimulus presentations. To do this, we ran a many-participants single-presentation version of the Quinn and Watt experiment. 616 visitors to the Glasgow Science Centre participated. We found that the results substantially matched those obtained earlier, and demonstrate that participants' responses are essentially independent of previously presented stimuli.	\N	\N
22688920	Previous research suggests that young children have significant difficulty recognizing speech in the presence of background noise as compared with older children and adults. However, limited research exists that examines the developmental effects of speech recognition in noise in separate age groups of young children, especially in a classroom setting. The lack of research may relate to the limited number of tests with multiple, equally intelligible lists in noise that are also appropriate for young children. As a result, the goals of the present study include investigating (1) effects of age and (2) benefits of spatial separation of speech and noise sources on the speech recognition in noise performance of young children with normal-hearing sensitivity. A secondary goal of the study was to establish the validity and reliability of the Phrases in Noise Test (PINT) for assessing the 50% correct speech-in-noise threshold of young children. The investigators used a two-way repeated measures design to examine the main effects of age and spatial separation. Sixty-eight children in separate groups of 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds and 17 adults completed two speech-recognition conditions with (1) speech and noise from the same loudspeaker at 0-degree azimuth (S0/N0) and (2) speech and noise from separate loudspeakers at 0- and 180-degree azimuth (S0/N180). Recruiting sites included local preschools and school districts for children and a university for adults. The results of this investigation suggest that younger children (<4 years of age) have significantly poorer speech-in-noise thresholds than older children and adults, and 4- and 5-year-old children also have significantly poorer performance than adults when speech and noise are presented from the same spatial location. All participants obtained significant spatial release from masking. On a parent and teacher screening questionnaire to assess educational risk, five of 12 children with at-risk behaviors had poor speech-in-noise thresholds relative to their peers. When two lists of the PINT are used, the test seems to be a valid and reliable measure for assessing young children's speech-in-noise thresholds. Young children exhibit significantly poorer speech recognition than do older children and adults in a classroom, especially when speech and noise are presented from the same location. Given the poor acoustics of typical classrooms, and the earlier age at which many children are educated, special modifications to classrooms may be necessary to improve listening through acoustic modifications or classroom amplification. A combination of a parent or teacher questionnaire and the PINT may be helpful in identifying children who are at risk for educational delays and listening difficulties in classrooms with typically poor acoustics.	\N	\N
22693344	Hearing and feeling both rely upon the transduction of physical events into frequency-based neural codes, suggesting that the auditory system may be intimately related to the somatosensory system. Here, we provide evidence that the neural substrates for audition and somatosensation are anatomically linked. Using diffusion tensor imaging with both deterministic and probabilistic tractography to measure white matter connectivity, we show that there are extensive ipsilateral connections between the primary auditory cortex and the primary and secondary somatosensory regions in the human cerebral cortex. We further show that these cross-modal connections are exaggerated between the auditory and secondary somatosensory cortex in the lesioned hemisphere of a patient (SR) with acquired auditory-tactile synesthesia, in whom sounds alone produce bodily sensations. These results provide an anatomical basis for multisensory interactions between audition and somatosensation and suggest that cross-talk between these regions may explain why some sounds, such as nails screeching down a chalkboard or an audible mosquito, can induce feelings of touch, especially on the contralesional body surface of patient SR.	\N	\N
22695875	The aim of this study is to compare the hearing thresholds of the diabetic patients with the age- and sex-matched normal control group regarding age, glucose level, duration and complications of diabetes with the degree of hearing impairment. Pure tone audiometry was performed in 58 patients with type 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus and compared with 58 age- and sex-matched controls. The patients were categorized into groups according to age, duration of diabetes, complications and control of diabetes. These observations were compared with those from the control subjects. 15-50 years age group with diabetes showed a significant high frequency hearing loss, as compared to the controls. Complicated and poorly controlled diabetics have significant degree of hearing loss in high frequencies as compared to those who were well controlled and uncomplicated. There was also a correlation between the level of hearing loss and duration of diabetes.	\N	\N
22710551	Superficial siderosis is a progressive disease of the central nervous system associated with chronic subarachnoid hemorrhage. Sensorineural hearing loss occurs early in the disease typically progressing to a profound hearing loss during several years and ultimately affecting 95% of patients. There are published reports of variable outcomes regarding auditory performance for cochlear implantation in cases of superficial siderosis: the objective of this article was to systematically review this evidence. A systematic search of NHS Evidence electronic journal databases AMED (1985 to present), BNI (1985 to present), CINAHL (1981 to present), EMBASE (1980 to present), HEALTH BUSINESS ELITE, HMIC, MEDLINE (1950 to present), and PsycINFO (1806 to present) was performed. Further research using personal communication, Google Scholar, hand searching Otology & Neurotology (2008-2011), and assessment of reference lists identified in other relevant articles yielded additional articles. A total of 24 articles were short-listed based on relevance; no studies were excluded on a basis of quality. Of these 24 articles, 11 were excluded. The 13 articles included in this review report 15 cases of cochlear implantation in superficial siderosis. Of these 15 individual cases, 7 (47%) showed clear sustained benefit from cochlear implantation, 6 showed limited/no benefit from the onset, and the remaining 2 patients' initial benefit was not maintained. Outcomes will depend on the site of lesion and the degree of cochlear nerve functionality, as well as ongoing neural deterioration. Comprehensive assessment of the auditory pathway including electrical auditory brainstem response and magnetic resonance imaging as well as pre/postimplantation counseling is indicated, but these preoperative measures are imperfect predictors of outcomes. There are indications that, where the underlying disease is stable, cochlear implant performance may be sustained, and where there is disease progression (specifically regarding involvement of auditory brainstem nuclei), cochlear implant performance may deteriorate. Further data are needed in this regard; however, results suggest that earlier implantation would provide benefit for a longer period and increase cost-effectiveness.	\N	\N
22712945	Frequency modulation detection limens (FMDLs) were measured for five hearing-impaired (HI) subjects for carrier frequencies f(c) = 1000, 4000, and 6000 Hz, using modulation frequencies f(m) = 2 and 10 Hz and levels of 20 dB sensation level and 90 dB SPL. FMDLs were smaller for f(m) = 10 than for f(m) = 2 Hz for the two higher f(c), but not for f(c) = 1000 Hz. FMDLs were also determined with additional random amplitude modulation (AM), to disrupt excitation-pattern cues. The disruptive effect was larger for f(m) = 10 than for f(m) = 2 Hz. The smallest disruption occurred for f(m) = 2 Hz and f(c) = 1000 Hz. AM detection thresholds for normal-hearing and HI subjects were measured for the same f(c) and f(m) values. Performance was better for the HI subjects for both f(m). AM detection was much better for f(m)  = 10 than for f(m) = 2 Hz. Additional tests showed that most HI subjects could discriminate temporal fine structure (TFS) at 800 Hz. The results are consistent with the idea that, for f(m) = 2 Hz and f(c) = 1000 Hz, frequency modulation (FM) detection was partly based on the use of TFS information. For higher carrier frequencies and for all carrier frequencies with f(m) = 10 Hz, FM detection was probably based on place cues.	\N	\N
22712949	The musical scale is a basis for melodies and can be a simple melody by itself. The present study investigated magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to omissions of one tone out of the C major scale. The tone preceding the omitted "target" tone was either prolonged or repeated. In another series, the tone after the target tone was repeated. In "normal" oddball experiments, the complete C major scale was presented more frequently than an incomplete scale lacking one tone, and in "reverse" oddball experiments, the roles were exchanged. In the normal oddball experiments, omission of any tone produced a response significantly different in amplitude from the standard response in the group of non-musicians, although the responses differed depending on the types of omission. The leading tone (B in the C major scale) was shown to elicit a large response when omitted and also when its presence was emphasized. The Reverse oddball experiments showed that repeated presentation of an incomplete scale lacking one tone temporarily reduced the influence of the complete scale but could not even temporarily replace it working as "standard." In addition, an auxiliary study was done to see possible influence of rhythmic variations.	\N	\N
22713383	We report a patient with non-fluent Primary Progressive Aphasia who was premorbidly literate in two alphabetic scripts, Hungarian (L1) and English (L2). Testing was performed over a two-year period to assess the impact of progressive illness on oral reading and repetition of single words. Results showed significant decline in oral reading in both languages, and an effect of language status in favour of oral reading in L1. Phonological complexity was a significant predictor of oral reading decline in both languages. Of interest, we observed an effect of language status on task performance whereby repetition was better in L2 than L1 but oral reading was better in L1 than L2. We conclude that language status has an effect on repetition and oral reading abilities for bilingual speakers with non-fluent Primary Progressive Aphasia.	\N	\N
22714710	It is clear that the ability to learn new speech contrasts changes over development, such that learning to categorize speech sounds as native speakers of a language do is more difficult in adulthood than it is earlier in development. There is also a wealth of data concerning changes in the perception of speech sounds during infancy, such that infants quite rapidly progress from language-general to more language-specific perceptual biases. It is often suggested that the perceptual narrowing observed during infancy plays a causal role in the loss of plasticity observed in adulthood, but the relationship between these two phenomena is complicated. Here I consider the relationship between changes in sensitivity to speech sound categorization over the first 2 years of life, when they appear to reorganize quite rapidly, to the "long tail" of development throughout childhood, in the context of understanding the sensitive period for speech perception.	\N	\N
22716266	This study aimed to discover whether general receptive vocabulary is qualitatively phenotypical in Down syndrome. Sixty-two participants with Down syndrome (M age=16.74 years, SD=3.28) were individually matched on general vocabulary raw total score with 62 participants with intellectual disability of undifferentiated etiology (M age=16.20 years, SD=3.08) and 62 typical children (M age=5.32 years, SD=0.82). Item analyses using the transformed item difficulties method to detect differential item functioning across groups showed that the groups' rank orders of item difficulty were highly similar. It was concluded that the general receptive vocabulary of older children and adolescents with Down syndrome is not qualitatively distinguished when its overall size is held constant. Methodological and theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.	\N	\N
22717687	To develop a predictive model of spatial release from masking (SRM) for cochlear implantees, and validate this model against data from the literature. To establish the spatial configurations for which the model predicts a large advantage of bilateral over unilateral implantation. To collect data to support these predictions and generate predictions of more typical advantages of bilateral implantation. The model initially assumed that bilateral cochlear implantees had equally effective implants on each side, with which they could perform optimal better-ear listening. Predictions were compared with measurements of SRM, using one and two implants with up to three interfering noises. The effect of relaxing the assumption of equally effective implants was explored. Novel measurements of SRM for eight unilateral implantees were collected, including measurements using speech and noise at azimuths of ± 60 degrees, and compared with prediction. A spatial map of bilateral implant benefit was generated for a situation with one interfering noise in anechoic conditions, and predictions of benefit were generated from binaural room impulse responses in a variety of real rooms. The model accurately predicted data from a previous study for multiple interfering noises in a variety of spatial configurations, even when implants were assumed to be equally effective (r = 0.97). It predicted that the maximum benefit of bilateral implantation was 18 dB. Predictions were little affected if the implants were not assumed to be equally effective. The new measurements supported the 18 dB advantage prediction. The spatial map of predicted benefit showed that, for a listener facing the target voice, bilateral implantees could enjoy an advantage of about 10 dB over unilateral implantees in a wide range of situations. Predictions based on real-room measurements with speech and noise at 1 m showed that large benefits can occur even in reverberant spaces. In optimal conditions, the benefit of bilateral implantation to speech intelligibility in noise can be much larger than has previously been reported. This benefit is thus considerably larger than reported benefits of summation or squelch and is robust in reverberation when the interfering source is close.	\N	\N
22721629	Understanding the temporal dynamics underlying cortical processing of auditory categories is complicated by difficulties in equating temporal and spectral features across stimulus classes. In the present magnetoencephalography (MEG) study, female voices and cat sounds were filtered so as to match in most of their acoustic properties, and the respective auditory evoked responses were investigated with a paradigm that allowed us to examine auditory cortical processing of two natural sound categories beyond the physical make-up of the stimuli. Three cat or human voice sounds were first presented to establish a categorical context. Subsequently, a probe sound that was congruent, incongruent, or ambiguous to this context was presented. As an index of a categorical mismatch, MEG responses to incongruent sounds were stronger than the responses to congruent sounds at ~250 ms in the right temporoparietal cortex, regardless of the sound category. Furthermore, probe sounds that could not be unambiguously attributed to any of the two categories ("cat" or "voice") evoked stronger responses after the voice than cat context at 200-250 ms, suggesting a stronger contextual effect for human voices. Our results suggest that categorical templates for human and animal vocalizations are established at ~250 ms in the right temporoparietal cortex, likely reflecting continuous online analysis of spectral stimulus features during auditory categorizing task.	\N	\N
22726605	In a recent study, we reported that the accurate perception of beat structure in music ('perception of musical meter') accounted for over 40% of the variance in single word reading in children with and without dyslexia (Huss et al., 2011). Performance in the musical task was most strongly associated with the auditory processing of rise time, even though beat structure was varied by manipulating the duration of the musical notes. Here we administered the same musical task a year later to 88 children with and without dyslexia, and used new auditory processing measures to provide a more comprehensive picture of the auditory correlates of the beat structure task. We also measured reading comprehension and nonword reading in addition to single word reading. One year later, the children with dyslexia performed more poorly in the musical task than younger children reading at the same level, indicating a severe perceptual deficit for musical beat patterns. They now also had significantly poorer perception of sound rise time than younger children. Longitudinal analyses showed that the musical beat structure task was a significant longitudinal predictor of development in reading, accounting for over half of the variance in reading comprehension along with a linguistic measure of phonological awareness. The non-linguistic musical beat structure task is an important independent longitudinal and concurrent predictor of variance in reading attainment by children. The different longitudinal versus concurrent associations between musical beat perception and auditory processing suggest that individual differences in the perception of rhythmic timing are an important shared neural basis for individual differences in children in linguistic and musical processing.	\N	\N
22732772	The purpose of this study was to determine how combinations of reverberation and noise, typical of environments in many elementary school classrooms, affect normal-hearing school-aged children's speech recognition in stationary and amplitude-modulated noise, and to compare their performance with that of normal-hearing young adults. In addition, the magnitude of release from masking in the modulated noise relative to that in stationary noise was compared across age groups in nonreverberant and reverberant listening conditions. Last, for all noise and reverberation combinations the degree of change in predicted performance at 70% correct was obtained for all age groups using a best-fit cubic polynomial. Bamford-Kowal-Bench sentences and noise were convolved with binaural room impulse responses representing nonreverberant and reverberant environments to create test materials representative of both audiology clinics and school classroom environments. Speech recognition of 48 school-aged children and 12 adults was measured in speech-shaped and amplitude-modulated speech-shaped noise, in the following three virtual listening environments: nonreverberant, reverberant at 2 m, and reverberant at 6 m. Speech recognition decreased in the reverberant conditions and with decreasing age. Release from masking in modulated noise relative to stationary noise decreased with age and was reduced by reverberation. In the nonreverberant condition, participants showed similar amounts of masking release across ages. The slopes of performance-intensity functions increased with age, with the exception of the nonreverberant modulated masker condition. The slopes were steeper in the stationary masker conditions, where they also decreased with reverberation and distance. In the presence of a modulated masker, the slopes did not differ between the two reverberant conditions. The results of this study reveal systematic developmental changes in speech recognition in noisy and reverberant environments for elementary-school-aged children. The overall pattern suggests that younger children require better acoustic conditions to achieve sentence recognition equivalent to their older peers and adults. In addition, this is the first study to report a reduction of masking release in children as a result of reverberation. Results support the importance of minimizing noise and reverberation in classrooms, and highlight the need to incorporate noise and reverberation into audiological speech-recognition testing to improve predictions of performance in the real world.	\N	\N
22743078	This work is a preliminary study that sought to investigate and develop a method for defining and evaluating "success" in paediatric cochlear implantation (PCI) and to apply a process by which a clinical team could optimally achieve this aim. A pilot group of 25 profoundly deaf children who received a unilateral cochlear implant from 1995 to 2008 was used to develop the process. The cases displayed features that are commonly encountered in PCI. Individual case records were examined retrospectively for adverse factors that might impact on the implantation outcome with particular reference to the probability and severity of impact of each factor. Case prognosis was then rated on a 1-4 basis (1: excellent, 2: good, 3: fair, 4: poor). The subsequent outcomes were assessed using standardised speech (GFW, DEAP), language (PLS-4; CELF) and vocabulary (PPVT; EVT) assessments. Auditory performance outcomes were assessed using a new Categories of Auditory Performance Index (CAPI) that incorporated criteria, testing and scoring aspects. Family issues were also evaluated. Case outcomes were rated 1-4 as above and the prognoses and outcomes were then compared. Accurate prognostication was seen in 14 cases, 5 had better outcomes than expected and 6 obtained poorer results. "Success", where the outcome equalled or exceeded the prognosis, occurred in 19 (76%) of cases. The successful group contained some "limited gains" cases where the results were nonetheless in line with expectations and parental satisfaction. The detrimental effect of delayed implantation was evident; Connexin 26 (GJB2) mutation had little influence. Poor general medical condition and adverse family situations commonly produced poorer outcomes. Success in PCI is achieved when the outcome matches or exceeds the pre-operative expectations of the well-counselled family, without adverse side effects. The assessments achieved a good success rate, but further research is required to clearly identify potential problems and a skilled team is needed to evaluate their risk to the PCI outcome. Unforseen events may also intervene. Currently, differing outcome evaluation techniques impede comparison of studies, particularly in the speech and hearing domains. Rationalisation of these is recommended to facilitate future research.	\N	\N
22744139	To determine if short-term computerized speech-in-noise training can produce significant improvements in speech-in-noise perception by cochlear implant (CI) recipients on standardized audiologic testing measures. Five adult postlingually deafened CI recipients participated in 4 speech-in-noise training sessions using the Seeing and Hearing Speech program (Sensimetrics; Malden, MA). Each participant completed lessons concentrating on consonant and vowel recognition at word, phrase, and sentence levels. Speech-in-noise abilities were assessed using the QuickSIN (Killion, Niquette, Gudmundsen, Revit, & Banerjee, 2004) and the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT ( Nilsson, Soli & Sullivan, 1994)). All listeners significantly improved key word identification on the HINT after training, albeit only at the most favorable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Listeners also showed a significant reduction in the degree of SNR loss on the QuickSIN after training. Short-term speech-in-noise training may improve speech-in-noise perception in postlingually deafened adult CI recipients.	\N	\N
22760769	Sound localization is a computational process accomplished along the auditory pathway. Once the acoustic information received at each ear is analyzed independently (monaural cues) and comparatively (binaural cues), those cues are integrated to generate a coherent spatial percept. Using adult ferrets trained by positive conditioning in a spatial task, we aimed to study the role of the auditory cortex in the ability to localize sounds under both normal hearing and monaurally occluded conditions, the latter of which requires a reinterpretation of the values of the localization cues. Sound localization deficits were found after lesion or inactivation of the different auditory cortical regions, thereby indicating their participation in spatial processing. The differential impairments found in the approach-to-target and in the head movement responses reveal the complex relationship between cortex and midbrain which are putatively responsible for the voluntary and reflexive aspects of localization behaviour respectively. Furthermore, every auditory cortical region contributes to the adaptation process that follows monaural occlusion, indicating the key role that the auditory cortex plays in experience-dependent plasticity. Also, the selective lesion of the descending projections from the auditory cortex to the inferior colliculus by chromophore-targeted laser photolysis has revealed the essential function that descending pathways play in learning-induced localization plasticity.	\N	\N
22772879	Synesthesia is an unusual condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality causes an experience in another sensory modality or when a sensation in one sensory modality causes another sensation within the same modality. We describe a previously unreported association of auditory-olfactory synesthesia coexisting with auditory-visual synesthesia. Given that many types of synesthesias involve vision, it is important that the clinician provide these patients with the necessary information and support that is available.	\N	\N
22773777	Many neurons adapt their spike output to accommodate the prevailing sensory environment. Although such adaptation is thought to improve coding of relevant stimulus features, the relationship between adaptation at the neural and behavioral levels remains to be established. Here we describe improved discrimination performance for an auditory spatial cue (interaural time differences, ITDs) following adaptation to stimulus statistics. Physiological recordings in the midbrain of anesthetized guinea pigs and measurement of discrimination performance in humans both demonstrate improved coding of the most prevalent ITDs in a distribution, but with highest accuracy maintained for ITDs corresponding to frontal locations, suggesting the existence of a fovea for auditory space. A biologically plausible model accounting for the physiological data suggests that neural tuning is stabilized by inhibition to maintain high discriminability for frontal locations. The data support the notion that adaptive coding in the midbrain is a key element of behaviorally efficient sound localization in dynamic acoustic environments.	\N	\N
22779451	Animals live in cluttered auditory environments, where sounds arrive at the two ears through several paths. Reflections make sound localization difficult, and it is thought that the auditory system deals with this issue by isolating the first wavefront and suppressing later signals. However, in many situations, reflections arrive too early to be suppressed, for example, reflections from the ground in small animals. This paper examines the implications of these early reflections on binaural cues to sound localization, using realistic models of reflecting surfaces and a spherical model of diffraction by the head. The fusion of direct and reflected signals at each ear results in interference patterns in binaural cues as a function of frequency. These cues are maximally modified at frequencies related to the delay between direct and reflected signals, and therefore to the spatial location of the sound source. Thus, natural binaural cues differ from anechoic cues. In particular, the range of interaural time differences is substantially larger than in anechoic environments. Reflections may potentially contribute binaural cues to distance and polar angle when the properties of the reflecting surface are known and stable, for example, for reflections on the ground.	\N	\N
22779484	Previous studies have shown a loss in the precision of horizontal localization responses of older hearing-impaired (HI) individuals, along with potentially poorer neural representations of sound-source location. These deficits could be the result or corollary of greater difficulties in discriminating spatial images, and the insensitivity to punctate sound sources. This hypothesis was tested in three headphone-presentation experiments varying interaural coherence (IC), the cue most associated with apparent auditory source width. First, thresholds for differences in IC were measured for a broad sampling of participants. Older HI participants were significantly worse at discriminating IC across reference values than younger normal-hearing participants. These results are consistent with senescent increases in temporal jitter. Performance decreased with age, a finding corroborated in a second discrimination experiment using a separate group of participants matched for hearing loss. This group also completed a third, visual experiment, with both a cross-mapping task where they drew the size of the sound they heard and the identification task where they chose the image that best corresponded to what they heard. The results from the visual tasks indicate that older HI individuals do not hear punctate images and are relatively insensitive to changes in width based on IC.	\N	\N
22783631	This study investigates the phonetic implementation of stress in American English compounds by measuring the interaction of stress cues with different intonation patterns. Participants in an experiment produced compounds and phrases such as greenhouse and green house in different prosodic positions and sentence types to elicit the contrast in a variety of intonational environments. Intonation patterns were labeled and carefully controlled for, and measurements of vowel duration, intensity (dB) and pitch (in semitones) were compared. The results of the experiment reveal clear patterns that distinguish compounds from phrases, and provide acoustic evidence of the characteristic prominence pattern for adjective + noun compounds. Intensity is a significant cue for compound stress in all but the rising intonation environments, such as questions. Duration differences are a reliable cue in exactly this intonational environment, and also in certain clause-final intonation patterns, which similarly contain a high boundary tone. Distinctive pitch patterns were also found. The results suggest that interactions with the intonational and prosodic environment determine which phonetic cues will signal the stress pattern of a compound in a given utterance.	\N	\N
22786953	Auditory spatial perception plays a critical role in day-to-day communication. For instance, listeners utilize acoustic spatial information to segregate individual talkers into distinct auditory "streams" to improve speech intelligibility. However, spatial localization is an exceedingly difficult task in everyday listening environments with numerous distracting echoes from nearby surfaces, such as walls. Listeners' brains overcome this unique challenge by relying on acoustic timing and, quite surprisingly, visual spatial information to suppress short-latency (1-10 ms) echoes through a process known as "the precedence effect" or "echo suppression." In the present study, we employed electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the neural time course of echo suppression both with and without the aid of coincident visual stimulation in human listeners. We find that echo suppression is a multistage process initialized during the auditory N1 (70-100 ms) and followed by space-specific suppression mechanisms from 150 to 250 ms. Additionally, we find a robust correlate of listeners' spatial perception (i.e., suppressing or not suppressing the echo) over central electrode sites from 300 to 500 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, vision's powerful contribution to echo suppression occurs late in processing (250-400 ms), suggesting that vision contributes primarily during late sensory or decision making processes. Together, our findings support growing evidence that echo suppression is a slow, progressive mechanism modifiable by visual influences during late sensory and decision making stages. Furthermore, our findings suggest that audiovisual interactions are not limited to early, sensory-level modulations but extend well into late stages of cortical processing.	\N	\N
22790547	Children and adolescents who live in situations of social vulnerability present a series of health problems. Nonetheless, affirmations that sensory and cognitive abnormalities are present are a matter of controversy. The aim of this study was to investigate aspects to auditory processing, through applying the brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP) and behavioral auditory processing tests to children living on the streets, and comparison with a control group. Cross-sectional study in the Laboratory of Auditory Processing, School of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo. The auditory processing tests were applied to a group of 27 individuals, subdivided into 11 children (7 to 10 years old) and 16 adolescents (11 to 16 years old), of both sexes, in situations of social vulnerability, compared with an age-matched control group of 10 children and 11 adolescents without complaints. The BAEP test was also applied to investigate the integrity of the auditory pathway. For both children and adolescents, there were significant differences between the study and control groups in most of the tests applied, with significantly worse performance in the study group, except in the pediatric speech intelligibility test. Only one child had an abnormal result in the BAEP test. The results showed that the study group (children and adolescents) presented poor performance in the behavioral auditory processing tests, despite their unaltered auditory brainstem pathways, as shown by their normal results in the BAEP test.	\N	\N
22813575	To separate neural signals from noise, brain responses measured in neuroimaging are routinely averaged across space and time. However, such procedures may obscure some properties of neural activity. Recently, multi-voxel pattern analysis methods have demonstrated that patterns of activity across voxels contain valuable information that is concealed by spatial averaging. Here we show that temporal patterns of neural activity contain information that can discriminate different stimuli, even within brain regions that show no net activation to that stimulus class. Furthermore, we find that in many brain regions, responses to natural stimuli are highly context dependent. In such cases, prototypical event-related responses do not even exist for individual stimuli, so that averaging responses to the same stimulus within different contexts may worsen the effective signal-to-noise. As a result, analysis of the temporal structures of single events can reveal aspects of neural dynamics which cannot be detected using standard event-related averaging methods.	\N	\N
22821077	The decision about which location should be the goal of the next eye movement is known to be determined by the interaction between auditory and visual input. This interaction can be explained by the vector theory that states that each element (either visual or auditory) in a scene evokes a vector in the oculomotor system. These vectors determine the direction in which the eye movement is initiated. Because auditory input is lateralized and localizable in most studies, it is currently unclear how non-lateralized auditory input interacts with the vectors evoked by visual input. In the current study, we investigated the influence of a non-lateralized auditory non-target on saccade accuracy (saccade angle deviation from the target) and latency in a single-target condition in Experiment 1 and a double-target condition in Experiment 2. The visual targets in Experiment 2 were positioned in such a way that saccades on average landed in between the two targets (i.e., a global effect). There was no effect of the auditory input on saccade accuracy in the single-target condition, but auditory input did influence saccade accuracy in the double-target condition. In both experiments, saccade latency increased when auditory input accompanied the visual target(s). Together, these findings show that non-lateralized auditory input enhances all vectors evoked by visual input. The results will be discussed in terms of their possible neural substrates.	\N	\N
22834336	The coherency characteristics of the brain electrical activity were studied in two groups of subjects: 1) with high and 2) low indexes of "emotional ear" (an ability to successfully recognize emotions in the speech). Comparison of the coherency links between two groups of subjects permitted the authors to make a conclusion that the persons of the first group had a much lower coherency level, especially in the alpha- and gamma-rhythms. The subjects of the second group were characterized by the opposite tendency: an increase in coherent links on the majority of frequency bands.	\N	\N
22836173	Functional networks in the human brain give rise to complex cognitive and perceptual abilities. While the decrease of functional connectivity is linked to neurological and psychiatric disorders, less is known about the consequences of increased functional connectivity. One population that has exceptionally enhanced perceptual abilities is people with absolute pitch (AP) - an ability to categorize tones into pitch classes without reference. AP has been linked to exceptional talent as well as to psychiatric and neurological conditions. Here we show that AP possessors have increased functional activation during music listening, as well as increased degrees, clustering, and local efficiency of functional correlations, with the difference being highest around the left superior temporal gyrus. Our results provide the first evidence that increased functional connectivity in a small-world brain network is related to exceptional perceptual abilities in a healthy population.	\N	\N
22842471	Task-irrelevant perceptual learning (TIPL) refers to the phenomenon where the stimulus features of a subject's task are learned when they are consistently presented at times when behaviorally relevant events occur. In this article, we addressed two points concerning TIPL. First, we address the question, are all behaviorally relevant events equal in their impact on encoding processes? Second, we address the hypothesis that TIPL involves mechanisms of the alerting attentional system. Two experiments of fast-TIPL were conducted in which the attentional state of participants was manipulated by using an alerting cue (visual or auditory) that informed participants of the arrival of an upcoming target. Images were presented with task-related stimuli (cues, targets and distractors) and subjects were tested on their memory of those images. Results indicate that memory for target-paired images was enhanced and cue-paired images were suppressed relative to that of distractor-paired images. The alerting cue increased the ability to recall target-paired images presented after this cue, although this result depended on the proportion of cued trials in a session. These results demonstrate a complex interplay between task-elements and the encoding of stimuli paired with them where both enhancement and suppression of task-paired stimuli can be found depending whether those stimuli are paired with task-targets or cues.	\N	\N
22848464	When a second sound follows a long first sound, its location appears to be perceived away from the first one (the localization/lateralization aftereffect). This aftereffect has often been considered to reflect an efficient neural coding of sound locations in the auditory system. To understand determinants of the localization aftereffect, the current study examined whether it is induced by an interaural temporal difference (ITD) in the amplitude envelope of high frequency transposed tones (over 2 kHz), which is known to function as a sound localization cue. In Experiment 1, participants were required to adjust the position of a pointer to the perceived location of test stimuli before and after adaptation. Test and adapter stimuli were amplitude modulated (AM) sounds presented at high frequencies and their positional differences were manipulated solely by the envelope ITD. Results showed that the adapter's ITD systematically affected the perceived position of test sounds to the directions expected from the localization/lateralization aftereffect when the adapter was presented at ±600 µs ITD; a corresponding significant effect was not observed for a 0 µs ITD adapter. In Experiment 2, the observed adapter effect was confirmed using a forced-choice task. It was also found that adaptation to the AM sounds at high frequencies did not significantly change the perceived position of pure-tone test stimuli in the low frequency region (128 and 256 Hz). The findings in the current study indicate that ITD in the envelope at high frequencies induces the localization aftereffect. This suggests that ITD in the high frequency region is involved in adaptive plasticity of auditory localization processing.	\N	\N
22858614	The purpose of this evidence-based systematic review was to evaluate the efficacy of digital noise reduction and directional microphones for outcome measures of audibility, speech recognition, speech and language, and self- or parent-report in pediatric hearing aid users. The authors searched 26 databases for experimental studies published after 1980 addressing one or more clinical questions and meeting all inclusion criteria. The authors evaluated studies for methodological quality and reported or calculated p values and effect sizes when possible. A systematic search of the literature resulted in the inclusion of 4 digital noise reduction and 7 directional microphone studies (in 9 journal articles) that addressed speech recognition, speech and language, and/or self- or parent-report outcomes. No digital noise reduction or directional microphone studies addressed audibility outcomes. On the basis of a moderate level of evidence, digital noise reduction was not found to improve or degrade speech understanding. Additional research is needed before conclusions can be drawn regarding the impact of digital noise reduction on important speech, language, hearing, and satisfaction outcomes. Moderate evidence also indicates that directional microphones resulted in improved speech recognition in controlled optimal settings; however, additional research is needed to determine the effectiveness of directional microphones in actual everyday listening environments.	\N	\N
22859982	Pitch processing is a critical ability on which humans' tonal musical experience depends, and which is also of paramount importance for decoding prosody in speech. Congenital amusia refers to deficits in the ability to properly process musical pitch, and recent evidence has suggested that this musical pitch disorder may impact upon the processing of speech sounds. Here we present the first electrophysiological evidence demonstrating that individuals with amusia who speak Mandarin Chinese are impaired in classifying prosody as appropriate or inappropriate during a speech comprehension task. When presented with inappropriate prosody stimuli, control participants elicited a larger P600 and smaller N100 relative to the appropriate condition. In contrast, amusics did not show significant differences between the appropriate and inappropriate conditions in either the N100 or the P600 component. This provides further evidence that the pitch perception deficits associated with amusia may also affect intonation processing during speech comprehension in those who speak a tonal language such as Mandarin, and suggests music and language share some cognitive and neural resources.	\N	\N
22866760	Many studies have examined the processes involved in recognizing types of human action through sound, but little is known about whether the physical characteristics of an action (such as kinetic and kinematic parameters) can be perceived and imitated from sound. Twelve young healthy adults listened to recordings of footsteps on a gravel path taken from walks of different stride lengths (SL) and cadences. In 1 protocol, participants performed a real-time reenactment of the walking action depicted in a sound sample. Second, participants listened to 2 different sound samples and discriminated differences in SL. In a 2nd experiment, these procedures were repeated using synthesized sounds derived from the kinetic interactions between the foot and walking surface. A 3rd experiment examined the influence of altered cadence on participants' ability to discriminate changes in SL. Participants significantly adapted their own SL and cadence according to those depicted in both real and synthesized sounds (p < .01). However, although participants accurately discriminated between large changes in SL, these perceptions were heavily influenced by temporal factors, that is, when cadence changed between samples. These findings show that spatial attributes of action sounds can be both mimicked and discriminated, even when only basic kinetic interactions present within the action are specified.	\N	\N
22875083	The aim of the current study was to differentiate between neural activity that represents neural anomalies that are responsible for persistent developmental stuttering (PDS) from the activity that is a result of compensating for stuttering. This was done by investigating alterations to the intrinsic functional architecture of speech-language processes of patients with PDS before and after a short-term intervention. The resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and cortical thickness were examined before and after the intervention. The structural data were used to validate the functional results. Fifteen stuttering patients who received intervention (PDS+), 13 stuttering patients who did not receive intervention (PDS-), and 13 fluent controls participated. Before the intervention, both groups of PDS patients showed significant RSFC and cortical thickness reductions in the left pars-opercularis (PO) and RSFC increases in the cerebellum, as compared to fluent controls. The intervention was effective in reducing stuttering in PDS+ patients and lowering their RSFC in the cerebellum to the level of fluent controls. The intervention effect was specific to the PDS+ group (it was not evident in the PDS- group). The intervention did not change RSFC and cortical thickness in the left PO, which remained at its preintervention level. The results suggest that the left PO is a locus where the intrinsic functional architecture of speech-language processes is altered in PDS patients, suggesting an etiologic role of this region in PDS. The cerebellum showed intervention-induced neural reorganization, suggesting a compensatory response when stuttering occurs.	\N	\N
22889186	Two experiments are reported concerning the perception of ground extent to discover whether prior reports of anisotropy between frontal extents and extents in depth were consistent across different measures (visual matching and pantomime walking) and test environments (outdoor environments and virtual environments). In Experiment 1 it was found that depth extents of up to 7 m are indeed perceptually compressed relative to frontal extents in an outdoor environment, and that perceptual matching provided more precise estimates than did pantomime walking. In Experiment 2, similar anisotropies were found using similar tasks in a similar (but virtual) environment. In both experiments pantomime walking measures seemed to additionally compress the range of responses. Experiment 3 supported the hypothesis that range compression in walking measures of perceived distance might be due to proactive interference (memory contamination). It is concluded that walking measures are calibrated for perceived egocentric distance, but that pantomime walking measures may suffer range compression. Depth extents along the ground are perceptually compressed relative to frontal ground extents in a manner consistent with the angular scale expansion hypothesis.	\N	\N
22894208	Artificial bandwidth extension methods have been developed to improve the quality and intelligibility of narrowband telephone speech and to reduce the difference with wideband speech. Such methods have commonly been evaluated with objective measures or subjective listening-only tests, but conversational evaluations have been rare. This article presents a conversational evaluation of two methods for the artificial bandwidth extension of telephone speech. Bandwidth-extended narrowband speech is compared with narrowband and wideband speech in a test setting including a simulated telephone connection, realistic conversation tasks, and various background noise conditions. The responses of the subjects indicate that speech processed with one of the methods is preferred to narrowband speech in noise, but wideband speech is superior to both narrowband and bandwidth-extended speech. Bandwidth extension was found to be beneficial for telephone conversation in noisy listening conditions.	\N	\N
22894315	Studies of spoken-word recognition have revealed that competition from embedded words differs in strength as a function of where in the carrier word the embedded word is found and have further shown embedding patterns to be skewed such that embeddings in initial position in carriers outnumber embeddings in final position. Lexico-statistical analyses show that this skew is highly attenuated in Japanese, a noninflectional language. Comparison of the extent of the asymmetry in the three Germanic languages English, Dutch, and German allows the source to be traced to a combination of suffixal morphology and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables.	\N	\N
22897231	When asked how many animals of each kind Moses took on the Ark, most people respond with "two" despite the substituted name (Moses for Noah) in the question. Possible explanations for semantic illusions appear to be related to processing limitations such as those of working memory. Indeed, individual working memory capacity has an impact upon how sentences containing substitutions are processed. This experiment examined further the role of working memory in the occurrence of semantic illusions using a dual-task working memory load approach. Participants verified statements while engaging in either articulatory suppression or random number generation. Secondary task type had a significant effect on semantic illusion rate, but only when comparing the control condition to the two dual-task conditions. Furthermore, secondary task performance in the random number generation condition declined, suggesting a tradeoff between tasks. Response time analyses also showed a different pattern of processing across the conditions. The findings suggest that the phonological loop plays a role in representing semantic illusion sentences coherently and in monitoring for details, while the role of the central executive is to assist gist-processing of sentences. This usually efficient strategy leads to error in the case of semantic illusions.	\N	\N
22915198	Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET) has been the leading theory in timing research, and has also influenced research into human timing. However, other timing theories exist, such as Learning to Time (LeT). The double bisection task was designed to test the SET and LeT theories in pigeons. The purpose of this experiment was to verify whether similar results emerge from a human adaptation of the double bisection task. The results indicated that humans perform the double bisection task in the same way as pigeons do. However, the assumptions inherent in LeT cannot be applied to humans. Two other explanations are also assessed here.	\N	\N
22915276	A hearing screening among 14- to 15-year-old pupils was performed to estimate the number of hearing-impaired individuals in the adolescent population. A total of 1,298 pupils from 30 schools in Tyrol (Austria) participated in the screening. Hearing tests were performed in a silent room at the school. Sinus tones at frequencies 0.5/1/2/4/6 kHz and at levels of 25/20/20/20/20 dB HL, respectively, were delivered via headphones to either ear. Failure of screening was defined as not hearing one or more frequencies in one or both ears. The screening was failed by 16.3% of the pupils. There was a small but not significant difference between males and females (17.0 vs. 15.2%). Most of the pupils failed at only one frequency (9.6%). Failing at two or more frequencies in the same ear occurred in 3.9% of the pupils, thereof in 1.1% bilaterally. As the specificity of our screening is limited, false-positive results may result. Thus, the rate of hearing deficits in our sample is probably a bit lower than indicated by the figures above. Most of the adolescents who failed the screen failed at only one frequency. These subjects have a small elevation of their hearing threshold, not a hearing loss in the sense of a raised averaged threshold. A hearing loss in the latter sense is supposed to be present in only very few percent of adolescents, a bilateral hearing loss in perhaps less than 1%.	\N	\N
22918112	Current strategies for functional rehabilitation of microtia-atresia patients with bone-anchored implants or surgical atresia repair have been extended by the feasibility of active middle ear implants. The aim of the present research is to evaluate a new flowchart of the treatment of these patients that considers active middle ear implants. Congenital aural atresia and microtia. Bilateral cases are provided with a conductive hearing aid after birth and implanted with an active middle ear implant within the second year. Unilateral cases are provided with a conductive hearing aid and implanted with a middle ear or bone-conduction device in early childhood. Unilateral cases without amplification in the vulnerable time after birth are carefully selected for late implantation. At age 8 to 10, the auricular reconstruction is completed. Feasibility of implantation irrespective of age, functional gain in audiometry. The results of early implantation are as good as those previously published for adolescents. Mean reaction threshold with the Vibrant Soundbridge was 21 dB. Mean functional gain was 48 dB. The local tissues are unaltered and ready for auricular reconstruction. Active middle ear implants allow early and selective stimulation of the auditory pathway in children with congenital conductive hearing loss and are expected to lead to the normal development of the binaural hearing functions. To date, it is the only option if the stimulation is to be started at the age of 12 to 18 months. This was implemented into a new flowchart for aural atresia-microtia.	\N	\N
22921291	To use a randomized design to evaluate the effectiveness of voice training programs for telemarketers via multidimensional analysis. Forty-eight telemarketers were randomly assigned to two groups: voice training group (n=14) who underwent training over an 8-week period and a nontraining control group (n=34). Before and after training, recordings of the sustained vowel /ɛ/ and connected were collected for acoustic and perceptual analyses. Based on pre- and posttraining comparisons, the voice training group presented with a significant reduction in percent jitter (P=0.044). No other significant differences were observed, and inter-rater reliability varied from poor to fair. These findings suggest that voice training improved a single acoustic dimension, but do not change perceptual dimension of telemarketers' voices.	\N	\N
22921292	This study investigated whether listener's experience, presence/absence of vibrato, formant frequency difference, or onset delay affect the ability of experienced and inexperienced listeners to segregate complex vocal stimuli. Repeated measures factorial design. Two sets of stimuli were constructed: one with no vibrato and another with vibrato. For each set, each stimulus was synthesized at four pitches: A3, E4, B4, and F5. Stimuli were synthesized using formant patterns appropriate for the vowel |ɑ|. Frequencies for formants one through four were systematically varied from lower to higher in an attempt to simulate the acoustic results of corresponding changes in vocal tract length. Four formant patterns were synthesized (patterns A-D). Three pairs were created at each pitch, pairing the formants AB (mezzo-soprano/mezzo-soprano), CD (soprano/soprano), and AD (mezzo-soprano/soprano). Each of these three pairs was constructed in three separate conditions: simultaneous onset; the first voice in the pair with an onset delay of 100 milliseconds; and the second voice in the pair with an onset delay of 100 milliseconds. Using a scroll bar, listeners rated how difficult it was for them to hear each stimulus pair as two separate voices. The most difficult combinations to segregate were produced with no vibrato and used simultaneous onset. The easiest conditions to segregate were combinations including a "soprano-like" formant pattern (D) in the vibrato condition. Overall, listener's experience did not affect the perceived difficulty of segregation; however, in the presence of vibrato cues, inexperienced listeners did not use delay cues as an aid in segregation in the same manner as did experienced listeners. Once vibrato was removed from the experimental context, inexperienced listeners were able to use delay to aid in segregation in a similar manner to experienced listeners. Presence/absence of vibrato, formant pattern difference, and onset delay interact in a complex manner to affect the perceived difficulty of voice segregation.	\N	\N
22921368	In spite of its massively parallel architecture [1], the human brain is fundamentally limited if required to perform two tasks at the same time [2, 3]. This limitation can be studied with the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, where two stimuli that require speeded responses occur in close succession [4]. Interference generally takes the form of a delay in the time to respond to the second stimulus [5]. Previous studies suggested that sensory decisions require the accumulation of sensory evidence [6, 7] and that the PRP reflects the inability to form more than one decision at a time [4, 8]. In the present study, we used a psychophysical reverse-correlation technique [9, 10] to measure the time-course of evidence accumulation during the PRP. We found that the accumulation of evidence could occur during the PRP albeit with a reduced efficiency, which implies that multiple decision processes can occur in parallel in the human brain. In addition to the reduced efficiency of evidence accumulation, our results uncover an additional delay in the routing of the decision to motor structures during the PRP, which implies that the process of sensory decision making is separable from the preparation of a motor response [11-13].	\N	\N
22921779	To evaluate the auditory outcomes of children implanted in an ear with eighth nerve hypoplasia or aplasia and to determine whether preoperative characteristics are predictive of auditory performance achieved. retrospective case review. tertiary care medical center. ten children implanted in an ear with eighth nerve hypoplasia or aplasia, as determined by high resolution magnetic resonance imaging. Neural response test measurements, detection and speech awareness thresholds, Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale scores, as well as speech perception level achieved. Post-implantation, three children demonstrated little to no detection of sound, three had improved detection and awareness of environmental sounds, one developed closed-set speech perception and spoken language, and three developed open-set speech perception and spoken language. No imaging findings appeared related to outcomes. Significantly better implant detection thresholds and Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale scores were found in children who had preoperative aided auditory detection (p's ≤ 0.02-0.05). Some children with eighth nerve hypoplasia or aplasia may derive significant benefit from a cochlear implant. In our study high resolution magnetic resonance imaging was more sensitive than high resolution computer tomography in detecting neural deficiency. However, no imaging findings were predictive of auditory performance level achieved post-implantation.	\N	\N
22928919	To investigate speech recognition performance in noise with bilateral open-fit hearing aids and as reference also with closed earmolds, in omnidirectional mode, directional mode, and directional mode in conjunction with noise reduction. A within-subject design with repeated measures across conditions was used. Speech recognition thresholds in noise were obtained for the different conditions. Twenty adults without prior experience with hearing aids. All had symmetric sensorineural mild hearing loss in the lower frequencies and moderate to severe hearing loss in the higher frequencies. Speech recognition performance in noise was not significantly better with an omnidirectional microphone compared to unaided, whereas performance was significantly better with a directional microphone (1.6 dB with open fitting and 4.4 dB with closed earmold) compared to unaided. With open fitting, no significant additional advantage was obtained by combining the directional microphone with a noise reduction algorithm, but with closed earmolds a significant additional advantage of 0.8 dB was obtained. The significant, though limited, advantage of directional microphones and the absence of additional significant improvement by a noise reduction algorithm should be considered when fitting open-fit hearing aids.	\N	\N
22928962	In synaesthetes, stimulation of one sensory pathway provokes a sensory experience (e.g. a colour concurrent) in a different sensory modality or sub-modality. Results of synaesthetic Stroop and priming tests indicate that the perception of a colour concurrent interferes with the processing of a veridical colour in synaesthetes. We here examined the congruency between a stimulus' colour and the colour concurrent both in grapheme-colour synaesthetes and in non-synaesthetes trained on grapheme-colour associations. Electrophysiological (electroencephalogram) and behavioural measurements were collected during a priming task that included grapheme-grapheme and grapheme-colour patch pairs. To investigate covert bidirectional synaesthesia, an additional inverted colour patch-grapheme condition was included. Both groups of participants showed longer reaction time and more negative-going N300 and N400 event-related potential (ERP) components on incongruent trials. Whereas ERP effects in the non-synaesthetes were largely confined to the late cognitive components N300, P300 and N400, the synaesthetes also showed congruency-dependent modulation of the early sensory component N170. Our results suggest that early cognitive processes distinguish cross-modal synaesthetic perceptions from acquired associations. The involvement of both early- and late-stage cognitive components in bidirectional synaesthesia possibly indicates similar feature-binding mechanisms during processing of opposite flow directions of information, namely grapheme-colour and colour-grapheme.	\N	\N
22937153	In everyday life, we need a capacity to flexibly shift attention between alternative sound sources. However, relatively little work has been done to elucidate the mechanisms of attention shifting in the auditory domain. Here, we used a mixed event-related/sparse-sampling fMRI approach to investigate this essential cognitive function. In each 10-sec trial, subjects were instructed to wait for an auditory "cue" signaling the location where a subsequent "target" sound was likely to be presented. The target was occasionally replaced by an unexpected "novel" sound in the uncued ear, to trigger involuntary attention shifting. To maximize the attention effects, cues, targets, and novels were embedded within dichotic 800-Hz vs. 1500-Hz pure-tone "standard" trains. The sound of clustered fMRI acquisition (starting at t = 7.82 sec) served as a controlled trial-end signal. Our approach revealed notable activation differences between the conditions. Cued voluntary attention shifting activated the superior intra--parietal sulcus (IPS), whereas novelty-triggered involuntary orienting activated the inferior IPS and certain subareas of the precuneus. Clearly more widespread activations were observed during voluntary than involuntary orienting in the premotor cortex, including the frontal eye fields. Moreover, we found -evidence for a frontoinsular-cingular attentional control network, consisting of the anterior insula, inferior frontal cortex, and medial frontal cortices, which were activated during both target discrimination and voluntary attention shifting. Finally, novels and targets activated much wider areas of superior temporal auditory cortices than shifting cues.	\N	\N
22938066	There are different reports of the usefulness of the Nasometer™ as a complement to listening, often as correlation calculations between listening and nasalance measurements. Differences between findings have been attributed to listener experience and types of speech stimuli. To compare nasalance scores from the Nasometer with perceptual assessments, for the same and different Swedish speech stimuli, using three groups of listeners with differing levels of experience in judging speech nasality. To compare nasalance scores and blinded listener ratings of randomized recordings using three groups of listeners and two groups of speakers. Speakers were either classified as having hypernasal speech or speech with typical speech resonance. Listeners were speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working predominantly with resonance disorders, other SLPs and untrained listeners. Correlations (r(s)) between hypernasality ratings and nasalance scores for each listener group and speech stimuli were calculated. For both groups of SLPs all correlations between perceptual ratings and nasalance scores were significant at p= 0.01. The correlations between the nasalance scores and ratings by listeners in the SLP groups were higher than those for the untrained listener group regardless of stimulus type. Post-hoc Mann-Whitney U-tests showed that the only difference that was significant was expert SLP group versus untrained listener group. Secondly, correlations between perceptual ratings and oral stimulus nasalance scores were higher when the perceptual ratings were based on spontaneous speech rather than on the oral stimulus. However, a Wilcoxon signed rank test showed that the difference was not significant. A third finding was that correlations between oral stimulus nasalance scores and perceptual scores were higher than those between mixed stimulus nasalance scores and perceptual scores. A Wilcoxon signed rank test showed that the difference was significant. The Nasometer might be useful for the SLP with limited experience in assessing resonance disorders in differentiating between hyper- and hyponasality. With listener reliability for ratings of hypernasality still being an issue, the use of a nasalance score as a complement to the perceptual evaluation will also aid the expert SLP. It will give an alternative way of quantifying speech resonance and might help in especially hard to judge cases.	\N	\N
22944369	Previous studies have demonstrated amygdala activation in response to fearful faces even if presented below the threshold of conscious visual perception. It has also been proposed that subcortical regions are selectively sensitive to low spatial frequency (LSF) information. However, chronic hyperarousal may reduce amygdala activation in panic disorder (PD). Our aim was to establish whether the amygdala is engaged by masked and LSF fearful faces in PD as compared to healthy subjects. Neutral faces were used as the mask stimulus. Thirteen PD patients (seven females, six males; mean age=29.1 (S.D: 5.9)) and 15 healthy volunteers (seven females, eight males; mean age=27.9 (S.D. 4.5)) underwent two passive viewing tasks during a 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as follows: 1) presentation of faces with fearful versus neutral expressions (17ms) using a backward masking procedure and 2) presentation of the same faces whose spatial frequency contents had been manipulated by low-pass filtering. Level of awareness was confirmed by a forced choice fear-detection task. Whereas controls showed bilateral activation to fearful masked faces versus neutral faces, patients failed to show activation within the amygdala. LSF stimuli did not elicit amygdala response in either group, contrary to the view that LSF information plays a crucial role in the processing of facial expressions in the amygdala. Findings suggest maladaptive amygdala responses to potentially threatening visual stimuli in PD patients.	\N	\N
22962856	It has been suggested that high alexithymia scorers have an 'augmenter' profile which amplifies their physiological and subjective responses to highly arousing stimuli. The aim of this study was to test this theory using several physiological measures. Participants listened to musical excerpts either in a 'weak-to-strong' or a 'strong-to-weak' order of arousing levels of stimuli. The results show that alexithymia was associated with an augmenter profile for subjective reports for the most arousing stimulus and with stronger skin conductance level responses in the 'strong-to-weak' order. These results partially support the augmenter profile and reveal that alexithymia may be associated with higher anticipation for the most arousing excerpt.	\N	\N
22970141	Extensive research shows that inter-talker variability (i.e., changing the talker) affects recognition memory for speech signals. However, relatively little is known about the consequences of intra-talker variability (i.e. changes in speaking style within a talker) on the encoding of speech signals in memory. It is well established that speakers can modulate the characteristics of their own speech and produce a listener-oriented, intelligibility-enhancing speaking style in response to communication demands (e.g., when speaking to listeners with hearing impairment or non-native speakers of the language). Here we conducted two experiments to examine the role of speaking style variation in spoken language processing. First, we examined the extent to which clear speech provided benefits in challenging listening environments (i.e. speech-in-noise). Second, we compared recognition memory for sentences produced in conversational and clear speaking styles. In both experiments, semantically normal and anomalous sentences were included to investigate the role of higher-level linguistic information in the processing of speaking style variability. The results show that acoustic-phonetic modifications implemented in listener-oriented speech lead to improved speech recognition in challenging listening conditions and, crucially, to a substantial enhancement in recognition memory for sentences.	\N	\N
22978875	Simulated room impulse responses have been proven to be both useful and indispensable for comprehensive testing of acoustic signal processing algorithms while controlling parameters such as the reverberation time, room dimensions, and source-array distance. In this work, a method is proposed for simulating the room impulse responses between a sound source and the microphones positioned on a spherical array. The method takes into account specular reflections of the source by employing the well-known image method, and scattering from the rigid sphere by employing spherical harmonic decomposition. Pseudocode for the proposed method is provided, taking into account various optimizations to reduce the computational complexity. The magnitude and phase errors that result from the finite order spherical harmonic decomposition are analyzed and general guidelines for the order selection are provided. Three examples are presented: an analysis of a diffuse reverberant sound field, a study of binaural cues in the presence of reverberation, and an illustration of the algorithm's use as a mouth simulator.	\N	\N
22985274	Whether the mechanisms giving rise to pitch reflect spectral or temporal processing has long been debated. Generally, sounds having strong harmonic structures in their spectra have strong periodicities in their temporal structures. We found that when a wideband harmonic tone complex is passed through a noise vocoder, the resulting sound can have a harmonic structure with a large peak-to-valley ratio, but with little or no periodicity in the temporal structure. To test the role of harmonic structure in pitch perception for a nonhuman mammal, we measured behavioral responses to noise-vocoded tone complexes in chinchillas (Chinchilla laniger) using a stimulus generalization paradigm. Chinchillas discriminated either a harmonic tone complex or an iterated rippled noise from a 1-channel vocoded version of the tone complex. When tested with vocoded versions generated with 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 channels, responses were similar to those of the 1-channel version. Behavioral responses could not be accounted for based on harmonic peak-to-valley ratio as the acoustic cue, but could be accounted for based on temporal properties of the autocorrelation functions such as periodicity strength or the height of the first peak. The results suggest that pitch perception does not arise through spectral processing in nonhuman mammals but rather through temporal processing. The conclusion that spectral processing contributes little to pitch in nonhuman mammals may reflect broader cochlear tuning than that described in humans.	\N	\N
22986018	Structural priming paradigms have been influential in shaping theories of adult sentence processing and theories of syntactic development. However, until recently there have been few attempts to provide an integrated account that explains both adult and developmental data. The aim of the present paper was to begin the process of integration by taking a developmental approach to structural priming. Using a dialog comprehension-to-production paradigm, we primed participants (3-4year olds, 5-6year olds and adults) with double object datives (Wendy gave Bob a dog) and prepositional datives (Wendy gave a dog to Bob). Half the participants heard the same verb in prime and target (e.g. gave-gave) and half heard a different verb (e.g. sent-gave). The results revealed substantial differences in the magnitude of priming across development. First, there was a small but significant abstract structural priming effect across all age groups, but this effect was larger in younger children than in older children and adults. Second, adding verb overlap between prime and target prompted a large, significant increase in the priming effect in adults (a lexical boost), a small, marginally significant increase in the older children and no increase in the youngest children. The results support the idea that abstract syntactic knowledge can develop independently of verb-specific frames. They also support the idea that different mechanisms may be needed to explain abstract structural priming and lexical priming, as predicted by the implicit learning account (Bock, K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology - General, 129(2), 177-192). Finally, the results illustrate the value of an integrative developmental approach to both theories of adult sentence processing and theories of syntax acquisition.	\N	\N
22989579	The perception of a melody is invariant to the absolute properties of its constituting notes, but depends on the relation between them-the melody's relative pitch profile. In fact, a melody's "Gestalt" is recognized regardless of the instrument or key used to play it. Pitch processing in general is assumed to occur at the level of the auditory cortex. However, it is unknown whether early auditory regions are able to encode pitch sequences integrated over time (i.e., melodies) and whether the resulting representations are invariant to specific keys. Here, we presented participants different melodies composed of the same 4 harmonic pitches during functional magnetic resonance imaging recordings. Additionally, we played the same melodies transposed in different keys and on different instruments. We found that melodies were invariantly represented by their blood oxygen level-dependent activation patterns in primary and secondary auditory cortices across instruments, and also across keys. Our findings extend common hierarchical models of auditory processing by showing that melodies are encoded independent of absolute pitch and based on their relative pitch profile as early as the primary auditory cortex.	\N	\N
22989871	The function of consciousness was explored in two contexts of audio-visual speech, cross-modal visual attention guidance and McGurk cross-modal integration. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 utilized a novel cueing paradigm in which two different flash suppressed lip-streams cooccured with speech sounds matching one of these streams. A visual target was then presented at either the audio-visually congruent or incongruent location. Target recognition differed for the congruent versus incongruent trials, and the nature of this difference depended on the probabilities of a target appearing at these respective locations. Thus, even though the lip-streams were never consciously perceived, they were nevertheless meaningfully integrated with the consciously perceived sounds, and participants learned to guide their attention according to statistical regularities between targets and these unconsciously perceived cross-modal cues. In Experiment 4, McGurk stimuli were presented in which the lip-streams were either flash suppressed (4a) or unsuppressed (4b), and the McGurk effect was found to vanish under conditions of flash suppression. Overall, these results suggest a simple yet fundamental principle regarding the function of consciousness in multisensory integration - cross-modal effects can occur in the absence of consciousness, but the influencing modality must be consciously perceived for its information to cross modalities.	\N	\N
22989933	Distraction is a strategy that is commonly used to cope with pain. Results concerning the efficacy of distraction from both experimental and clinical studies are variable, however, and indicate that its efficacy may depend on particular circumstances. Several models propose that distraction may be less effective for people who display a large attentional bias towards pain-related information. This hypothesis was tested in an experimental context with 53 pain-free volunteers. First, attentional bias towards cues signalling the occurrence of pain (electrocutaneous stimuli) and towards words describing the sensory experience of this painful stimulus was independently assessed by means of 2 behavioural paradigms (respectively, spatial cueing task and dot-probe task). This was followed by a subsequent distraction task during which the efficacy of distraction, by directing attention away from the electrocutaneous stimuli, was tested. In addition, state-trait anxiety, catastrophic thinking, and initial pain intensity were measured. Results indicated that people who display a large attentional bias towards predictive cues of pain or who initially experience the pain as more painful benefit less from distraction on a subsequent test. No effects were found between attentional bias towards pain words, state-trait anxiety, catastrophic thinking, and the efficacy of distraction. Current findings suggest that distraction should not be used as a 'one size fits all' method to control pain, but only under more specific conditions.	\N	\N
22992016	The present study showed that elevation of bone-conduction (BC) thresholds at low frequencies might be a characteristic audiometric finding in cases with otitis media with effusion (OME) with high pepsinogen (PG) concentrations. The objective of this study was to investigate whether there is any characteristic audiometric finding in adult cases with otitis media with high PG compared to those with low PG. Twenty-four adult patients with unilateral OME of undetermined etiology and high PG concentrations (> 500 ng/ml) in their middle ear effusions (high PG group) were selected. The air-conduction and BC thresholds of pure tone audiometry were compared between the affected and healthy ears. Results were compared to those in 23 patients with low PG concentrations (< 50 ng/ml; low PG group). The average BC difference in the threshold at 0.25 kHz between the affected ear and the healthy ear was significantly higher in the high PG group than in the low PG group, with a significantly higher proportion of patients in the high PG group having BC thresholds at 0.25 kHz in the affected ear that were ≥ 15 dB higher than in the healthy ear.	\N	\N
23000014	Music is a stimulus which may give rise to a wide range of emotional and cognitive responses. Therefore, brain reactivity to music has become a focus of interest in cognitive neuroscience. It is possible that individual preference moderates the effectof music on the brain. In the present study we examined whether there are common effects of listening to music even if each subject in a sample chooses their own piece of music. We invited 18 subjects to bring along their favorite relaxing music, and their favourite stimulating music. Additionally, a condition with tactile stimulation on the foot and a baseline condition (rest) without stimulation were used. The tactile stimulation was chosen to provide a simple, non-auditory condition which would be identical for all subjects. The electroencephalogram was recorded for each of the 3 conditions and during rest. We found responses in the alpha range mainly on parietal and occipital sites that were significant compared to baseline in 13 subjects during relaxing music, 15 subjects during activating music, and 16 subjects during tactile stimulation. Most subjects showed an alpha desynchronization in a lower alpha range followed by a synchronization in an upper frequency range. However, some subjects showed an increase in this area, whereas others showed a decrease only. In addition, many subjects showed reactivity in the beta range. Beta activity was especially increased while listening to activating music and during tactile stimulation in most subjects. We found interindividual differences in the response patterns even though the stimuli provoked comparable subjective emotions (relaxation, activation), and even if the stimulus was the same for all subjects (somatosensory stimulation). We suggest that brain responsivity to music should be examined individually by considering individual characteristics.	\N	\N
23009003	Cochlear Implant (CI) is the most advanced method of treatment in receptive type of deafness and profound hearing loss. Good functioning auditory organ plays a significant role not only in auditory perception but also in the process of phonation, giving the possibility of good realization of the process of verbal communication. The aim of the study is to assess the quality of voice and life in adults with pre- and postlingual deafness treated using cochlear implant. Twenty six patients with pre- (group I) and postlingual (group II) deafness deriving no benefit from hearing aids were included into the study. Voice quality was assessed using subjective and objective methods. The endoscopic (VLS) and stroboscopic (VLSS) examination of the larynx and the acoustic voice analysis were carried out. The quality of life was assessed using the Nijmegen Cochlear Implant Questionnaire (NCIQ). Examinations were conducted before implantation and 6 months after activation of speech processor. In the subjective and objective assessment of voice quality the improvement was registered in both groups. The effects were less spectacular in prelingual patients. In this group of patients the subjective assessment of voice quality and stroboscopic examination confirmed the hypofunctional type of dysphonia. In postlingual patients the hyperfunctional type of dysphonia was registered what was confirmed by the analysis of acoustic parameters of voice. The improvement of quality of life was observed in both groups of patients after implantation. The voice quality was improved after implantation in both analyzed groups. In patients with postlingual deafness values of parameters of voice quality assessment were closed to physiological. Results of the subjective assessment of voice quality were confirmed by objective examinations and the acoustic voice analysis. Rehabilitation with cochlear implant gave the opportunity for active participation in private and social life, improving the quality of life in patients with pre- and postlingual deafness.	\N	\N
23017812	Auditory impairments in schizophrenia have been demonstrated previously, especially for tasks requiring precise encoding of frequency, although it is unclear the extent to which they have difficulty using pitch information and other cues to segregate sounds. We determined the extent to which those with schizophrenia have difficulty using pitch information and other auditory cues to segregate sounds that are presented sequentially. Ten participants with schizophrenia and nine healthy/normal control participants completed a battery of tasks that tested for the ability to perform sequential auditory stream segregation using pitch, amplitude modulation, or inter-aural phase difference as cues to segregation. All three sequential segregation tasks showed reduced tendency for those with schizophrenia to perceive segregated sounds, compared to control participants. These findings extend prior research by demonstrating a general impairment on sequential sound segregation tasks in schizophrenia, and not just on tasks that require precise encoding of frequency. Together, the pattern of results provide evidence that auditory impairments in schizophrenia result from selective abnormalities in neural circuits that carry out specific computations necessary for stream segregation, as opposed to an impairment in processing specific cues.	\N	\N
23025161	We examined whether and how sounds influence visually induced illusory self-motion (vection). Visual stimuli were presented for 40 s. They were made radially, expanding or contracting visual motion field and luminance-defined gratings drifting in a vertical or horizontal direction. Auditory stimuli were presented with the visual stimuli in most conditions; we employed sounds that increased or decreased in intensity, or ascended or descended in frequency. As a result, the sound which increased in intensity facilitated forward vection, and the sound which ascended/descended in frequency facilitated upward/downward vection. The perceptual plausibility of the sound for the corresponding self-motion seemed an important factor of enhancing vection.	\N	\N
23025794	Preferences between low delays and phase-frequency responses of behind-the-ear, open-canal hearing aids were investigated with acoustic conditions deemed sensitive to delay effects by normal-hearing listeners. Hearing aids with the following selectable delay and phase response options were fitted at low insertion gain: (1) 1.4 ms delay, minimum phase; (2) 3.4 ms delay, minimum phase; and (3) 3.4 ms delay, linear phase. Blind paired comparisons were made between processing options and between each option and a muted hearing-aid output with two music stimuli. The three alternative forced choice responses were "Slightly prefer", "Prefer", or "Strongly prefer". Twelve hearing-impaired musicians. At the 3.4-ms delay, the minimum-phase response was significantly preferred to the linear-phase response for one music sample and vice-versa for the other sample with a sign test (p < 0.04) but not a Wilcoxon signed rank test that accounted for the low preference strength. Preferences between all other processing conditions were not significant. In acoustic conditions sensitive to delay effects, delays of 1.4 or 3.4 ms were either not detected or no less preferable than no delayed aided signal. It is unclear whether different phase-frequency responses may be preferred with different music stimuli.	\N	\N
23027674	To examine the hypothesis that infants receiving a degraded auditory signal have more difficulty segmenting words from fluent speech if familiarized with the words presented in both speech and sign compared to familiarization with the words presented in speech only. Experiment utilizing an infant-controlled visual preference procedure. Twenty 8.5-month-old normal-hearing infants completed testing. Infants were familiarized with repetitions of words in either the speech + sign (n = 10) or the speech only (n = 10) condition. Infants were then presented with four six-sentence passages using an infant-controlled visual preference procedure. Every sentence in two of the passages contained the words presented in the familiarization phase, whereas none of the sentences in the other two passages contained familiar words. Infants exposed to the speech + sign condition looked at familiar word passages for 15.3 seconds and at nonfamiliar word passages for 15.6 seconds, t (9) = -0.130, p = .45. Infants exposed to the speech only condition looked at familiar word passages for 20.9 seconds and to nonfamiliar word passages for 15.9 seconds. This difference was statistically significant, t (9) = 2.076, p = .03. Infants' ability to segment words from degraded speech is negatively affected when these words are initially presented in simultaneous speech and sign. The current study suggests that a decreased ability to segment words from fluent speech may contribute towards the poorer performance of pediatric cochlear implant recipients in total communication settings on a wide range of spoken language outcome measures.	\N	\N
23030713	The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is a common experience, usually coupled with a frustrating feeling caused by the incapability of retrieving a familiar word. It is thought that TOTs occur when the semantic and syntactic information of the word is retrieved but not its phonology. This study aims to further understand the role of phonology in TOT resolution. Specifically, using a syllabic pseudohomophone priming paradigm, we aim to analyse the role of the phonological syllabic position (first vs. last) and the number of syllables in TOT states resolution. TOT was elicited by a picture naming task, after which a lexical decision task was presented. Here, first, last, or none of the phonological syllables of the target word were embedded in pseudohomophone primes. Results showed a significant syllabic pseudohomophone priming effect facilitating TOT resolution. The effect was stronger for four-syllable words, especially when the last syllable was used as prime. These results seem to reinforce the importance of phonology in TOT states resolution, particularly the role of the syllable as an important sublexical unit in speech processing.	\N	\N
23035086	Humans and other animals with foveate vision make saccadic eye movements to prioritize the visual analysis of behaviorally relevant information. Even before movement onset, visual processing is selectively enhanced at the target of a saccade, presumably gated by brain areas controlling eye movements. Here we assess concurrent changes in visual performance and perceived contrast before saccades, and show that saccade preparation enhances perception rapidly, altering early visual processing in a manner akin to increasing the physical contrast of the visual input. Observers compared orientation and contrast of a test stimulus, appearing briefly before a saccade, to a standard stimulus, presented previously during a fixation period. We found simultaneous progressive enhancement in both orientation discrimination performance and perceived contrast as time approached saccade onset. These effects were robust as early as 60 ms after the eye movement was cued, much faster than the voluntary deployment of covert attention (without eye movements), which takes ∼300 ms. Our results link the dynamics of saccade preparation, visual performance, and subjective experience and show that upcoming eye movements alter visual processing by increasing the signal strength.	\N	\N
23041297	Speech prosody conveys information about important aspects of communication: the meaning of the sentence and the emotional state or intention of the speaker. The present study addressed processing of emotional prosodic changes in natural speech stimuli in school-age children (mean age 10 years) by recording the electroencephalogram, facial electromyography, and behavioral responses. The stimulus was a semantically neutral Finnish word uttered with four different emotional connotations: neutral, commanding, sad, and scornful. In the behavioral sound-discrimination task the reaction times were fastest for the commanding stimulus and longest for the scornful stimulus, and faster for the neutral than for the sad stimulus. EEG and EMG responses were measured during non-attentive oddball paradigm. Prosodic changes elicited a negative-going, fronto-centrally distributed neural response peaking at about 500 ms from the onset of the stimulus, followed by a fronto-central positive deflection, peaking at about 740 ms. For the commanding stimulus also a rapid negative deflection peaking at about 290 ms from stimulus onset was elicited. No reliable stimulus type specific rapid facial reactions were found. The results show that prosodic changes in natural speech stimuli activate pre-attentive neural change-detection mechanisms in school-age children. However, the results do not support the suggestion of automaticity of emotion specific facial muscle responses to non-attended emotional speech stimuli in children.	\N	\N
23043968	The current study examined auditory processing deficits in dyslexia using a dichotic pitch stimulus and functional MRI. Cortical activation by the dichotic pitch task occurred in bilateral Heschl's gyri, right planum temporale, and right superior temporal sulcus. Adolescents with dyslexia, relative to age-matched controls, illustrated greater activity in left Heschl's gyrus for random noise, less activity in right Heschl's gyrus for all auditory conditions, and less activity in right superior temporal sulcus for a dichotic melody. Subsequent analyses showed that these group differences were attributable to dyslexic readers who performed poorly on the psychophysical task. Furthermore, behavioral performance on phonological reading was correlated to activity from dichotic conditions in right Heschl's gyrus and right superior temporal sulcus. It is postulated that these differences between reader groups is primarily due to a noise exclusion deficit shown previously in dyslexia.	\N	\N
23046141	Object-substitution masking (OSM) occurs when a mask, such as four dots that surround a brief target item, onsets simultaneously with the target and offsets a short time after the target, rather than simultaneously with it. OSM is a reduction in accuracy of reporting the target with the temporally trailing mask, compared with the simultaneously offsetting mask. It has been thought that OSM occurs only if attention cannot be rapidly focused, or prefocused, on the target location. One line of evidence for this is a reported interaction between target display set size and the duration of the trailing mask. We analyze the evidence for this interaction and suggest it occurs only as an artifact of data being compressed by a ceiling effect. We report six experiments that support this interpretation by showing that the interaction is always absent unless a ceiling effect is induced. We go on to analyze other evidence to support the notion that attention modulates OSM, and argue that in each case, the data either reflect a ceiling effect or can be explained in another way. Our data and our analyses of the existing literature have strong implications for how OSM should be conceptualized.	\N	\N
23046461	It has been repeatedly shown that the auditory N1 is enhanced for sounds presented at an attended time point. The present study investigated the underlying mechanisms using a temporal cuing paradigm. In each trial, an auditory cue indicated at which time point a second sound could be relevant for response selection. Crucially, in addition to temporal attention, two physical sound features with known effects on the sensory N1 were manipulated: location and intensity. Positive evidence for conjoint effects of attention and location or attention and intensity would corroborate the notion that the sensory N1 was modulated by temporal attention, thus supporting a gain mechanism. However, the N1 effect of temporal attention was not similarly lateralized as the sensory N1, and, moreover, it was independent of sound intensity. Thus, the present results do not provide compelling evidence that temporal attention involves an increase in sensory gain.	\N	\N
23047261	Acoustically evoked neural and hair cell potentials can be measured from the round window (RW) intraoperatively in the general population of cochlear implant recipients. Cochlear implant performance varies greatly among patients. Improved methods to assess and monitor functional hair cell and neural substrate before and during implantation could potentially aid in enhanced nontraumatic intracochlear electrode placement and subsequent improved outcomes. Subjects (1-80 yr) undergoing cochlear implantation were included. A monopolar probe was placed at the RW after surgical access was obtained. The cochlear microphonic (CM), summating potential (SP), compound action potential (CAP), and auditory nerve neurophonic (ANN) were recorded in response to tone bursts at frequencies of 0.25 to 4 kHz at various levels. Measurable hair cell/neural potentials were detected to 1 or more frequencies in 23 of 25 subjects. The greatest proportion and magnitude of cochlear responses were to low frequencies (<1,000 Hz). At these low frequencies, the ANN, when present, contributed to the ongoing response at the stimulus frequency. In many subjects, the ANN was small or absent, whereas hair cell responses remained. In cochlear implant recipients, acoustically evoked cochlear potentials are detectable even if hearing is extremely limited. Sensitive measures of cochlear and neural status can characterize the state of hair cell and neural function before implantation. Whether this information correlates with speech performance outcomes or can help in tailoring electrode type, placement or audiometric fitting, can be determined in future studies.	\N	\N
23049884	Accumulating evidence suggests that basic visual information processing is impaired in schizophrenia. However, deficits in peripheral vision remain largely unexplored. Here we hypothesized that sensory processing of information in the visual periphery would be impaired in schizophrenia patients and, as a result, crowding - the breakdown in target recognition that occurs in cluttered visual environments - would be stronger. Therefore, we assessed visual crowding in the peripheral vision of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Subjects were asked to identify a target letter that was surrounded by distracter letters of similar appearance. Targets and distracters were displayed at 8° and 10° of visual angle from the fixation point (eccentricity), and target-distracter spacing was 2°, 3°, 4°, 5°, 6°, 7° or 8° of visual angle. Eccentricity and target-distracter spacing were randomly varied. Accuracy was defined as the proportion of correctly identified targets. Critical spacing was defined as the spacing at which target identification accuracy began to deteriorate, and was assessed at viewing eccentricities of 8° and 10°. Schizophrenia patients were less accurate and showed a larger critical spacing than healthy individuals. These results indicate that crowding is stronger and sensory processing of information in the visual periphery is impaired in schizophrenia. This is in line with previous reports of preferential magnocellular dysfunction in schizophrenia. Thus, deficits in peripheral vision may account for perceptual alterations and contribute to cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23055485	Older adults frequently report they can hear what is said but cannot understand the meaning, especially in noise. This difficulty may arise from the inability to process rapidly changing elements of speech. Aging is accompanied by a general slowing of neural processing and decreased neural inhibition, both of which likely interfere with temporal processing in auditory and other sensory domains. Age-related reductions in inhibitory neurotransmitter levels and delayed neural recovery can contribute to decreases in the temporal precision of the auditory system. Decreased precision may lead to neural timing delays, reductions in neural response magnitude, and a disadvantage in processing the rapid acoustic changes in speech. The auditory brainstem response (ABR), a scalp-recorded electrical potential, is known for its ability to capture precise neural synchrony within subcortical auditory nuclei; therefore, we hypothesized that a loss of temporal precision results in subcortical timing delays and decreases in response consistency and magnitude. To assess this hypothesis, we recorded ABRs to the speech syllable /da/ in normal hearing younger (18-30 years old) and older (60-67 years old) adult humans. Older adults had delayed ABRs, especially in response to the rapidly changing formant transition, and greater response variability. We also found that older adults had decreased phase locking and smaller response magnitudes than younger adults. Together, our results support the theory that older adults have a loss of temporal precision in the subcortical encoding of sound, which may account, at least in part, for their difficulties with speech perception.	\N	\N
23057507	There is strong evidence of shared acoustic profiles common to the expression of emotions in music and speech, yet relatively limited understanding of the specific psychoacoustic features involved. This study combined a controlled experiment and computational modelling to investigate the perceptual codes associated with the expression of emotion in the acoustic domain. The empirical stage of the study provided continuous human ratings of emotions perceived in excerpts of film music and natural speech samples. The computational stage created a computer model that retrieves the relevant information from the acoustic stimuli and makes predictions about the emotional expressiveness of speech and music close to the responses of human subjects. We show that a significant part of the listeners' second-by-second reported emotions to music and speech prosody can be predicted from a set of seven psychoacoustic features: loudness, tempo/speech rate, melody/prosody contour, spectral centroid, spectral flux, sharpness, and roughness. The implications of these results are discussed in the context of cross-modal similarities in the communication of emotion in the acoustic domain.	\N	\N
23063935	Individuals who have been exposed to two different musical cultures (bimusicals) can be differentiated from those exposed to only one musical culture (monomusicals). Just as bilingual speakers handle the distinct language-syntactic rules of each of two languages, bimusical listeners handle two distinct musical-syntactic rules (e.g., tonal schemas) in each musical culture. This study sought to determine specific brain activities that contribute to differentiating two culture-specific tonal structures. We recorded magnetoencephalogram (MEG) responses of bimusical Japanese nonmusicians and amateur musicians as they monitored unfamiliar Western melodies and unfamiliar, but traditional, Japanese melodies, both of which contained tonal deviants (out-of-key tones). Previous studies with Western monomusicals have shown that tonal deviants elicit an early right anterior negativity (mERAN) originating in the inferior frontal cortex. In the present study, tonal deviants in both Western and Japanese melodies elicited mERANs with characteristics fitted by dipoles around the inferior frontal gyrus in the right hemisphere and the premotor cortex in the left hemisphere. Comparisons of the nature of mERAN activity to Western and Japanese melodies showed differences in the dipoles' locations but not in their peak latency or dipole strength. These results suggest that the differentiation between a tonal structure of one culture and that of another culture correlates with localization differences in brain subregions around the inferior frontal cortex and the premotor cortex.	\N	\N
23064383	1) Describe the association between hearing loss and dysfunction of each of the 5 vestibular end-organs--the horizontal, superior, and posterior semicircular canals; saccule; and utricle--in older individuals. 2) Evaluate whether hearing loss and vestibular end-organ deficits share any risk factors. Cross-sectional study. Academic medical center. Fifty-one individuals age 70 years or older. Audiometry, head-thrust dynamic visual acuity (htDVA), sound-evoked cervical vestibular-evoked myogenic potential (cVEMP), and tap-evoked ocular VEMP (oVEMP). Audiometric pure-tone averages (PTA), htDVA LogMAR scores as a measure of semicircular canal function in each canal plane, and cVEMP and oVEMP amplitudes as a measure of saccular and utricular function, respectively. We observed a significant correlation between hearing loss at high frequencies and reduced cVEMP amplitudes (or reduced saccular function; r = -0.37, p < 0.0001) in subjects age 70 years or older. In contrast, hearing loss was not associated with oVEMP amplitudes (or utricular function), or htDVA LogMAR scores (or semicircular canal function) in any of the canal planes. Age and noise exposure were significantly associated with measures of both cochlear and saccular dysfunction. The concomitant decline in the cochlear and saccular function associated with aging may reflect their common embryologic origin in the pars inferior of the labyrinth. Noise exposure seems to be related to both saccular and cochlear dysfunction. These findings suggest a potential benefit of screening individuals with presbycusis-particularly those with significant noise exposure history-for saccular dysfunction, which may contribute to fall risk in the elderly.	\N	\N
23067726	The ability to control external events through our own actions is a fundamental aspect of human experience. Both the subjective experience of agency, and its neural correlates, remain poorly understood. Previous studies show that the angular gyrus is activated when participants explicitly judge that they lack agency. In contrast, the positive sense of agency over external events is associated with distortions of time perception. Here, we show that the perceived interval between actions and a subsequent tone is shorter than the perceived interval between a physically comparable passive movement and a tone, replicating the 'intentional binding' effect reported previously. We considered this as a potential implicit marker of agency, and investigated its neural basis, by using parametric analyses to identify brain areas whose activation correlated more strongly with the perceived action-tone interval in the action condition, than in the passive condition. Small volume corrections were used to test specific hypotheses about the contribution of the angular gyrus, and of the supplementary motor area (SMA), based on previous literature. We found no correlation between angular gyrus and our temporal measure of sense of agency. In contrast, we found that a lateral, caudal region within the SMA proper was more strongly associated with the perceived action-tone interval than with perception of a control interval following a passive movement. We suggest that the supplementary motor complex contributes to the subjective experience of temporal flow that accompanies goal-directed voluntary actions.	\N	\N
23076114	Following prolonged exposure to adaptor sounds moving in a single direction, participants may perceive stationary-probe sounds as moving in the opposite direction [direction-selective auditory motion aftereffect (aMAE)] and be less sensitive to motion of any probe sounds that are actually moving (motion-sensitive aMAE). The neural mechanisms of aMAEs, and notably whether they are due to adaptation of direction-selective motion detectors, as found in vision, is presently unknown and would provide critical insight into auditory motion processing. We measured human behavioral responses and auditory evoked potentials to probe sounds following four types of moving-adaptor sounds: leftward and rightward unidirectional, bidirectional, and stationary. Behavioral data replicated both direction-selective and motion-sensitive aMAEs. Electrical neuroimaging analyses of auditory evoked potentials to stationary probes revealed no significant difference in either global field power (GFP) or scalp topography between leftward and rightward conditions, suggesting that aMAEs are not based on adaptation of direction-selective motion detectors. By contrast, the bidirectional and stationary conditions differed significantly in the stationary-probe GFP at 200 ms poststimulus onset without concomitant topographic modulation, indicative of a difference in the response strength between statistically indistinguishable intracranial generators. The magnitude of this GFP difference was positively correlated with the magnitude of the motion-sensitive aMAE, supporting the functional relevance of the neurophysiological measures. Electrical source estimations revealed that the GFP difference followed from a modulation of activity in predominantly right hemisphere frontal-temporal-parietal brain regions previously implicated in auditory motion processing. Our collective results suggest that auditory motion processing relies on motion-sensitive, but, in contrast to vision, non-direction-selective mechanisms.	\N	\N
23088548	This study investigates how newly learned words are integrated into the first-language lexicon using masked priming. Two lexical decision experiments are reported, with the aim of establishing whether newly learned words behave like real words in a masked form priming experiment. If they do, they should show a prime lexicality effect (PLE), in which less priming is obtained due to form similarity when the prime is a word. In the first experiment, subjects were taught the meanings of novel words that were neighbors of real words, but no PLE was observed; that is, equally strong form priming was obtained for both trained and untrained novel primes. In the second experiment, 4 training sessions were spread over 4 weeks, and under these conditions, a clear PLE was obtained in the final session. It is concluded that lexicalization requires multiple training sessions. Possible explanations of the PLE are discussed.	\N	\N
23088832	The neuroscience of tinnitus represents an ideal model to explore central issues in brain functioning such as the formation of auditory percepts, in addition to opening up new treatment avenues for the condition in the long-term. The present review discusses the origin and nature of tinnitus-related neural activity. First, we review evidence for the hypothesis that tinnitus is caused by the central nervous system changes induced by sensory deprivation, even when hearing loss is not visible in the audiogram. Second, we suggest that changes in neural activity in individual central structures may not be sufficient to underlie the tinnitus percept. Instead, we propose that tinnitus may arise from functional alterations at multiple levels which promote abnormal propagation of neural activity throughout the network involved in auditory perception. In this context, functional coupling within and between central auditory structures may be especially important to consider. Investigating how sensory deprivation affects functional coupling between areas, which might be reflected in changes in temporal coherence of intrinsic ongoing activity patterns, may give critical insights into the mechanisms of tinnitus.	\N	\N
23095305	To update a 15-year-old study of 800 postlinguistically deaf adult patients showing how duration of severe to profound hearing loss, age at cochlear implantation (CI), age at onset of severe to profound hearing loss, etiology and CI experience affected CI outcome. Retrospective multicenter study. Data from 2251 adult patients implanted since 2003 in 15 international centers were collected and speech scores in quiet were converted to percentile ranks to remove differences between centers. The negative effect of long duration of severe to profound hearing loss was less important in the new data than in 1996; the effects of age at CI and age at onset of severe to profound hearing loss were delayed until older ages; etiology had a smaller effect, and the effect of CI experience was greater with a steeper learning curve. Patients with longer durations of severe to profound hearing loss were less likely to improve with CI experience than patients with shorter duration of severe to profound hearing loss. The factors that were relevant in 1996 were still relevant in 2011, although their relative importance had changed. Relaxed patient selection criteria, improved clinical management of hearing loss, modifications of surgical practice, and improved devices may explain the differences.	\N	\N
23102807	Age-related hearing impairment (ARHI), or presbycusis, is a common condition of the elderly that results in significant communication difficulties in daily life. Clinically, it has been defined as a progressive loss of sensitivity to sound, starting at the high frequencies, inability to understand speech, lengthening of the minimum discernable temporal gap in sounds, and a decrease in the ability to filter out background noise. The causes of presbycusis are likely a combination of environmental and genetic factors. Previous research into the genetics of presbycusis has focused solely on hearing as measured by pure-tone thresholds. A few loci have been identified, based on a best ear pure-tone average phenotype, as having a likely role in susceptibility to this type of hearing loss; and GRM7 is the only gene that has achieved genome-wide significance. We examined the association of GRM7 variants identified from the previous study, which used an European cohort with Z-scores based on pure-tone thresholds, in a European-American population from Rochester, NY (N = 687), and used novel phenotypes of presbycusis. In the present study mixed modeling analyses were used to explore the relationship of GRM7 haplotype and SNP genotypes with various measures of auditory perception. Here we show that GRM7 alleles are associated primarily with peripheral measures of hearing loss, and particularly with speech detection in older adults.	\N	\N
23109085	People often fail to detect changes between successively presented tactile patterns, a phenomenon known as tactile change blindness. In this study, we investigated whether changes introduced to tactile patterns are detected better when a participant's attention is focused on the location where the change occurs. Across two experiments, participants (N = 55) were instructed to detect changes between two consecutively presented tactile patterns. In half of the trials, the stimulated body sites in the two patterns were identical. In the other half of the trials, one of the stimulated body locations differed between the two patterns. Endogenous (or voluntary) attention was manipulated by instructing participants which new bodily location was most likely to be stimulated. We found that changes at the attended location were detected more accurately than changes at bodily locations that were unattended. This finding demonstrates that attention can effectively modulate tactile change detection. We discuss the value of this experimental paradigm for investigating excessive attentional focus or hypervigilance to particular regions of the body in various clinical populations.	\N	\N
23116413	Aiming to further our understanding of fundamental mechanisms of auditory working memory (WM), the present study compared performance for three auditory materials (words, tones, timbres). In a forward recognition task (Experiment 1) participants indicated whether the order of the items in the second sequence was the same as in the first sequence. In a backward recognition task (Experiment 2) participants indicated whether the items of the second sequence were played in the correct backward order. In Experiment 3 participants performed an articulatory suppression task during the retention delay of the backward task. To investigate potential length effects the number of items per sequence was manipulated. Overall findings underline the benefit of a cross-material experimental approach and suggest that human auditory WM is not a unitary system. Whereas WM processes for timbres differed from those for tones and words, similarities and differences were observed for words and tones: Both types of stimuli appear to rely on rehearsal mechanisms, but might differ in the involved sensorimotor codes.	\N	\N
23117535	Noise sensitivity is considered to be a self-perceived indicator of vulnerability to stressors in general and not noise alone. Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) has to some extent been accompanied by noise sensitivity, indicating a moderate correspondence between them. The aim of this study is to investigate if the Weinstein's Noise Sensitivity Scale and Quick Environmental Exposure and Sensitivity Inventory's (QEESI) Chemical Intolerance Subscale can differentiate noise sensitivity and MCS as different entities, and if there are overlaps in the characteristics of noise sensitivity and MCS. In 2002, 327 individuals (166 men, 161 women; age range 45 - 66 years) from the Finnish Twin Cohort answered a questionnaire on noise-related and MCS items. Somatic, psychological, and lifestyle factors were obtained through earlier questionnaires for the same individuals. Both confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses (CFA and EFA) of the questionnaire items on the Weinstein's Noise Sensitivity Scale and QEESI's Chemical Intolerance Subscale indicated the presence of three factors - Noise Sensitivity, Chemical Sensitivity, and Ability to Concentrate factors - arising from the forming of two factors from the items of the Weinstein's scale. In the regression analyses, among all subjects, the Noise Sensitivity Factor was associated with neuroticism and smoking, and the Chemical Sensitivity Factor was associated with allergies and alcohol use. The study indicates that the Weinstein's Noise Sensitivity Scale and QEESI's Chemical Intolerance Subscale differentiate noise sensitivity and MCS as different entities.	\N	\N
23122629	To evaluate through a multidimensional protocol voice changes after voice therapy in patients with benign vocal fold lesions. 65 consecutive patients affected by benign vocal fold lesions were enrolled. Depending on videolaryngostroboscopy the patients were divided into 3 groups: 23 patients with Reinke's oedema, 22 patients with vocal fold cysts and 20 patients with gelatinous polyp. Each subject received 10 voice therapy sessions and was evaluated, before and after voice therapy, through a multidimensional protocol including videolaryngostroboscopy, perception, acoustics, aerodynamics and self-rating by the patient. Data were compared using Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyse the mean variation difference between the three groups of patients. Mann-Whitney test was used for post hoc analysis. Only in 11 cases videolaryngostroboscopy revealed an improvement of the initial pathology. However a significant improvement was observed in perceptual, acoustic and self-assessment ratings in the 3 groups of patients. In particular the parameters of G, R and A of the GIRBAS scale, and the noise to harmonic ratio, Jitter and shimmer scores improved after rehabilitation. A significant improvement of all the parameters of Voice Handicap Index after rehabilitation treatment was found. No significant difference among the three groups of patients was visible, except for self-assessment ratings. Voice therapy may provide a significant improvement in perceptual, acoustic and self-assessed voice quality in patients with benign glottal lesions. Utilization of voice therapy may allow some patients to avoid surgical intervention.	\N	\N
23128585	Both the Stroop and the Simon paradigms are often used in research on cognitive control, however, there is evidence that dissociable control processes are involved in these tasks: While conflicts in the Stroop task may be resolved mainly by enhanced task-relevant stimulus processing, conflicts in the Simon task may be resolved rather by suppressing the influence of task-irrelevant information on response selection. In the present study, we show that these control mechanisms interact in different ways with the presentation of accessory stimuli. Accessory stimuli do not affect cognitive control in the Simon task, but they impair the efficiency of cross-trial control processes in the Stroop task. Our findings underline the importance of differentiating between different types of conflicts and mechanisms of cognitive control.	\N	\N
23135617	The purpose of this study was to examine differences between older and younger listeners in the ability to sequentially attend to and ignore words. Participants (n = 13 older adults and 13 younger adults) completed a temporally interleaved word recognition task. On each trial, 10 words were presented, and participants were instructed to repeat back every other word while ignoring the intervening words. Three variables were examined: (1) whether the word strings that were to be attended and to be ignored created syntactically correct sentences; (2) whether the to-be-attended and to-be-ignored words were presented from the same or from different spatial locations; and (3) whether the five target words in each trial (and the five distractor words in each trial) were spoken by a single talker or by five different talkers. In addition, digit-span forward and digit-span backward were measured and used as variables in correlation analyses. As a group, the younger participants outperformed the older listeners, particularly when the to-be-attended and to-be-ignored words were presented from the same spatial location (versus when they were presented with spatial separation). Compared with the younger participants, older listeners also made more error responses that were to-be-ignored words, although the proportion of errors that were not responses involving masking words did not significantly differ between groups. Scores on the digit-span-forward test (but not digit-span-backward scores or the degree of hearing loss) were associated with older individuals' performance on this temporally interleaved speech-recognition task. The overall pattern of results suggests that factors other than threshold elevation contribute to speech-understanding problems experienced by older listeners. However, although younger adults outperformed older listeners on this interleaved sentence task, older and younger adults benefited, to a similar extent, from spatial separation of the to-be-attended and to-be-ignored words, and from having a consistent target talker within a trial.	\N	\N
23138762	Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is typically considered to be a visual syndrome, primarily characterised by progressive impairment of visuoperceptual and visuospatial skills. However, patients commonly describe early difficulties with word retrieval. This paper details the first systematic analysis of linguistic function in PCA. Characterising and quantifying the aphasia associated with PCA is important for clarifying diagnostic and selection criteria for clinical and research studies. 15 patients with PCA, seven patients with logopenic/phonological aphasia (LPA) and 18 age matched healthy participants completed a detailed battery of linguistic tests evaluating auditory input processing, repetition and working memory, lexical and grammatical comprehension, single word retrieval and fluency, and spontaneous speech. Relative to healthy controls, PCA patients exhibited language impairments across all of the domains examined, but with anomia, reduced phonemic fluency and slowed speech rate the most prominent deficits. PCA performance most closely resembled that of LPA patients on tests of auditory input processing, repetition and digit span, but was relatively stronger on tasks of comprehension and spontaneous speech. The study demonstrates that in addition to the well reported degradation of vision, literacy and numeracy, PCA is characterised by progressive oral language dysfunction with prominent word retrieval difficulties. Overlap in the linguistic profiles of PCA and LPA, which are both most commonly caused by Alzheimer's disease, further emphasises the notion of a phenotypic continuum between typical and atypical manifestations of the disease. Clarifying the boundaries between Alzheimer's disease phenotypes has important implications for diagnosis, clinical trial recruitment and investigations into biological factors driving phenotypic heterogeneity in Alzheimer's disease. Rehabilitation strategies to ameliorate the phonological deficit in PCA are required.	\N	\N
23143506	This retrospective study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the Esteem(®) middle ear implant in sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) of different degree as well as to compare it with that obtained with conventional hearing aids. Fifteen out of 30 adults patients who received an Esteem(®) middle ear device for rehabilitation of sensorineural hearing loss met the primary eligibility criterion of prior, continuous use of conventional hearing aids. Study population included moderate-to-severe SNHL (8 patients) and severe-to-profound SNHL (7 patients). Audiometric measurements included free-field pure-tone and speech audiometry in Esteem(®)-aided, HA-aided, and baseline threshold. For speech audiometry, speech reception threshold (SRT) and word recognition score (WRS) were assessed. Subjective benefit was evaluated by Client Oriented Scale of Improvement (COSI) questionnaire. In all the subjects, SRT and WRS showed improvement both with conventional HA and Esteem(®) in respect to the unaided situation. Although not statistically significant, a slight prevalence of the Esteem(®) performances was recorded both audiometrically and as subjective satisfaction score. The Esteem(®) middle ear device demonstrated appreciable benefit for rehabilitation of SNHL of different degree, comparable to what can be achieved by conventional hearing aids. In addition, this rehabilitative process may enable also individuals presenting with severe-to-profound SNHL to achieve remarkable functional outcomes.	\N	\N
23145620	A modulation-based index is proposed for predicting speech intelligibility by cochlear implant (CI) listeners. The input to the proposed index are speech envelopes extracted using the individual CI user's daily strategy, and as such, this approach incorporates information about the number of active electrodes, shape of the compression function and electrical dynamic range. High correlation (r = 0.96) was achieved with the proposed index when evaluated with speech-reception thresholds (SRTs) obtained by CI users in steady and speech-masker conditions. This outcome suggests that the information contained in electrodograms seems to be sufficient for reliably predicting CI user's performance in noise. The proposed index can be used by clinicians to optimize the selection of fitting parameters of individual CI users for better performance in noise.	\N	\N
23150094	To report the results of cochlear implantation via the middle fossa approach in 4 patients, discuss the complications, and present a detailed description of the programming specifications in these cases. Retrospective case review. Tertiary-care referral center with a well-established cochlear implant program. Four patients with bilateral canal wall down mastoid cavities who underwent the middle fossa approach for cochlear implantation. Cochlear implantation and subsequent rehabilitation. A middle fossa approach with cochleostomy was successfully performed on the most superficial part of the apical turn in 4 patients. A Nucleus 24 cochlear implant system was used in 3 patients and a MED-EL Sonata Medium device in 1 patient. The single electrode array was inserted through a cochleostomy from the cochlear apex and occupied the apical, middle, and basal turns. Telemetry and intraoperative impedance recordings were performed at the end of surgery. A CT scan of the temporal bones was performed to document electrode insertion for all of the patients. Complications, hearing thresholds, and speech perception outcomes were evaluated. Neural response telemetry showed present responses in all but 1 patient, who demonstrated facial nerve stimulation during the test. Open-set speech perception varied from 30% to 100%, despite the frequency allocation order of the MAP. Cochlear implantation via the middle cranial fossa is a safe approach, although it is a challenging procedure, even for experienced surgeons.	\N	\N
23152235	This is an update of a Cochrane Review first published in The Cochrane Library in Issue 12, 2010.Tinnitus is described as the perception of sound or noise in the absence of real acoustic stimulation. Numerous management strategies have been tried for this potentially debilitating, heterogeneous symptom. External noise has been used as a management tool for tinnitus, in different capacities and with different philosophical intent, for over a century. To assess the effectiveness of sound-creating devices (including hearing aids) in the management of tinnitus in adults. Primary outcome measures were changes in the loudness or severity of tinnitus and/or impact on quality of life. Secondary outcome measures were change in pure-tone auditory thresholds and adverse effects of treatment. We searched the Cochrane ENT Group Trials Register; CENTRAL; PubMed; EMBASE; CINAHL; Web of Science; BIOSIS Previews; Cambridge Scientific Abstracts; ICTRP and additional sources for published and unpublished trials. The date of the most recent search was 8 February 2012. Prospective randomised controlled trials recruiting adults with persistent, distressing, subjective tinnitus of any aetiology in which the management strategy included maskers, noise-generating device and/or hearing aids, used either as the sole management tool or in combination with other strategies, including counselling. Two authors independently examined the 387 search results to identify studies for inclusion in the review, of which 33 were potentially relevant. The update searches in 2012 retrieved no further potentially relevant studies. Both authors extracted data independently. Six trials (553 participants) are included in this review. Studies were varied in design, with significant heterogeneity in the evaluation of subjective tinnitus perception, with different scores, scales, tests and questionnaires as well as variance in the outcome measures used to assess the improvement in tinnitus sensation/quality of life. This precluded meta-analysis of the data. There was no long-term follow-up. We assessed the risk of bias as medium in three and high in three studies. Following analysis of the data, no significant change was seen in the loudness of tinnitus or the overall severity of tinnitus following the use of sound therapy compared to other interventions such as patient education, 'relaxation techniques', 'tinnitus coping strategies', counselling, 'tinnitus retraining' and exposure to environmental sounds. No side effects or significant morbidity were reported from the use of sound-creating devices. The limited data from the included studies failed to show strong evidence of the efficacy of sound therapy in tinnitus management. The absence of conclusive evidence should not be interpreted as evidence of lack of effectiveness. The lack of quality research in this area, in addition to the common use of combined approaches (hearing therapy plus counselling) in the management of tinnitus are, in part, responsible for the lack of conclusive evidence. Other combined forms of management, such as tinnitus retraining therapy, have been subject to a Cochrane Review. Optimal management may involve multiple strategies.	\N	\N
23155729	Auditory stimuli are known to improve visual target recognition and detection when both are presented in the same spatial location. However, most studies have focused on crossmodal spatial congruency along the horizontal plane and the effects of audio-visual spatial congruency in depth (i.e., along the depth axis) are relatively less well understood. In the following experiments we presented a visual (face) or auditory (voice) target stimulus in a location on a spatial array which was either spatially congruent or incongruent in depth (i.e., positioned directly in front or behind) with a crossmodal stimulus. The participant's task was to determine whether a visual (experiments 1 and 3) or auditory (experiment 2) target was located in the foreground or background of this array. We found that both visual and auditory targets were less accurately located when crossmodal stimuli were presented from different, compared to congruent, locations in depth. Moreover, this effect was particularly found for visual targets located in the periphery, although spatial incongruency affected the location of auditory targets across both locations. The relative distance of the array to the observer did not seem to modulate this congruency effect (experiment 3). Our results add to the growing evidence for multisensory influences on search performance and extend these findings to the localisation of targets in the depth plane.	\N	\N
23160796	Small songbirds have a difficult analysis problem: their head is small compared to the wavelengths of sounds used for communication providing only small interaural time and level differences. Klump and Larsen (1992) measured the physical binaural cues in the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) that allow the comparison of acoustical cues and perception. We determined the starling's minimum audible angle (MAA) in an operant Go/NoGo procedure for different spectral and temporal stimulus conditions. The MAA for broadband noise with closed-loop localization reached 17°, while the starling's MAA for open-loop localization of broadband noise reached 29°. No substantial difference between open-loop and closed-loop localization was found in 2 kHz pure tones. The closed-loop MAA improved from 26° to 19° with an increase in pure tone frequency from 1 to 4 kHz. This finding is in line with the physical cues available. While the starlings can only make use of interaural time difference cues at lower frequencies (e.g., 1 and 2 kHz), additional interaural level difference cues become available at higher frequencies (e.g., 4 kHz or higher, Klump and Larsen 1992). An improvement of the starling's MAA with an increasing number of standard stimulus presentations prior to the test stimulus has important implications for determining relative (MAA) localization thresholds.	\N	\N
23163413	Music performance requires control of two sequential structures: the ordering of pitches and the temporal intervals between successive pitches. Whether pitch and temporal structures are processed as separate or integrated features remains unclear. A repetition suppression paradigm compared neural and behavioral correlates of mapping pitch sequences and temporal sequences to motor movements in music performance. Fourteen pianists listened to and performed novel melodies on an MR-compatible piano keyboard during fMRI scanning. The pitch or temporal patterns in the melodies either changed or repeated (remained the same) across consecutive trials. We expected decreased neural response to the patterns (pitch or temporal) that repeated across trials relative to patterns that changed. Pitch and temporal accuracy were high, and pitch accuracy improved when either pitch or temporal sequences repeated over trials. Repetition of either pitch or temporal sequences was associated with linear BOLD decrease in frontal-parietal brain regions including dorsal and ventral premotor cortex, pre-SMA, and superior parietal cortex. Pitch sequence repetition (in contrast to temporal sequence repetition) was associated with linear BOLD decrease in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) while pianists listened to melodies they were about to perform. Decreased BOLD response in IPS also predicted increase in pitch accuracy only when pitch sequences repeated. Thus, behavioral performance and neural response in sensorimotor mapping networks were sensitive to both pitch and temporal structure, suggesting that pitch and temporal structure are largely integrated in auditory-motor transformations. IPS may be involved in transforming pitch sequences into spatial coordinates for accurate piano performance.	\N	\N
23169193	An estimated 36 million US citizens have impaired hearing, but nearly half of them have never had a hearing test. As noted by a recent National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIH/NIDCD) Working Group, "In the United States (in contrast to many other nations) there are no readily accessible low cost hearing screening programs…" (Donahue et al, 2010, p. 2). Since 2004, telephone administered screening tests utilizing three-digit sequences presented in noise have been developed, validated, and implemented in seven countries. Each of these tests has been based on a test protocol conceived by Smits and colleagues in The Netherlands. Investigators from Communication Disorders Technology, Inc., Indiana University, and VU University Medical Center of Amsterdam agreed to collaborate in the development and validation of a screening test for hearing impairment suitable for delivery over the telephone, for use in the United States. This test, utilizing spoken three-digit sequences (triplets), was to be based on the design of Smits and his colleagues. A version of the digits-in-noise test was developed utilizing digit triplets spoken in Middle American dialect. The stimuli were individually adjusted to speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) values yielding 50% correct identification, on the basis of data collected from a group of 10 young adult listeners with normal hearing. A final set of 64 homogeneous stimuli were selected from an original 160 recorded triplets. Each test consisted of a series of 40 triplets drawn at random, presented in a noise background. The SNR threshold for 50% correct identification of the triplets was determined by a one-down, one-up adaptive procedure. The test was implemented by telephone, and administered to listeners with varying levels of hearing impairment. The listeners were then evaluated with pure-tone tests and other audiometric measures as clinically appropriate. Ninety participants included 72 who were volunteers from the regular client population at the Indiana University Hearing Clinic, and 18 who were recruited with a newspaper ad offering a free hearing test. Of the 90 participants, 49 were later determined to have mean pure-tone thresholds greater than 20 dB hearing level (HL). The primary data analyses were correlations between telephone test thresholds and other measures, including pure-tone thresholds and speech recognition tests, collected for the same participants. The correlation between the telephone test and pure-tone thresholds (r = 0.74) was within the range of correlations observed with successful telephone screening tests in use in other countries. Thresholds based on the average of only 21 trials (trials five through 25 of the 40-trial tracking history) yielded sensitivity and specificity values of 0.80 and 0.83, respectively, using pure-tone average((0.5, 1.0, 2.0 kHz)) >20 dB HL as the criterion measure. This US version of the digits-in-noise telephone screening test is sufficiently valid to be implemented for use by the general public. Its properties are quite similar to those telephone screening tests currently in use in most European countries. Telephone tests provide efficient, easy to use, and valid screening for functional hearing impairment. The results of this test are a reasonable basis for advising those who fail to seek a comprehensive hearing evaluation by an audiologist.	\N	\N
23169195	Speech recognition in noise testing has been conducted at least since the 1940s (Dickson et al, 1946). The ability to recognize speech in noise is a distinct function of the auditory system (Plomp, 1978). According to Kochkin (2002), difficulty recognizing speech in noise is the primary complaint of hearing aid users. However, speech recognition in noise testing has not found widespread use in the field of audiology (Mueller, 2003; Strom, 2003; Tannenbaum and Rosenfeld, 1996). The audiogram has been used as the "gold standard" for hearing ability. However, the audiogram is a poor indicator of speech recognition in noise ability. This study investigates the relationship between pure-tone thresholds, the articulation index, and the ability to recognize speech in quiet and in noise. Pure-tone thresholds were measured for audiometric frequencies 250-6000 Hz. Pure-tone threshold groups were created. These included a normal threshold group and slight, mild, severe, and profound high-frequency pure-tone threshold groups. Speech recognition thresholds in quiet and in noise were obtained using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) (Nilsson et al, 1994; Vermiglio, 2008). The articulation index was determined by using Pavlovic's method with pure-tone thresholds (Pavlovic, 1989, 1991). Two hundred seventy-eight participants were tested. All participants were native speakers of American English. Sixty-three of the original participants were removed in order to create groups of participants with normal low-frequency pure-tone thresholds and relatively symmetrical high-frequency pure-tone threshold groups. The final set of 215 participants had a mean age of 33 yr with a range of 17-59 yr. Pure-tone threshold data were collected using the Hughson-Weslake procedure. Speech recognition data were collected using a Windows-based HINT software system. Statistical analyses were conducted using descriptive, correlational, and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) statistics. The MANCOVA analysis (where the effect of age was statistically removed) indicated that there were no significant differences in HINT performances between groups of participants with normal audiograms and those groups with slight, mild, moderate, or severe high-frequency hearing losses. With all of the data combined across groups, correlational analyses revealed significant correlations between pure-tone averages and speech recognition in quiet performance. Nonsignificant or significant but weak correlations were found between pure-tone averages and HINT thresholds. The ability to recognize speech in steady-state noise cannot be predicted from the audiogram. A new classification scheme of hearing impairment based on the audiogram and the speech reception in noise thresholds, as measured with the HINT, may be useful for the characterization of the hearing ability in the global sense. This classification scheme is consistent with Plomp's two aspects of hearing ability (Plomp, 1978).	\N	\N
23173635	A 42-year-old man suffered damage to the left supra-sylvian areas due to a stroke and presented with verbal short-term memory (STM) deficits. He occasionally could not recall even a single syllable that he had heard one second before. A study of mismatch negativity using magnetoencephalography suggested that the duration of auditory sensory (echoic) memory traces was reduced on the affected side of the brain. His maximum digit span was four with auditory presentation (equivalent to the 1st percentile for normal subjects), whereas it was up to six with visual presentation (almost within the normal range). He simply showed partial recall in the digit span task, and there was no self correction or incorrect reproduction. From these findings, reduced echoic memory was thought to have affected his verbal short-term retention. Thus, the impairment of verbal short-term memory observed in this patient was "pure auditory" unlike previously reported patients with deficits of the phonological short-term store (STS), which is the next higher-order memory system. We report this case to present physiological and behavioral data suggesting impaired short-term storage of verbal information, and to demonstrate the influence of deterioration of echoic memory on verbal STM.	\N	\N
23177349	This research investigates how early learning about native language sound structure affects how infants associate sounds with meanings during word learning. Infants (19-month-olds) were presented with bisyllabic labels with high or low phonotactic probability (i.e., sequences of frequent or infrequent phonemes in English). The labels were produced with the predominant English trochaic (strong/weak) stress pattern or the less common iambic (weak/strong) pattern. Using the habituation-based Switch Task to test label learning, we found that infants readily learned high probability trochaic labels. However, they failed to learn low probability labels, regardless of stress, and failed to learn iambic labels, regardless of phonotactics. Thus, infants required support from both common phoneme sequences and a common stress pattern to map the labels to objects. These findings demonstrate that early word learning is shaped by prior knowledge of native language phonological regularities and provide support for the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.	\N	\N
23177756	A plethora of investigations have studied the acoustic characteristics of vibrato such as the rate, extent, onset (time from initiation of phonation until the first peak of vibrato), and periodicity. Despite extensive research, the degree to which various parameters of vibrato contribute to its acceptability remain unclear. The present study sought to determine the psychoacoustical relationship of mean fundamental frequency (f(0)), modulation frequency (f(f0m)), modulation depth (d(f0m)), and intensity to the appropriateness or inappropriateness of vibrato. Phonation samples of eight voice majors singing at low, middle, and high pitches were obtained. A high fidelity vocoder (STRAIGHT; Kawahara, 1997) was used to resynthesize these vowels with systematic manipulations of f(f0m) and d(f0m) of the f(0) contours resulting in a total of 600 stimuli (8 singers×3 pitches×5 f(f0m) levels×5 d(f0m) levels). Nine listeners (four experts and five students) evaluated these stimuli for appropriateness of vibrato at two different presentation levels (70 and 90 dB sound pressure level). Statistical analyses of the perceptual data suggest that appropriateness of vibrato tends to increase with mean f(0) and decrease with d(f0m.) Appropriateness of vibrato is greatest for f(f0m) value of 6 Hz, but decreases both above and below this frequency. perceived appropriateness of vibrato results from an interaction of mean f(0), f(f0m), and d(f0m) of the vowel waveform.	\N	\N
23202431	The investigation of brain activity using naturalistic, ecologically-valid stimuli is becoming an important challenge for neuroscience research. Several approaches have been proposed, primarily relying on data-driven methods (e.g. independent component analysis, ICA). However, data-driven methods often require some post-hoc interpretation of the imaging results to draw inferences about the underlying sensory, motor or cognitive functions. Here, we propose using a biologically-plausible computational model to extract (multi-)sensory stimulus statistics that can be used for standard hypothesis-driven analyses (general linear model, GLM). We ran two separate fMRI experiments, which both involved subjects watching an episode of a TV-series. In Exp 1, we manipulated the presentation by switching on-and-off color, motion and/or sound at variable intervals, whereas in Exp 2, the video was played in the original version, with all the consequent continuous changes of the different sensory features intact. Both for vision and audition, we extracted stimulus statistics corresponding to spatial and temporal discontinuities of low-level features, as well as a combined measure related to the overall stimulus saliency. Results showed that activity in occipital visual cortex and the superior temporal auditory cortex co-varied with changes of low-level features. Visual saliency was found to further boost activity in extra-striate visual cortex plus posterior parietal cortex, while auditory saliency was found to enhance activity in the superior temporal cortex. Data-driven ICA analyses of the same datasets also identified "sensory" networks comprising visual and auditory areas, but without providing specific information about the possible underlying processes, e.g., these processes could relate to modality, stimulus features and/or saliency. We conclude that the combination of computational modeling and GLM enables the tracking of the impact of bottom-up signals on brain activity during viewing of complex and dynamic multisensory stimuli, beyond the capability of purely data-driven approaches.	\N	\N
23205712	To estimate the prevalence of severe and profound hearing loss in a clinical population and to report the audiological and hearing-aid characteristics for this group, as well as outcome measures from use of hearing aids. A retrospective observational study initially, followed by a postal Glasgow health status inventory (GHSI) to establish the patients functional outcomes. A clinical database of 32 781 cases was interrogated from which 2199 cases of severe /profound hearing loss were identified. From these, an adult sample stratified in terms of age and gender of n = 302 was contacted. An estimated 6.7% of the local clinical population and 0.7% of the general population were found to have hearing > 70 dB averaged over 0.5, 1, and 2 kHz. Most patients were fitted with bilateral hearing aids, using a non-linear prescription, and as a group they reported a high level of social support. This study has estimated the prevalence of severe and profound hearing loss as 6.7% of the clinical population, and 0.7% of the general population. This is consistent with previous work, although it probably underestimates the prevalence. Further work is indicated to strengthen the estimate.	\N	\N
23207574	Synchronizing movements with auditory beats, compared to visual flashes, yields divergent activation in timing-related brain areas as well as more stable tapping synchronization. The differences in timing-related brain activation could reflect differences in tapping synchronization stability, rather than differences between modality (i.e., audio-motor vs. visuo-motor integration). In the current fMRI study, participants synchronized their finger taps with four types of visual and auditory pacing sequences: flashes and a moving bar, as well as beeps and a frequency-modulated 'siren'. Behavioral tapping results showed that visuo-motor synchronization improved with moving targets, whereas audio-motor synchronization degraded with frequency-modulated sirens. Consequently, a modality difference in synchronization occurred between the discrete beeps and flashes, but not between the novel continuous siren and moving bar. Imaging results showed that activation in the putamen, a key timing area, paralleled the behavioral results: putamen activation was highest for beeps, intermediate for the continuous siren and moving bar, and was lowest for the flashes. Putamen activation differed between modalities for beeps and flashes, but not for the novel moving bar and siren. By dissociating synchronization performance from modality, we show that activation in the basal ganglia is associated with sensorimotor synchronization stability rather than modality-specificity in this task. Synchronization stability is apparently contingent upon the modality's processing affinity: discrete auditory and moving visual signals are modality appropriate, and can be encoded reliably for integration with the motor system.	\N	\N
23216089	Results for speech recognition in noise tests when using a new research coding strategy designed to introduce the virtual channel effect provided no advantage over MP3(000™). Although statistically significant smaller just noticeable differences (JNDs) were obtained, the findings for pitch ranking proved to have little clinical impact. The aim of this study was to explore whether modifications to MP3000 by including sequential virtual channel stimulation would lead to further improvements in hearing, particularly for speech recognition in background noise and in competing-talker conditions, and to compare results for pitch perception and melody recognition, as well as informally collect subjective impressions on strategy preference. Nine experienced cochlear implant subjects were recruited for the prospective study. Two variants of the experimental strategy were compared to MP3000. The study design was a single-blinded ABCCBA cross-over trial paradigm with 3 weeks of take-home experience for each user condition. Comparing results of pitch-ranking, a significantly reduced JND was identified. No significant effect of coding strategy on speech understanding in noise or competing-talker materials was found. Melody recognition skills were the same under all user conditions.	\N	\N
23218176	The use of the stapes coupling technique, employed in the Vibrant Soundbridge system, is technically less demanding than the vibroplasty technique, and is more likely to generate a positive outcome without significantly changing residual hearing or resulting in medical or surgical complication. We report a patient with repeated left ossiculoplasty failure, who was successfully implanted with a Vibrant Soundbridge. We believe that the stapes coupling technique can provide natural stimulation to the inner ear, resulting in a better perceived sound quality.	\N	\N
23219981	Prior work with Wright and others demonstrated that rhesus monkeys recognized the relative relationships of notes in common melodies. As an extension of tests of pattern similarities, tamarins were habituated to 3-sound unit patterns in an AAB or ABB form that were human phonemes, piano notes, or monkey calls. The subjects were tested with novel sounds in each category constructed either to match the prior pattern or to violate the prior habituated pattern. The monkeys attended significantly more to a violation of their habituated pattern to a new pattern when human phonemes were used, and there was a trend difference in attention toward pattern violations with melodies. Monkey call patterns generated a variety of behavioral responses, were less likely to show habituation, and did not generate a strong attention reaction to changes in the patterns. Monkeys can extract abstract rules and patterns from auditory stimuli but the stimuli, by their nature, may generate competing responses which block processing of abstract regularities.	\N	\N
23220120	Normal-hearing listeners can perceptually segregate concurrent sound sources, but listeners with significant hearing loss or who wear a cochlear implant (CI) lag behind in this ability. Perceptual grouping mechanisms are essential to segregate concurrent sound sources and affect comodulation masking release (CMR). Thus, CMR measurements in CI users could shed light on segregation cues needed for forming and grouping of auditory objects. CMR illustrates the fact that detection of a target sound embedded in a fluctuating masker is improved by the addition of masker energy remote from the target frequency, provided the envelope fluctuations across masker components are coherent. We modified such a CMR experiment to electrically-induced hearing using direct stimulation and measured the effect in 21 CI users. Cluster analysis of our data revealed two groups: one showed no or only small CMR of 0.1 dB ± 2.7 (N = 14) and a second group achieved a CMR of 10.7 dB ± 3.2 (N = 7), a value that is close to the enhancement observed in a comparable acoustic experiment in normal-hearing listeners (12.9 dB ± 2.6, N = 6). Interestingly, we observed that CMR in CI users may relate to hearing etiology and duration of hearing loss pre-implantation. Our study demonstrates for the first time that a substantial minority of cochlear-implant listeners (about a third) can show significant CMR. This outcome motivates the development of physiologically inspired multi-band gain control and/or different coding strategies for these groups in order to better preserve coherent modulation and thus to take advantage of the individual remaining capabilities to analyze spectro-temporal patterns.	\N	\N
23224782	Past research has identified an event-related potential (ERP) marker for vocal emotional encoding and has highlighted vocal-processing differences between male and female listeners. We further investigated this ERP vocal-encoding effect in order to determine whether it predicts voice-related changes in listeners' memory for verbal interaction content. Additionally, we explored whether sex differences in vocal processing would affect such changes. To these ends, we presented participants with a series of neutral words spoken with a neutral or a sad voice. The participants subsequently encountered these words, together with new words, in a visual word recognition test. In addition to making old/new decisions, the participants rated the emotional valence of each test word. During the encoding of spoken words, sad voices elicited a greater P200 in the ERP than did neutral voices. While the P200 effect was unrelated to a subsequent recognition advantage for test words previously heard with a neutral as compared to a sad voice, the P200 did significantly predict differences between these words in a concurrent late positive ERP component. Additionally, the P200 effect predicted voice-related changes in word valence. As compared to words studied with a neutral voice, words studied with a sad voice were rated more negatively, and this rating difference was larger, the larger the P200 encoding effect was. While some of these results were comparable in male and female participants, the latter group showed a stronger P200 encoding effect and qualitatively different ERP responses during word retrieval. Estrogen measurements suggested the possibility that these sex differences have a genetic basis.	\N	\N
23231206	Earlier work using sine-wave and noise-vocoded signals suggests that dynamic spectral structure plays a greater role in speech recognition for children than adults [Nittrouer and Lowenstein. (2010). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 1624-1635], but questions arise concerning whether outcomes can be compared because sine waves and wide noise bands are different in nature. The current study addressed that question using narrow noise bands for both signals, and applying a difference ratio to index the contribution made by dynamic spectral structure. Results replicated earlier findings, supporting the idea that dynamic spectral structure plays a critical role in speech recognition, especially for children.	\N	\N
23241225	According to classical theories, automatic processes operate independently of attention. Recent evidence, however, shows that masked visuomotor priming, an example of an automatic process, depends on attention to visual form versus semantics. In a continuation of this approach, we probed feature-specific attention within the perceptual domain and tested in two event-related potential (ERP) studies whether masked visuomotor priming in a shape decision task specifically depends on attentional sensitization of visual pathways for shape in contrast to color. Prior to the masked priming procedure, a shape or a color decision task served to induce corresponding task sets. ERP analyses revealed visuomotor priming effects over the occipitoparietal scalp only after the shape, but not after the color induction task. Thus, top-down control coordinates automatic processing streams in congruency with higher-level goals even at a fine-grained level.	\N	\N
23246616	Speech recognition in a multi-talker situation poses high demands on attentional and other central resources. This study examines the relationship between age, cognition and speech recognition in tasks that require selective or divided attention in a multi-talker setting. Two groups of normal-hearing adults (one younger and one older group) were asked to repeat utterances from either one or two concurrent speakers. Cognitive abilities were then inspected by neuropsychological tests. Speech recognition scores approached its ceiling and did not significantly differ between age groups for tasks that demanded selective attention. However, when divided attention was required, performance in older listeners was reduced as compared to the younger group. When selective attention was required, speech recognition was strongly related to working memory skills, as determined by a regression model. In comparison, speech recognition for tests requiring divided attention could be more strongly determined by neuropsychological probes of fluid intelligence. The findings of this study indicate that - apart from hearing impairment - cognitive aspects account for the typical difficulties of older listeners in a multi-speaker setting. Our results are discussed in the context of evidence showing that frontal lobe functions in terms of working memory and fluid intelligence generally decline with age.	\N	\N
23269517	The most prominent models of numerical representation posit that numerical symbols are converted into a single internal, abstract representation prior to estimation and comparison processing. Here, we (1) provide a mathematical analysis of the predictions of the abstract-representation hypothesis, assuming the validity of the analog-representation hypothesis, (2) run a simulation to assess the patterns of data that result from our mathematical analysis, and (3) conduct two experiments to test the predictions of our model, using relative frequencies as inputs. We assess relative frequencies in a typical numerical distance task, whereby participants are presented with two relative frequencies and asked to identify the one that represents the larger quantity. Our data reveal that relative frequencies' numerical representations (1) are analog and (2) are scale-specific (i.e., nonabstract).	\N	\N
23275409	In this study, the authors explored whether French-learning infants use nonadjacent phonotactic regularities in their native language, which they learn between the ages of 7 and 10 months, to segment words from fluent speech. Two groups of 20 French-learning infants were tested using the head-turn preference procedure at 10 and 13 months of age. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with 2 passages: 1 containing a target word with a frequent nonadjacent phonotactic structure and the other containing a target word with an infrequent nonadjacent phonotactic structure in French. During the test phase, infants were presented with 4 word lists: 2 containing the target words presented during familiarization and 2 other control words with the same phonotactic structure. In Experiment 2, the authors retested infants' ability to segment words with the infrequent phonotactic structure. Ten- and 13-month-olds were able to segment words with the frequent phonotactic structure, but it is only by 13 months, and only under the circumstances of Experiment 2, that infants could segment words with the infrequent phonotactic structure. These results provide new evidence showing that infant word segmentation is influenced by prior nonadjacent phonotactic knowledge.	\N	\N
23275416	In this article, the authors describe the development of a new instrument, the Test of Child Speechreading (ToCS), which was specifically designed for use with deaf and hearing children. Speechreading is a skill that is required for deaf children to access the language of the hearing community. ToCS is a deaf-friendly, computer-based test that measures child speechreading (silent lipreading) at 3 psycholinguistic levels: (a) Words, (b) Sentences, and (c) Short Stories. The aims of the study were to standardize the ToCS with deaf and hearing children and to investigate the effects of hearing status, age, and linguistic complexity on speechreading ability. Eighty-six severely and profoundly deaf children and 91 hearing children participated. All children were between the ages of 5 and 14 years. The deaf children were from a range of language and communication backgrounds, and their preferred mode of communication varied. Speechreading skills significantly improved with age for both groups of children. There was no effect of hearing status on speechreading ability, and children from both groups showed similar performance across all subtests of the ToCS. The ToCS is a valid and reliable assessment of speechreading ability in school-age children that can be used to measure individual differences in performance in speechreading ability.	\N	\N
23275425	In this study, the authors aimed to investigate how differences in language ability relate to differences in processing talker information in the native language and an unfamiliar language by comparing performance for different ages and for groups with impaired language. Three groups of native English listeners with typical language development (TLD; ages 7-9, ages 10-12, adults) and 2 groups with specific language impairment (SLI; ages 7-9, ages 10-12) participated in the study. Listeners heard pairs of words in both English and German (unfamiliar language) and were asked to determine whether the words were produced by the same or different talkers. In English, talker discrimination improved with age. In German, performance improved with age for the school-age children but was worse for adult listeners. No differences were found between TLD and SLI children. These results show that as listeners' language skills develop, there is a trade-off between more general perceptual abilities useful for processing talker information in any language and those that are relevant to their everyday language experiences and, thus, tied to the phonology. The lack of differences between the children with and without language impairments suggests that general auditory processing may be intact in at least some children with SLI.	\N	\N
23275583	This study was designed to evaluate the effect of a pinna compensation (PC) algorithm on localization performance in the horizontal plane and speech intelligibility in noise. Nine and 18 experienced hearing aid users with bilaterally symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss participated in the localization study and the speech-in-noise study, respectively. Performance was evaluated unaided, aided with a behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aid with an omnidirectional microphone (Omni), and aided with the same hearing aid with the PC algorithm (Omni+PC). Localization performance was measured using 12 loudspeakers spaced 30° apart on a horizontal plane. Speech-in-noise performance was measured with speech presented from 0° or 180°. A single-blinded, repeated measures design was used. Significant improvement in localization accuracy was found when comparing the Omni+PC condition to the Omni condition. Also, the Omni+PC condition improved the signal-to-noise ratio by 2.4 dB when compared to the Omni condition when speech was presented from the front in a diffuse noise background. Use of the PC algorithm improved localization on the horizontal plane and speech-in-noise performance. These results support use of the PC algorithm in BTE hearing aid fittings.	\N	\N
23276111	Recent research on eye movements during scene viewing has primarily focused on where the eyes fixate. But eye fixations also differ in their durations. Here we investigated whether fixation durations in scene viewing are under the direct and immediate control of the current visual input. Subjects freely viewed photographs of scenes in preparation for a later memory test while their eye movements were recorded. Using a novel scene degradation paradigm based on a saccade-contingent display change method, scenes were reduced in luminance during saccades ending in critical fixations. Results from two experiments showed that the durations of the critical fixations were immediately affected by scene luminance, with a monotonic relationship between luminance reduction and fixation duration. The results are the first to demonstrate that fixation durations in scene viewing are immediately influenced by the ease of processing of the image currently in view. These results are consistent with the CRISP (a timer-Controlled Random-Walk with Inhibition for Saccade Planning) computational model of saccade generation in scenes, proposing that difficulty in moment-by-moment visual and cognitive processing of the scene modulates fixation durations.	\N	\N
23281939	Recent human behavioral studies have shown semantic and/or lexical processing for stimuli presented below the auditory perception threshold. Here, we investigated electroencephalographic responses to words, pseudo-words and complex sounds, in conditions where phonological and lexical categorizations were behaviorally successful (categorized stimuli) or unsuccessful (uncategorized stimuli). Data showed a greater decrease in low-beta power at left-hemisphere temporal electrodes for categorized non-lexical sounds (complex sounds and pseudo-words) than for categorized lexical sounds (words), consistent with the signature of a failure in lexical access. Similar differences between lexical and non-lexical sounds were observed for uncategorized stimuli, although these stimuli did not yield evoked potentials or theta activity. The results of the present study suggest that behaviorally uncategorized stimuli were processed at the lexical level, and provide evidence of the neural bases of the results observed in previous behavioral studies investigating auditory perception in the absence of stimulus awareness.	\N	\N
23285949	To study the long-term rehabilitation effects for treating tinnitus by tinnitus masking combined with counseling. Complete the tinnitus handicap inventory(THI) for participants before treatment and after six months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years. Eighty-six tinnitus patients participated. Nine participants and sixteen, twenty-six, sixteen participants drop-up during the follow up after half-year, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years separately. The percentage of participants whose THI score decreased more than or equal to 20 are 66%, 56%, 40%, 48% after half year, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years respectively. The tinnitus related handicap improved by tinnitus masking combined with counseling after 1 year. The drop-out rate was increase after follow-up 1 year. The long-term rehabilitation effects for tinnitus treatment is still needed.	\N	\N
23288656	Three experiments investigated whether extrinsic vowel normalization takes place largely at a categorical or a precategorical level of processing. Traditional vowel normalization effects in categorization were replicated in Experiment 1: Vowels taken from an [I]-[ε] continuum were more often interpreted as /I/ (which has a low first formant, F(1)) when the vowels were heard in contexts that had a raised F(1) than when the contexts had a lowered F(1). This was established with contexts that consisted of only two syllables. These short contexts were necessary for Experiment 2, a discrimination task that encouraged listeners to focus on the perceptual properties of vowels at a precategorical level. Vowel normalization was again found: Ambiguous vowels were more easily discriminated from an endpoint [ε] than from an endpoint [I] in a high-F(1) context, whereas the opposite was true in a low-F(1) context. Experiment 3 measured discriminability between pairs of steps along the [I]-[ε] continuum. Contextual influences were again found, but without discrimination peaks, contrary to what was predicted from the same participants' categorization behavior. Extrinsic vowel normalization therefore appears to be a process that takes place at least in part at a precategorical processing level.	\N	\N
23294198	Thirteen (5.4%) of patients with idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) had benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). Most of the patients showed profound hearing loss and had BPPV of the lateral canal. BPPV in patients with ISSNHL may have no influence on hearing recovery. BPPV occurs in 8.6-12.7% of patients with ISSNHL; however, the role of BPPV in hearing recovery remains controversial. Therefore, we investigated hearing outcomes in the patients, including the distribution of initial hearing threshold, the type of canal involved, and the number of repositioning maneuvers performed. Of 241 patients with ISSNHL who presented to a dizziness clinic between March 2008 and May 2012, 13 with both ISSNHL and BPPV were recruited for this study. The patients were evaluated for their initial hearing threshold, type of canal involved, response to repositioning maneuvers, and hearing outcome. Age- and hearing threshold-matched patients with ISSNHL but without BPPV were randomly sampled and included for a hearing outcome comparison. Of 13 patients with ISSNHL and BPPV, 11 showed profound hearing loss. The lateral canal was involved in 11 patients, including 3 who had multi-canal involvement. Ten patients underwent a single repositioning maneuver. Those patients did not display a significant difference in hearing recovery compared with those patients having ISSNHL only.	\N	\N
23294284	Following cochlear implantation, hearing-impaired listeners must adapt to speech as heard through their prosthesis. Visual speech information (VSI; the lip and facial movements of speech) is typically available in everyday conversation. Here, we investigate whether learning to understand a popular auditory simulation of speech as transduced by a cochlear implant (noise-vocoded [NV] speech) is enhanced by the provision of VSI. Experiment 1 demonstrates that provision of VSI concurrently with a clear auditory form of an utterance as feedback after each NV utterance during training does not enhance learning over clear auditory feedback alone, suggesting that VSI does not play a special role in retuning of perceptual representations of speech. Experiment 2 demonstrates that provision of VSI concurrently with NV speech (a simulation of typical real-world experience) facilitates perceptual learning of NV speech, but only when an NV-only repetition of each utterance is presented after the composite NV/VSI form during training. Experiment 3 shows that this more efficient learning of NV speech is probably due to the additional listening effort required to comprehend the utterance when clear feedback is never provided and is not specifically due to the provision of VSI. Our results suggest that rehabilitation after cochlear implantation does not necessarily require naturalistic audiovisual input, but may be most effective when (a) training utterances are relatively intelligible (approximately 85% of words reported correctly during effortful listening), and (b) the individual has the opportunity to map what they know of an utterance's linguistic content onto the degraded form.	\N	\N
23294551	The aim of the present study was to examine patterns of neural activity in response to variations in scale notes and alterations from a scale note to a non-scale note. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to scale and non-scale violin notes using an odd-ball mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm. Standard stimuli were set to the scale note A4 (440 Hz). Deviant stimuli included two scale notes (scale-B, B4 = 494 Hz; scale-C, C5 = 523 Hz) and a non-scale note halfway between them (non-scale, B4+42¢ = 506 Hz). MMN amplitude elicited by the non-scale was significantly larger than that elicited by the scale-B and scale-C, which did not differ significantly from one another. The current results suggest that the human brain may possess pre-attentive mechanisms for extracting relational aspects among sounds of the musical scale. The results indicate that non-scale notes may be processed in a different way even in the pre-attentive stage than scale notes.	\N	\N
23296187	Sounds can modulate visual perception as well as neural activity in retinotopic cortex. Most studies in this context investigated how sounds change neural amplitude and oscillatory phase reset in visual cortex. However, recent studies in macaque monkeys show that congruence of audio-visual stimuli also modulates the amount of stimulus information carried by spiking activity of primary auditory and visual neurons. Here, we used naturalistic video stimuli and recorded the spatial patterns of functional MRI signals in human retinotopic cortex to test whether the discriminability of such patterns varied with the presence and congruence of co-occurring sounds. We found that incongruent sounds significantly impaired stimulus decoding from area V2 and there was a similar trend for V3. This effect was associated with reduced inter-trial reliability of patterns (i.e. higher levels of noise), but was not accompanied by any detectable modulation of overall signal amplitude. We conclude that sounds modulate naturalistic stimulus encoding in early human retinotopic cortex without affecting overall signal amplitude. Subthreshold modulation, oscillatory phase reset and dynamic attentional modulation are candidate neural and cognitive mechanisms mediating these effects.	\N	\N
23297908	The relative contributions of within-channel and across-channel processes to perceptual comodulation masking release (CMR) were investigated in the framework of an auditory processing model. A generalized version of the computational auditory signal processing and perception model [CASP; Jepsen et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 124, 422-438 (2008)] was used and extended by an across-channel modulation processing stage according to Piechowiak et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 121, 2111-2126 (2007)]. Five experimental paradigms were considered: CMR with a broadband noise masker as a function of the masker spectrum level; CMR with four widely spaced flanking bands (FBs) varying in overall level; CMR with one FB varying in frequency and level relative to the on-frequency band (OFB); CMR with one FB varying in frequency; and CMR as a function of the number of FBs. The predictions suggest that at least three different mechanisms contribute to overall CMR in the considered conditions: (1) a within-channel process based on changes in the envelope characteristic due to the addition of the signal to the masker; (2) a within-channel process based on nonlinear peripheral processing of the OFB's envelope caused by the FB(s); and (3) an across-channel process that is robust across presentation levels but relatively small (2-5 dB).	\N	\N
23297915	This study used the same methodology in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to examine the perceived accuracy of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 4- and 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and combined the findings with those of 3-year-olds reported in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to track the development of monosyllabic tone production in preschool children. Tone productions of adults and children were collected in a picture naming task and low-pass filtered to remove lexical information and reserve tone information. Five native-speakers categorized the target tones in the filtered productions. Children's tone accuracy was compared to adults' to determine mastery and developmental changes. The results showed that preschool children in Taiwan have not fully mastered the production of monosyllabic Mandarin tones. None of the tones produced by the children in the three age groups reached adult-like accuracy. Little developmental change was found in children's tone accuracy during the preschool years. A similar order of accuracy of the tones was observed across the three age groups and the order appeared to follow the order of articulatory complexity in producing the tones. The findings suggest a protracted course of development in children's acquisition of Mandarin tones and that tone development may be constrained by physiological factors.	\N	\N
23299125	Phantom electrode (PE) stimulation consists of out-of-phase stimulation of two electrodes. When presented at the apex of the electrode array, phantom stimulation is known to produce a lower pitch sensation than monopolar (MP) stimulation on the most apical electrode. The ratio of the current between the primary electrode (PEL) and the compensating electrode (CEL) is represented by the coefficient σ, which ranges from 0 (monopolar) to 1 (full bipolar). The exact mechanism by which PE stimulation produces a lower pitch sensation is unclear. In the present study, unmasked and masked thresholds were obtained using a forward masking paradigm to estimate the spread of current for MP and PE stimulation. Masked thresholds were measured for two phantom electrode configurations (1) PEL = 4, CEL = 5 (lower pitch phantom) and (2) PEL = 4, CEL = 3 (higher pitch phantom). The unmasked thresholds were subtracted from the masked thresholds to obtain masking patterns which were normalized to their peak. The masking patterns reveal (1) differences in the spread of excitation that are consistent with the direction of pitch shift produced by PE stimulation, and (2) narrower spread of electrical excitation for PE stimulation relative to MP stimulation.	\N	\N
23301659	The last decade has offered a multitude of instant fit coupling systems to be fitted with behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids. The impact of these designs on the reliability of real ear measurements (REMs) has not been reported. The purpose of this study was to obtain REM reliability data for instant fit coupling systems. REM reliability data was obtained for four different instant-fit coupling systems and for standard size 13 tubing and custom earmolds. REMs were performed for all five coupling systems two times and by two examiners. Ten normal-hearing individuals (20 ears) served as participants. The REM test-retest reliability is high for the four instant fit coupling systems as well as for the custom earmolds. The REM inter-examiner reliability is high for three of the four instant fit coupling systems. Carrying out REMs with instant fit coupling systems appears to be fundamentally no different than performing REMs with conventional hearing aids. For either, care should be taken in probe tube placement in terms of insertion depth and maintaining the probe tube placement, and other best practices regarding test environment and test setup should be observed.	\N	\N
23308266	Computational and experimental research has revealed that auditory sensory predictions are derived from regularities of the current environment by using internal generative models. However, so far, what has not been addressed is how the auditory system handles situations giving rise to redundant or even contradictory predictions derived from different sources of information. To this end, we measured error signals in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to violations of auditory predictions. Sounds could be predicted on the basis of overall probability, i.e., one sound was presented frequently and another sound rarely. Furthermore, each sound was predicted by an informative visual cue. Participants' task was to use the cue and to discriminate the two sounds as fast as possible. Violations of the probability based prediction (i.e., a rare sound) as well as violations of the visual-auditory prediction (i.e., an incongruent sound) elicited error signals in the ERPs (Mismatch Negativity [MMN] and Incongruency Response [IR]). Particular error signals were observed even in case the overall probability and the visual symbol predicted different sounds. That is, the auditory system concurrently maintains and tests contradictory predictions. Moreover, if the same sound was predicted, we observed an additive error signal (scalp potential and primary current density) equaling the sum of the specific error signals. Thus, the auditory system maintains and tolerates functionally independently represented redundant and contradictory predictions. We argue that the auditory system exploits all currently active regularities in order to optimally prepare for future events.	\N	\N
23317386	Non-word repetition (NWR) tasks have been found to correlate with language skills and to discriminate between groups of typically developing (TD) children and children with specific language impairment (SLI) across languages. The main aim was to develop an easily-administered NWR screening test that could discriminate between Slovak-speaking TD children and children with SLI. The second aim was to establish if the novel scoring methods for NWR tasks were equally effective at differentiating between the TD versus SLI groups. As Slovak vowels are not reduced in unstressed syllables, it was also sought to establish whether scoring vowels (in addition to the consonants usually assessed in English language tests) would be informative. The paper evaluated the performance of a new NWR task for Slovak-speaking children. Study 1 compared the performance of 60 TD children in three age groups: 3-year-olds (N = 20), 4-your-olds (N = 20) and 5-year-olds (N = 20). Five types of scoring methods were examined: whole-item, number of syllables, syllable structure, consonants, and vowels. Study 2 compared performance on the NWR task administered in Study 1 across three groups of child participants: an SLI group (N = 16), a TD age-matched group (N = 16), and a TD language-matched group (N = 14). Study 1 found an age effect in the TD sample for three out of five of the scoring methods tested (number of syllables, syllable structure, and consonants). Study 2 showed that all five of the scoring methods discriminated between: (1) the group of children with SLI and the TD language-matched (TDLM) sample and (2) the group of children with SLI and the TD age-matched (TDAM) group. The novel NWR tool reliably differentiated between children with SLI and TD children. Scoring cut-off points which demonstrated high rates of success at verifying true-positives (93.75%) and true-negatives (100%) are provided. The most informative scoring methods for Slavic languages (whole-item scoring and vowels correct) are identified and discussed.	\N	\N
23333667	Spontaneous beat gestures are an integral part of the paralinguistic context during face-to-face conversations. Here we investigated the time course of beat-speech integration in speech perception by measuring ERPs evoked by words pronounced with or without an accompanying beat gesture, while participants watched a spoken discourse. Words accompanied by beats elicited a positive shift in ERPs at an early sensory stage (before 100 ms) and at a later time window coinciding with the auditory component P2. The same word tokens produced no ERP differences when participants listened to the discourse without view of the speaker. We conclude that beat gestures are integrated with speech early on in time and modulate sensory/phonological levels of processing. The present results support the possible role of beats as a highlighter, helping the listener to direct the focus of attention to important information and modulate the parsing of the speech stream.	\N	\N
23333869	The present study investigates the status of rhythmic irregularities occurring in natural speech and the importance of rhythmic alternations in cognitive processing. Previous studies showed the relevance of rhythm for language processing, but there has been only little research using the method of event-related potentials to investigate this phenomenon in a natural metrical context. To this end, an experiment was conducted in which the so-called Rhythm Rule (alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables) was either met or violated by stress clashes or stress lapses which are known to occur in German. The comparison of rhythmic well-formed conditions with the conditions including rhythmic irregularities revealed biphasic EEG-patterns for rhythmically marked structures, i.e., stress clashes and lapses. The present results show that irregular but possible rhythmic variants are costly in language processing, reflected by an early negativity and an N400 in contrast to the well-formed control conditions. Supposedly, the early negativity reflects error detection in rhythmical structure and supports the view that the brain is sensitive to subtle violations of rhythmical structure. A late positive component reflects the evaluation process related to the task requirements. The study shows that subtle rhythmical deviations from the Rhythm Rule are perceived and treated differently from well-formed structures during processing, even if the deviation in question is permitted and can therefore occur in language production.	\N	\N
23335579	Recent work suggests that people predict how objects interact in a manner consistent with Newtonian physics, but with additional uncertainty. However, the sources of uncertainty have not been examined. In this study, we measure perceptual noise in initial conditions and stochasticity in the physical model used to make predictions. Participants predicted the trajectory of a moving object through occluded motion and bounces, and we compared their behavior to an ideal observer model. We found that human judgments cannot be captured by simple heuristics and must incorporate noisy dynamics. Moreover, these judgments are biased consistently with a prior expectation on object destinations, suggesting that people use simple expectations about outcomes to compensate for uncertainty about their physical models.	\N	\N
23337441	Here, we explore the sensitivity of different awareness scales in revealing conscious reports on visual emotion perception. Participants were exposed to a backward masking task involving fearful faces and asked to rate their conscious awareness in perceiving emotion in facial expression using three different subjective measures: confidence ratings (CRs), with the conventional taxonomy of certainty, the perceptual awareness scale (PAS), through which participants categorize "raw" visual experience, and post-decision wagering (PDW), which involves economic categorization. Our results show that the CR measure was the most exhaustive and the most graded. In contrast, the PAS and PDW measures suggested instead that consciousness of emotional stimuli is dichotomous. Possible explanations of the inconsistency were discussed. Finally, our results also indicate that PDW biases awareness ratings by enhancing first-order accuracy of emotion perception. This effect was possibly a result of higher motivation induced by monetary incentives.	\N	\N
23338560	Our study estimates detection thresholds for tones of different durations and frequencies in Great Tits (Parus major) with operant procedures. We employ signals covering the duration and frequency range of communication signals of this species (40-1,010 ms; 2, 4, 6.3 kHz), and we measure threshold level-duration (TLD) function (relating threshold level to signal duration) in silence as well as under behaviorally relevant environmental noise conditions (urban noise, woodland noise). Detection thresholds decreased with increasing signal duration. Thresholds at any given duration were a function of signal frequency and were elevated in background noise, but the shape of Great Tit TLD functions was independent of signal frequency and background condition. To enable comparisons of our Great Tit data to those from other species, TLD functions were first fitted with a traditional leaky-integrator model. We then applied a probabilistic model to interpret the trade-off between signal amplitude and duration at threshold. Great Tit TLD functions exhibit features that are similar across species. The current results, however, cannot explain why Great Tits in noisy urban environments produce shorter song elements or faster songs than those in quieter woodland environments, as detection thresholds are lower for longer elements also under noisy conditions.	\N	\N
23342146	This study investigated a theoretically challenging dissociation between good production and poor perception of tones among neurologically unimpaired native speakers of Cantonese. The dissociation is referred to as the near-merger phenomenon in sociolinguistic studies of sound change. In a passive oddball paradigm, lexical and nonlexical syllables of the T1/T6 and T4/T6 contrasts were presented to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a from two groups of participants, those who could produce and distinguish all tones in the language (Control) and those who could produce all tones but specifically failed to distinguish between T4 and T6 in perception (Dissociation). The presence of MMN to T1/T6 and null response to T4/T6 of lexical syllables in the dissociation group confirmed the near-merger phenomenon. The observation that the control participants exhibited a statistically reliable MMN to lexical syllables of T1/T6, weaker responses to nonlexical syllables of T1/T6 and lexical syllables of T4/T6, and finally null response to nonlexical syllables of T4/T6, suggests the involvement of top-down processing in speech perception. Furthermore, the stronger P3a response of the control group, compared with the dissociation group in the same experimental conditions, may be taken to indicate higher cognitive capability in attention switching, auditory attention or memory in the control participants. This cognitive difference, together with our speculation that constant top-down predictions without complete bottom-up analysis of acoustic signals in speech recognition may reduce one's sensitivity to small acoustic contrasts, account for the occurrence of dissociation in some individuals but not others.	\N	\N
23354998	Complex sounds vary along a number of acoustic dimensions. These dimensions may exhibit correlations that are familiar to listeners due to their frequent occurrence in natural sounds-namely, speech. However, the precise mechanisms that enable the integration of these dimensions are not well understood. In this study, we examined the categorization of novel auditory stimuli that differed in the correlations of their acoustic dimensions, using decision bound theory. Decision bound theory assumes that stimuli are categorized on the basis of either a single dimension (rule based) or the combination of more than one dimension (information integration) and provides tools for assessing successful integration across multiple acoustic dimensions. In two experiments, we manipulated the stimulus distributions such that in Experiment 1, optimal categorization could be accomplished by either a rule-based or an information integration strategy, while in Experiment 2, optimal categorization was possible only by using an information integration strategy. In both experiments, the pattern of results demonstrated that unidimensional strategies were strongly preferred. Listeners focused on the acoustic dimension most closely related to pitch, suggesting that pitch-based categorization was given preference over timbre-based categorization. Importantly, in Experiment 2, listeners also relied on a two-dimensional information integration strategy, if there was immediate feedback. Furthermore, this strategy was used more often for distributions defined by a negative spectral correlation between stimulus dimensions, as compared with distributions with a positive correlation. These results suggest that prior experience with such correlations might shape short-term auditory category learning.	\N	\N
23357804	Frequency-lowering signal processing in hearing aids has re-emerged as an option to improve audibility of the high frequencies by expanding the input bandwidth. Few studies have investigated the usefulness of the scheme as an option for bimodal users (i.e., combined use of a cochlear implant and a contralateral hearing aid). In this study, that question was posed. The purposes of this study were (1) to determine if frequency compression was a better bimodal option than conventional amplification and (2) to determine the impact of a frequency-compression hearing aid on speech recognition abilities. There were two separate experiments in this study. The first experiment investigated the contribution of a frequency-compression hearing aid to contralateral cochlear implant (CI) performance for localization and speech perception in noise. The second experiment assessed monaural consonant and vowel perception in quiet using the frequency-compression and conventional hearing aid without the use of a contralateral CI or hearing aid. Ten subjects fitted with a cochlear implant and hearing aid participated in the first experiment. Seventeen adult subjects with a cochlear implant and hearing aid or two hearing aids participated in the second experiment. To be included, subjects had to have a history of postlingual deafness, a moderate or moderate-to-severe hearing loss, and have not worn this type of frequency-lowering hearing aid previously. In the first experiment, performance using the frequency-compression and conventional hearing aids was assessed on tests of sound localization, speech perception in a background of noise, and two self-report questionnaires. In the second experiment, consonant and vowel perception in quiet was assessed monaurally for the two conditions. In both experiments, subjects alternated daily between a frequency-compression and conventional hearing aid for 2 mo. The parameters of frequency compression were set individually for each subject, and audibility was measured for the frequency compression and conventional hearing aid programs by comparing estimations of the Speech Intelligibility Index (SII) using a modified algorithm (Bentler et al, 2011). In both experiments, the outcome measures were administered following the hearing aid fitting to assess performance at baseline and after 2 mo of use. For this group of subjects, the results revealed no significant difference between the frequency-compression and conventional hearing aid on tests of localization and consonant recognition. Spondee-in-noise and vowel perception scores were significantly higher with the conventional hearing aid compared to the frequency-compression hearing aid after 2 mo of use. These results suggest that, for the subjects in this study, frequency compression is not a better bimodal option than conventional amplification. In addition, speech perception may be negatively influenced by frequency compression because formant frequencies are too severely compressed and can no longer be distinguished.	\N	\N
23357807	Johnson and Dillon (2011) provided a model-based comparison of current generic hearing aid prescriptive methods for adults with hearing loss based on the attributes of speech intelligibility, loudness, and bandwidth. This study compared the National Acoustic Laboratories-Non-linear 2 (NAL-NL2) and Cambridge Method for Loudness Equalization 2-High-Frequency (CAM2) prescriptive methods using adult participants with less high-frequency hearing loss than Johnson and Dillon (2011). Of study interest was quantification of prescribed audibility, speech intelligibility, and loudness. The preferences of participants for either NAL-NL2 or CAM2 and preferred deviations from prescribed settings are also reported. Using a single-blind, counter-balanced, randomized design, preference judgments for the prescriptive methods with regard to sound quality of speech and music stimuli were obtained. Preferred gain adjustments from the prescription within the 4-10 kHz frequency range were also obtained from each participant. Speech intelligibility and loudness model calculations were completed on the prescribed and adjusted amplification. Fourteen male Veterans, whose average age was 65 yr and whose hearing sensitivity averaged normal to borderline normal through 1000 Hz sloping to a moderately severe sensorineural loss, served as participants. Following a brief listening time (~10 min), typical of an initial fitting visit, the participants made paired comparison of sound quality between the NAL-NL2 and CAM2 prescriptive settings. Participants were also asked to modify each prescription in the range of 4-10 kHz using an overall gain control and make subsequent comparisons of sound quality preference between prescriptive and adjusted settings. Participant preferences were examined with respect to quantitative analysis of loudness modeling, speech intelligibility modeling, and measured high-frequency bandwidth audibility. Consistent with the lack of difference in predicted speech intelligibility between the two prescriptions, sound quality preferences on the basis of clarity were split across participants while some participants did not have a discernable preference. Considering sound quality judgments of pleasantness, the majority of participants preferred the sound quality of the NAL-NL2 (8 of 14) prescription instead of the CAM2 prescription (2 of 14). Four of the 14 participants showed no preference on the basis of pleasantness for either prescription. Individual subject preferences were supported by loudness modeling that indicated NAL-NL2 was the softer of the two prescriptions and CAM2 was the louder. CAM2 did provide more audibility to the higher frequencies (5-8 kHz) than NAL-NL2. Participants turned the 4-10 kHz gain recommendation of CAM2 lower, on average, by a significant amount of 4 dB when making adjustments while no significant adjustment was made to the initial NAL-NL2 recommendation. NAL-NL2 prescribed gains were more often preferred at the initial fitting by the majority of participating veterans. For those patients with preference for a louder fitting than NAL-NL2, CAM2 is a good alternative. When the participant adjustment from the prescription between 4 and 10 kHz exceeded 4 dB from either NAL-NL2 (2 of 14) or CAM2 (11 of 14), the participants demonstrated a later preference for that adjustment 69% of the time. These findings are viewed as limited evidence that some individuals may have a preference for high-frequency gain that differs from the starting prescription.	\N	\N
23363117	Recently introduced hearing devices allow dynamic-range compression to be coordinated at the two ears through a wireless link. This study investigates how linking compression across the ears might improve speech intelligibility in the presence of a spatially separated steady noise. An analysis of the compressors' behavior shows how linked compression can preserve interaural level differences (ILDs) and, compared to compression operating independently at each ear, improve the long-term apparent speech-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the ear with the better SNR. Speech intelligibility for normal-hearing listeners was significantly better with linked than with unlinked compression. The performance with linked compression was similar to that without any compression. The benefit of linked over unlinked compression was the same for binaural listening and for monaural listening to the ear with the better SNR, indicating that the benefit was due to changes to the signal at this ear and not to the preservation of ILDs. Differences in performance across experimental conditions were qualitatively consistent with changes in apparent SNR at the better ear. Predictions made using a speech intelligibility model suggest that linked compression could potentially provide a user of bilateral hearing aids with an improvement in intelligibility of up to approximately ten percentage points.	\N	\N
23374605	To date, the nature of the phonological deficit in developmental dyslexia is still debated. We concur with possible impairments in the representations of the universal phonological constraints that universally govern how phonemes co-occur as a source of this deficit. We were interested in whether-and how-dyslexic children have sensitivity to sonority-related markedness constraints. We tested 10 French dyslexic children compared with 20 typically developing chronological age-matched and reading level-matched controls. All were tested with two aurally administered syllable counting tasks that manipulated well-formedness of unattested consonant clusters, as determined by universal phonological sonority-related markedness constraints (onset clusters in Experiment 1; intervocalic clusters in Experiment 2). Surprisingly, dyslexic children's response patterns were similar to those in both control groups; as universal phonological sonority-related markedness increased, dyslexic children increasingly perceptually confused and phonologically repaired clusters with an illusory epenthetic vowel (e.g., /ʁəbal/). Although dyslexic children were systematically slower, like both control groups, they were influenced by universal sonority-related markedness constraints and hierarchically ranked constraints specific to French over evident acoustic-phonetic contrasts or sonority-unrelated cues. Our results are counterintuitive but innovative and compete to question an impaired universal phonological grammar because dyslexic children were found to have normal universal phonological constraints and were skilled to restore phonotactically legal syllable structures with a language-specific illusory epenthetic vowel (i.e., /ə/-like vowel). We discuss them regarding active phonological decoding and recoding processes within the framework of the optimality theory.	\N	\N
23384511	We tested whether incoming sounds are processed differently depending on how the preceding sound sequence has been interpreted by the brain. Sequences of a regularly repeating three-tone pattern, the perceived organization of which spontaneously switched back and forth between two alternative interpretations, were delivered to listeners. Occasionally, a regular tone was exchanged for a slightly or moderately lower one (deviants). The electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded while listeners continuously marked their perception of the sound sequence. We found that for both the regular and the deviant tones, the early exogenous P1 and N1 amplitudes varied together with the perceived sound organization. Percept-dependent effects on the late endogenous N2 and P3a amplitudes were only found for deviant tones. These results suggest that the perceived sound organization affects sound processing both by modulating what information is extracted from incoming sounds as well as by influencing how deviant sound events are evaluated for further processing.	\N	\N
23384530	Prosodic aspects of speech such as pitch, duration and amplitude constitute nonverbal cues that supplement or modify the meaning of the spoken word, to provide valuable clues as to a speakers' state of mind. It can thus indicate what emotion a person is feeling (emotional prosody), or their attitude towards an event, person or object (attitudinal prosody). Whilst the study of emotional prosody has gathered pace, attitudinal prosody now deserves equal attention. In social cognition, understanding attitudinal prosody is important in its own right, since it can convey powerful constructs such as confidence, persuasion, sarcasm and superiority. In this review, it is examined what prosody is, how it conveys attitudes, and which attitudes prosody can convey. The review finishes by considering the neuroanatomy associated with attitudinal prosody, and put forward the hypothesis that this cognition is mediated by the right cerebral hemisphere, particularly posterior superior lateral temporal cortex, with an additional role for the basal ganglia, and limbic regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala. It is suggested that further exploration of its functional neuroanatomy is greatly needed, since it could provide valuable clues about the value of current prosody nomenclature and its separability from other types of prosody at the behavioural level.	\N	\N
23386124	The sight of a speaker's facial movements during the perception of a spoken message can benefit speech processing through online predictive mechanisms. Recent evidence suggests that these predictive mechanisms can operate across sensory modalities, that is, vision and audition. However, to date, behavioral and electrophysiological demonstrations of cross-modal prediction in speech have considered only the speaker's native language. Here, we address a question of current debate, namely whether the level of representation involved in cross-modal prediction is phonological or pre-phonological. We do this by testing participants in an unfamiliar language. If cross-modal prediction is predominantly based on phonological representations tuned to the phonemic categories of the native language of the listener, then it should be more effective in the listener's native language than in an unfamiliar one. We tested Spanish and English native speakers in an audiovisual matching paradigm that allowed us to evaluate visual-to-auditory prediction, using sentences in the participant's native language and in an unfamiliar language. The benefits of cross-modal prediction were only seen in the native language, regardless of the particular language or participant's linguistic background. This pattern of results implies that cross-modal visual-to-auditory prediction during speech processing makes strong use of phonological representations, rather than low-level spatiotemporal correlations across facial movements and sounds.	\N	\N
23387878	Velopharyngeal incompetence is a contributing factor to speech disorders and implies the presence of hypernasality, inappropriate nasal escape, and decreased air pressure during speech. One prosthetic treatment is a rehabilitative procedure employing a palatal lift prosthesis (PLP), which reduces hypernasality by approximating the incompetent soft palate to the posterior pharyngeal wall and consists of two parts, the anterior denture base and the palatal lifting plate, which are connected with steel wires; however, it seems difficult to reproduce the mobility of the soft palate in speaking, and it is therefore likely that the palatal lifting plate stimulates or oppresses the tissue of the soft palate and hinders rather than assists articulatory function. To avoid these disturbances we devised an adjustable PLP with a flexible conjunction between the denture base and the palatal lifting plate to obtain the optimal vertical lifting angle. The palatal plate was adapted to conform in a passive manner to the soft palate with light-cured resin. The designed PLP simplified the procedure and reduced the number of adjustments and visits.	\N	\N
23389426	The human visual attention system is geared toward detecting the most salient and relevant events in an overwhelming stream of information. There has been great interest in measuring how many visual events can be processed at a time, and most of the work has suggested that the limit is three to four. However, attention to a visual stimulus can also be driven by a synchronous auditory event. The present work indicates that a fundamentally different limit applies to audiovisual processing, such that at most only a single audiovisual event can be processed at a time. This limited capacity is not due to a limitation in visual selection; participants were able to process about four visual objects simultaneously. Instead, we propose that audiovisual orienting is subject to a fundamentally different capacity limit than pure visual selection is.	\N	\N
23395711	In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and deviant. A smaller distance required more attention, which was reflected in a larger amplitude. An analysis of audiovisual material, after correction for visual activity, showed that McGurk type stimuli evoked brain responses that differed from both the standard and the congruent deviants. Finally, we found that congruent audiovisual stimuli elicited an N2 with a shorter latency and a P3 with a smaller amplitude than auditory stimuli. The current ERP study, thus, shows that for audiovisual processing the whole is more than the sum of its parts.	\N	\N
23395774	This paper examines the judgment of segmented temporal intervals, using short tone sequences as a convenient test case. In four experiments, we investigate how the relative lengths, arrangement, and pitches of the tones in a sequence affect judgments of sequence duration, and ask whether the data can be described by a simple weighted sum of segments model. The model incorporates three basic assumptions: (i) the judgment of each segment is a negatively accelerated function of its duration, (ii) the judgment of the overall interval is produced by summing the judgments of each segment, and (iii) more recent segments are weighted more heavily. We also assume that higher-pitched tones are judged to last longer. Empirically, sequences with equal-sized segments were consistently judged longer than those with accelerating or decelerating structures. Furthermore, temporal structure interacted with duration, such that accelerating sequences were judged longer than decelerating ones at short durations but the effect reversed at longer durations. These effects were modulated by the number of tones in the sequence, the rate of acceleration/deceleration, and whether the sequence had ascending or descending pitch, and were well-described by the weighted sum model. The data provide strong constraints on theories of temporal judgment, and the weighted sum of segments model offers a useful basis for future theoretical and empirical investigation.	\N	\N
23397035	We used a face-gender repetition priming paradigm to precisely map the spatial frequencies (SFs) that influence observers' responses under different prime awareness conditions. A visible prime condition was set up by presenting the stimulus sequence mask-blank-prime-blank-mask-target and an invisible prime condition by switching the order of the masks and the blanks (see also Dehaene et al., 2001). The prime faces (~4.6° × 3.1°) were randomly filtered trial-by-trial according to the SF bubbles technique (Willenbockel, Fiset et al., 2010). Classification vectors, derived by summing the SF filters from each trial weighted by observers' transformed response times, revealed that SFs around 12 cycles per face width modulated responses in both prime awareness conditions. The significant SFs closely matched those optimal for accurate performance in a direct face-gender classification paradigm. Surprisingly, the significant SFs facilitated observers' responses in the visible prime condition, whereas they slowed responses in the invisible prime condition. Our findings suggest that SF tuning per se remains robust under different prime awareness conditions but that diagnostic visual cues might be utilized in a qualitatively different fashion as a function of awareness.	\N	\N
23400826	In two experiments, we used an interruption-and-recall (IAR) task to explore listeners' ability to monitor the capacity of working memory as new information arrived in real time. In this task, listeners heard recorded word lists with instructions to interrupt the input at the maximum point that would still allow for perfect recall. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the most commonly selected segment size closely matched participants' memory span, as measured in a baseline span test. Experiment 2 showed that reducing the sound level of presented word lists to a suprathreshold but effortful listening level disrupted the accuracy of matching selected segment sizes with participants' memory spans. The results are discussed in terms of whether online capacity monitoring may be subsumed under other, already enumerated working memory executive functions (inhibition, set shifting, and memory updating).	\N	\N
23403808	The objective of this study was to examine the role of the acoustic stapedius reflex in the protection of speech recognition from the upward spread of masking arising from low-frequency background noise. Speech recognition scores were measured for nine control participants (19-34 years) and six patients with transected stapedius tendons poststapedotomy (39-57 years) as a function of the amplitude of a low-frequency masker, presented at nominal signal to noise ratios of +5 dB, -5 dB, and -15 dB. All participants had pure-tone hearing thresholds in the normal range. Continuous high-pass noise was present in all conditions to avoid ceiling effects; this reduced performance in quiet to approximately 85% for all participants. Scores were measured for soft and loud nonsense syllables (average third octave band levels of 35 and 65 dB SPL), so that a comparison of the low-frequency noise masking functions at the two levels would provide information about the effects of the reflex on speech intelligibility in noise. A third group of nine control participants (19-22 years) listened in the presence of a low-frequency masker gated to come on 1 sec before stimulus onset, to reduce the likelihood of reflex adaptation. The Speech-Intelligibility Index was used to quantify the amount of speech information available in each condition. Patients with transected tendons performed more poorly than control participants as a function of Speech-Intelligibility Index in all conditions, even at levels that were too soft for reflex activation. This could be because of postsurgical differences in sensitivity, the more advanced age of poststapedotomy group, or differences in medial olivocochlear inhibition. For loud speech, patient performance fell nearly linearly with increases in the low-frequency masker, but control participants' performance declined little as the signal to noise ratio declined from +5 to -5 dB, and then fell rapidly as the ratio declined to -15 dB. This plateau in the masking function did not occur for the patients. Masking functions obtained with the gated low-frequency masker were either highly similar or poorer to those obtained with a continuous masker, suggesting that the use of a continuous low frequency masker did not result in significant reflex adaptation. The stapedius reflex appears to offer some protection from the upward spread of masking of speech by background low-frequency noise at moderate levels, but not at high levels.	\N	\N
23406991	Around 10% of people experience subjective tinnitus (the perception of sound, only audible to the patient, in the absence of an external auditory stimulus).(1-3) It may be associated with hearing loss, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbance, concentration problems or reduced quality of life; for around 0.5% it is extremely disturbing.(1-4) Risk factors include aging, significant noise exposure, drug therapy (e.g. aminoglycosides, NSAIDs, diuretics), or disorders of the outer, middle or inner ear or auditory nerve (e.g. ear wax, infections, vestibular schwannoma, otosclerosis).(1,2,4) It may be due to excessive spontaneous activity in the auditory system and brain; if the signal (normally suppressed by the subconscious) becomes noticed it becomes more intrusive and annoying in a vicious cycle.(5) Here, we discuss symptomatic drug and non-drug treatments for subjective tinnitus in adults. We do not cover treatment of underlying causes of tinnitus.	\N	\N
23408389	Coding for the degree of disorder in a temporally unfolding sensory input allows for optimized encoding of these inputs via information compression and predictive processing. Prior neuroimaging work has examined sensitivity to statistical regularities within single sensory modalities and has associated this function with the hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and lateral temporal cortex. Here we investigated to what extent sensitivity to input disorder, quantified by Markov entropy, is subserved by modality-general or modality-specific neural systems when participants are not required to monitor the input. Participants were presented with rapid (3.3 Hz) auditory and visual series varying over four levels of entropy, while monitoring an infrequently changing fixation cross. For visual series, sensitivity to the magnitude of disorder was found in early visual cortex, the anterior cingulate, and the intraparietal sulcus. For auditory series, sensitivity was found in inferior frontal, lateral temporal, and supplementary motor regions implicated in speech perception and sequencing. Ventral premotor and central cingulate cortices were identified as possible candidates for modality-general uncertainty processing, exhibiting marginal sensitivity to disorder in both modalities. The right temporal pole differentiated the highest and lowest levels of disorder in both modalities, but did not show general sensitivity to the parametric manipulation of disorder. Our results indicate that neural sensitivity to input disorder relies largely on modality-specific systems embedded in extended sensory cortices, though uncertainty-related processing in frontal regions may be driven by both input modalities.	\N	\N
23413000	In the present experiments, participants had to verify properties of concepts but, depending on the trial condition, concept-property pairs were presented via headphones or on the screen. The results showed that participants took longer and were less accurate at verifying conceptual properties when the channel used to present the CONCEPT-property pair and the type of property matched in sensory modality (e.g., LEMON-yellow on screen; BLENDER-loud in headphones) compared to when properties and channel did not match (e.g., LEMON-yellow in headphones; BLENDER-loud on screen). Such interference is consistent with theories of embodied cognition holding that knowledge is grounded in modality-specific systems (Barsalou in Behav Brain Sci 22:577-660, 1999). When the resources of one modality are burdened during the task, processing costs are incurred in a conceptual task (Vermeulen et al. in Cognition 109:287-294, 2008).	\N	\N
23425567	Previous studies on the role of vowel harmony in word segmentation are based on artificial languages where harmonic cues reliably signal word boundaries. In this corpus study run on the data available at CHILDES, we investigated whether natural languages provide a learner with reliable segmentation cues similar to the ones created artificially. We observed that in harmonic languages (child-directed speech to thirty-five Turkish and three Hungarian children), but not in non-harmonic ones (child-directed speech to one Farsi and four Polish children), harmonic vowel sequences are more likely to appear within words, and non-harmonic ones mostly appear across word boundaries, suggesting that natural harmonic languages provide a learner with regular cues that could potentially be used for word segmentation along with other cues.	\N	\N
23432759	The time frame for infants' acquisition of language constancy was probed, using the phonetic variation in a rarely heard accent (South African English) or a frequently heard accent (American English). A total of 156 Australian infants were tested. Six-month-olds looked longer to Australian English than less commonly heard South African accent, but at 9 months, showed similar looking times. With the more frequently heard American accent, 3-month-olds looked longer to Australian and American English, whereas 6-month-olds looked equally. Together these results imply that in the 1st year, differential attention to native versus nonnative accents decreases as infants develop a sense of language constancy for the common native language. However, experience with the nonnative accent can expedite this process.	\N	\N
23433243	Patients with alien hand syndrome (AHS) experience making apparently deliberate and purposeful movements with their hand against their will. However, the mechanisms contributing to these involuntary actions remain poorly understood. Here, we describe two experimental investigations in a patient with corticobasal syndrome (CBS) with alien hand behaviour in her right hand. First, we show that responses with the alien hand are made significantly more quickly to images of objects which afford an action with that hand compared to objects which afford an action with the unaffected hand. This finding suggests that involuntary grasping behaviours in AHS might be due to exaggerated, automatic motor activation evoked by objects which afford actions with that limb. Second, using a backwards masked priming task, we found normal automatic inhibition of primed responses in the patient's unaffected hand, but importantly there was no evidence of such suppression in the alien limb. Taken together, these findings suggest that grasping behaviours in AHS may result from exaggerated object affordance effects, which might potentially arise from disrupted inhibition of automatically evoked responses.	\N	\N
23440517	Users of bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) experience difficulties localizing sounds in reverberant rooms, even in rooms where normal-hearing listeners would hardly notice the reverberation. We measured the localization ability of seven bilateral CI users listening with their own devices in anechoic space and in a simulated reverberant room. To determine factors affecting performance in reverberant space we measured the sensitivity to interaural time differences (ITDs), interaural level differences (ILDs), and forward masking in the same participants using direct computer control of the electric stimulation in their CIs. Localization performance, quantified by the coefficient of determination r(2) and the root mean squared error, was significantly worse in the reverberant room than in anechoic conditions. Localization performance in the anechoic room, expressed as r(2), was best predicted by subject's sensitivity to ILDs. However, the decrease in localization performance caused by reverberation was better predicted by the sensitivity to envelope ITDs measured on single electrode pairs, with a correlation coefficient of 0.92. The CI users who were highly sensitive to envelope ITDs also better maintained their localization ability in reverberant space. Results in the forward masking task added only marginally to the predictions of localization performance in both environments. The results indicate that envelope ITDs provided by CI processors support localization in reverberant space. Thus, methods that improve perceptual access to envelope ITDs could help improve localization with bilateral CIs in everyday listening situations.	\N	\N
23440859	Children with reading disability and normal reading development were compared in their ability to discriminate native (English) and novel language (Mandarin) from nonlinguistic sounds. Children's preference for native versus novel language sounds and for disyllables containing dominant trochaic versus non-dominant iambic stress patterns was also assessed. Participants included second and third grade monolingual native English speakers with reading disability (N = 18) and normal reading development (N = 18). Children selected from pairs of novel, native, and nonlinguistic sounds that was more like language. Both groups discriminated disyllabic linguistic sounds (native and novel) from nonlinguistic sounds. Both groups showed preference for the dominant English trochaic stress pattern over the non-dominant iambic stress pattern. Implications for development of prosodic sensitivity in relation to reading skills and future research are discussed.	\N	\N
23442569	The relative impact of early intervention approach on speech perception and language skills was examined in these 3 well-matched groups of children using cochlear implants. Eight children from an auditory verbal intervention program were identified. From a pediatric database, researchers blind to the outcome data, identified 23 children from auditory oral programs and 8 children from bilingual-bicultural programs with the same inclusion criteria and equivalent demographic factors. All child participants were male, had congenital profound hearing loss (pure tone average >80 dBHL), no additional disabilities, were within the normal IQ range, were monolingual English speakers, had no unusual findings on computed tomography/magnetic resonance imaging, and received hearing aids and cochlear implants at a similar age and before 4 years of age. Open-set speech perception (consonant-nucleus-consonant [CNC] words and Bamford-Kowal-Bench [BKB] sentences) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) were administered. The mean age at cochlear implant was 1.7 years (range, 0.8-3.9; SD, 0.7), mean test age was 5.4 years (range, 2.5-10.1; SD, 1.7), and mean device experience was 3.7 years (range, 0.7-7.9; SD, 1.8). Results indicate mean CNC scores of 60%, 43%, and 24% and BKB scores of 77%, 77%, and 56% for the auditory-verbal (AV), aural-oral (AO), and bilingual-bicultural (BB) groups, respectively. The mean PPVT delay was 13, 19, and 26 months for AV, AO, and BB groups, respectively. Despite equivalent child demographic characteristics at the outset of this study, by 3 years postimplant, there were significant differences in AV, AO, and BB groups. Results support consistent emphasis on oral/aural input to achieve optimum spoken communication outcomes for children using cochlear implants.	\N	\N
23445327	Metabolic syndrome is a risk factor for age-related hearing impairment (ARHI). There are metabolic differences between abdominal adipose tissue present in subcutaneous and visceral areas. In this study, we investigated the association between abdominal fat composition, measured by computerized tomography (CT), and hearing thresholds. We recruited 662 adults aged 40-82 years with normal or symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss who underwent fat measurement by CT. Linear regression models were used to address the association between risk factors, including abdominal fat composition, and average hearing levels at low and high frequencies. After adjusting for age, systemic disease and other variables, a positive association between visceral adipose tissue (VAT) area and average hearing threshold was observed in women. In men, there was no significant association between abdominal fat composition and hearing threshold. Our findings show an association between VAT and hearing impairment in women. A reduction in visceral adiposity may help to prevent hearing loss in women.	\N	\N
23446225	The aim of this study was to assess the benefit of having preserved acoustic hearing in the implanted ear for speech recognition in complex listening environments. The present study included a within-subjects, repeated-measures design including 21 English-speaking and 17 Polish-speaking cochlear implant (CI) recipients with preserved acoustic hearing in the implanted ear. The patients were implanted with electrodes that varied in insertion depth from 10 to 31 mm. Mean preoperative low-frequency thresholds (average of 125, 250, and 500 Hz) in the implanted ear were 39.3 and 23.4 dB HL for the English- and Polish-speaking participants, respectively. In one condition, speech perception was assessed in an eight-loudspeaker environment in which the speech signals were presented from one loudspeaker and restaurant noise was presented from all loudspeakers. In another condition, the signals were presented in a simulation of a reverberant environment with a reverberation time of 0.6 sec. The response measures included speech reception thresholds (SRTs) and percent correct sentence understanding for two test conditions: CI plus low-frequency hearing in the contralateral ear (bimodal condition) and CI plus low-frequency hearing in both ears (best-aided condition). A subset of six English-speaking listeners were also assessed on measures of interaural time difference thresholds for a 250-Hz signal. Small, but significant, improvements in performance (1.7-2.1 dB and 6-10 percentage points) were found for the best-aided condition versus the bimodal condition. Postoperative thresholds in the implanted ear were correlated with the degree of electric and acoustic stimulation (EAS) benefit for speech recognition in diffuse noise. There was no reliable relationship among measures of audiometric threshold in the implanted ear nor elevation in threshold after surgery and improvement in speech understanding in reverberation. There was a significant correlation between interaural time difference threshold at 250 Hz and EAS-related benefit for the adaptive speech reception threshold. The findings of this study suggest that (1) preserved low-frequency hearing improves speech understanding for CI recipients, (2) testing in complex listening environments, in which binaural timing cues differ for signal and noise, may best demonstrate the value of having two ears with low-frequency acoustic hearing, and (3) preservation of binaural timing cues, although poorer than observed for individuals with normal hearing, is possible after unilateral cochlear implantation with hearing preservation and is associated with EAS benefit. The results of this study demonstrate significant communicative benefit for hearing preservation in the implanted ear and provide support for the expansion of CI criteria to include individuals with low-frequency thresholds in even the normal to near-normal range.	\N	\N
23446226	Understanding speech in acoustically degraded environments can place significant cognitive demands on school-age children who are developing the cognitive and linguistic skills needed to support this process. Previous studies suggest the speech understanding, word learning, and academic performance can be negatively impacted by background noise, but the effect of limited audibility on cognitive processes in children has not been directly studied. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of limited audibility on speech understanding and working memory tasks in school-age children with normal hearing. Seventeen children with normal hearing between 6 and 12 years of age participated in the present study. Repetition of nonword consonant-vowel-consonant stimuli was measured under conditions with combinations of two different signal to noise ratios (SNRs; 3 and 9 dB) and two low-pass filter settings (3.2 and 5.6 kHz). Verbal processing time was calculated based on the time from the onset of the stimulus to the onset of the child's response. Monosyllabic word repetition and recall were also measured in conditions with a full bandwidth and 5.6 kHz low-pass cutoff. Nonword repetition scores decreased as audibility decreased. Verbal processing time increased as audibility decreased, consistent with predictions based on increased listening effort. Although monosyllabic word repetition did not vary between the full bandwidth and 5.6 kHz low-pass filter condition, recall was significantly poorer in the condition with limited bandwidth (low pass at 5.6 kHz). Age and expressive language scores predicted performance on word recall tasks, but did not predict nonword repetition accuracy or verbal processing time. Decreased audibility was associated with reduced accuracy for nonword repetition and increased verbal processing time in children with normal hearing. Deficits in free recall were observed even under conditions where word repetition was not affected. The negative effects of reduced audibility may occur even under conditions where speech repetition is not impacted. Limited stimulus audibility may result in greater cognitive effort for verbal rehearsal in working memory and may limit the availability of cognitive resources to allocate to working memory and other processes.	\N	\N
23464029	Aided consonant and vowel identification was measured in 13 listeners with high-frequency sloping hearing losses. To investigate the influence of compression-channel analysis bandwidth on identification performance independent of the number of channels, performance was compared for three 17-channel compression systems that differed only in terms of their channel bandwidths. One compressor had narrow channels, one had widely overlapping channels, and the third had level-dependent channels. Measurements were done in quiet, in speech-shaped noise, and in a three-talker background. The results showed no effect of channel bandwidth, neither on consonant nor on vowel identification scores. This suggests that channel bandwidth per se has little influence on speech intelligibility when individually prescribed, frequency-varying compressive gain is provided.	\N	\N
23466188	It is well established that individuals with schizophrenia demonstrate alterations in auditory perception beginning at the very earliest stages of information processing. However, it is not clear how these impairments in basic information processing translate into high-order cognitive deficits. Auditory scene analysis allows listeners to group auditory information into meaningful objects, and as such provides an important link between low-level auditory processing and higher cognitive abilities. In the present study we investigated whether low-level impairments in the processing of binaural temporal information impact upon auditory scene analysis ability. Binaural temporal processing ability was investigated in 19 individuals with schizophrenia and 19 matched controls. Individuals with schizophrenia showed impaired binaural temporal processing ability on an inter-aural time difference (ITD) discrimination task. In addition, patients demonstrated impairment in two measures of auditory scene analysis. Specifically, patients had reduced ability to use binaural temporal cues to extract signal from noise in a masking level difference paradigm, and to separate the location of a source sound in the presence of an echo in the precedence effect paradigm. These findings demonstrate that individuals with schizophrenia have impairments in the accuracy with which simple binaural temporal information is encoded in the auditory system, and furthermore, this impairment has functional consequences in terms of the use of these cues to extract information in complex auditory environments.	\N	\N
23467261	We tested whether congenital amusics, who exhibit pitch perception deficits, nevertheless adjust the pitch of their voice in response to a sudden pitch shift applied to vocal feedback. Nine amusics and matched controls imitated their own previously-recorded speech or singing, while the online feedback they received was shifted mid-utterance by 25 or 200 cents. While a few amusics failed to show pitch-shift effects, a majority showed a pitch-shift response and nearly half showed a normal response to both large and small shifts, with similar magnitudes and response times as controls. The size and presence of the shift response to small shifts were significantly predicted by participants' vocal pitch matching accuracy, rather than their ability to perceive small pitch changes. The observed dissociation between the ability to consciously perceive small pitch changes and to produce and monitor vocal pitch provides evidence for a dual-route model of pitch processing in the brain.	\N	\N
23472959	The more a novel word conforms to the phonotactics of the language, the more wordlike it is and the easier it is to learn. It is unknown to what extent children with hearing loss (CHL) take advantage of phonotactic cues to support word learning. This study investigated whether CHL had similar sensitivities to wordlikeness during a word-learning task as children with normal hearing (CNH). Sixteen CHL and 24 CNH participated in a novel word-learning task. Novel words varied by English wordlikeness. Recall was tested using a forced-choice identification task wherein foils for each trial related semantically, lexically or not at all. Receptive vocabulary and working memory were also assessed. All children were able to identify high wordlike novel words more accurately than low wordlike novel words. The number of errors on identification of words that were moderate in wordlikeness was inversely correlated to vocabulary size (not working memory) and CHL had smaller vocabularies than CNH. When in error, CHL were more likely than CNH to select a semantically related foil. Although they are sensitive to extremes in wordlikeness, compared with their peers with normal hearing, CHL present with subtle differences in word learning. Clinical implications for exploiting wordlikeness in service of word learning assessment and intervention are presented.	\N	\N
23473799	The Attention Network Test (ANT) assesses the networks of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive control). The utility of measuring attention network performances with the repeated administration of the ANT in clinical populations has not yet been explored. In the present study, we administered a variant of the ANT (ANT-I) to 11 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and 11 controls over six monthly sessions to examine the stability, isolability, robustness, and reliability of the ANT-I. Participants responded through button presses to indicate the direction of a target arrow presented either above or below a fixation cross. The target was accompanied by distracting arrows, pointing either in the same or opposite direction of the target arrow. Target arrows were preceded in some trials by alerting auditory signals and/or by uninformative visual cues. Network scores were calculated using orthogonal subtractions of performance under selected conditions. The MS patients were slower than the controls, though group differences in network performance were rare. Even after five test sessions, the network scores remained stable, despite some practice effects that were the largest under conditions that tested the executive network. The reliabilities of the orienting and executive network effects were good in both groups and increased across sessions, especially with the MS patients. The alerting network was the least reliable, especially for MS patients, but it also became more reliable across sessions. The results suggest that the ANT-I can be used to measure the integrity of attention networks for MS patients in applications that require repeated testing.	\N	\N
23479475	The human visual system possesses the remarkable ability to pick out salient objects in images. Even more impressive is its ability to do the very same in the presence of disturbances. In particular, the ability persists despite the presence of noise, poor weather, and other impediments to perfect vision. Meanwhile, noise can significantly degrade the accuracy of automated computational saliency detection algorithms. In this article, we set out to remedy this shortcoming. Existing computational saliency models generally assume that the given image is clean, and a fundamental and explicit treatment of saliency in noisy images is missing from the literature. Here we propose a novel and statistically sound method for estimating saliency based on a nonparametric regression framework and investigate the stability of saliency models for noisy images and analyze how state-of-the-art computational models respond to noisy visual stimuli. The proposed model of saliency at a pixel of interest is a data-dependent weighted average of dissimilarities between a center patch around that pixel and other patches. To further enhance the degree of accuracy in predicting the human fixations and of stability to noise, we incorporate a global and multiscale approach by extending the local analysis window to the entire input image, even further to multiple scaled copies of the image. Our method consistently outperforms six other state-of-the-art models (Bruce & Tsotsos, 2009; Garcia-Diaz, Fdez-Vidal, Pardo, & Dosil, 2012; Goferman, Zelnik-Manor, & Tal, 2010; Hou & Zhang, 2007; Seo & Milanfar, 2009; Zhang, Tong, & Marks, 2008) for both noise-free and noisy cases.	\N	\N
23479544	The NIH Toolbox project has assembled measurement tools to assess a wide range of human perception and ability across the lifespan. As part of this initiative, a small but comprehensive battery of auditory tests has been assembled. The main tool of this battery, pure-tone thresholds, measures the ability of people to hear at specific frequencies. Pure-tone thresholds have long been considered the "gold standard" of auditory testing, and are normally obtained in a clinical setting by highly trained audiologists. For the purposes of the Toolbox project, an automated procedure (NIH Toolbox Threshold Hearing Test) was developed that allows nonspecialists to administer the test reliably. Three supplemental auditory tests are also included in the Toolbox auditory test battery: assessment of middle-ear function (tympanometry), speech perception in noise (the NIH Toolbox Words-in-Noise Test), and self-assessment of hearing impairment (the NIH Toolbox Hearing Handicap Inventory Ages 18-64 and the NIH Toolbox Hearing Handicap Inventory Ages 64+). Tympanometry can help differentiate conductive from sensorineural pathology. The NIH Toolbox Words-in-Noise Test measures a listener's ability to perceive words in noisy situations. This ability is not necessarily predicted by a person's pure-tone thresholds; some people with normal hearing have difficulty extracting meaning from speech sounds heard in a noisy context. The NIH Toolbox Hearing Handicap Inventory focuses on how a person's perceived hearing status affects daily life. The test was constructed to include emotional and social/situational subscales, with specific questions about how hearing impairment may affect one's emotional state or limit participation in specific activities. The 4 auditory tests included in the Toolbox auditory test battery cover a range of auditory abilities and provide a snapshot of a participant's auditory capacity.	\N	\N
23483527	We used the visual world paradigm to examine interlingual lexical competition when Dutch-English bilinguals listened to low-constraining sentences in their nonnative (L2; Experiment 1) and native (L1; Experiment 2) languages. Additionally, we investigated the influence of the degree of cross-lingual phonological similarity. When listening in L2, participants fixated more on competitor pictures of which the onset of the name was phonologically related to the onset of the name of the target in the nontarget language (e.g., fles, "bottle", given target flower) than on phonologically unrelated distractor pictures. Even when they listened in L1, this effect was also observed when the onsets of the names of the target picture (in L1) and the competitor picture (in L2) were phonologically very similar. These findings provide evidence for interlingual competition during the comprehension of spoken sentences, both in L2 and in L1.	\N	\N
23485447	With an incidence of 1:29 000 among Caucasians, Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is the most common inherited ataxia, leading to both sensory and motor degeneration. Despite many FRDA patients exhibiting normal or near normal sound detection thresholds, many individuals show abnormal neural conduction along their central auditory pathways. Electrophysiological testing can show abnormal or absent cochlear nerve and auditory brainstem recordings in the presence of normal pre-neural cochlear function (otoacoustic emissions or cochlear microphonics). This pattern of normal pre-neural cochlear function and disrupted neural conduction has been termed auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). Studies of FRDA patients with ANSD have shown that they exhibit severe deficits in temporal processing, impaired frequency discrimination, and deficits in speech perception. Rehabilitation of these auditory percept deficits remains difficult, as hearing aids may amplify sounds without adding clarity to the temporally disrupted or distorted signal that FRDA patients with ANSD may receive. There is limited data on the best intervention for patients with FRDA with ANSD, although personal radio aids (FM systems) have been shown to be beneficial. We report a case, where cochlear implantation has led to a dramatic improvement in speech perception in an individual with FRDA and ANSD. The majority of the literature on ANSD treatment has focused on paediatric patients with the 'dyssynchrony' type of ANSD, rather than the true neuropathy type underlying the hearing loss in FRDA patients.	\N	\N
23497238	Auditory feedback is important for accurate control of voice fundamental frequency (F(0)). The purpose of this study was to address whether task instructions could influence the compensatory responding and sensorimotor adaptation that has been previously found when participants are presented with a series of frequency-altered feedback (FAF) trials. Trained singers and musically untrained participants (nonsingers) were informed that their auditory feedback would be manipulated in pitch while they sang the target vowel [/α /]. Participants were instructed to either 'compensate' for, or 'ignore' the changes in auditory feedback. Whole utterance auditory feedback manipulations were either gradually presented ('ramp') in -2 cent increments down to -100 cents (1 semitone) or were suddenly ('constant') shifted down by 1 semitone. Results indicated that singers and nonsingers could not suppress their compensatory responses to FAF, nor could they reduce the sensorimotor adaptation observed during both the ramp and constant FAF trials. Compared to previous research, these data suggest that musical training is effective in suppressing compensatory responses only when FAF occurs after vocal onset (500-2500 ms). Moreover, our data suggest that compensation and adaptation are automatic and are influenced little by conscious control.	\N	\N
23506084	Although adults rapidly adjust to accented speakers' pronunciation of words, young children appear to struggle when confronted with unfamiliar variants of their native language (e.g., American English-learning 15-month-olds cannot recognize familiar words spoken in Jamaican English; Best et al., 2009). It is currently unclear, however, why this is the case, or how infants overcome this apparent inability. Here, we begin to address these crucial questions. Experiments 1 and 2 confirm with a new population that infants are initially unable to recognize familiar words produced in unfamiliar accents. That is, Canadian English-learning infants cannot recognize familiar words spoken in Australian English until they near their second birthday. However, Experiments 3 and 4 show that this early inability to recognize accented words can readily be overcome when infants are exposed to a story read in the unfamiliar accent prior to test. Importantly, this adaptation only occurs when the story is highly familiar, consistent with the idea that top-down lexical feedback may enable the adaptation process. We conclude that infants, like adults, have the cognitive capacity to rapidly deduce the mapping between their own and an unfamiliar variant of their native language. Thus, the essential machinery underlying spoken language communication is in place much earlier than previous studies have suggested.	\N	\N
23507048	Event related potentials (ERP) associated with early sensory information processing have been proposed as possible vulnerability markers for psychosis. Compared to other ERPs reported in schizophrenia research, like Mismatch Negativity (MMN), little is known about P3a, an ERP related to novelty detection. The aim of this study was to analyze the MMN-P3a complex in 20 antipsychotic naïve first-episode psychosis patients (FEP), 23 antipsychotic naïve individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR) and 24 healthy controls. The MMN-P3a amplitudes and latencies were obtained during a passive auditory mismatch frequency deviant ERP paradigm and analyzed in frontal and central scalp regions. There were no significant differences in MMN amplitude between groups. There was a significant group difference in P3a due to reduced amplitude (F[2,64] = 3.7, p = 0.03) in both CHR and FEP groups (Mean difference (MD) = 0.39, p = 0.04 and MD = 0.49, p = 0.02, respectively) compared to the control group and this effect was most prominent on the right side (Group × laterality effect: MD = 0.57, p < 0.01 and MD = 0.58, p < 0.01, respectively). No significant differences were observed for MMN or P3a latencies between groups. Although a P3a decrement in chronic schizophrenia and FEP has been previously reported, our results suggest that this novelty detection impairment is present even in pre-psychosis stages in antipsychotic naïve subjects. This study supports the evidence that P3a could represent a neurophysiological vulnerability marker for the development of psychosis.	\N	\N
23510647	Rehabilitation success in cochlear implant patients is influenced by many factors. Influence of different etiologies of deafness on rehabilitation outcome is assessed. Retrospective survey of patients. University hospital. Secondary referral center. One hundred and sixty-three between 1996 and 2008 implanted children (0-18 years, mean 5.17 years). Evaluation of patients' data: origin of deafness, hearing and speech test results. Access Data Base; Wilcoxon and t-test. Mean follow-up: 65.4 months. Etiology of deafness in children found in 104 cases: 69 (51.9%) suffered from hereditary hearing loss. All children showed improvement in their auditory performance, children with connexin-26 mutation performed significantly best, Usher and CHARGE-syndrome children significantly worst. Post-meningitic and post-septic children developed slower but reached same levels later. Primary cause of deafness, among other factors, has a considerable impact on outcome of rehabilitation. This offers possibilities to influence the outcome by etiology-adjusted therapy modules.	\N	\N
23517653	Numerous cortical disorders affect language. We explore the connection between the observed language behavior and the underlying substrates by adopting a neurocomputational approach. To represent the observed trajectories of the discourse in patients with disorganized speech and in healthy participants, we design a graphical representation for the discourse as a trajectory that allows us to visualize and measure the degree of order in the discourse as a function of the disorder of the trajectories. Our work assumes that many of the properties of language production and comprehension can be understood in terms of the dynamics of modular networks of neural associative memories. Based upon this assumption, we connect three theoretical and empirical domains: (1) neural models of language processing and production, (2) statistical methods used in the construction of functional brain images, and (3) corpus linguistic tools, such as Latent Semantic Analysis (henceforth LSA), that are used to discover the topic organization of language. We show how the neurocomputational models intertwine with LSA and the mathematical basis of functional neuroimaging. Within this framework we describe the properties of a context-dependent neural model, based on matrix associative memories, that performs goal-oriented linguistic behavior. We link these matrix associative memory models with the mathematics that underlie functional neuroimaging techniques and present the "functional brain images" emerging from the model. This provides us with a completely "transparent box" with which to analyze the implication of some statistical images. Finally, we use these models to explore the possibility that functional synaptic disconnection can lead to an increase in connectivity between the representations of concepts that could explain some of the alterations in discourse displayed by patients with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23522843	Aging usually affects the ability to focus attention on a given task and to ignore distractors. However, aging is also associated with increased between-subject variability, and it is unclear in which features of processing older high-performing and low-performing human beings may differ in goal-directed behavior. To study involuntary shifts in attention to task-irrelevant deviant stimuli and subsequent reorientation, we used an auditory distraction task and analyzed event-related potential measures (mismatch negativity), P3a and reorienting negativity) of 35 younger, 32 older high-performing, and 32 older low-performing participants. Although both high and low performing elderly individuals showed a delayed reorienting to the primary stimulus feature, relative to young participants, poor performance of the elderly participants in processing of deviant stimuli was associated with strong involuntary attention capture by task-irrelevant features. In contrast, high performance of the elderly group was associated with intensified attentional shifting toward the target features. Thus, it appears that performance deficits in aging are due to higher distractibility in combination with deficits in the orienting-reorienting mechanisms.	\N	\N
23526255	In this study, we present the normative values of the adaptation of the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-2; Bradley & Lang, 2007a) for European Portuguese (EP). The IADS-2 is a standardized database of 167 naturally occurring sounds that is widely used in the study of emotions. The sounds were rated by 300 college students who were native speakers of EP, in the three affective dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance, by using the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). The aims of this adaptation were threefold: (1) to provide researchers with standardized and normatively rated affective sounds to be used with an EP population; (2) to investigate sex and cultural differences in the ratings of affective dimensions of auditory stimuli between EP and the American (Bradley & Lang, 2007a) and Spanish (Fernández-Abascal et al., Psicothema 20:104-113 2008; Redondo, Fraga, Padrón, & Piñeiro, Behavior Research Methods 40:784-790 2008) standardizations; and (3) to promote research on auditory affective processing in Portugal. Our results indicated that the IADS-2 is a valid and useful database of digitized sounds for the study of emotions in a Portuguese context, allowing for comparisons of its results with those of other international studies that have used the same database for stimulus selection. The normative values of the EP adaptation of the IADS-2 database can be downloaded along with the online version of this article.	\N	\N
23528307	KCNA10 is a voltage gated potassium channel that is expressed in the inner ear. The localization and function of KCNA10 was studied in a mutant mouse, B6-Kcna10(TM45), in which the single protein coding exon of Kcna10 was replaced with a beta-galactosidase reporter cassette. Under the regulatory control of the endogenous Kcna10 promoter and enhancers, beta-galactosidase was expressed in hair cells of the vestibular organs and the organ of Corti. KCNA10 expression develops in opposite tonotopic gradients in the inner and outer hair cells. Kcna10(TM45) homozygotes display only a mild elevation in pure tone hearing thresholds as measured by auditory brainstem response (ABR), while heterozygotes are normal. However, Kcna10(TM45) homozygotes have absent vestibular evoked potentials (VsEPs) or elevated VsEP thresholds with prolonged peak latencies, indicating significant vestibular dysfunction despite the lack of any overt imbalance behaviors. Our results suggest that Kcna10 is expressed primarily in hair cells of the inner ear, with little evidence of expression in other organs. The Kcna10(TM45) targeted allele may be a model of human nonsyndromic vestibulopathy.	\N	\N
23534195	The author investigated the longitudinal relations between theory of mind (ToM) understanding and perceptions of self and social conversations in 17 school-aged children (12 girls, 5 boys, age 8-12 years). ToM was assessed at Time 1 (T1; M age = 8 years 5 months, SD = 8.7 months, and perceptions of self and conversational experiences assessed two years later at Time 2 (T2; M age = 10 years 4 months, SD = 7.9 months. Most importantly, longitudinal findings showed that children who scored relatively high on ToM at T1 reported relatively lower perceptions of self-worth and higher number of mental states verbs in their perceptions of peer and family conversations at T2. Significant negative longitudinal associations were found between children's number of siblings and their perceptions of self-worth (T1) and number of cognitive terms in their perceptions of peer and family conversations (T2). Frequency analysis suggested that girls' perceptions of conversations referred to more social and psychological aspects of self and relationships, whereas boys focused mainly on physical activities. Most children were more likely to prefer listening to talking during social conversations. The majority of children reported feelings of mixed or ambiguous emotions during experiences of silence. Implications for socioemotional and cognitive development in early adolescents are discussed.	\N	\N
23538131	A total of 64 loci for autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing impairment have been described, and the causative genes have been identified for 24 of these. The present study reports on the clinical characteristics of an autosomal dominantly inherited hearing impairment that is linked to a region within the DFNA60 locus located on chromosome 2 in q22.1-24.1. A pedigree spanning four generations was established with 13 affected individuals. Linkage analysis demonstrated that the locus extended over a 2.96 Mb region flanked by markers D2S2335 and D2S2275. The audiograms mainly showed a distinctive U-shaped configuration. Deterioration of hearing started at a wide age range, from 12 to 40 years. Cross-sectional analysis showed rapid progression of hearing impairment from mild to severe, between the ages of 40 and 60 years, a phenomenon that is also observed in DFNA9 patients. The results of the individual longitudinal analyses were generally in line with those obtained by the cross-sectional analysis. Speech recognition scores related to the level of hearing impairment (PTA1,2,4 kHz) appeared to be fairly similar to those of presbyacusis patients. It is speculated that hearing impairment starting in mid-life, as shown by DFNA60 patients, could play a role in the development of presbyacusis. Furthermore, speech recognition did not deteriorate appreciably before the sixth decade of life. We conclude that DFNA60 should be considered in hearing impaired patients who undergo a rapid progression in middle age and are negative for DFNA9. Furthermore, cochlear implantation resulted in good rehabilitation in two DFNA60 patients.	\N	\N
23538912	Experiences of adversity in the early years of life alter the developing brain. However, evidence documenting this relationship often focuses on severe stressors and relies on peripheral measures of neurobiological functioning during infancy. In the present study, we employed functional MRI during natural sleep to examine associations between a more moderate environmental stressor (nonphysical interparental conflict) and 6- to 12-month-old infants' neural processing of emotional tone of voice. The primary question was whether interparental conflict experienced by infants is associated with neural responses to emotional tone of voice, particularly very angry speech. Results indicated that maternal report of higher interparental conflict was associated with infants' greater neural responses to very angry relative to neutral speech across several brain regions implicated in emotion and stress reactivity and regulation (including rostral anterior cingulate cortex, caudate, thalamus, and hypothalamus). These findings suggest that even moderate environmental stress may be associated with brain functioning during infancy.	\N	\N
23551061	The N1 and P2 event-related potentials (ERPs) are attenuated when the eliciting sounds coincide with our own actions. Although this ERP attenuation could be caused by central processes, it may also reflect a peripheral mechanism: the coactivation of the stapedius muscle with the task-relevant effector, which reduces signal transmission efficiency in the middle ear, reducing the effective intensity of concurrently presented tones, which, in turn, elicit lower amplitude auditory ERPs. Because stapedius muscle contraction attenuates frequencies below 2 kHz, no attenuation should occur at frequencies above 2 kHz. A self-induced tone paradigm was administered with 0.5, 2.0, and 8.0 kHz pure tones. Self-induced tones elicited attenuated N1 and P2 ERPs, but the magnitude of attenuation was not affected by tone frequency. This result does not support the hypothesis that ERP attenuation to self-induced tones are caused by stapedius muscle contractions.	\N	\N
23553325	Sound pressure level delivered through personal listening devices (PLDs) and reaching the ear drum might be affected by body size and jaw movements. This study aimed to investigate whether jaw movement and/or smaller body mass index (BMI) resulted in decrease of sound pressure level within the ear canals of PLD users via an earbud earphone. Case series. Forty-five normal-hearing subjects (16 males; mean age, 23.3 years) participated in this study. A probe-microphone system was used to measure sound pressure level in the external ear canal with music delivered from a media player via an earbud earphone. Test materials consisted of two 20-second excerpts from a heavy metal music piece. Subjects were instructed to adjust the volume of the media player to conform to three conditions for sound pressure measurement: comfortable, loud, and maximum. Measurements were then repeated while subjects mimicked chewing action under the same listening conditions. Sound pressure levels were significantly lower when measured with jaw movement than without jaw movement (P < .05). Sound pressure levels monitored with/without jaw movement were generally lower in subjects with a BMI<23 than those with a BMI ≥ 23 (P < .05). Jaw movement and low BMI (<23) reduced the overall sound level of PLDs at the ear canal. Sound pressure levels detected in the external ear canal of our subjects using earbud earphones were significantly lower under conditions of jaw movement/BMI <23. Our research invites further studies on a larger group of PLD users to correlate these variables with hearing threshold shifts over time.	\N	\N
23556595	Although bilateral cochlear implantation has the potential to improve sound localization and speech understanding in noise, obstacles exist in presenting maximally useful binaural information to bilateral cochlear-implant (CI) users. One obstacle is that electrode arrays may differ in cochlear position by several millimeters, thereby stimulating different neural populations. Effects of interaural frequency mismatch on binaural processing were studied in normal-hearing (NH) listeners using band-limited pulse trains, thereby avoiding confounding factors that may occur in CI users. In experiment 1, binaural image fusion was measured to capture perceptual number, location, and compactness. Subjects heard a single, compact image on 73% of the trials. In experiment 2, intracranial image location was measured for different interaural time differences (ITDs) and interaural level differences (ILDs). For larger mismatch, locations perceptually shifted towards the ear with the higher carrier frequency. In experiment 3, ITD and ILD just-noticeable differences (JNDs) were measured. JNDs increased with decreasing bandwidth and increasing mismatch, but were always measurable up to 3 mm of mismatch. If binaural-hearing mechanisms are similar between NH and CI subjects, these results may explain reduced sensitivity of ITDs and ILDs in CI users. Large mismatches may lead to distorted spatial maps and reduced binaural image fusion.	\N	\N
23556693	Talking silently to ourselves occupies much of our mental lives, yet the mechanisms underlying this experience remain unclear. The following experiments provide behavioral evidence that the auditory content of inner speech is provided by corollary discharge. Corollary discharge is the motor system's prediction of the sensory consequences of its actions. This prediction can bias perception of other sensations, pushing percepts to match with prediction. The two experiments below show this bias induced by inner speech, demonstrating that inner speech causes external sounds to be heard as similar to the imagined speech, and that this bias operates on subphonemic content.	\N	\N
23565267	Psychophysiological evidence suggests that music and language are intimately coupled such that experience/training in one domain can influence processing required in the other domain. While the influence of music on language processing is now well-documented, evidence of language-to-music effects have yet to be firmly established. Here, using a cross-sectional design, we compared the performance of musicians to that of tone-language (Cantonese) speakers on tasks of auditory pitch acuity, music perception, and general cognitive ability (e.g., fluid intelligence, working memory). While musicians demonstrated superior performance on all auditory measures, comparable perceptual enhancements were observed for Cantonese participants, relative to English-speaking nonmusicians. These results provide evidence that tone-language background is associated with higher auditory perceptual performance for music listening. Musicians and Cantonese speakers also showed superior working memory capacity relative to nonmusician controls, suggesting that in addition to basic perceptual enhancements, tone-language background and music training might also be associated with enhanced general cognitive abilities. Our findings support the notion that tone language speakers and musically trained individuals have higher performance than English-speaking listeners for the perceptual-cognitive processing necessary for basic auditory as well as complex music perception. These results illustrate bidirectional influences between the domains of music and language.	\N	\N
23571299	A variety of noises have been employed for decades in an effort to facilitate habituation, mask, or suppress tinnitus. Many of these sounds have reportedly provided benefit, but success has not been universal. More recently, musical stimuli have been added as a sound therapy component. The potential advantages of using such stimuli, in particular fractal tones, in combination with amplification are discussed in this paper.	\N	\N
23571301	The past decade has seen an escalating enthusiasm to comprehend chronic tinnitus from the perspective of both scientific understanding and clinical management. At the same time, there is a significant interest and commercial investment in providing targeted and individualized approaches to care, which incorporate novel sound-based technologies, with standard audiological and psychological strategies. Commercially produced sound-based devices for the tinnitus market include Co-ordinated Reset Neuromodulation ® , Neuromonics © , Serenade ® , and Widex ® Zen. Additionally, experimental interventions such as those based on frequency-discrimination training are of current interest. Many of these interventions overtly claim to target the underlying neurological causes of tinnitus. Here, we briefly summarize current perspectives on the pathophysiology of tinnitus and evaluate claims made by the device supporters from a critical point of view. We provide an opinion on how future research in the field of individualized sound-based interventions might best provide a reliable evidence-base in this growing area of translational medicine.	\N	\N
23577828	Mismatch negativity (MMN) overlaps with other auditory event-related potential (ERP) components. We examined the ERPs of 50 9- to 11-year-old children for vowels /i/, /y/ and equivalent complex tones. The goal was to separate MMN from obligatory ERP components using principal component analysis and equal probability control condition. In addition to the contrast of the deviant minus standard response, we employed the contrast of the deviant minus control response, to see whether the obligatory processing contributes to MMN in children. When looking for differences in speech deviant minus standard contrast, MMN starts around 112 ms. However, when both contrasts are examined, MMN emerges for speech at 160 ms whereas for nonspeech MMN is observed at 112 ms regardless of contrast. We argue that this discriminative response to speech stimuli at 112 ms is obligatory in nature rather than reflecting change detection processing.	\N	\N
23578016	Music is a cultural universal and a rich part of the human experience. However, little is known about common brain systems that support the processing and integration of extended, naturalistic 'real-world' music stimuli. We examined this question by presenting extended excerpts of symphonic music, and two pseudomusical stimuli in which the temporal and spectral structure of the Natural Music condition were disrupted, to non-musician participants undergoing functional brain imaging and analysing synchronized spatiotemporal activity patterns between listeners. We found that music synchronizes brain responses across listeners in bilateral auditory midbrain and thalamus, primary auditory and auditory association cortex, right-lateralized structures in frontal and parietal cortex, and motor planning regions of the brain. These effects were greater for natural music compared to the pseudo-musical control conditions. Remarkably, inter-subject synchronization in the inferior colliculus and medial geniculate nucleus was also greater for the natural music condition, indicating that synchronization at these early stages of auditory processing is not simply driven by spectro-temporal features of the stimulus. Increased synchronization during music listening was also evident in a right-hemisphere fronto-parietal attention network and bilateral cortical regions involved in motor planning. While these brain structures have previously been implicated in various aspects of musical processing, our results are the first to show that these regions track structural elements of a musical stimulus over extended time periods lasting minutes. Our results show that a hierarchical distributed network is synchronized between individuals during the processing of extended musical sequences, and provide new insight into the temporal integration of complex and biologically salient auditory sequences.	\N	\N
23580330	Schumacher et al. Psychological Science 12:101-108, (2001) demonstrated the elimination of most dual-task costs ("perfect time-sharing") after extensive dual-task practice of a visual and an auditory task in combination. For the present research, we used a transfer methodology to examine this practice effect in more detail, asking what task-processing stages were sped up by this dual-task practice. Such research will be essential to specify mechanisms associated with the practice-related elimination of dual-task costs. In three experiments, we introduced postpractice transfer probes focusing on the perception, central response-selection, and final motor-response stages. The results indicated that the major change achieved by dual-task practice was a speed-up in the central response-selection stages of both tasks. Additionally, perceptual-stage shortening of the auditory task was found to contribute to the improvements in time-sharing. For a better understanding of such time-sharing, we discuss the contributions of the present findings in relation to models of practiced dual-task performance.	\N	\N
23585888	To localize the neural generators of the musically elicited mismatch negativity with high temporal resolution we conducted a beamformer analysis (Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry, SAM) on magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a previous musical mismatch study. The stimuli consisted of a six-tone melodic sequence comprising broken chords in C- and G-major. The musical sequence was presented within an oddball paradigm in which the last tone was lowered occasionally (20%) by a minor third. The beamforming analysis revealed significant right hemispheric neural activation in the superior temporal (STC), inferior frontal (IFC), superior frontal (SFC) and orbitofrontal (OFC) cortices within a time window of 100-200 ms after the occurrence of a deviant tone. IFC and SFC activation was also observed in the left hemisphere. The pronounced early right inferior frontal activation of the auditory mismatch negativity has not been shown in MEG studies so far. The activation in STC and IFC is consistent with earlier electroencephalography (EEG), optical imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that reveal the auditory and inferior frontal cortices as main generators of the auditory MMN. The observed right hemispheric IFC is also in line with some previous music studies showing similar activation patterns after harmonic syntactic violations. The results demonstrate that a deviant tone within a musical sequence recruits immediately a distributed neural network in frontal and prefrontal areas suggesting that top-down processes are involved when expectation violation occurs within well-known stimuli.	\N	\N
23586418	The neural dys-synchrony associated with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) causes a temporal impairment that could degrade spatial hearing, particularly sound localization accuracy (SLA) and spatial release from masking (SRM). Unilateral cochlear implantation has become an accepted treatment for ANSD but treatment options for the contralateral ear remain controversial. We report spatial hearing measures in a child with ANSD before and after receiving a second cochlear implant (CI). An 11-year-7-month old boy with ANSD and expressive and receptive language delay received a second CI eight years after his first implant. The SLA and SRM were measured four months before sequential bilateral CIs (with the contralateral ear plugged and unplugged), and after nine months using both CIs. Testing done before the second CI, with the first CI alone, suggested that residual hearing in the contralateral ear contributed to sound localization accuracy, but not word recognition in quiet or noise. Nine-months after receiving a second CI, SLA improved by 12.76° and SRM increased to 3.8-4.2 dB relative to pre-operative performance. Results were compared to published outcomes for children with bilateral CIs. The addition of a second CI in this child with ANSD improved spatial hearing.	\N	\N
23587808	Whether visual subliminal processing involves semantic processing is still being debated. To examine this, we combined a passive electroencephalogram (EEG) study with an application of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). In the masked-face priming paradigm, we presented a subliminal prime preceding the target stimulus. Participants were asked to determine whether the target face was a famous face, indicated by a button press. The prime and target pair were either the same person's face (congruent) or different person's faces (incongruent), and were always both famous or both non-famous faces. Experiments were performed over 2 days: 1 day for a real tDCS session and another for a sham session as a control condition. In the sham session, a priming effect, reflected in the difference in amplitude of the late positive component (250-500 ms to target onset), was observed only in the famous prime condition. According to a previous study, this effect might indicate a subliminal semantic process [10]. Alternatively, a priming effect toward famous primes disappeared after tDCS stimulation. Our results suggested that a subliminal process might not be limited to processes in the occipital and temporal areas, but may proceed to the semantic level processed in prefrontal cortex.	\N	\N
23616587	Congenital amusia is a lifelong disorder of music perception and production. The present study investigated the cerebral bases of impaired pitch perception and memory in congenital amusia using behavioural measures, magnetoencephalography and voxel-based morphometry. Congenital amusics and matched control subjects performed two melodic tasks (a melodic contour task and an easier transposition task); they had to indicate whether sequences of six tones (presented in pairs) were the same or different. Behavioural data indicated that in comparison with control participants, amusics' short-term memory was impaired for the melodic contour task, but not for the transposition task. The major finding was that pitch processing and short-term memory deficits can be traced down to amusics' early brain responses during encoding of the melodic information. Temporal and frontal generators of the N100m evoked by each note of the melody were abnormally recruited in the amusic brain. Dynamic causal modelling of the N100m further revealed decreased intrinsic connectivity in both auditory cortices, increased lateral connectivity between auditory cortices as well as a decreased right fronto-temporal backward connectivity in amusics relative to control subjects. Abnormal functioning of this fronto-temporal network was also shown during the retention interval and the retrieval of melodic information. In particular, induced gamma oscillations in right frontal areas were decreased in amusics during the retention interval. Using voxel-based morphometry, we confirmed morphological brain anomalies in terms of white and grey matter concentration in the right inferior frontal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus in the amusic brain. The convergence between functional and structural brain differences strengthens the hypothesis of abnormalities in the fronto-temporal pathway of the amusic brain. Our data provide first evidence of altered functioning of the auditory cortices during pitch perception and memory in congenital amusia. They further support the hypothesis that in neurodevelopmental disorders impacting high-level functions (here musical abilities), abnormalities in cerebral processing can be observed in early brain responses.	\N	\N
23621479	In some cochlear implant users, success is not achieved in spite of optimal clinical factors (including age at implantation, duration of rehabilitation and post-implant hearing level), which may be attributed to disorders at higher levels of the auditory pathway. We used cortical auditory evoked potentials to investigate the ability to perceive and discriminate auditory stimuli in 10 unsuccessful implant users aged 8-10 years (CI) and 10 healthy age-matched controls with normal hearing (NH). Pure tones (1 and 2 kHz) and double consonant-vowel syllables were applied. The stimuli were presented in an oddball paradigm that required the subjects to react consciously. The latencies and amplitudes of the P1, N1, P2, N2 and P3 waves were analyzed, in addition to reaction times and number of responses. Significant differences in the average response times and number of responses were observed between the CI and NH groups. The latencies also indicate that the CI group took longer to perceive and discriminate between tonal and speech auditory stimuli than the NH group.	\N	\N
23625644	In this study we provide evidence that unconscious priming can be obtained as a result of the processing of the salient region (SR) of illusory figures and without that of illusory contours (ICs). We used a metacontrast masking paradigm where illusory figures were masked by real figures. In Experiment 1 we found a clear priming effect when participants were asked to discriminate between square and diamond masks preceded by congruent or incongruent illusory square or diamond primes. It is likely that metacontrast impairs the processing of ICs but not of the SR; therefore the above result strongly suggests that the priming effect was specifically related to the processing of the SR. In Experiment 2 participants were tested in the same task as in Experiment 1 with additional primes in which the inducers were presented in the same locations but their shapes were changed so as to modify the global configuration. We termed these primes High, Low, and No Salient Region (HSR, LSR, and NSR, respectively). The HSR condition replicated Experiment 1, whereas in the LSR and NSR conditions the priming effect got progressively smaller. The results of Experiment 1 were replicated with the priming effect significantly larger in the HSR than in all other conditions. It was also larger in the HSR than in LSR condition and smallest but still present in the NSR condition. Taken together, these results indicate that the unconscious processing of only the SR yields a priming effect and that a reduction of the saliency of the SR leads to a reduction of the priming effect, while its elimination does not abolish it.	\N	\N
23627625	Fully auditory Brain-computer interfaces based on the dichotic listening task (DL-BCIs) are suited for users unable to do any muscular movement, which includes gazing, exploration or coordination of their eyes looking for inputs in form of feedback, stimulation or visual support. However, one of their disadvantages, in contrast with the visual BCIs, is their lower performance that makes them not adequate in applications that require a high accuracy. To overcome this disadvantage, we employed a Bayesian approach in which the DL-BCI was modeled as a Binary phase shift keying receiver for which the accuracy can be estimated a priori as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio. The results showed the measured accuracy to match the predefined target accuracy, thus validating this model that made possible to estimate in advance the classification accuracy on a trial-by-trial basis. This constitutes a novel methodology in the design of fully auditory DL-BCIs that let us first, define the target accuracy for a specific application and second, classify when the signal-to-noise ratio guarantees that target accuracy.	\N	\N
23633439	This study combines functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to test the "asymmetric sampling in time" (AST) hypothesis, which makes assertions about the symmetrical and asymmetrical representation of speech in the primary and nonprimary auditory cortex. Twenty-three volunteers participated in this parametric clustered-sparse fMRI study. The availability of slowly changing acoustic cues in spoken sentences was systematically reduced over continuous segments with varying lengths (100, 150, 200, 250 ms) by utilizing local time-reversion. As predicted by the hypothesis, functional lateralization in Heschl's gyrus could not be observed. Lateralization in the planum temporale and posterior superior temporal gyrus shifted towards the right hemisphere with decreasing suprasegmental temporal integrity. Cortical thickness of the planum temporale was automatically measured. Participants with an L > R cortical thickness performed better on the in-scanner auditory pattern-matching task. Taken together, these findings support the AST hypothesis and provide substantial novel insight into the division of labor between left and right nonprimary auditory cortex functions during comprehension of spoken utterances. In addition, the present data yield support for a structural-behavioral relationship in the nonprimary auditory cortex.	\N	\N
23633643	The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of oral reading expressiveness on the comprehension of storybooks by 4- and 5-year-old prekindergarten children. The possible impact of prosody on listening comprehension was explored. Ninety-two prekindergarten children (M age = 57.26 months, SD = 3.89 months) listened to an expressive or inexpressive recording of 1 of 2 similar stories. Story comprehension was tested using assessments of both free recall and cued recall. Children showed statistically significantly better cued recall for the expressive readings of stories compared to the inexpressive readings of stories. This effect generalized across stories and when story length was controlled across both expressive and inexpressive versions. The effect of expressiveness on children's free recall was not significant. Highly expressive readings resulted in better comprehension of storybooks by prekindergarten children. Further, because recordings were used, this effect might be attributed to the facilitation of language processing rather than to enhanced social interaction between the reader and the child.	\N	\N
23645715	Even though language allows us to say exactly what we mean, we often use language to say things indirectly, in a way that depends on the specific communicative context. For example, we can use an apparently straightforward sentence like "It is hard to give a good presentation" to convey deeper meanings, like "Your talk was a mess!" One of the big puzzles in language science is how listeners work out what speakers really mean, which is a skill absolutely central to communication. However, most neuroimaging studies of language comprehension have focused on the arguably much simpler, context-independent process of understanding direct utterances. To examine the neural systems involved in getting at contextually constrained indirect meaning, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging as people listened to indirect replies in spoken dialog. Relative to direct control utterances, indirect replies engaged dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, right temporo-parietal junction and insula, as well as bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right medial temporal gyrus. This suggests that listeners take the speaker's perspective on both cognitive (theory of mind) and affective (empathy-like) levels. In line with classic pragmatic theories, our results also indicate that currently popular "simulationist" accounts of language comprehension fail to explain how listeners understand the speaker's intended message.	\N	\N
23648960	Speech perception requires the effortless mapping from smooth, seemingly continuous changes in sound features into discrete perceptual units, a conversion exemplified in the phenomenon of categorical perception. Explaining how/when the human brain performs this acoustic-phonetic transformation remains an elusive problem in current models and theories of speech perception. In previous attempts to decipher the neural basis of speech perception, it is often unclear whether the alleged brain correlates reflect an underlying percept or merely changes in neural activity that covary with parameters of the stimulus. Here, we recorded neuroelectric activity generated at both cortical and subcortical levels of the auditory pathway elicited by a speech vowel continuum whose percept varied categorically from /u/ to /a/. This integrative approach allows us to characterize how various auditory structures code, transform, and ultimately render the perception of speech material as well as dissociate brain responses reflecting changes in stimulus acoustics from those that index true internalized percepts. We find that activity from the brainstem mirrors properties of the speech waveform with remarkable fidelity, reflecting progressive changes in speech acoustics but not the discrete phonetic classes reported behaviorally. In comparison, patterns of late cortical evoked activity contain information reflecting distinct perceptual categories and predict the abstract phonetic speech boundaries heard by listeners. Our findings demonstrate a critical transformation in neural speech representations between brainstem and early auditory cortex analogous to an acoustic-phonetic mapping necessary to generate categorical speech percepts. Analytic modeling demonstrates that a simple nonlinearity accounts for the transformation between early (subcortical) brain activity and subsequent cortical/behavioral responses to speech (>150-200 ms) thereby describing a plausible mechanism by which the brain achieves its acoustic-to-phonetic mapping. Results provide evidence that the neurophysiological underpinnings of categorical speech are present cortically by ~175 ms after sound enters the ear.	\N	\N
23651462	To develop and evaluate a 12-item version of the Speech, Spatial and Qualities of Hearing scale for use in clinical research and rehabilitation settings, and provide a formula for converting scores between the full (SSQ49) and abbreviated (SSQ12) versions. Items were selected independently at the three centres (Eriksholm Research Centre, MRC Institute of Hearing Research, University of New England) to be representative of the complete scale. A consensus was achieved after discussion. The data set (n = 1220) used for a factor analysis (Akeroyd et al, submitted) was re-analysed to compare original SSQ scores (SSQ49) with scores on the short version (SSQ12). A scatter-plot of SSQ12 scores against SSQ49 scores showed that SSQ12 score was about 0.6 of a scale point lower than the SSQ49 (0-10 scale) in the re-analysis of the Akeroyd et al data. SSQ12 scores lay on a slightly steeper slope than scores on the SSQ49. The SSQ12 provides similar results to SSQ49 in a large clinical research sample. The slightly lower average SSQ12 score and the slightly steeper slope reflect the composition of this short form relative to the SSQ49.	\N	\N
23652327	To compare speech understanding of the BAHA BP110 and BAHA Intenso sound processors. Prospective experimental study. Tertiary referral center. Twenty experienced user of osseointegrated auditory implants with conductive or mixed hearing loss. In a first session, half of the participants were fitted with an Intenso, the other half with a BP110. After 1 month of use, aided speech understanding in quiet and in noise was measured, and the other test processor was fitted. One month later, speech understanding with the second sound processor was assessed. Speech understanding in quiet and in noise, with noise arriving either from the front, the rear, or the side of the user with the osseointegrated bone conductor. Significant improvements were found for both processors for speech understanding in quiet (+9.6 to +34.8 percent points; p = 0.02 to 0.001) and in noise (+6.2 to +13.8 dB, p < 0.001). No significant differences were found between the 2 devices for speech in quiet. For noise from the rear, subjects were able to understand speech at signal-to-noise ratios which were lower (less favorable) by -5.1 dB (p < 0.001) when compared with the Intenso. Speech understanding is substantially improved by both devices, with no significant differences between the sound processors in quiet. In noise, speech understanding is significantly better with the BP110 when compared to the Intenso for noise from the rear.	\N	\N
23654396	Chen et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 131, 2987-2998 (2012)] evaluated the effectiveness of an algorithm for enhancing spectral changes over time in improving the intelligibility of speech in background sounds for hearing-impaired subjects. The processing improved intelligibility for speech in steady speech-spectrum noise (SSN) but tended to impair intelligibility in a background of two-talker speech (TTS). Large individual differences were found. The present study assessed whether the effectiveness of the algorithm was improved when the parameters that controlled the degree and type of enhancement were chosen individually for each subject, using a genetic algorithm based on subjective preferences for speech clarity. The parameter values selected by the genetic algorithm varied markedly across subjects. Speech intelligibility was measured for unprocessed stimuli and stimuli processed using the selected parameters, with SSN and TTS maskers and two signal-to-masker ratios (SMRs) for each subject. The intelligibility of speech in the SSN masker at the lower SMR was improved about 14 percentage points by the processing. The overall improvement produced by the processing was significantly larger than the improvement observed in the previous study when the parameter values were fixed across subjects, indicating that use of the genetic algorithm was beneficial.	\N	\N
23659894	Attentional problems are commonly reported as a feature of the behavioural profile in both Williams syndrome (WS) and Down's syndrome (DS). Recent studies have begun to investigate these impairments empirically, acknowledging the need for an approach that considers cross-syndrome comparisons and developmental changes across the different component functions of attention. The present study assessed children with WS and DS using a new preschool attention battery (ECAB: early childhood attention battery), designed to be suitable for mental age 3-6 years including groups with developmental disorders. The ECAB has the advantage of giving an individual profile of attentional abilities for each child, covering different components of attention. In relation to test norms for their mental age, both groups showed a profile of strengths and weaknesses in the attention domain. Both syndrome groups performed relatively well on tests of sustained attention and poorly on aspects of selective attention and attentional control (executive function). The DS group showed a specific strength in auditory sustained attention, whilst the WS group showed a particular deficit in visuo-spatial response control. There was also evidence for considerable differences in the developmental trajectory of these abilities across the two groups. The results provide evidence for syndrome-specific patterns of impairment, and distinct profiles of strengths and weaknesses that may be useful in understanding the nature of everyday attention difficulties in these groups and tailoring interventions to meet these needs.	\N	\N
23664833	Here, we applied a multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm in order to systematically investigate the neuronal representation of vowels and temporally manipulated CV syllables in a homogeneous sample of string players and non-musicians. Based on previous work indicating an increased sensitivity of the musicians' auditory system, we expected to find that musically trained subjects will elicit increased MMN amplitudes in response to temporal variations in CV syllables, namely voice-onset time (VOT) and duration. In addition, since different vowels are principally distinguished by means of frequency information and musicians are superior in extracting tonal (and thus frequency) information from an acoustic stream, we also expected to provide evidence for an increased auditory representation of vowels in the experts. In line with our hypothesis, we could show that musicians are not only advantaged in the pre-attentive encoding of temporal speech cues, but most notably also in processing vowels. Additional "just noticeable difference" measurements suggested that the musicians' perceptual advantage in encoding speech sounds was more likely driven by the generic constitutional properties of a highly trained auditory system, rather than by its specialisation for speech representations per se. These results shed light on the origin of the often reported advantage of musicians in processing a variety of speech sounds.	\N	\N
23683806	The present study aimed to investigate the vocal tract and glottal function during and after phonation into a tube and a stirring straw. A male classically trained singer was assessed. Computerized tomography (CT) was performed when the subject produced [a:] at comfortable speaking pitch, phonated into the resonance tube and when repeating [a:] after the exercise. Similar procedure was performed with a narrow straw after 15 minutes silence. Anatomic distances and area measures were obtained from CT midsagittal and transversal images. Acoustic, perceptual, electroglottographic (EGG), and subglottic pressure measures were also obtained. During and after phonation into the tube or straw, the velum closed the nasal passage better, the larynx position lowered, and hypopharynx area widened. Moreover, the ratio between the inlet of the lower pharynx and the outlet of the epilaryngeal tube became larger during and after tube/straw phonation. Acoustic results revealed a stronger spectral prominence in the singer/speaker's formant cluster region after exercising. Listening test demonstrated better voice quality after straw/tube than before. Contact quotient derived from EGG decreased during both tube and straw and remained lower after exercising. Subglottic pressure increased during straw and remained somewhat higher after it. CT and acoustic results indicated that vocal exercises with increased vocal tract impedance lead to increased vocal efficiency and economy. One of the major changes was the more prominent singer's/speaker's formant cluster. Vocal tract and glottal modifications were more prominent during and after straw exercising compared with tube phonation.	\N	\N
23684420	Bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users encounter difficulties in localizing sound sources in everyday environments, especially in the presence of background noise and reverberation. They tend to show large directional errors and front-back confusions compared to normal hearing (NH) subjects in the same conditions. In this study, the ability of bilateral CI users to use head movements to improve sound source localization was evaluated. Speech sentences of 0.5, 2, and 4.5 seconds were presented in noise to the listeners in conditions with and without head movements. The results show that for middle and long signal durations, the CI users could significantly reduce the number of front-back confusions. The angular accuracy, however, did not improve. Analysis of head trajectories showed that the CI users had great difficulties in moving their head towards the position of the source, whereas the NH listeners targeted the source loudspeaker correctly.	\N	\N
23686398	Morphology of the human brain predicts the speed at which individuals learn to distinguish novel foreign speech sounds after laboratory training. However, little is known about the neuroanatomical basis of individual differences in speech perception when a second language (L2) has been learned in natural environments for extended periods of time. In the present study, two samples of highly proficient bilinguals were selected according to their ability to distinguish between very similar L2 sounds, either isolated (prelexical) or within words (lexical). Structural MRI was acquired and processed to estimate vertex-wise indices of cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (CSA), and the association between cortical morphology and behavioral performance was inspected. Results revealed that performance in the lexical task was negatively associated with the thickness of the left temporal cortex and angular gyrus, as well as with the surface area of the left precuneus. Our findings, consistently with previous fMRI studies, demonstrate that morphology of the reported areas is relevant for word recognition based on phonological information. Further, we discuss the possibility that increased CT and CSA in sound-to-meaning mapping regions, found for poor non-native speech sounds perceivers, would have plastically arisen after extended periods of increased functional activity during L2 exposure.	\N	\N
23688330	A sequence of constant-frequency tones can promote streaming in a subsequent sequence of alternating-frequency tones, but why this effect occurs is not fully understood and its time course has not been investigated. Experiment 1 used a 2.0-s-long constant-frequency inducer (10 repetitions of a low-frequency pure tone) to promote segregation in a subsequent, 1.2-s test sequence of alternating low- and high-frequency tones. Replacing the final inducer tone with silence substantially reduced reported test-sequence segregation. This reduction did not occur when either the 4th or 7th inducer was replaced with silence. This suggests that a change at the induction/test-sequence boundary actively resets build-up, rather than less segregation occurring simply because fewer inducer tones were presented. Furthermore, Experiment 2 found that a constant-frequency inducer produced its maximum segregation-promoting effect after only three tones--this contrasts with the more gradual build-up typically observed for alternating-frequency sequences. Experiment 3 required listeners to judge continuously the grouping of 20-s test sequences. Constant-frequency inducers were considerably more effective at promoting segregation than alternating ones; this difference persisted for ∼10 s. In addition, resetting arising from a single deviant (longer tone) was associated only with constant-frequency inducers. Overall, the results suggest that constant-frequency inducers promote segregation by capturing one subset of test-sequence tones into an ongoing, preestablished stream, and that a deviant tone may reduce segregation by disrupting this capture. These findings offer new insight into the dynamics of stream segregation, and have implications for the neural basis of streaming and the role of attention in stream formation.	\N	\N
23689300	Evaluation of speech perception in noisy environments for normally hearing children was conducted in order to provide normal data for speech perception testing in children with hearing impairments thus improving early intervention alternatives for Mandarin-speaking children with hearing impairments. The speech perception abilities of 174 developmentally normal children ranging aged 2-5 years, in four age groups, were evaluated in environments that were quiet or with high levels of competing noise using the Mandarin pediatric speech intelligibility (MPSI) test. The mean score of MPSI between the four age groups showed notable statistical differences, including a variation in mean score between the four age groups, clearly indicating that the speech perception abilities of young children in noisy environments improved greatly with age, most notably between the ages of 3 and 4 years old. Speech perception ability in noisy environments was shown to be significantly, but weakly, related to age, implying the presence of other, possibly environment factors, in speech perception development. Furthermore, no statistically significant difference between boys and girls was noted in the experimental MPSI scores. The ability of children to increasingly perceive speech in environments containing high competing noise levels was shown to gradually and progressively increase with age. These results indicated that the developing Mandarin speech perception abilities in noisy environments in normal hearing children develops substantially after the age of 3-4 years, suggesting that similar age ranges may be even more critical intervention points for children with hearing impairments. More studies are still needed to confirm that.	\N	\N
23696279	The constituent elements and dynamics of the networks responsible for word production are a central issue to understanding human language. Of particular interest is their dependency on lexical category, particularly the possible segregation of nouns and verbs into separate processing streams. We applied a novel mixed-effects, multilevel analysis to electrocorticographic data collected from 19 patients (1942 electrodes) to examine the activity of broadly disseminated cortical networks during the retrieval of distinct lexical categories. This approach was designed to overcome the issues of sparse sampling and individual variability inherent to invasive electrophysiology. Both noun and verb generation evoked overlapping, yet distinct nonhierarchical processes favoring ventral and dorsal visual streams, respectively. Notable differences in activity patterns were noted in Broca's area and superior lateral temporo-occipital regions (verb > noun) and in parahippocampal and fusiform cortices (noun > verb). Comparisons with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results yielded a strong correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signal and gamma power and an independent estimate of group size needed for fMRI studies of cognition. Our findings imply parallel, lexical category-specific processes and reconcile discrepancies between lesional and functional imaging studies.	\N	\N
23700131	Recent research has reported that spatial modulation effects of audiotactile interactions tend to be limited to the space and body parts around the head. The present study investigated the generality of this finding by manipulating body parts stimulated and spatial relationships between the body parts and sounds. In Experiment 1, tactile stimuli were presented randomly to either left or right cheek, hand (palm or back) placed near the head, and knee while auditory stimuli were presented to either the same or opposite side from loudspeakers close to the head. Participants made speeded spatial discrimination responses regarding the side (left versus right) of the tactile stimulation. For any body part stimulated, the performance was worse when the auditory stimuli were presented from the opposite side rather than from the same side. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the spatial modulation effects for the palm or the back of the hand occurred irrespective of hand position (near or far from the head) and sound position (near or far from the head). The sounds delivered from near the head exerted a greater influence on tactile spatial discrimination performance as compared with the sound delivered from far from the head. Furthermore, the back of the hand was more influenced by the auditory stimuli than the palm when the hands were placed near the sounds. These results suggest that the spatial modulation effects of audiotactile interactions can occur beyond the space and body surface around the head.	\N	\N
23703134	To compare hearing performance relating to the peripheral and central auditory system between solvent-exposed and non-exposed workers. Forty-eight workers exposed to a mixture of solvents and 48 non-exposed control subjects of matched age, gender and educational level were selected to participate in the study. The evaluation procedures included: pure-tone audiometry (500 - 8,000 Hz), to investigate the peripheral auditory system; the Random Gap Detection test, to assess the central auditory system; and the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap, to investigate subjects' self-reported hearing performance in daily-life activities. A Student t test and analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were computed to determine possible significant differences between solvent-exposed and non-exposed subjects for the hearing level, Random Gap Detection test and Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap. Pearson correlations among the three measures were also calculated. Solvent-exposed subjects exhibited significantly poorer hearing thresholds for the right ear than non-exposed subjects. Also, solvent-exposed subjects exhibited poorer results for the Random Gap Detection test and self-reported poorer listening performance than non-exposed subjects. Results of the Amsterdam Inventory for Auditory Disability and Handicap were significantly correlated with the binaural average of subject pure-tone thresholds and Random Gap Detection test performance. Solvent exposure is associated with poorer hearing performance in daily life activities that relate to the function of the peripheral and central auditory system.	\N	\N
23705636	This article explores enhancing sincerity, honesty, or truthfulness in computer-generated synthetic speech by accompanying it with music. Sincerity is important if we are to respond positively to any voice, whether human or artificial. What is sincerity in the artificial disembodied voice? Studies in musical expression and performance may illuminate aspects of the 'musically spoken' or sung voice in rendering deeper levels of expression that may include sincerity. We consider one response to this notion in an especially composed melodrama (music accompanying a (synthetic) spoken voice) designed to convey sincerity.	\N	\N
23709064	Spatial ventriloquism refers to the phenomenon that a visual stimulus such as a flash can attract the perceived location of a spatially discordant but temporally synchronous sound. An analogous example of mutual attraction between audition and vision has been found in the temporal domain, where temporal aspects of a visual event, such as its onset, frequency, or duration, can be biased by a slightly asynchronous sound. In this review, we examine various manifestations of spatial and temporal attraction between the senses (both direct effects and aftereffects), and we discuss important constraints on the occurrence of these effects. Factors that potentially modulate ventriloquism-such as attention, synesthetic correspondence, and other cognitive factors-are described. We trace theories and models of spatial and temporal ventriloquism, from the traditional unity assumption and modality appropriateness hypothesis to more recent Bayesian and neural network approaches. Finally, we summarize recent evidence probing the underlying neural mechanisms of spatial and temporal ventriloquism.	\N	\N
23711533	Auditory cortices can be separated into dissociable processing pathways similar to those observed in the visual domain. Emotional stimuli elicit enhanced neural activation within sensory cortices when compared to neutral stimuli. This effect is particularly notable in the ventral visual stream. Little is known, however, about how emotion interacts with dorsal processing streams, and essentially nothing is known about the impact of emotion on auditory stimulus localization. In the current study, we used fMRI in concert with individualized auditory virtual environments to investigate the effect of emotion during an auditory stimulus localization task. Surprisingly, participants were significantly slower to localize emotional relative to neutral sounds. A separate localizer scan was performed to isolate neural regions sensitive to stimulus location independent of emotion. When applied to the main experimental task, a significant main effect of location, but not emotion, was found in this ROI. A whole-brain analysis of the data revealed that posterior-medial regions of auditory cortex were modulated by sound location; however, additional anterior-lateral areas of auditory cortex demonstrated enhanced neural activity to emotional compared to neutral stimuli. The latter region resembled areas described in dual pathway models of auditory processing as the 'what' processing stream, prompting a follow-up task to generate an identity-sensitive ROI (the 'what' pathway) independent of location and emotion. Within this region, significant main effects of location and emotion were identified, as well as a significant interaction. These results suggest that emotion modulates activity in the 'what,' but not the 'where,' auditory processing pathway.	\N	\N
23716219	The purpose of this study is to investigate the sufficient "similarity" between consecutive auditory events for the auditory system to define the fundamental period for pitch perception. It is possible to contaminate the periodicity of harmonic complex tones by scaling the impulse response in the time domain at every other cycle. Scale-alternating wavelet sequences (SAWS) in which two impulse responses with different scaling factors alternated were generated based on impulse responses obtained from Japanese vowels spoken by a male speaker. Preliminary listening to such signals indicated that the perceived pitch went down an octave relative to the original when the scaling factor exceeded a certain degree. In the first experiment, pitch matching was measured as a function of the scaling factor by the method of adjustment where the comparison stimuli were completely periodic with adjustable base periods. The pitch shift was discontinuous against the base period, chromatic continuum. In the second experiment, pitch matching was investigated with comparison stimuli whose odd harmonics were attenuated. This procedure provides a stimulus continuum where the pitch moved up an octave without changing its pitch chroma. The attenuation of the odd harmonics needed to match the SAWS varied systematically as a function of the degree of scaling. The relation between pitch matching and the peak height along the time interval axis of the stabilized auditory image is discussed.	\N	\N
23716244	This study investigated monaural envelope correlation perception (Richards 1987) for noise bandwidths ranging from 25 to 1,600 Hz. The high-frequency side of the low band was fixed at 3,000 Hz and the low-frequency side of the high band was fixed at 3,500 Hz. When comodulated, the magnitude spectra of the pair of noise bands were either identical or reflected around the midpoint. Six listeners with normal hearing participated. Listeners showed similar performance for identical and reflected-spectrum conditions, with best performance usually occurring for bandwidths between 200 and 800 Hz. Results were considered in terms of envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of multiple peripheral filters or envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of central filters set to the bandwidths of the noise stimuli. Some aspects of the results were incompatible with the account based on multiple peripheral filters. However, the results of a supplementary condition involving the gating of band subregions indicated that this incompatibility could be accounted for by nonoptimal weighting of peripheral filter outputs.	\N	\N
23716245	Envelope fluctuations of complex sounds carry information that is -essential for many types of discrimination and for detection in noise. To study the neural representation of envelope information and mechanisms for processing of this temporal aspect of sounds, it is useful to identify an animal model that can -sensitively detect amplitude modulations (AM). Low modulation frequencies, which dominate speech sounds, are of particular interest. Yet, most animal -models studied previously are relatively insensitive to AM at low modulation -frequencies. Rabbits have high thresholds for low-frequency modulations, -especially for tone carriers. Rhesus macaques are less sensitive than humans to low-frequency -modulations of wideband noise (O'Conner et al. Hear Res 277, 37-43, 2011). Rats and -chinchilla also have higher thresholds than humans for amplitude -modulations of noise (Kelly et al. J Comp Psychol 120, 98-105, 2006; Henderson et al. J Acoust Soc Am 75, -1177-1183, 1984). In contrast, the budgerigar has thresholds for AM detection of wideband noise similar to those of human listeners at low -modulation frequencies (Dooling and Searcy. Percept Psychophys 46, 65-71, 1981). A -one-interval, two-alternative operant conditioning procedure was used to estimate AM -detection thresholds for 4-kHz tone carriers at low modulation -frequencies (4-256 Hz). Budgerigar thresholds are comparable to those of human subjects in a comparable task. Implications of these comparative results for temporal coding of complex sounds are discussed. Comparative results for masked AM detection are also presented.	\N	\N
23716246	Compared to humans, Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus) are much more sensitive at detecting mistuning of frequency components of a harmonic complex (Klinge and Klump. J Acoust Soc Am 128:280-290, 2010). One processing mechanism suggested to result in the high sensitivity involves evaluating the phase shift that gradually develops between the mistuned and the remaining components in the same or separate auditory filters. To investigate if this processing mechanism may explain the observed sensitivity, we determined the gerbils' thresholds to detect a constant phase shift in a component of a harmonic complex that is introduced without a frequency shift. The gerbils' detection thresholds for constant phase shifts were considerably lower for a high-frequency component (6,400 Hz) than for a low-frequency component (400 Hz) of a 200-Hz harmonic complex and increased with decreasing stimulus duration. Compared to the phase shifts calculated from the mistuning detection thresholds, the detection thresholds for constant phase shifts were similar to those for gradual phase shifts for the low-frequency harmonic but considerably lower for the high-frequency harmonic. A simulation of the processing of harmonic complexes by the gerbil's peripheral auditory filters when components are phase shifted shows waveform changes comparable to those assessed for mistuning detection Klinge and Klump (J Acoust Soc Am 128:280-290, 2010) and provides evidence that detection of the gradual phase shifts may underlie mistuning detection.	\N	\N
23716247	Detecting rare and surprising events is a useful strategy for sensory -systems. In the human auditory system, deviance detection is indexed by an important component of the auditory event-related potentials, the mismatch negativity (MMN). Responses of single neurons in the inferior colliculus, medial geniculate body, and auditory cortex of mammals (cats, rats, and mice) show responses that share some properties with MMN: they are evoked by rare events, are preattentive (in as much as they occur in anesthetized animals), and, at least at the level of primary auditory cortex, cannot be accounted for by simple fatigue of the incoming sensory information. Here we extend these results to deviations beyond tone frequency. Recording in rat primary auditory cortex and using oddball sequences consisting of two frozen tokens of broadband noise samples, we found differences between the responses to the same token when used as the common and when used as the deviant, showing an exquisite sensitivity to the small differences between two spectro-temporally similar sounds. Similarly, differential adaptation can be demonstrated when using two word-like stimuli that have been derived from human speech but adapted to the rat auditory system. Thus, differential adaptation to common and rare sounds is present also with sounds whose complexity mirrors that of natural environments.	\N	\N
23716255	Many previous studies have shown that a tone that is momentarily -interrupted can be perceived as continuous if the interruption is completely masked by noise. It has been suggested this "continuity illusion" occurs only when peripheral neural responses contain no evidence that the signal was interrupted. In this study, we used a combination of psychophysical measures and computational simulations of peripheral auditory responses to examine whether the continuity illusion can be experienced under conditions where peripheral neural responses contain evidence that the signal did not continue through the masker. Our results provide an example of a salient continuity illusion despite evidence of an interruption in the peripheral representation, indicating that the illusion may depend more on global features of the interrupting sound, such as its long-term specific loudness, than on its fine-grained temporal structure.	\N	\N
23717403	The present study of KCNQ4 mutations was carried out to 1) determine the prevalence by unbiased population-based genetic screening, 2) clarify the mutation spectrum and genotype/phenotype correlations, and 3) summarize clinical characteristics. In addition, a review of the reported mutations was performed for better understanding of this deafness gene. The screening using 287 probands from unbiased Japanese autosomal dominant nonsyndromic hearing loss (ADNSHL) families identified 19 families with 7 different disease causing mutations, indicating that the frequency is 6.62% (19/287). While the majority were private mutations, one particular recurrent mutation, c.211delC, was observed in 13 unrelated families. Haplotype analysis in the vicinity of c.211delC suggests existence of a common ancestor. The majority of the patients showed all frequency, but high-frequency predominant, sensorineural hearing loss. The present study adds a new typical audiogram configuration characterized by mid-frequency predominant hearing loss caused by the p.V230E mutation. A variant at the N-terminal site (c. 211delC) showed typical ski-slope type audiogram configuration. Concerning clinical features, onset age was from 3 to 40 years old, and mostly in the teens, and hearing loss was gradually progressive. Progressive nature is a common feature of patients with KCNQ4 mutations regardless of the mutation type. In conclusion, KCNQ4 mutations are frequent among ADNSHL patients, and therefore screening of the gene and molecular confirmation of these mutations have become important in the diagnosis of these conditions.	\N	\N
23727883	Visual motion aftereffects can occur contingent on arbitrary sounds. Two circles, placed side by side, were alternately presented, and the onsets were accompanied by tone bursts of high and low frequencies, respectively. After a few minutes of exposure to the visual apparent motion with the tones, a circle blinking at a fixed location was perceived as a lateral motion in the same direction as the previously exposed apparent motion (Teramoto et al. in PLoS One 5:e12255, 2010). In the present study, we attempted to reverse this contingency (pitch aftereffects contingent on visual information). Results showed that after prolonged exposure to the audio-visual stimuli, the apparent visual motion systematically affected the perceived pitch of the auditory stimuli. When the leftward apparent visual motion was paired with the high-low-frequency sequence during the adaptation phase, a test tone sequence was more frequently perceived as a high-low-pitch sequence when the leftward apparent visual motion was presented and vice versa. Furthermore, the effect was specific for the exposed visual field and did not transfer to the other side, thus ruling out an explanation in terms of simple response bias. These results suggest that new audiovisual associations can be established within a short time, and visual information processing and auditory processing can mutually influence each other.	\N	\N
23740184	Age-related hearing loss (presbyacusis) has a complex etiology. Results from animal models detailing the effects of specific cochlear injuries on audiometric profiles may be used to understand the mechanisms underlying hearing loss in older humans and predict cochlear pathologies associated with certain audiometric configurations ("audiometric phenotypes"). Patterns of hearing loss associated with cochlear pathology in animal models were used to define schematic boundaries of human audiograms. Pathologies included evidence for metabolic, sensory, and a mixed metabolic + sensory phenotype; an older normal phenotype without threshold elevation was also defined. Audiograms from a large sample of older adults were then searched by a human expert for "exemplars" (best examples) of these phenotypes, without knowledge of the human subject demographic information. Mean thresholds and slopes of higher frequency thresholds of the audiograms assigned to the four phenotypes were consistent with the predefined schematic boundaries and differed significantly from each other. Significant differences in age, gender, and noise exposure history provided external validity for the four phenotypes. Three supervised machine learning classifiers were then used to assess reliability of the exemplar training set to estimate the probability that newly obtained audiograms exhibited one of the four phenotypes. These procedures classified the exemplars with a high degree of accuracy; classifications of the remaining cases were consistent with the exemplars with respect to average thresholds and demographic information. These results suggest that animal models of age-related hearing loss can be used to predict human cochlear pathology by classifying audiograms into phenotypic classifications that reflect probable etiologies for hearing loss in older humans.	\N	\N
23741046	Many manual tasks involve object manipulation and are achieved by an evolving series of actions, or action phases, recruited to achieve task subgoals. The ability to effectively link action phases is an important component of manual dexterity. However, our understanding of how the effective linking of sequential action phases develops with skill learning is limited. Here, we addressed this issue using a task in which participants applied forces to a handle to move a cursor on a computer screen to successively acquire visual targets. Target acquisition required actively holding the cursor within the target zone (hold phase) for a required duration before moving to the next target (transport phase). If the transport phase was initiated prematurely, before the end of the required hold duration, participants had to return to the target to acquire it. The goal was to acquire targets as quickly as possible. Distinct visual and auditory sensory events marked goal completion of each action phase. During initial task performance, the transport phase was reactively triggered by sensory events signaling hold phase completion. However, with practice, participants learned to initiate the transport phase based on a prediction of the time of hold phase completion. Simulations revealed that participants learned to near-optimally compensate for temporal uncertainty, presumably related to estimation of time intervals and execution of motor commands, so as to reduce the average latency between the end of the required hold phase duration and the start of the transport phase, while avoiding an excess of premature exits.	\N	\N
23742366	Estimates of human basilar membrane gain and compression obtained using temporal masking curve (TMC) and additivity of forward masking (AFM) methods with long-duration maskers or long masker-signal silent intervals may be affected by olivocochlear efferent activation, which reduces basilar membrane gain. The present study introduces a fixed-duration masking curve (FDMC) method, which involves a comparison of off- and on-frequency forward masker levels at threshold as a function of masker and signal duration, with the total masker-signal duration fixed at 25 ms to minimize efferent effects. Gain and compression estimates from the FDMC technique were compared with those from TMC (104-ms maskers) and AFM (10- and 200-ms maskers) methods. Compression estimates over an input-masker range of 40-60 dB sound pressure level were similar for the four methods. Maximum compression occurred at a lower input level for the FDMC compared to the TMC method. Estimates of gain were similar for TMC and FDMC methods. The FDMC method may provide a more reliable estimate of BM gain and compression in the absence of efferent activation and could be a useful method for estimating effects of efferent activity when used with a precursor sound (to trigger efferent activation), presented prior to the combined masker-signal stimulus.	\N	\N
23742368	Masking functions and fixed-signal functions were constructed using a narrow range of pedestal intensities for 10-ms, 1000-Hz gated tones. Data from three experiments agreed with previously reported data, clearly demonstrating negative masking and the pedestal effect. The data extend earlier findings by showing (1) the resilience of the pedestal effect when a background noise masker is introduced; (2) a possible indifference of the fixed-signal function to stimulus duration; (3) the ability of a set of psychometric functions to produce both masking and fixed-signal functions; (4) depending on method, the impact of unit choice on the interpretation of both the pedestal effect and negative masking data. Results are discussed in relation to current psychophysical models, and suggest that accounting for the auditory system's sensitivity to differences in low-level sounds remains a challenge.	\N	\N
23745759	This study investigates the influence of stress grouping on verbal short-term memory (STM). English speakers show a preference to combine syllables into trochaic groups, both lexically and in continuous speech. In two serial recall experiments, auditory lists of nonsense syllables were presented with either trochaic (STRONG-weak) or iambic (weak-STRONG) stress patterns, or in monotone. The acoustic correlates that carry stress were also manipulated in order to examine the relationship between input and output processes during recall. In Experiment 1, stressed and unstressed syllables differed in intensity and pitch but were matched for spoken duration. Significantly more syllables were recalled in the trochaic stress pattern condition than in the iambic and monotone conditions, which did not differ. In Experiment 2, spoken duration and pitch were manipulated but intensity was held constant. No effects of stress grouping were observed, suggesting that intensity is a critical acoustic factor for trochaic grouping. Acoustic analyses demonstrated that speech output was not identical to the auditory input, but that participants generated correct stress patterns by manipulating acoustic correlates in the same way in both experiments. These data challenge the idea of a language-independent STM store and support the notion of separable phonological input and output processes.	\N	\N
23751011	Cognitive theories on consciousness propose a strong link between consciousness and working memory (WM). This link is also present at the neural level: Both consciousness and WM have been implicated in a prefrontal parietal network. However, the link remains empirically unexplored. The present study investigates the relation between consciousness and WM by studying the impact of WM load on one aspect of consciousness, the threshold for subjective visibility. At the same time, we investigated how WM affects cognitive control, a function that has been implicated to consciousness. Results showed an increase in the threshold of subjective visibility when WM load increased. Furthermore, the impact of a prime stimulus on the response to the target was also modulated by WM load. We propose that the observed interference is caused by the functional and neural overlap of these functions.	\N	\N
23751171	The extent of visual perceptual processing that occurs in the absence of awareness is as yet unclear. Here we examined event-related-potential (ERP) indices of visual and cognitive processes as awareness was manipulated through object-substitution masking (OSM), an awareness-disrupting effect that has been hypothesized to result from the disruption of reentrant signaling to low-level visual cortical areas. In OSM, a visual stimulus array is briefly presented that includes a parafoveal visual target denoted by a cue, typically consisting of several surrounding dots. When the offset of the target-surrounding cue dots is delayed relative to the rest of the array, a striking reduction in the perception of the target image surrounded by the dots is observed. Using faces and houses as the target stimuli, we found that successful OSM reduced or eliminated all the measured electrophysiological indices of visual processing stages after 130ms post-stimulus. More specifically, when targets were missed within the masked condition (i.e., on trials with effective OSM that disrupted awareness), we observed fully intact early feed-forward processing up through the visual extrastriate P1 ERP component peaking at 100ms, followed by reduced low-level activity over the occipital pole 130-170ms post-stimulus, reduced ERP indices of lateralized shifts of attention toward the parafoveal target, reduced object-generic visual processing, abolished object-category-specific (face-specific) processing, and reduced late visual short-term-memory processing activity. The results provide a comprehensive electrophysiological account of the neurocognitive underpinnings of effective OSM of visual-object images, including evidence for central roles of early reentrant signal disruption and insufficient visual attentional deployment.	\N	\N
23757308	Most people cannot name the musical note that corresponds to a particular pitch without being provided a reference note, but those people with absolute pitch (AP) can do this accurately. Early experience during a developmental period is often thought to convey identity and stability of the note categories in people with AP, but the plasticity of these categories has not been investigated. Here we provide the first evidence that the note categories of adults with AP can change with listening experience. Participants with AP showed shifts in perception in direct accord with prior exposure to music detuned by a fraction of a semitone. This suggests that the apparent stability of AP categories is conferred not by early experience but rather by the cultural norms adopted for tuning music.	\N	\N
23758506	Levitin's findings that nonmusicians could produce from memory the absolute pitches of self-selected pop songs have been widely cited in the music psychology literature. These findings suggest that latent absolute pitch (AP) memory may be a more widespread trait within the population than traditional AP labelling ability. However, it has been left unclear what factors may facilitate absolute pitch retention for familiar pieces of music. The aim of the present paper was to investigate factors that may contribute to latent AP memory using Levitin's sung production paradigm for AP memory and comparing results to the outcomes of a pitch labelling task, a relative pitch memory test, measures of music-induced emotions, and various measures of participants' musical backgrounds. Our results suggest that relative pitch memory and the quality and degree of music-elicited emotions impact on latent AP memory.	\N	\N
23774001	Auditory alarm misperception is one of the critical events that lead aircraft pilots to an erroneous flying decision. The rarity of these alarms associated with their possible unreliability may play a role in this misperception. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we manipulated both audiovisual conflict and sound rarity in a simplified landing task. Behavioral data and event related potentials (ERPs) of thirteen healthy participants were analyzed. We found that the presentation of a rare auditory signal (i.e., an alarm), incongruent with visual information, led to a smaller amplitude of the auditory N100 (i.e., less negative) compared to the condition in which both signals were congruent. Moreover, the incongruity between the visual information and the rare sound did not significantly affect reaction times, suggesting that the rare sound was neglected. We propose that the lower N100 amplitude reflects an early visual-to-auditory gating that depends on the rarity of the sound. In complex aircraft environments, this early effect might be partly responsible for auditory alarm insensitivity. Our results provide a new basis for future aeronautic studies and the development of countermeasures.	\N	\N
23776244	Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often show insensitivity to the human voice, a deficit that is thought to play a key role in communication deficits in this population. The social motivation theory of ASD predicts that impaired function of reward and emotional systems impedes children with ASD from actively engaging with speech. Here we explore this theory by investigating distributed brain systems underlying human voice perception in children with ASD. Using resting-state functional MRI data acquired from 20 children with ASD and 19 age- and intelligence quotient-matched typically developing children, we examined intrinsic functional connectivity of voice-selective bilateral posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS). Children with ASD showed a striking pattern of underconnectivity between left-hemisphere pSTS and distributed nodes of the dopaminergic reward pathway, including bilateral ventral tegmental areas and nucleus accumbens, left-hemisphere insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Children with ASD also showed underconnectivity between right-hemisphere pSTS, a region known for processing speech prosody, and the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala, brain regions critical for emotion-related associative learning. The degree of underconnectivity between voice-selective cortex and reward pathways predicted symptom severity for communication deficits in children with ASD. Our results suggest that weak connectivity of voice-selective cortex and brain structures involved in reward and emotion may impair the ability of children with ASD to experience speech as a pleasurable stimulus, thereby impacting language and social skill development in this population. Our study provides support for the social motivation theory of ASD.	\N	\N
23778471	The audibility thresholds for the sound frequency of 137 upward- and downward-sloping audiograms showing sensorineural hearing loss were selected and analyzed in conjunction with speech recognition thresholds obtained from individuals seen at a public otolaryngology clinic to determine which frequencies in slope audiograms best represent speech recognition thresholds. The linear regression model and mean square error were used to determine the associations between the threshold values. The mean square error identified larger errors when using thresholds of 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz than when using audibility thresholds of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz. The linear regression model showed a higher correlation (91%) between the audiogram thresholds for frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz than for the frequencies of 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz (88%). Frequencies of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz were the most significant in predicting the speech recognition threshold.	\N	\N
23784072	Several sources of evidence point toward a link between asymmetry of prefrontal brain activity and approach-withdrawal tendencies. Here, we tested the causal nature of this link and examined if the categorization of an ambiguous approach- or withdrawal-related vocal signal can be biased by manipulating left and right frontal neural activity. We used voice morphing of affective non-verbal vocalizations to create individually tailored affectively ambiguous stimuli on an Anger-Fear continuum-two emotions that represent extremes on the approach-withdrawal dimension. We tested perception of these stimuli after 10 min of low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation over left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or over the vertex (control), a technique that has transient inhibitory effects on the targeted brain region. As expected, ambiguous stimuli were more likely perceived as expressing Anger (approach) than Fear (withdrawal) after right prefrontal compared with left prefrontal or control stimulation. These results provide the first evidence that the manipulation of asymmetrical activity in prefrontal cortex can change the explicit categorization of ambiguous emotional signals.	\N	\N
23785181	To evaluate child-adult differences for consonant identification in a noise or a 2-talker masker. Error patterns were compared across age and masker type to test the hypothesis that errors with the noise masker reflect limitations in the peripheral encoding of speech, whereas errors with the 2-talker masker reflect target-masker confusions within the central auditory system. A repeated-measures design compared the performance of children (5-13 years) and adults in continuous speech-shaped noise or a 2-talker masker. Consonants were identified from a closed set of 12 using a picture-pointing response. In speech-shaped noise, children under age 10 years performed more poorly than adults, but performance was adultlike for 11- to 13-year-olds. In the 2-talker masker, significant child-adult differences were observed in even the oldest group of children. Systematic clusters of consonant errors were observed for children in the noise masker and for adults in both maskers, but not for children in the 2-talker masker. These results suggest a more prolonged time course of development for consonant identification in a 2-talker masker than in a noise masker. Differences in error patterns between the maskers support the hypothesis that errors with the 2-talker masker reflect failures of sound segregation.	\N	\N
23785182	In this study, the authors assessed the influence of masking level (29% or 71% sentence perception) and test modality on the processing load during language perception as reflected by the pupil response. In addition, the authors administered a delayed cued stimulus recall test to examine whether processing load affected the encoding of the stimuli in memory. Participants performed speech and text reception threshold tests, during which the pupil response was measured. In the cued recall test, the first half of correctly perceived sentences was presented, and participants were asked to complete the sentences. Reading and listening span tests of working memory capacity were presented as well. Regardless of test modality, the pupil response indicated higher processing load in the 29% condition than in the 71% correct condition. Cued recall was better for the 29% condition. The consistent effect of masking level on the pupil response during listening and reading support the validity of the pupil response as a measure of processing load during language perception. The absent relation between pupil response and cued recall may suggest that cued recall is not directly related to processing load, as reflected by the pupil response.	\N	\N
23786392	Exposure to loud noise can impair cochlear microcirculation and cause noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). TNF-α signaling has been shown to be activated in NIHL and to control spiral modiolar artery vasoconstriction that regulates cochlear microcirculation. It was the aim of this experimental study to analyse the effects of the TNF-α inhibitor etanercept on cochlear microcirculation and hearing threshold shift in NIHL in vivo. After assessment of normacusis using ABR, loud noise (106 dB SPL, 30 minutes) was applied on both ears in guinea pigs. Etanercept was administered systemically after loud noise exposure while control animals received a saline solution. In vivo fluorescence microscopy of strial capillaries was performed after surgical exposure of the cochlea for microcirculatory analysis. ABR measurements were derived from the contralateral ear. Guinea pigs (n = 6, per group). Compared to controls, cochlear blood flow in strial capillary segments was significantly increased in etanercept-treated animals. Additionally, hearing threshold was preserved in animals receiving the TNF-α inhibitor in contrast to a significant threshold raising in controls. TNF-α inhibition using etanercept improves cochlear microcirculation and protects hearing levels after loud noise exposure and appears as a promising treatment strategy for human NIHL.	\N	\N
23786395	This study investigates the relation between diagnosis of dead regions based on the off-frequency psychophysical tuning curve (PTC) tip and the frequency and level of the probe tone. A previously developed functional model of auditory processing was used to simulate the complete loss of inner hair cells (IHC), dysfunction of outer hair cells (OHC), complete loss of IHCs in combination with OHC dysfunction, and IHC insensitivity. The model predictions were verified through comparison with experimental data. This study compares PTC data of five normal-hearing listeners and six hearing-impaired listeners with model-simulated PTC data. It was shown that OHC activity and IHC insensitivity may significantly alter the shift of PTC tips with increasing probe level. Model results suggest that OHC activity and IHC insensitivity can change the outcome of dead region diagnosis using PTCs. Supplementary to PTC dead region diagnostic information, model results may provide additional information regarding the edge frequency of a dead region and OHC function.	\N	\N
23789623	Pickering & Garrod's (P&G's) integrated model of production and comprehension includes no explicit role for nonlinguistic cognitive processes. Yet, how domain-general cognitive functions contribute to language processing has become clearer with well-specified theories and supporting data. We therefore believe that their account can benefit by incorporating functions like working memory and cognitive control into a unified model of language processing.	\N	\N
23789938	Pickering & Garrod (P&G) consider the possibility that inner speech might be a product of forward production models. Here I consider the idea of inner speech as a forward model in light of empirical work from the past few decades, concluding that, while forward models could contribute to it, inner speech nonetheless requires activity from the implementers.	\N	\N
23790092	The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of lengthening of voice onset time and burst duration of selected speech stimuli on perception by individuals with auditory dys-synchrony. This is the second of a series of articles reporting the effect of signal enhancing strategies on speech perception by such individuals. Two experiments were conducted: (1) assessment of the 'just-noticeable difference' for voice onset time and burst duration of speech sounds; and (2) assessment of speech identification scores when speech sounds were modified by lengthening the voice onset time and the burst duration in units of one just-noticeable difference, both in isolation and in combination with each other plus transition duration modification. Lengthening of voice onset time as well as burst duration improved perception of voicing. However, the effect of voice onset time modification was greater than that of burst duration modification. Although combined lengthening of voice onset time, burst duration and transition duration resulted in improved speech perception, the improvement was less than that due to lengthening of transition duration alone. These results suggest that innovative speech processing strategies that enhance temporal cues may benefit individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.	\N	\N
23790958	To determine the prevalence of otitis media with effusion (OME) in children with Down syndrome (DS), and the associated to hearing loss at the age of 8 years. A national population based clinical study of all children with DS born in Norway in 2002. OME was found in 20 out of 52 (38%) children. Those with OME had a significant lower hearing level with a mean pure tone average (PTA) of 33.4 dB HL compared to children with no OME whose mean PTA was 21.7 dB HL (p < 0.0001). Verified hearing loss above 25 dB HL in the better hearing ear was found in 12 out of the 20 with OME, compared to 5 out 31 without OME. The findings of this present study uncover the increased risk of OME in eight year old children with DS as current otitis media was found in one of three. This reduced hearing ability in children with DS due to OME at age of 8 strongly emphasizes the need for optimal treatment and follow up to optimize hearing rehabilitation. The findings are further supported by the population based study design, the focus on the narrow age band and the high response rate.	\N	\N
23801322	When a deviant (oddball) stimulus is presented within a series of otherwise identical (standard) stimuli, the duration of the oddball tends to be overestimated. Two experiments investigated factors affecting systematic distortions in the perceived duration of oddball stimuli. Both experiments used an auditory oddball paradigm where oddball tones varied in both their pitch distance from the pitch of a standard tone and their likelihood of occurrence. Experiment 1 revealed that (1) far-pitch oddballs were perceived to be longer than near-pitch oddballs, (2) effects of pitch distance were greater in low-likelihood conditions, and (3) oddballs in later serial positions were perceived to be longer than oddballs in earlier serial positions. The above effects held regardless of whether oddballs were higher or lower in pitch than the standard. Experiment 2 revealed a pattern of response times in an oddball detection task that generally paralleled the pattern of data observed in Experiment 1; across conditions, there was a negative correlation between detection times and perceived duration. Taken together, the results suggest that the observed effects of oddball pitch, likelihood, and position on perceived duration are at least partly driven by how quickly individuals are able to initiate timing the oddball following its onset. Implications for different theoretical accounts of the oddball effect are discussed.	\N	\N
23817922	For this research, we used a dual-task approach to investigate the involvement of working memory in following written instructions. In two experiments, participants read instructions to perform a series of actions on objects and then recalled the instructions either by spoken repetition or performance of the action sequence. Participants engaged in concurrent articulatory suppression, backward-counting, and spatial-tapping tasks during the presentation of the instructions, in order to disrupt the phonological-loop, central-executive, and visuospatial-sketchpad components of working memory, respectively. Recall accuracy was substantially disrupted by all three concurrent tasks, indicating that encoding and retaining verbal instructions depends on multiple components of working memory. The accuracy of recalling the instructions was greater when the actions were performed than when the instructions were repeated, and this advantage was unaffected by the concurrent tasks, suggesting that the benefit of enactment over oral repetition does not cost additional working memory resources.	\N	\N
23831479	Mismatch negativity (MMN) is a promising window on how the functional integrity of auditory sensory memory and change discrimination is modulated by age and relevant clinical conditions. However, the effects of aging on MMN have remained somewhat elusive, particularly at short interstimulus intervals (ISIs). We performed a meta-analysis of peer-reviewed MMN studies that had targeted both young and elderly adults to estimate the mean effect size. Nine studies, consisting of 29 individual investigations, were included and the final total study population consisted of 182 young and 165 elderly subjects. The effects of different deviant types and duration of ISIs on the effect size were assessed. The overall mean effect size was 0.63 (95% CI at 0.43-0.82). The effect sizes for long ISI (>2s, effect size 0.68, 95% CI at 0.31-1.06) and short ISI (<2s, effect size 0.61, 95% CI at 0.39-0.84) were both considered moderate. A further analysis showed a prominent aging-related decrease in MMN responses to duration and frequency changes at short ISIs. It was also interesting to note that the effect size was about 25% larger for duration deviant condition compared to the frequency deviant condition. In conclusion, a reduced MMN response to duration and frequency deviants is a robust feature among the aged adults, which suggests that there has been a decline in the functional integrity of central auditory processing in this population.	\N	\N
23842602	The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of impulse noise on age-related hearing loss. The study consisted of two groups. Each group contained 109 men. Group I comprised veterans with normal hearing at the end of 1979 sino-vietnamese war. All these veterans were randomly selected from Guangzhou Military Command. Group II were men with no military experience randomly chosen from the health examination center of Guangzhou General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Command. Pure-tone thresholds of these two groups were measured and compared. The pure-tone thresholds of Group I were poorer than those of Group II at the frequencies of 4, 6 and 8 kHz. Thus, impulse noise accelerates age-related hearing loss.	\N	\N
23855495	Recent evidence suggests that humans can become fearful after exposure to olfactory fear signals, yet these studies have reported the effects of fear chemosignals without examining emotion-relevant input from traditional communication modalities (i.e., vision, audition). The question that we pursued here was therefore: How significant is an olfactory fear signal in the broader context of audiovisual input that either confirms or contradicts olfactory information? To test this, we manipulated olfactory (fear, no fear) and audiovisual (fear, no fear) information and demonstrated that olfactory fear signals were as potent as audiovisual fear signals in eliciting a fearful facial expression. Irrespective of confirmatory or contradictory audiovisual information, olfactory fear signals produced by senders induced fear in receivers outside of conscious access. These findings run counter to traditional views that emotions are communicated exclusively via visual and linguistic channels.	\N	\N
23864263	Similarities have been observed in the localization of the final position of moving visual and moving auditory stimuli: Perceived endpoints that are judged to be farther in the direction of motion in both modalities likely reflect extrapolation of the trajectory, mediated by predictive mechanisms at higher cognitive levels. However, actual comparisons of the magnitudes of displacement between visual tasks and auditory tasks using the same experimental setup are rare. As such, the purpose of the present free-field study was to investigate the influences of the spatial location of motion offset, stimulus velocity, and motion direction on the localization of the final positions of moving auditory stimuli (Experiment 1 and 2) and moving visual stimuli (Experiment 3). To assess whether auditory performance is affected by dynamically changing binaural cues that are used for the localization of moving auditory stimuli (interaural time differences for low-frequency sounds and interaural intensity differences for high-frequency sounds), two distinct noise bands were employed in Experiments 1 and 2. In all three experiments, less precise encoding of spatial coordinates in paralateral space resulted in larger forward displacements, but this effect was drowned out by the underestimation of target eccentricity in the extreme periphery. Furthermore, our results revealed clear differences between visual and auditory tasks. Displacements in the visual task were dependent on velocity and the spatial location of the final position, but an additional influence of motion direction was observed in the auditory tasks. Together, these findings indicate that the modality-specific processing of motion parameters affects the extrapolation of the trajectory.	\N	\N
23866207	Although much research has been done to study the working memory structure in children in their first school years, the relation of cognitive constructs involved in this process remains uncertain. In particular, it is unclear whether working memory is a domain general construct that coordinates separate codes of verbal and visuospatial storage or whether it is a domain-specific construct with distinct resources of verbal and visuospatial information. This paper investigates the structure of working memory, by using the Working Memory Test Battery for Children (WMTB-C) and by doing confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) on a sample of Portuguese children (n = 103) between 8 and 9 years of age. The results of the confirmatory factor analyses that provide the best fit of the data correspond to the model that includes Central Executive and Visuospatial Sketchpad in the same factor, co-varying with a Phonological Loop factor. Moreover, the traditional working memory tripartite structure--based on the Baddeley and Hitch Model--revealed good fit to the data.	\N	\N
23871868	Accounts of the functional role of the frontal cortex in pre-attentive auditory change detection include attention switching, response inhibition, contrast enhancement, and activation of a predictive model. These accounts assume different sequential activation patterns between the temporal and frontal cortices: Change detection in the auditory areas of the superior temporal cortex (STC) followed by inferior frontal cortex (IFC) activation for attention switching and response inhibition; STC preceded by IFC activation for contrast enhancement; and an IFC-STC-IFC activation sequence for the predictive model. We used the event-related optical signal (EROS), which provides a temporal resolution of milliseconds and a spatial resolution of 5 to 10mm, combined with lagged correlation path modeling to examine the response of the right frontal and temporal cortices to auditory duration deviants of varying magnitude. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were also recorded, as was the slow optical (hemodynamic) brain response. The data analyses revealed temporal-frontal, frontal-temporal-frontal, and temporal-frontal activation patterns when the deviants represented relatively large, medium, and small changes from the standard stimulus, respectively. These results indicate that the degree of deviance modulates spatio-temporal dynamics within the STC-IFC auditory change detection network.	\N	\N
23874705	Besides the influence of dopaminergic neurotransmission on negative symptoms in schizophrenia, there is evidence that alterations of serotonin (5-HT) system functioning also play a crucial role in the pathophysiology of these disabling symptoms. From post mortem and genetic studies on patients with negative symptoms a 5-HT dysfunction is documented. In addition atypical neuroleptics and some antidepressants improve negative symptoms via serotonergic action. So far no research has been done to directly clarify the association between the serotonergic functioning and the extent of negative symptoms. Therefore, we examined the status of brain 5-HT level in negative symptoms in schizophrenia by means of the loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP). The LDAEP provides a well established and non-invasive in vivo marker of the central 5-HT activity. We investigated 13 patients with schizophrenia with predominant negative symptoms treated with atypical neuroleptics and 13 healthy age and gender matched controls with a 32-channel EEG. The LDAEP of the N1/P2 component was evaluated by dipole source analysis and single electrode estimation at Cz. Psychopathological parameters, nicotine use and medication were assessed to control for additional influencing factors. Schizophrenic patients showed significantly higher LDAEP in both hemispheres than controls. Furthermore, the LDAEP in the right hemisphere in patients was related to higher scores in scales assessing negative symptoms. A relationship with positive symptoms was not found. These data might suggest a diminished central serotonergic neurotransmission in patients with predominant negative symptoms.	\N	\N
23876942	The goal of the present study was to determine if students can be trained to reliably perceive dysphonia using the Dysphonic Severity Percentage (DSP) scale, a perceptual measure shown to have high interrater reliability when used by speech-language pathologists experienced with voice disorders. Because the DSP scale was found to be useful as a research tool in the measurement of dysphonia, using it to train students to recognize dysphonia can enhance their education as future clinicians and researchers. This method involved having five inexperienced speech-language pathology students listen to voice samples in two conditions (spontaneous speech and paragraph reading) of 10 clients with moderate to severe dysphonia (phonotrauma); the students simultaneously tallied the nondysphonic syllables on written content of the samples to obtain a DSP for both conditions. Because the clients' dysphonias were moderate to severe, and there were many dysphonic syllables, it was more efficient and advantageous for the students' perception and training to tally the nondysphonic syllables, leaving the dysphonic syllables to calculate the DSP. By tallying the nondysphonic syllables, the students were still recognizing which syllables were dysphonic by not choosing them, thus increasing their perception of both normal and disordered syllables. Statistical analysis using the intraclass correlation coefficient revealed high interrater reliability and high correlations among the trained students for both spontaneous speech and paragraph reading, thus indicating similar training experiences and perceptions. This method appeared to be a more quantitative measure of perceptual ratings than current scales, which use general gradations of dysphonic severity. Moreover, the DSPs were similar between the newly trained students and experienced raters for spontaneous speech, indicating that the students could be trained in the direction experienced by voice clinicians. There was, however, a significant difference between the two groups for paragraph reading, which will be discussed. It was concluded that the DSP method was an effective technique to train students to recognize dysphonia.	\N	\N
23882007	In this article, the authors examine (a) the effect of semantic context on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Spanish-accented American English (AE) as judged by monolingual AE listeners and (b) the interaction of semantic context and accentedness on comprehensibility and intelligibility. Twenty adult native (L1) Spanish speakers proficient in AE and 4 L1 AE speakers (controls) read 48 statements consisting of true-false, semantically meaningful, and semantically anomalous sentences. Eighty monolingual AE listeners assessed accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of the statements. A significant main effect was found for semantic category on all 3 dependent variables. Accents were perceived to be stronger, and both comprehensibility and intelligibility were worse, in semantically anomalous contexts. Speaker data were grouped into strong, mid-level, and mild accents. The interaction between semantic category and accent was significant for both comprehensibility and intelligibility. The effect of semantic context was strongest for strong accents. Intelligibility was excellent for speakers with mid-level accents in true-false and semantically meaningful contexts, and it was excellent for mild accents in all contexts. Listeners access semantic information, in addition to phonetic and phonotactic features, in the perception of nonnative speech. Both accent level and semantic context are important in research on foreign-accented speech.	\N	\N
23883307	The irrelevant sound effect (ISE) is the finding that serial recall performance is impaired under complex auditory backgrounds such as speech as compared to white noise or silence. Several findings have demonstrated that ISE occurs with nonspeech backgrounds and that the changing-state complexity of the background stimuli is critical to ISE. In a pair of experiments, we investigate whether speech-like qualities of the irrelevant background have an effect beyond their changing-state complexity. We do so by using two kinds of transformations of speech with identical changing-state complexity: one kind that preserved speech-like information (sinewave speech and fully reversed sinewave speech) and others in which this information was distorted (two selectively reversed sinewave speech conditions). Our results indicate that even when changing-state complexity is held constant, sinewave speech conditions in which speech-like interformant relationships are disrupted, produce less ISE than those in which these relationships are preserved. This indicates that speech-like properties of the background are important beyond their changing-state complexity for ISE.	\N	\N
23885549	In patients with epileptic lesions in the hippocampus as well as in the temporal lobe and hippocampus simultaneously, studies were made on the perception of sound signals imitating sound source movement. It was established that hippocampal lesion results in disturbance of estimation of sound spatial characteristics which manifests in a change accuracy of localization and shortening of subjective sound image movement trajectory. Maximum disturbances of localization function are observed during lesions of hippocampus and temporal lobe. Possible neurophysiological mechanism underling observed disturbances are considered.	\N	\N
23886425	Communication while traveling in an automobile often is very difficult for hearing aid users. This is because the automobile/road noise level is usually high, and listeners/drivers often do not have access to visual cues. Since the talker of interest usually is not located in front of the listener/driver, conventional directional processing that places the directivity beam toward the listener's front may not be helpful and, in fact, could have a negative impact on speech recognition (when compared to omnidirectional processing). Recently, technologies have become available in commercial hearing aids that are designed to improve speech recognition and/or listening effort in noisy conditions where talkers are located behind or beside the listener. These technologies include (1) a directional microphone system that uses a backward-facing directivity pattern (Back-DIR processing), (2) a technology that transmits audio signals from the ear with the better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to the ear with the poorer SNR (Side-Transmission processing), and (3) a signal processing scheme that suppresses the noise at the ear with the poorer SNR (Side-Suppression processing). The purpose of the current study was to determine the effect of (1) conventional directional microphones and (2) newer signal processing schemes (Back-DIR, Side-Transmission, and Side-Suppression) on listener's speech recognition performance and preference for communication in a traveling automobile. A single-blinded, repeated-measures design was used. Twenty-five adults with bilateral symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss aged 44 through 84 yr participated in the study. The automobile/road noise and sentences of the Connected Speech Test (CST) were recorded through hearing aids in a standard van moving at a speed of 70 mph on a paved highway. The hearing aids were programmed to omnidirectional microphone, conventional adaptive directional microphone, and the three newer schemes. CST sentences were presented from the side and back of the hearing aids, which were placed on the ears of a manikin. The recorded stimuli were presented to listeners via earphones in a sound-treated booth to assess speech recognition performance and preference with each programmed condition. Compared to omnidirectional microphones, conventional adaptive directional processing had a detrimental effect on speech recognition when speech was presented from the back or side of the listener. Back-DIR and Side-Transmission processing improved speech recognition performance (relative to both omnidirectional and adaptive directional processing) when speech was from the back and side, respectively. The performance with Side-Suppression processing was better than with adaptive directional processing when speech was from the side. The participants' preferences for a given processing scheme were generally consistent with speech recognition results. The finding that performance with adaptive directional processing was poorer than with omnidirectional microphones demonstrates the importance of selecting the correct microphone technology for different listening situations. The results also suggest the feasibility of using hearing aid technologies to provide a better listening experience for hearing aid users in automobiles.	\N	\N
23888869	Binding is key in multisensory perception. This study investigated the audio-visual (A-V) temporal binding window in 4-, 5-, and 6-year-old children (total N = 120). Children watched a person uttering a syllable whose auditory and visual components were either temporally synchronized or desynchronized by 366, 500, or 666 ms. They were asked whether the voice and face went together (Experiment 1) or whether the desynchronized videos differed from the synchronized one (Experiment 2). Four-year-olds detected the 666-ms asynchrony, 5-year-olds detected the 666- and 500-ms asynchrony, and 6-year-olds detected all asynchronies. These results show that the A-V temporal binding window narrows slowly during early childhood and that it is still wider at 6 years of age than in older children and adults.	\N	\N
23891107	Biologically salient sounds, including speech, are rarely heard in isolation. Our brains must therefore organize the input arising from multiple sources into separate "streams" and, in the case of speech, map the acoustic components of the target signal onto meaning. These auditory and linguistic processes have traditionally been considered to occur sequentially and are typically studied independently [1, 2]. However, evidence that streaming is modified or reset by attention [3], and that lexical knowledge can affect reports of speech sound identity [4, 5], suggests that higher-level factors may influence perceptual organization. In two experiments, listeners heard sequences of repeated words or acoustically matched nonwords. After several presentations, they reported that the initial /s/ sound in each syllable formed a separate stream; the percept then fluctuated between the streamed and fused states in a bistable manner. In addition to measuring these verbal transformations, we assessed streaming objectively by requiring listeners to detect occasional targets-syllables containing a gap after the initial /s/. Performance was better when streaming caused the syllables preceding the target to transform from words into nonwords, rather than from nonwords into words. Our results show that auditory stream formation is influenced not only by the acoustic properties of speech sounds, but also by higher-level processes involved in recognizing familiar words.	\N	\N
23893201	Mimicking the human ear on the basis of auditory models has become a viable approach in many applications by now. However, only a few attempts have been made to extend the scope of physiological ear models to be employed in cochlear implants (CI). Contemporary CI systems rely on much simpler filter banks and simulate the natural signal processing of a healthy cochlea to only a very limited extent. When looking at rehabilitation outcomes, current systems seem to have reached their peak potential, which signals the need for better algorithms and/or technologies. In this paper, we present a novel sound processing strategy, SAM (Stimulation based on Auditory Modeling), that is based on neurophysiological models of the human ear and can be employed in auditory prostheses. It incorporates active cochlear filtering (basilar membrane and outer hair cells) along with the mechanoelectrical transduction of the inner hair cells, so that several psychoacoustic phenomena are accounted for inherently. Although possible, current implementation does not make use of parallel stimulation of the electrodes, which matches state-of-the-art CI hardware. This paper elaborates on SAM's signal processing and provides a computational evaluation of the strategy. Results show that aspects of normal cochlear processing that are missing in common strategies can be replicated by SAM. This is supposed to improve overall CI user performance, which we have at least partly proven in a pilot study with implantees.	\N	\N
23893677	Several studies suggest that auditory perception in general and the perception of speech in noise in particular continue to develop until late childhood or early adolescence. It remains unclear, however, whether this prolonged development results from the maturation of the cognitive factors associated with the performance of auditory tasks or from the slow development of auditory sensory processing. We investigated the perception of monosyllabic words embedded in white noise in Hebrew-speaking school-age children and adults. Although identification thresholds did not become adult-like until 11 years of age, we found no evidence linking this prolonged development to non-sensory factors associated with performance consistency. Therefore, we suggest that similar to the development of amplitude and frequency modulation detection thresholds, this protracted development is related to the maturation of auditory sensory processing.	\N	\N
23893940	Videos can be used as didactic tools for self-learning under several circumstances, including those cases in which students are responsible for the development of this resource as an audiovisual notebook. We compared students' and teachers' perceptions regarding the main features that an audiovisual notebook should include. Four questionnaires with items about information, images, text and music, and filmmaking were used to investigate students' (n = 115) and teachers' perceptions (n = 28) regarding the development of a video focused on a histological technique. The results show that both students and teachers significantly prioritize informative components, images and filmmaking more than text and music. The scores were significantly higher for teachers than for students for all four components analyzed. The highest scores were given to items related to practical and medically oriented elements, and the lowest values were given to theoretical and complementary elements. For most items, there were no differences between genders. A strong positive correlation was found between the scores given to each item by teachers and students. These results show that both students' and teachers' perceptions tend to coincide for most items, and suggest that audiovisual notebooks developed by students would emphasize the same items as those perceived by teachers to be the most relevant. Further, these findings suggest that the use of video as an audiovisual learning notebook would not only preserve the curricular objectives but would also offer the advantages of self-learning processes.	\N	\N
23905279	Recent studies in the field of intonational phonology have shown that information-seeking questions can be distinguished from confirmation-seeking questions by prosodic means in a variety of languages (Armstrong, 2010, for Puerto Rican Spanish; Grice & Savino, 1997, for Bari Italian; Kügler, 2003, for Leipzig German; Mata & Santos, 2010, for European Portuguese; Vanrell, Mascaró, Prieto, & Torres-Tamarit, 2010, for Catalan). However, all these studies have relied on production experiments and little is known about the perceptual relevance of these intonational cues. This paper explores whether Majorcan Catalan listeners distinguish information- and confirmation-seeking questions by means of two distinct nuclear falling pitch accents. Three behavioral tasks were conducted with 20 Majorcan Catalan subjects, namely a semantic congruity test, a rating test, and a classical categorical perception identification/discrimination test. The results show that a difference in pitch scaling on the leading H tone of the H+L* nuclear pitch accent is the main cue used by Majorcan Catalan listeners to distinguish confirmation questions from information-seeking questions. Thus, while a iH+L* pitch accent signals an information-seeking question (i.e., the speaker has no expectation about the nature of the answer), the H+L* pitch accent indicates that the speaker is asking about mutually shared information. We argue that these results have implications in representing the distinctions of tonal height in Catalan. The results also support the claim that phonological contrasts in intonation, together with other linguistic strategies, can signal the speakers' beliefs about the certainty of the proposition expressed.	\N	\N
23906967	Training people on temporal discrimination can substantially improve performance in the trained modality but also in untrained modalities. A pretest-training-posttest design was used to investigate whether consolidation plays a crucial role for training effects within the trained modality and its transfer to another modality. In the pretest, both auditory and visual discrimination performance was assessed. In the training phase, participants performed only the auditory task. After a consolidation interval of either 5 min or 24h, participants were again tested in both the auditory and visual tasks. Irrespective of the consolidation interval, performance improved from the pretest to the posttest in both modalities. Most importantly, the training effect for the trained auditory modality was independent of the consolidation interval whereas the transfer effect to the visual modality was larger after 24h than after 5 min. This finding shows that transfer effects benefit from extended consolidation.	\N	\N
23921930	To confirm the clinical efficacy and safety of a direct acoustic cochlear implant. Prospective multicenter study. The study was performed at 3 university hospitals in Europe (Germany, The Netherlands, and Switzerland). Fifteen patients with severe-to-profound mixed hearing loss because of otosclerosis or previous failed stapes surgery. Implantation with a Codacs direct acoustic cochlear implant investigational device (ID) combined with a stapedotomy with a conventional stapes prosthesis Preoperative and postoperative (3 months after activation of the investigational direct acoustic cochlear implant) audiometric evaluation measuring conventional pure tone and speech audiometry, tympanometry, aided thresholds in sound field and hearing difficulty by the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit questionnaire. The preoperative and postoperative air and bone conduction thresholds did not change significantly by the implantation with the investigational Direct Acoustic Cochlear Implant. The mean sound field thresholds (0.25-8 kHz) improved significantly by 48 dB. The word recognition scores (WRS) at 50, 65, and 80 dB SPL improved significantly by 30.4%, 75%, and 78.2%, respectively, after implantation with the investigational direct acoustic cochlear implant compared with the preoperative unaided condition. The difficulty in hearing, measured by the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit, decreased by 27% after implantation with the investigational direct acoustic cochlear implant. Patients with moderate-to-severe mixed hearing loss because of otosclerosis can benefit substantially using the Codacs investigational device.	\N	\N
23927112	The present study evaluated the influence of suppressor frequency (fs) and level (Ls) on stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emissions (SFOAEs) recorded using the amplitude-modulated (AM) suppressor technique described by Neely et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 118, 2124-2127 (2005a)]. Data were collected in normal-hearing subjects, with data collection occurring in two phases. In phase 1, SFOAEs were recorded with probe frequency (fp) = 1, 2, and 4 kHz and probe levels (Lp) ranging from 0 to 60 dB sound pressure level (SPL). At each fp, Ls ranged from Ls = Lp to Ls = Lp + 30 dB. Additionally, nine relationships between fs and fp were evaluated, ranging from fs/fp = 0.80 to fs/fp = 1.16. Results indicated that for low suppressor levels, suppressors higher in frequency than fp (fs > fp) resulted in higher AM-SFOAE levels than suppressors lower in frequency than fp (fs < fp). At higher suppressor levels, suppressors both higher and lower in frequency than fp produced similar AM-SFOAE levels, and, in many cases, low-frequency suppressors produced the largest response. Recommendations for stimulus parameters that maximize AM-SFOAE level were derived from these data. In phase 2, AM-SFOAEs were recorded using these parameters for fp = 0.7-8 kHz and Lp = 20-60 dB SPL. Robust AM-SFOAE responses were recorded in this group of subjects using the parameters developed in phase 1.	\N	\N
23927121	Real-world sound sources are usually perceived as externalized and thus properly localized in both direction and distance. This is largely due to (1) the acoustic filtering by the head, torso, and pinna, resulting in modifications of the signal spectrum and thereby a frequency-dependent shaping of interaural cues and (2) interaural cues provided by the reverberation inside an enclosed space. This study first investigated the effect of room reverberation on the spectro-temporal behavior of interaural level differences (ILDs) by analyzing dummy-head recordings of speech played at different distances in a standard listening room. Next, the effect of ILD fluctuations on the degree of externalization was investigated in a psychoacoustic experiment performed in the same listening room. Individual binaural impulse responses were used to simulate a distant sound source delivered via headphones. The ILDs were altered using a gammatone filterbank for analysis and resynthesis, where the envelopes of the left and right-ear signals were modified such that the naturally occurring fluctuations of the ILDs were restricted. This manipulation reduced the perceived degree of externalization. This was consistent with the analysis of short-term ILDs at different distances showing that a decreased distance to the sound source also reduced the ILD fluctuations.	\N	\N
23927128	The perturbation of acoustic features in a speaker's auditory feedback elicits rapid compensatory responses that demonstrate the importance of auditory feedback for control of speech output. The current study investigated whether responses to a perturbation of speech auditory feedback vary depending on the importance of the perturbed feature to perception of the vowel being produced. Auditory feedback of speakers' first formant frequency (F1) was shifted upward by 130 mels in randomly selected trials during the speakers' production of consonant-vowel-consonant words containing either the vowel /Λ/ or the vowel /ɝ/. Although these vowels exhibit comparable F1 frequencies, the contribution of F1 to perception of /Λ/ is greater than its contribution to perception of /ɝ/. Compensation to the F1 perturbation was observed during production of both vowels, but compensatory responses during /Λ/ occurred at significantly shorter latencies and exhibited significantly larger magnitudes than compensatory responses during /ɝ/. The finding that perturbation of vowel F1 during /Λ/ and /ɝ/ yielded compensatory differences that mirrored the contributions of F1 to perception of these vowels indicates that some portion of feedback control is weighted toward monitoring and preservation of acoustic cues for speech perception.	\N	\N
23933139	A series of five experiments investigated the extent of subliminal processing of negation. Participants were presented with a subliminal instruction to either pick or not pick an accompanying noun, followed by a choice of two nouns. By employing subjective measures to determine individual thresholds of subliminal priming, the results of these studies indicated that participants were able to identify the correct noun of the pair--even when the correct noun was specified by negation. Furthermore, using a grey-scale contrast method of masking, Experiment 5 confirmed that these priming effects were evidenced in the absence of partial awareness, and without the effect being attributed to the retrieval of stimulus-response links established during conscious rehearsal.	\N	\N
23937006	To analyse the impact of tinnitus loudness, tinnitus frequency, hearing loss, tinnitus subjective loudness on the life of tinnitus patient. To inspect the 154 tinnitus patients with pure tone audiometry, tinnitus matching, tinnitus classification questionnaire and THI scale. This study applies THI scale to evaluate the impact of tinnitus on the life of tinnitus patient. Using statistical methods to analyse the relationship between tinnitus loudness, tinnitus frequency, hearing loss, tinnitus subjective loudness and the impact of tinnitus on the life of tinnitus patient. (1) Tinnitus frequency is closed with the frequency of hearing loss. (2) There is no significant correlation between tinnitus loudness and the impact of tinnitus on the life of tinnitus patient. (3) There is no distinction between hearing loss and the THI scores. (4) The patient gets more scores in subgroup of THI with the increase of tinnitus subjective loudness classification. The impact of tinnitus loudness, hearing loss on the life of tinnitus patient is not very clearly, while the impact of tinnitus subjective loudness classification on the life of tinnitus patient is significant. In clinical, we can not evaluate the effect of the tinnitus treatment relying on tinnitus loudness and hearing loss simply.The finding provides us individual treatment to tinnitus patients.	\N	\N
23937689	Several accounts of speech perception propose that the areas involved in producing language are also involved in perceiving it. In line with this view, neuroimaging studies show activation of premotor cortex (PMC) during phoneme judgment tasks; however, there is debate about whether speech perception necessarily involves motor processes, across all task contexts, or whether the contribution of PMC is restricted to tasks requiring explicit phoneme awareness. Some aspects of speech processing, such as mapping sounds onto meaning, may proceed without the involvement of motor speech areas if PMC specifically contributes to the manipulation and categorical perception of phonemes. We applied TMS to three sites-PMC, posterior superior temporal gyrus, and occipital pole-and for the first time within the TMS literature, directly contrasted two speech perception tasks that required explicit phoneme decisions and mapping of speech sounds onto semantic categories, respectively. TMS to PMC disrupted explicit phonological judgments but not access to meaning for the same speech stimuli. TMS to two further sites confirmed that this pattern was site specific and did not reflect a generic difference in the susceptibility of our experimental tasks to TMS: stimulation of pSTG, a site involved in auditory processing, disrupted performance in both language tasks, whereas stimulation of occipital pole had no effect on performance in either task. These findings demonstrate that, although PMC is important for explicit phonological judgments, crucially, PMC is not necessary for mapping speech onto meanings.	\N	\N
23943499	To investigate the effect of semantic congruity on audiovisual target responses, participants detected a semantic concept that was embedded in a series of rapidly presented stimuli. The target concept appeared as a picture, an environmental sound, or both; and in bimodal trials, the audiovisual events were either consistent or inconsistent in their representation of a semantic concept. The results showed faster detection latencies to bimodal than to unimodal targets and a higher rate of missed targets when visual distractors were presented together with auditory targets, in comparison to auditory targets presented alone. The findings of Experiment 2 showed a cross-modal asymmetry, such that visual distractors were found to interfere with the accuracy of auditory target detection, but auditory distractors had no effect on either the speed or the accuracy of visual target detection. The biased-competition theory of attention (Desimone & Duncan Annual Review of Neuroscience 18: 1995; Duncan, Humphreys, & Ward Current Opinion in Neurobiology 7: 255-261 1997) was used to explain the findings because, when the saliency of the visual stimuli was reduced by the addition of a noise filter in Experiment 4, visual interference on auditory target detection was diminished. Additionally, the results showed faster and more accurate target detection when semantic concepts were represented in a visual rather than an auditory format.	\N	\N
23966690	Aging listeners experience greater difficulty understanding speech in adverse listening conditions and exhibit degraded temporal resolution, even when audiometric thresholds are normal. When threshold evidence for peripheral involvement is lacking, central and cognitive factors are often cited as underlying performance declines. However, previous work has uncovered widespread loss of cochlear afferent synapses and progressive cochlear nerve degeneration in noise-exposed ears with recovered thresholds and no hair cell loss (Kujawa and Liberman 2009). Here, we characterize age-related cochlear synaptic and neural degeneration in CBA/CaJ mice never exposed to high-level noise. Cochlear hair cell and neuronal function was assessed via distortion product otoacoustic emissions and auditory brainstem responses, respectively. Immunostained cochlear whole mounts and plastic-embedded sections were studied by confocal and conventional light microscopy to quantify hair cells, cochlear neurons, and synaptic structures, i.e., presynaptic ribbons and postsynaptic glutamate receptors. Cochlear synaptic loss progresses from youth (4 weeks) to old age (144 weeks) and is seen throughout the cochlea long before age-related changes in thresholds or hair cell counts. Cochlear nerve loss parallels the synaptic loss, after a delay of several months. Key functional clues to the synaptopathy are available in the neural response; these can be accessed noninvasively, enhancing the possibilities for translation to human clinical characterization.	\N	\N
23966965	Williams syndrome (WS), a genetic, neurodevelopmental disorder, is of keen interest to music cognition researchers because of its characteristic auditory sensitivities and emotional responsiveness to music. However, actual musical perception and production abilities are more variable. We examined musicality in WS through the lens of amusia and explored how their musical perception abilities related to their auditory sensitivities, musical production skills, and emotional responsiveness to music. In our sample of 73 adolescents and adults with WS, 11% met criteria for amusia, which is higher than the 4% prevalence rate reported in the typically developing (TD) population. Amusia was not related to auditory sensitivities but was related to musical training. Performance on the amusia measure strongly predicted musical skill but not emotional responsiveness to music, which was better predicted by general auditory sensitivities. This study represents the first time amusia has been examined in a population with a known neurodevelopmental genetic disorder with a range of cognitive abilities. Results have implications for the relationships across different levels of auditory processing, musical skill development, and emotional responsiveness to music, as well as the understanding of gene-brain-behavior relationships in individuals with WS and TD individuals with and without amusia.	\N	\N
23967947	The purpose of this study was to analyze vowel articulation across various speaking tasks in a group of 20 early Parkinson's disease (PD) individuals prior to pharmacotherapy. Vowels were extracted from sustained phonation, sentence repetition, reading passage, and monologue. Acoustic analysis was based upon measures of the first (F1) and second (F2) formant of the vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, vowel space area (VSA), F2i/F2u and vowel articulation index (VAI). Parkinsonian speakers manifested abnormalities in vowel articulation across F2u, VSA, F2i/F2u, and VAI in all speaking tasks except sustained phonation, compared to 15 age-matched healthy control participants. Findings suggest that sustained phonation is an inappropriate task to investigate vowel articulation in early PD. In contrast, monologue was the most sensitive in differentiating between controls and PD patients, with classification accuracy up to 80%. Measurements of vowel articulation were able to capture even minor abnormalities in speech of PD patients with no perceptible dysarthria. In conclusion, impaired vowel articulation may be considered as a possible early marker of PD. A certain type of speaking task can exert significant influence on vowel articulation. Specifically, complex tasks such as monologue are more likely to elicit articulatory deficits in parkinsonian speech, compared to other speaking tasks.	\N	\N
23977030	Mechanisms of propofol-induced loss of consciousness remain poorly understood. Recent fMRI studies have shown decreases in functional connectivity during unconsciousness induced by this anesthetic agent. Functional connectivity does not provide information of directional changes in the dynamics observed during unconsciousness. The aim of the present study was to investigate, in healthy humans during an auditory task, the changes in effective connectivity resulting from propofol induced loss of consciousness. We used Dynamic Causal Modeling for fMRI (fMRI-DCM) to assess how causal connectivity is influenced by the anesthetic agent in the auditory system. Our results suggest that the dynamic observed in the auditory system during unconsciousness induced by propofol, can result in a mixture of two effects: a local inhibitory connectivity increase and a decrease in the effective connectivity in sensory cortices.	\N	\N
23978930	Faces presented upside-down are harder to recognize than presented right-side up, an effect known as the face inversion effect. With inversion the perceptual processing of the spatial relationship among facial parts is disrupted. Previous literature indicates a face inversion effect in chimpanzees toward familiar and conspecific faces. Although these results are not inconsistent with findings from humans they have some controversy in their methodology. Here, we employed a delayed matching-to-sample task to test captive chimpanzees on discriminating chimpanzee and human faces. Their performances were deteriorated by inversion. More importantly, the discrimination deterioration was systematically different between the two age groups of chimpanzee participants, i.e. young chimpanzees showed a stronger inversion effect for chimpanzee than for human faces, while old chimpanzees showed a stronger inversion effect for human than for chimpanzee faces. We conclude that the face inversion effect in chimpanzees is modulated by the level of expertise of face processing.	\N	\N
23980148	Learning, the foundation of adaptive and intelligent behavior, is based on plastic changes in neural assemblies, reflected by the modulation of electric brain responses. In infancy, auditory learning implicates the formation and strengthening of neural long-term memory traces, improving discrimination skills, in particular those forming the prerequisites for speech perception and understanding. Although previous behavioral observations show that newborns react differentially to unfamiliar sounds vs. familiar sound material that they were exposed to as fetuses, the neural basis of fetal learning has not thus far been investigated. Here we demonstrate direct neural correlates of human fetal learning of speech-like auditory stimuli. We presented variants of words to fetuses; unlike infants with no exposure to these stimuli, the exposed fetuses showed enhanced brain activity (mismatch responses) in response to pitch changes for the trained variants after birth. Furthermore, a significant correlation existed between the amount of prenatal exposure and brain activity, with greater activity being associated with a higher amount of prenatal speech exposure. Moreover, the learning effect was generalized to other types of similar speech sounds not included in the training material. Consequently, our results indicate neural commitment specifically tuned to the speech features heard before birth and their memory representations.	\N	\N
23992232	The detection of auditory stimuli that deviate from a simple or complex auditory regularity is reflected by the mismatch negativity component of the human auditory evoked potential. Moreover, simple deviants of an oddball paradigm modulate the preceding middle-latency response of the auditory evoked potential. For the frequency oddball paradigms it has been shown that the Nb wave, at approximately 40 ms from stimulus onset, is enhanced in response to deviant compared with standard stimuli. In this study we tested whether the detection of auditory deviants in a (frequency-location) feature-conjunction paradigm is reflected by modulations of the Na, Pa or Nb wave of healthy human participants. In addition, a frequency oddball paradigm was applied to directly contrast the results of a simple and a complex invariance. Feature-conjunction deviants did not elicit any modulations of the tested middle-latency waves. Deviants of the frequency oddball paradigm, by contrast, elicited an enhancement of the Nb wave, confirming the outcome of precedent studies. In both conditions a significant mismatch negativity component was elicited, which showed larger amplitudes and shorter latencies in the oddball condition than in the feature-conjunction condition. These findings corroborate the idea that simple auditory regularities are encoded upstream of those of more complex auditory features and are in line with the idea of a hierarchically working auditory novelty system.	\N	\N
24003981	This study explores if increasing number of repetitions might improve the precision of the acceptable noise level (ANL) test. We measured twelve ANL repetitions, i.e. four complete ANL tests (4 × 3 repetitions), at one session using diotic presentation and a non-semantic ANL version. Thirty-two normal-hearing adults. Small order and fatigue effects were seen. We used the coefficient of repeatability (CR) to assess the repeatability; CRs ranged between 3.9 and 7.6 dB for the four ANL tests. Using the twelve ANL repetitions we removed the variability of the ANL across subjects by normalizing the data to the individual mean ANL for the twelve repetitions. The mean normalized ANL across the subjects rapidly approached the ANL normalized to the individual mean for the 12 repetitions (0 dB), and after three repetitions the SD seemed to be stable at about 3 dB. The findings suggest that both order and fatigue affect the ANL. The findings also suggest that it may be more accurate to speak of an acceptable noise range than ANL. These findings have large implications for how we understand acceptable noise and it would explain a large part of the variability seen among normal-hearing and perhaps hearing-impaired subjects.	\N	\N
24005271	The objective of the present study was to evaluate the hearing function in the airport technical personnel and estimate the effectiveness of multicomponent anti-noise hearing protectors used by the specialists engaged in the aircraft maintenance. The tonal threshold audiometry was carried out before and after a shiftwork. The extra-aural effect of noise was assessed from the characteristics of cardiac rhythm variability. The study included two groups of subjects: in one of them (n=8) they used ordinary flight headsets (control) in the other the protection was ensured with the help of multi-insert hearing protectors (n=16). The initial hearing thresholds were found to be increased up to 70 and 60 dB at the frequencies of 4 and 8 kHz respectively. The regression analysis revealed the relationship between these parameters and the duration of aerodrome work experience. Temporary threshold shifts were observed only in the control group. An increase in the tone of the sympathetic nervous system was observed in the control subjects but was absent in the study group. It is concluded that the multi-component hearing protectors employed in the present study are highly efficacious anti-noise devices. The mechanisms of noise-induced hearing loss are discussed.	\N	\N
24007920	Many previous studies have shown that the human language processor is capable of rapidly integrating information from different sources during reading or listening. Yet, little is known about how this ability develops from child to adulthood. To gain insight into how children (in comparison to adults) handle different kinds of linguistic information during on-line language comprehension, the current study investigates a well-known morphological phenomenon that is subject to both structural and semantic constraints, the plurals-in-compounds effect, i.e. the dislike of plural (specifically regular plural) modifiers inside compounds (e.g. rats eater). We examined 96 seven-to-twelve-year-old children and a control group of 32 adults measuring their eye-gaze changes in response to compound-internal plural and singular forms. Our results indicate that children rely more upon structural properties of language (in the present case, morphological cues) early in development and that the ability to efficiently integrate information from multiple sources takes time for children to reach adult-like levels.	\N	\N
24012681	It was recently shown that brain activity can be represented as a stimulation-specific vector field. Since the vector field of brain activity is specifically transformed by sensory input, we suggested that a tensor field that transforms brain activity reflects sensory input. We calculated the tensor fields that transform brain activity between visual baseline and auditory word processing in PET data and between environmental sounds and auditory word processing in fMRI data. In the first comparison, significant clusters formed a distributed network over the brain cortex. In the second comparison, clusters were more localised in the temporo-frontal network of speech processing. Our study therefore demonstrated that tensor fields reflect the sensory input that specifically transforms brain activity.	\N	\N
24016155	For studying multistable auditory perception, we propose a paradigm that evokes integrated or segregated perception of a sound sequence, and permits decomposition of the segregated grouping into foreground and background sounds. The paradigm combines 3-tone pitch patterns with alternating timbres, resulting in a repeating 6-tone structure that can be perceived as rising based on temporal proximity, or as falling based on timbre similarity. Listeners continuously report their percept while EEG is recorded. Results show an ERP modulation starting at ∼70 ms after sound onset that can be explained by whether a sound belongs to perceived foreground or background, with no additional effect of integrated versus segregated grouping. Auditory grouping as indexed by the mismatch negativity did not correspond with reported sound grouping. The paradigm offers a new possibility for investigating effects of conscious perceptual organization on sound processing.	\N	\N
24018572	The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of hearing instruments set to Desired Sensation Level version 5 (DSL v5) hearing instrument prescription algorithm targets and equipped with directional microphones and digital noise reduction (DNR) on children's sentence recognition in noise performance and loudness perception in a classroom environment. Ten children (ages 8-17 years) with stable, congenital sensorineural hearing losses participated in the study. Participants were fitted bilaterally with behind-the-ear hearing instruments set to DSL v5 prescriptive targets. Sentence recognition in noise was evaluated using the Bamford-Kowal-Bench Speech in Noise Test (Niquette et al., 2003). Loudness perception was evaluated using a modified version of the Contour Test of Loudness Perception (Cox, Alexander, Taylor, & Gray, 1997). Children's sentence recognition in noise performance was significantly better when using directional microphones alone or in combination with DNR than when using omnidirectional microphones alone or in combination with DNR. Children's loudness ratings for sounds above 72 dB SPL were lowest when fitted with the DSL v5 Noise prescription combined with directional microphones. DNR use showed no effect on loudness ratings. Use of the DSL v5 Noise prescription with a directional microphone improved sentence recognition in noise performance and reduced loudness perception ratings for loud sounds relative to a typical clinical reference fitting with the DSL v5 Quiet prescription with no digital signal processing features enabled. Potential clinical strategies are discussed.	\N	\N
24021849	Dehaene et al. (2003) showed an absence of conscious, but not masked, conflict effects when patients with schizophrenia performed a number-categorisation priming task. We aimed to replicate these influential results using a different word-categorisation priming task. Counter to Dehaene et al.'s findings, 21 patients and 20 healthy controls showed similar congruence effects for both masked and visible primes. Within patients, a reduced congruence effect for visible primes associated with longer duration of illness and more severe behavioural disorganisation. Patients, unlike controls, were no slower to respond to targets that followed visible compared to masked primes. Conscious conflict effects on priming tasks are not universally reduced in schizophrenia but may associate with chronicity and behavioural disorganisation. That patients were no slower when the preceding primes were clearly visible accords with evidence elsewhere that information processing in schizophrenia is driven more by immediate conscious experience and constrained less by prior events.	\N	\N
24024543	Emotion in audio-voice signals, as synthesized by text-to-speech (TTS) technologies, was investigated to formulate a theory of expression for user interface design. Emotional parameters were specified with markup tags, and the resulting audio was further modulated with post-processing techniques. Software was then developed to link a selected TTS synthesizer with an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine, producing a chatbot that could speak and listen. Using these two artificial voice subsystems, investigators explored both artistic and psychological implications of artificial speech emotion. Goals of the investigation were interdisciplinary, with interest in musical composition, augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), commercial voice announcement applications, human-computer interaction (HCI), and artificial intelligence (AI). The work-in-progress points towards an emerging interdisciplinary ontology for artificial voices. As one study output, HCI tools are proposed for future collaboration.	\N	\N
24028995	Recent theory of physiology of language suggests a dual stream dorsal/ventral organization of speech perception. Using intra-cerebral Event-related potentials (ERPs) during pre-surgical assessment of twelve drug-resistant epileptic patients, we aimed to single out electrophysiological patterns during both lexical-semantic and phonological monitoring tasks involving ventral and dorsal regions respectively. Phonological information processing predominantly occurred in the left supra-marginal gyrus (dorsal stream) and lexico-semantic information occurred in anterior/middle temporal and fusiform gyri (ventral stream). Similar latencies were identified in response to phonological and lexico-semantic tasks, suggesting parallel processing. Typical ERP components were strongly left lateralized since no evoked responses were recorded in homologous right structures. Finally, ERP patterns suggested the inferior frontal gyrus as the likely final common pathway of both dorsal and ventral streams. These results brought out detailed evidence of the spatial-temporal information processing in the dual pathways involved in speech perception.	\N	\N
24032320	The purpose was the develop a questionnaire to identify the specific listening difficulties of second language (L2) learners. Based on previous research, a questionnaire containing 31 items was developed and administered to 1,056 college freshmen. The whole sample was split randomly into two subsamples, each containing 528 cases. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to analyse the first subsample, and six factors were extracted, explaining a total of 57.1% of variance. To test the factor model, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with the second subsample. Various fit indices were examined. The best fitting model for the data was a 23-item, six-factor model representing text, input channel and surroundings, relevance, listener, speaker, and task. Apart from the listener factor, all components are external ones and deemed to be uncontrollable by listeners. L2 learners must take an active role in listening practice to overcome L2 listening difficulties.	\N	\N
24034879	This paper presents an analytic procedure to assist safety practitioners in evaluating the audibility of an existing auditory warning system in their workplaces. Two alarm location models are described: (a) a model with an unknown signal sound level, and (b) a model with a known signal sound level. A heuristic algorithm to determine a minimum number of alarm devices and their locations so that the warning signals can be clearly heard by workers is also proposed. The algorithm considers the ambient noise level, noise levels generated by individual machines, locations where workers are likely to be present, and noise levels at worker locations. From the numerical examples and the computation experiment, both the optimization and heuristic approaches yield solutions that satisfy the 15-dBA constraints. The heuristic approach is efficient in solving large alarm location problems due its capability to find near-optimal solutions within reasonable computation time.	\N	\N
24035819	Given recent interest in syllabic rates (∼2-5 Hz) for speech processing, we review the perception of "fluctuation" range (∼1-10 Hz) modulations during listening to speech and technical auditory stimuli (AM and FM tones and noises, and ripple sounds). We find evidence that the temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF) of human auditory perception is not simply low-pass in nature, but rather exhibits a peak in sensitivity in the syllabic range (∼2-5 Hz). We also address human and animal neurophysiological evidence, and argue that this bandpass tuning arises at the thalamocortical level and is more associated with non-primary regions than primary regions of cortex. The bandpass rather than low-pass TMTF has implications for modeling auditory central physiology and speech processing: this implicates temporal contrast rather than simple temporal integration, with contrast enhancement for dynamic stimuli in the fluctuation range. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Communication Sounds and the Brain: New Directions and Perspectives".	\N	\N
24042339	Behavioral improvement within the first hour of training is commonly explained as procedural learning (i.e., strategy changes resulting from task familiarization). However, it may additionally reflect a rapid adjustment of the perceptual and/or attentional system in a goal-directed task. In support of this latter hypothesis, we show feature-specific gains in performance for groups of participants briefly trained to use either a spectral or spatial difference between 2 vowels presented simultaneously during a vowel identification task. In both groups, the neuromagnetic activity measured during the vowel identification task following training revealed source activity in auditory cortices, prefrontal, inferior parietal, and motor areas. More importantly, the contrast between the 2 groups revealed a striking double dissociation in which listeners trained on spectral or spatial cues showed higher source activity in ventral ("what") and dorsal ("where") brain areas, respectively. These feature-specific effects indicate that brief training can implicitly bias top-down processing to a trained acoustic cue and induce a rapid recalibration of the ventral and dorsal auditory streams during speech segregation and identification.	\N	\N
24047945	Tests of auditory perception, such as those used in the assessment of central auditory processing disorders ([C]APDs), represent a domain in audiological assessment where measurement of this theoretical construct is often confounded by nonauditory abilities due to methodological shortcomings. These confounds include the effects of cognitive variables such as memory and attention and suboptimal testing paradigms, including the use of verbal reproduction as a form of response selection. We argue that these factors need to be controlled more carefully and/or modified so that their impact on tests of auditory and visual perception is only minimal. To advocate for a stronger theoretical framework than currently exists and to suggest better methodological strategies to improve assessment of auditory processing disorders (APDs). Emphasis is placed on adaptive forced-choice psychophysical methods and the use of matched tasks in multiple sensory modalities to achieve these goals. Together, this approach has potential to improve the construct validity of the diagnosis, enhance and develop theory, and evolve into a preferred method of testing. Examination of methods commonly used in studies of APDs. Where possible, currently used methodology is compared to contemporary psychophysical methods that emphasize computer-controlled forced-choice paradigms. In many cases, the procedures used in studies of APD introduce confounding factors that could be minimized if computer-controlled forced-choice psychophysical methods were utilized. Ambiguities of interpretation, indeterminate diagnoses, and unwanted confounds can be avoided by minimizing memory and attentional demands on the input end and precluding the use of response-selection strategies that use complex motor processes on the output end. Advocated are the use of computer-controlled forced-choice psychophysical paradigms in combination with matched tasks in multiple sensory modalities to enhance the prospect of obtaining a valid diagnosis.	\N	\N
24048514	We studied autistics by quantitative EEG spectral and coherence analysis during three experimental conditions: basal, watching a cartoon with audio (V-A), and with muted audio band (VwA). Significant reductions were found for the absolute power spectral density (PSD) in the central region for delta and theta, and in the posterior region for sigma and beta bands, lateralized to the right hemisphere. When comparing VwA versus the V-A in the midline regions, we found significant decrements of absolute PSD for delta, theta and alpha, and increments for the beta and gamma bands. In autistics, VwA versus V-A tended to show lower coherence values in the right hemisphere. An impairment of visual and auditory sensory integration in autistics might explain our results.	\N	\N
24059595	The frequency-following response (FFR) is the compound phase-locked brainstem response to periodic components of sound stimuli, and is closely related to pitch perception. Its weak amplitude often prevents its measurement with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Recording of FFR using multichannel EEG is possible but expensive and it involves the manual screening of raw data. We describe a new method to extract FFR features by prescreening the raw data using automatic monitoring of sound pressure in the ear canal. Removal of stimulus artifacts, noise reduction, and data selection were systematically studied. The reliability of our new method was tested by comparing FFRs tracking accuracy and pitch perception in fifteen individuals with normal hearing. The extracted FFRs tracking accuracy was significantly correlated with behavioral measures of pitch perception, indicating that FFR could be used to represent individual differences in pitch perception ability among a population with similar hearing characteristics. The designed system could extract FFR signals more accurately with high SNR after signal prescreen and noise reduction.	\N	\N
24060845	The present study investigated whether and how beat gesture (small baton-like hand movements used to emphasize information in speech) influences semantic processing as well as its interaction with pitch accent during speech comprehension. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants watched videos of a person gesturing and speaking simultaneously. The critical words in the spoken sentences were accompanied by a beat gesture, a control hand movement, or no hand movement, and were expressed either with or without pitch accent. We found that both beat gesture and control hand movement induced smaller negativities in the N400 time window than when no hand movement was presented. The reduced N400s indicate that both beat gesture and control movement facilitated the semantic integration of the critical word into the sentence context. In addition, the words accompanied by beat gesture elicited smaller negativities in the N400 time window than those accompanied by control hand movement over right posterior electrodes, suggesting that beat gesture has a unique role for enhancing semantic processing during speech comprehension. Finally, no interaction was observed between beat gesture and pitch accent, indicating that they affect semantic processing independently.	\N	\N
24060967	Some dialogues are perceived as running more smoothly than others. To some extent that impression could be related to how well speakers adapt their prosody to each other. Adaptation in prosody can be signaled by the use of pitch accents that indicate how utterances are structurally related to those of the interlocutor (prosodic function) or by copying the interlocutor's prosodic features (prosodic form). The same acoustic features, such as pitch, are involved in both ways of adaptation. Further, function and form may require a different prosody for successful adaptation in certain discourse contexts. In this study we investigate to what extent interlocutors are perceived as good adapters, depending on whether the prosody of both speakers is functionally coherent or similar in form. This is done in two perception tests using prosodically manipulated dialogues. Results show that coherent functional prosody can be a cue for speaker adaptation and that this cue is more powerful than similarity in prosodic form.	\N	\N
24066179	We tested non-musicians and musicians in an auditory psychophysical experiment to assess the effects of timbre manipulation on pitch-interval discrimination. Both groups were asked to indicate the larger of two presented intervals, comprised of four sequentially presented pitches; the second or fourth stimulus within a trial was either a sinusoidal (or "pure"), flute, piano, or synthetic voice tone, while the remaining three stimuli were all pure tones. The interval-discrimination tasks were administered parametrically to assess performance across varying pitch distances between intervals ("interval-differences"). Irrespective of timbre, musicians displayed a steady improvement across interval-differences, while non-musicians only demonstrated enhanced interval discrimination at an interval-difference of 100 cents (one semitone in Western music). Surprisingly, the best discrimination performance across both groups was observed with pure-tone intervals, followed by intervals containing a piano tone. More specifically, we observed that: 1) timbre changes within a trial affect interval discrimination; and 2) the broad spectral characteristics of an instrumental timbre may influence perceived pitch or interval magnitude and make interval discrimination more difficult.	\N	\N
24073580	To establish music reference values for normal-hearing (NH) person in China, in order to give convenience in clinical application. The NH participant group included 39 subjects, of which 21 females and 18 males. Musical Sounds in Cochlear Implants test battery was used to assess the music perception ability for normal-hearing participants. The median pitch difference NH participants could discriminate for string was 2.5 semitones and 0.5 for flute. The average scores of rhythm discrimination, melody discrimination, chord discrimination, instrument identification and instrument number detection test were 86.1% (SD = 11.2), 76.5% (SD = 11.1), 75.6% (SD = 11.4), 89.9% (SD = 13.0) and 74.1% (SD = 20.7), respectively. The MuSIC test could be a test for music perception ability for China users and in further study the material that more suited for our culture should be added into it.	\N	\N
24073684	Work on the perception of urban soundscapes has generated a number of perceptual models which are proposed as tools to test and evaluate soundscape interventions. However, despite the excessive sound levels and noise within hospital environments, perceptual models have not been developed for these spaces. To address this, a two-stage approach was developed by the authors to create such a model. First, semantics were obtained from listening evaluations which captured the feelings of individuals from hearing hospital sounds. Then, 30 participants rated a range of sound clips representative of a ward soundscape based on these semantics. Principal component analysis extracted a two-dimensional space representing an emotional-cognitive response. The framework enables soundscape interventions to be tested which may improve the perception of these hospital environments.	\N	\N
24080979	Cochlear implantation (CI) is currently the main device option for children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) who receive minimal benefit from conventional amplification. This study examines potential prognostic factors associated with post-CI speech performance in this population. Retrospective chart review. Academic center. ANSD patients without inner ear abnormalities implanted with unilateral or bilateral CI between 1998 and 2010. CI and speech perception testing. Post-CI speech perception testing at 50 dBHL. "Good" performers were defined as patients with greater than 70% speech perception and "poor" performers less than 70%. Medical comorbidity, educational information, and social history were gathered. Twenty-seven patients met inclusion criteria. Mean age at diagnosis, first CI, and second CI in good performers were 2.5 ± 3.4, 3.4 ± 3.6, and 3.8 ± 1.6 years, respectively, compared with 9.7 ± 7.8, 14.8 ± 12.9, and 8.9 ± 3.5 in poor performers. Mean speech perception after first and second implantation for good performers trended at 85% and 90%, respectively, compared with 36% and 73% in poor performers. Better pre-CI PTA correlated with better post-CI speech perception. Patients with bilateral CI demonstrated better speech perception outcomes compared with unilateral CI use. Poor performers had later age of implantation, lower socioeconomic status, and lack of family support compared with good performers. ANSD patients who do not benefit from conventional amplification do well when implanted at a young age with proper access to education and habilitation training. Medical, social, and economic information may be helpful in predicting positive outcomes.	\N	\N
24083896	In this cross-language study, six Italian and six French voice experts evaluated perceptually the speech of 27 Italian and 40 French patients with dysphonia to determine if there were differences based on native language. French and Italian voice specialists agreed substantially in their evaluations of the overall grade of dysphonia and moderately concerning roughness and breathiness. No statistically significant effects were found related to the language of the speakers with the exception of breathiness, a finding that was interpreted as being due to different voice pathologies in the patient groups. It was concluded that the perception of the overall grade of dysphonia and breathiness is not language-dependent, whereas the significant difference in the perception of roughness may be related to a perception/adaption process.	\N	\N
24089502	Linguistic content can be conveyed both in speech and in writing. But how similar is the neural processing when the same real-life information is presented in spoken and written form? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded neural responses from human subjects who either listened to a 7 min spoken narrative or read a time-locked presentation of its transcript. Next, within each brain area, we directly compared the response time courses elicited by the written and spoken narrative. Early visual areas responded selectively to the written version, and early auditory areas to the spoken version of the narrative. In addition, many higher-order parietal and frontal areas demonstrated strong selectivity, responding far more reliably to either the spoken or written form of the narrative. By contrast, the response time courses along the superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus were remarkably similar for spoken and written narratives, indicating strong modality-invariance of linguistic processing in these circuits. These results suggest that our ability to extract the same information from spoken and written forms arises from a mixture of selective neural processes in early (perceptual) and high-order (control) areas, and modality-invariant responses in linguistic and extra-linguistic areas.	\N	\N
24091182	The auditory nervous system is highly nonlinear. Some nonlinear responses arise through active processes in the cochlea, while others may arise in neural populations of the cochlear nucleus, inferior colliculus and higher auditory areas. In humans, auditory brainstem recordings reveal nonlinear population responses to combinations of pure tones, and to musical intervals composed of complex tones. Yet the biophysical origin of central auditory nonlinearities, their signal processing properties, and their relationship to auditory perception remain largely unknown. Both stimulus components and nonlinear resonances are well represented in auditory brainstem nuclei due to neural phase-locking. Recently mode-locking, a generalization of phase-locking that implies an intrinsically nonlinear processing of sound, has been observed in mammalian auditory brainstem nuclei. Here we show that a canonical model of mode-locked neural oscillation predicts the complex nonlinear population responses to musical intervals that have been observed in the human brainstem. The model makes predictions about auditory signal processing and perception that are different from traditional delay-based models, and may provide insight into the nature of auditory population responses. We anticipate that the application of dynamical systems analysis will provide the starting point for generic models of auditory population dynamics, and lead to a deeper understanding of nonlinear auditory signal processing possibly arising in excitatory-inhibitory networks of the central auditory nervous system. This approach has the potential to link neural dynamics with the perception of pitch, music, and speech, and lead to dynamical models of auditory system development.	\N	\N
24094802	Although reduced stress is thought to be one of the most deviant speech dimensions in hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson's disease (PD), the mechanisms of stress production in PD have not been thoroughly explored by objective methods. The aim of the present study was to quantify the effect of PD on prosodic characteristics and to describe contrastive stress patterns in parkinsonian speech. The ability of 20 male speakers with early PD and 16 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HCs) to signal contrastive stress was investigated. Each participant was instructed to unnaturally emphasize five key words while reading a short block of text. Acoustic analyses were based on the measurement of pitch, intensity, and duration. In addition, an innovative measurement termed the stress pattern index (SPI) was designed to mirror the effect of all distinct acoustic cues exploited during stress production. Although PD patients demonstrated a reduced ability to convey contrastive stress, they could still notably increase pitch, intensity, and duration to emphasize a word within a sentence. No differences were revealed between PD and HC stress productions using the measurements of pitch, intensity, duration, and intensity range. However, restricted SPI and pitch range were evident in the PD group. A reduced ability to express stress seems to be the distinctive pattern of hypokinetic dysarthria, even in the early stages of PD. Because PD patients were able to consciously improve their speech performance using multiple acoustic cues, the introduction of speech therapy may be rewarding.	\N	\N
24098565	In the present study, we investigated brain morphological signatures of dyslexia by using a voxel-based asymmetry analysis. Dyslexia is a developmental disorder that affects the acquisition of reading and spelling abilities and is associated with a phonological deficit. Speech perception disabilities have been associated with this deficit, particularly when listening conditions are challenging, such as in noisy environments. These deficits are associated with known neurophysiological correlates, such as a reduction in the functional activation or a modification of functional asymmetry in the cortical regions involved in speech processing, such as the bilateral superior temporal areas. These functional deficits have been associated with macroscopic morphological abnormalities, which potentially include a reduction in gray and white matter volumes, combined with modifications of the leftward asymmetry along the perisylvian areas. The purpose of this study was to investigate gray/white matter distribution asymmetries in dyslexic adults using automated image processing derived from the voxel-based morphometry technique. Correlations with speech-in-noise perception abilities were also investigated. The results confirmed the presence of gray matter distribution abnormalities in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) and the superior temporal Sulcus (STS) in individuals with dyslexia. Specifically, the gray matter of adults with dyslexia was symmetrically distributed over one particular region of the STS, the temporal voice area, whereas normal readers showed a clear rightward gray matter asymmetry in this area. We also identified a region in the left posterior STG in which the white matter distribution asymmetry was correlated to speech-in-noise comprehension abilities in dyslexic adults. These results provide further information concerning the morphological alterations observed in dyslexia, revealing the presence of both gray and white matter distribution anomalies and the potential involvement of these defects in speech-in-noise deficits.	\N	\N
24098665	Numerous studies have documented the phenomenon of phonetic imitation: the process by which the production patterns of an individual become more similar on some phonetic or acoustic dimension to those of her interlocutor. Though social factors have been suggested as a motivator for imitation, few studies has established a tight connection between language-external factors and a speaker's likelihood to imitate. The present study investigated the phenomenon of phonetic imitation using a within-subject design embedded in an individual-differences framework. Participants were administered a phonetic imitation task, which included two speech production tasks separated by a perceptual learning task, and a battery of measures assessing traits associated with Autism-Spectrum Condition, working memory, and personality. To examine the effects of subjective attitude on phonetic imitation, participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions, where the perceived sexual orientation of the narrator (homosexual vs. heterosexual) and the outcome (positive vs. negative) of the story depicted in the exposure materials differed. The extent of phonetic imitation by an individual is significantly modulated by the story outcome, as well as by the participant's subjective attitude toward the model talker, the participant's personality trait of openness and the autistic-like trait associated with attention switching.	\N	\N
24099584	The objective of this prospective study was to investigate the relationship between acceptable noise level (ANL), which was measured using Taiwanese and the international speech test signal (ISTS), and real-world hearing-aid success for listeners who were representative of the population commonly seen in clinics. Unaided ANLs were measured pre-hearing-aid fitting. Hearing-aid success was assessed three months post-fitting using the international outcome inventory for hearing aids (IOI-HA) and a hearing-aid use questionnaire. Eighty adults with hearing impairment completed the study. Both Taiwanese and ISTS ANLs were significantly associated with hearing-aid success, with higher ANLs suggesting poorer outcomes. However, the ANL's prediction accuracy for the probability of hearing-aid success was either much lower than that suggested by some literature, or was not much different from that of simply predicting all listeners as successful users. The current study suggested the possibility of using ANL to predict hearing-aid success. However, the usefulness of ANL as a clinical tool is unlikely to be as great as indicated by the literature.	\N	\N
24101343	In a series of three experiments, we used an ambiguous plaid motion stimulus to explore the behavioral and electrophysiological effects of prior stimulus exposures and perceptual states on current awareness. The results showed that prior exposure to a stimulus biased toward one percept led to subsequent suppression of that percept. In contrast, in the absence of stimulus bias, prior perceptual experience can have a facilitative influence. The suppressive effects caused by the prior stimulus were found to transfer to an ambiguous plaid test stimulus rotated 180º relative to the adaptation stimulus, but were abolished if (1) the ambiguous test stimulus was only rotated 90º relative to the adaptation stimulus or (2) the adaptation stimulus was heavily biased toward the component grating percept. Event-related potential recordings were consistent with the involvement of visual cortical areas and suggested that the influence of recent stimulus exposure may involve recruitment of additional brain processes beyond those responsible for initial stimulus encoding. In contrast, the effects of prior and current perceptual experience appeared to depend on similar brain processes. Although the data presented here focus on vision, the work is discussed within the context of data from a parallel series of experiments in audition.	\N	\N
24110307	The cocktail party problem is a multi-faceted challenge which encompasses various aspects of auditory perception. Its processes underlie the brain's ability to detect, identify and classify sound objects; to robustly represent and maintain speech intelligibility amidst severe distortions; and to guide actions and behaviors in line with complex goals and shifting acoustic soundscapes. Here, we present a perspective that considers the powerful Bayesian inference as a unifying framework to integrate the role of sensory cues as well as stimulus-driven priors and top-down schemas including attention.	\N	\N
24110658	Temporal fine structure (TFS) carries important information for the speech perception of hearing-impaired listeners and for the design of novel prosthetic hearing devices. This study assessed the performance of present intelligibility indices for predicting the intelligibility of speech containing different amount of TFS information. Speech intelligibility data was collected from vocoded and wideband Mandarin sentences containing little/partial and intact TFS information, respectively, and was then subjected to the correlation analysis with existing intelligibility indices. It was found that, though performing well in predicting the intelligibility of vocoded or wideband speech separately, present intelligibility indices were not highly correlated with the intelligibility scores when a general function was used to map all intelligibility measures to intelligibility scores. Analysis further showed that the intelligibility prediction power could be significantly improved when multiple condition-dependent functions were used for mapping intelligibility measures to intelligibility scores.	\N	\N
24116428	Bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) have provided some success in improving spatial hearing abilities to patients, but with large variability in performance. One reason for the variability is that there may be a mismatch in the place-of-stimulation arising from electrode arrays being inserted at different depths in each cochlea. Goupell et al. [(2013b). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 133(4), 2272-2287] showed that increasing interaural mismatch led to non-fused auditory images and poor lateralization of interaural time differences in normal hearing subjects listening to a vocoder. However, a greater bandwidth of activation helped mitigate these effects. In the present study, the same experiments were conducted in post-lingually deafened bilateral CI users with deliberate and controlled interaural mismatch of single electrode pairs. Results show that lateralization was still possible with up to 3 mm of interaural mismatch, even when off-center, or multiple, auditory images were perceived. However, mismatched inputs are not ideal since it leads to a distorted auditory spatial map. Comparison of CI and normal hearing listeners showed that the CI data were best modeled by a vocoder using Gaussian-pulsed tones with 1.5 mm bandwidth. These results suggest that interaural matching of electrodes is important for binaural cues to be maximally effective.	\N	\N
24116537	Using molecular psychophysics, temporal loudness weights were measured for 2-s, 1-kHz tones with flat, increasing and decreasing time-intensity profiles. While primacy and recency effects were observed for flat profile stimuli, the so-called "level dominance" effect was observed for both increasing and decreasing profile stimuli, fully determining their temporal weights. The weighs obtained for these profiles were basically zero for all but the most intense parts of these sounds. This supports the view that the "level dominance" effect is prominent with intensity-varying sounds and that it persists over time since temporal weights are not affected by the direction of intensity change.	\N	\N
24124356	To assess the benefits of cochlear implantation in the elderly. A retrospective analysis of 31 postlingually deafened elderly (≥60 years of age) with unilateral cochlear implants was conducted. Audiological testing included preoperative and postoperative pure-tone audiometry and a monosyllabic word recognition test presented from recorded material in free field. Speech perception tests included Ling's six sound test (sound detection, discrimination, and identification), syllable discrimination, and monosyllabic and multisyllabic word recognition (open set) without lip-reading. Everyday life benefits from cochlear implantation were also evaluated. The mean age at the time of cochlear implantation was 72.4 years old. The mean postimplantation follow-up time was 2.34 years. All patients significantly improved their audiological and speech understanding performances. The preoperative mean pure-tone average threshold for 500 Hz, 1,000 Hz, 2,000 Hz, and 4,000 Hz was 110.17 dB HL. Before cochlear implantation, all patients scored 0% on the monosyllabic word recognition test in free field at 70 dB SPL intensity level. The postoperative pure-tone average was 37.14 dB HL (the best mean threshold was 17.50 dB HL, the worst was 58.75 dB HL). After the surgery, mean monosyllabic word recognition reached 47.25%. Speech perception tests showed statistically significant improvement in speech recognition. The results of this study showed that cochlear implantation is indeed a successful treatment for improving speech recognition and offers a great help in everyday life to deafened elderly patients. Therefore, they can be good candidates for cochlear implantation and their age alone should not be a relevant or excluding factor when choosing candidates for cochlear implantation.	\N	\N
24129008	PURPOSE Previous work has shown that monolingual French and English speakers use distinct articulatory settings, the underlying articulatory posture of a language. In the present article, the authors report on an experiment in which they investigated articulatory settings in bilingual speakers. The authors first tested the hypothesis that in order to sound native-like, bilinguals must use distinct, language-specific articulatory settings in monolingual mode. The authors then tested the hypothesis that in bilingual mode, a bilingual individual's articulatory setting is identical to the monolingual-mode setting of 1 of his or her languages. METHOD Eight French-English bilinguals each read 90 English and 90 French sentences, and the authors measured their interspeech posture (ISP) using optical tracking of the lips and jaw and ultrasound imaging of the tongue. RESULTS Results show that bilingual speakers who are perceived as native in both languages exhibit distinct, language-specific ISPs, and those who are not perceived as native in one or more languages do not. In bilingual mode, bilinguals use an ISP that is equivalent to the monolingual-mode ISP of their currently most used language. The most balanced bilingual used a French lip ISP but an English tongue-tip ISP. CONCLUSION Results support the claim that bilinguals who sound native in each of their languages have distinct articulatory settings for each language.	\N	\N
24130256	Biological motion research is an increasingly active field, with a great potential to contribute to a wide range of applications, such as behavioral monitoring/motion detection in surveillance situations, intention inference in social interactions, and diagnostic tools in autism research. In recent years, a large amount of motion capture data has become freely available online, potentially providing rich stimulus sets for biological motion research. However, there currently does not exist an easy-to-use tool to extract, present and manipulate motion capture data in the MATLAB environment, which many researchers use to program their experiments. We have developed the Biomotion Toolbox, which allows researchers to import motion capture data in a variety of formats, to display actions using Psychtoolbox 3, and to manipulate action displays in specific ways (e.g., inversion, three-dimensional rotation, spatial scrambling, phase-scrambling, and limited lifetime). The toolbox was designed to allow researchers with a minimal level of MATLAB programming skills to code experiments using biological motion stimuli.	\N	\N
24130865	Temporal processing underlies both music and language skills. There is increasing evidence that rhythm abilities track with reading performance and that language disorders such as dyslexia are associated with poor rhythm abilities. However, little is known about how basic time-keeping skills can be shaped by musical training, particularly during critical literacy development years. This study was carried out in collaboration with Harmony Project, a non-profit organization providing free music education to children in the gang reduction zones of Los Angeles. Our findings reveal that elementary school children with just one year of classroom music instruction perform more accurately in a basic finger-tapping task than their untrained peers, providing important evidence that fundamental time-keeping skills may be strengthened by short-term music training. This sets the stage for further examination of how music programs may be used to support the development of basic skills underlying learning and literacy, particularly in at-risk populations which may benefit the most.	\N	\N
24131604	The Dichotic Verbal Memory Test (DVMT) is useful in detecting verbal memory deficits and differences in memory function between the brain hemispheres. The purpose of this study was to prepare the Persian version of DVMT, to obtain its results in 18- to 25-yr-old Iranian individuals, and to examine the ear, gender, and serial position effect. The Persian version of DVMT consisted of 18 10-word lists. After preparing the 18 lists, content validity was assessed by a panel of eight experts and the equivalency of the lists was evaluated. Then the words were recorded on CD in a dichotic mode such that 10 words were presented to one ear, with the same words reversed simultaneously presented to the other ear. Thereafter, it was performed on a sample of young, normal, Iranian individuals. Thirty normal individuals (no history of neurological, ontological, or psychological diseases) with ages ranging from 18 to 25 yr were examined for evaluating the equivalency of the lists, and 110 subjects within the same age range participated in the final stage of the study to obtain the normative data on the developed test. There was no significant difference between the mean scores of the 18 developed lists (p > 0.05). The mean content validity index (CVI) score was .96. A significant difference was found between the mean score of the two ears (p < 0.05) and between female and male participants (p < 0.05). The Persian version of DVMT has good content validity and can be used for verbal memory assessment in Iranian young adults.	\N	\N
24131606	Current bone anchored hearing solutions (BAHSs) have incorporated automatic adaptive multichannel directional microphones (DMs). Previous fixed single-channel hypercardioid DMs in BAHSs have provided benefit in a diffuse listening environment, but little data are available on the performance of adaptive multichannel DMs in BAHSs for persons with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss (USNHL). The primary goal was to determine if statistically significant differences existed in the mean Reception Threshold for Sentences (RTS in dB) in diffuse uncorrelated restaurant noise between unaided, an omnidirectional microphone (OM), split DM (SDM), and full DM (FDM) in the Oticon Medical Ponto Pro. A second goal was to assess subjective benefit using the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) comparing the Ponto Pro to the participant's current BAHS, and the Ponto Pro and participant's own BAHS to unaided. The third goal was to compare RTS data of the Ponto Pro to data from an identical study examining Cochlear Americas' Divino. A randomized repeated measures, single blind design was used to measure an RTS for each participant for unaided, OM, SDM, and FDM. Fifteen BAHS users with USNHL were recruited from Washington University in St. Louis and the surrounding area. The Ponto Pro was fit by measuring in-situ bone conduction thresholds and was worn for 4 wk. An RTS was obtained utilizing Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) sentences in uncorrelated restaurant noise from an eight loudspeaker array, and subjective benefit was determined utilizing the APHAB. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyze the results of the Ponto Pro HINT and APHAB data, and comparisons between the Ponto Pro and previous Divino data. No statistically significant differences existed in mean RTS between unaided, the Ponto Pro's OM, SDM, or FDM (p = 0.10). The Ponto Pro provided statistically significant benefit for the Background Noise (BN) (p < 0.01) and Reverberation (RV) (p < 0.05) subscales compared to the participant's own BAHS. The Ponto Pro (Ease of Communication [EC] [p < 0.01], BN [p < 0.001], and RV [p < 0.01] subscales) and participant's own BAHS (BN [p < 0.01] and RV [p < 0.01] subscales) overall provided statistically significant benefit compared to unaided. Clinically significant benefit of 5% was present for the Ponto Pro compared to the participant's own BAHS and 10% for the Ponto Pro and the participant's own BAHS compared to unaided. The Ponto Pro's OM (p = 0.05), SDM (p = 0.05), and FDM (p < 0.01) were statistically significantly better than the Divino's OM. No significant differences existed between the Ponto Pro's OM, SDM, and FDM compared to the Divino's DM. No statistically significant differences existed between unaided, OM, SDM, or FDM. Participants preferred the Ponto Pro compared to the participant's own BAHS and the Ponto Pro and participant's own BAHS compared to unaided. The RTS of the Ponto Pro's adaptive multichannel DM was similar to the Divino's fixed hypercardioid DM, but the Ponto Pro's OM was statistically significantly better than the Divino's OM.	\N	\N
24136318	Hearing loss resulting from bilateral vestibular schwannomas (VSs) has a significant effect on the quality of life of patients with neurofibromatosis Type 2 (NF2). A national consensus protocol was produced in England as a guide for cochlear implantation (CI) and auditory brainstem implantation (ABI) in these patients. Consensus statement. English NF2 Service. Clinicians from all 4 lead NF2 units in England. A protocol for the assessment, insertion and rehabilitation of CI and ABI in NF2 patients. Patients should undergo more detailed hearing assessment once their maximum aided speech discrimination score falls below 50% in the better hearing ear. Bamford-Kowal-Bench sentence testing scores below 50% should trigger assessment for auditory implantation, as recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines on CI. Where this occurs in patients with bilateral stable VS or a unilateral stable VS where the contralateral cochlear nerve was lost at previous surgery, CI should be considered. Where VS surgery is planned, CI should be considered where cochlear nerve preservation is thought possible, otherwise an ABI should be considered. Intraoperative testing using electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses or cochlear nerve action potentials may be used to determine whether a CI or ABI is inserted. The NF2 centers in England agreed on this protocol. Multisite, prospective assessments of standardized protocols for auditory implantation in NF2 provide an essential model for evaluating candidacy and outcomes in this challenging patient population.	\N	\N
24139706	Language experience can alter perceptual abilities and the neural specialization for phonological contrasts. Here we investigated whether dialectal differences in the lexical use of pitch information lead to differences in functional lateralization for pitch processing. We measured cortical hemodynamic responses to pitch pattern changes in native speakers of Standard (Tokyo) Japanese, which has a lexical pitch accent system, and native speakers of 'accentless' dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. While the Standard Japanese speakers showed left-dominant responses in temporal regions to pitch pattern changes within words, the accentless dialects speakers did not show such left-dominance. Pitch pattern changes within harmonic-complex tones also elicited different brain activation patterns between the two groups. These results indicate that the neural processing of pitch information differs depending on the listener's native dialect, and that listeners' linguistic experiences may further affect the processing of pitch changes even for non-linguistic sounds.	\N	\N
24141311	Across all sensory modalities, the effect of context-dependent neural adaptation can be observed at every level, from receptors to perception. Nonetheless, it has long been assumed that the processing of interaural time differences, which is the primary cue for sound localization, is nonadaptive, as its outputs are mapped directly onto a hard-wired representation of space. Here we present evidence derived from in vitro and in vivo experiments in gerbils indicating that the coincidence-detector neurons in the medial superior olive modulate their sensitivity to interaural time differences through a rapid, GABA(B) receptor-mediated feedback mechanism. We show that this mechanism provides a gain control in the form of output normalization, which influences the neuronal population code of auditory space. Furthermore, psychophysical tests showed that the paradigm used to evoke neuronal GABA(B) receptor-mediated adaptation causes the perceptual shift in sound localization in humans that was expected on the basis of our physiological results in gerbils.	\N	\N
24141681	The signal processing strategy is a parameter that may influence the auditory performance of cochlear implant and is important to optimize this parameter to provide better speech perception, especially in difficult listening situations. To evaluate the individual's auditory performance using two different signal processing strategy. Prospective study with 11 prelingually deafened children with open-set speech recognition. A within-subjects design was used to compare performance with standard HiRes and HiRes 120 in three different moments. During test sessions, subject's performance was evaluated by warble-tone sound-field thresholds, speech perception evaluation, in quiet and in noise. In the silence, children S1, S4, S5, S7 showed better performance with the HiRes 120 strategy and children S2, S9, S11 showed better performance with the HiRes strategy. In the noise was also observed that some children performed better using the HiRes 120 strategy and other with HiRes. Not all children presented the same pattern of response to the different strategies used in this study, which reinforces the need to look at optimizing cochlear implant clinical programming.	\N	\N
24148845	Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are associated with auditory hyper- or hyposensitivity; atypicalities in central auditory processes, such as speech-processing and selective auditory attention; and neural connectivity deficits. We sought to investigate whether the low-level integrative processes underlying sound localization and spatial discrimination are affected in ASDs. We performed 3 behavioural experiments to probe different connecting neural pathways: 1) horizontal and vertical localization of auditory stimuli in a noisy background, 2) vertical localization of repetitive frequency sweeps and 3) discrimination of horizontally separated sound stimuli with a short onset difference (precedence effect). Ten adult participants with ASDs and 10 healthy control listeners participated in experiments 1 and 3; sample sizes for experiment 2 were 18 adults with ASDs and 19 controls. Horizontal localization was unaffected, but vertical localization performance was significantly worse in participants with ASDs. The temporal window for the precedence effect was shorter in participants with ASDs than in controls. The study was performed with adult participants and hence does not provide insight into the developmental aspects of auditory processing in individuals with ASDs. Changes in low-level auditory processing could underlie degraded performance in vertical localization, which would be in agreement with recently reported changes in the neuroanatomy of the auditory brainstem in individuals with ASDs. The results are further discussed in the context of theories about abnormal brain connectivity in individuals with ASDs.	\N	\N
24150886	Facilitatory effects have been noted between tools and the objects that they act upon (their "action recipients") across several paradigms. However, it has not been convincingly established that the motor system is directly involved in the joint visual processing of these object pairings. Here, we used the attentional blink (AB) paradigm to demonstrate privileged access to perceptual awareness for tool-action recipient object pairs and to investigate how motor affordances modulate their joint processing. We demonstrated a reduction in the size of the AB that was greater for congruent tool-action recipient pairings (e.g., hammer-nail) than for incongruent pairings (e.g., scissors-nail). Moreover, the AB was reduced only when action recipients followed their associated tool in the temporal sequence, but not when this order was reversed. Importantly, we also found that the effect was sensitive to manipulations of the motor congruence between the tool and the action recipient. First, we observed a greater reduction in the AB when the tool and action recipient were correctly aligned for action than when the tool was rotated to face away from the action recipient. Second, presenting a different tool as a distractor between the tool and action recipient target objects removed any benefit seen for congruent pairings. This was likely due to interference from the motor properties of the distractor tool that disrupted the motor synergy between the congruent tool and action recipient targets. Overall, these findings demonstrate that the contextual motoric relationship between tools and their action recipients facilitates their visual encoding and access to perceptual awareness.	\N	\N
24157488	The aim of this study was to evaluate electrode array position in relation to cochlear anatomy and its influence on hearing performance in cochlear implantees. Twenty-two patients (25 ears) with Med-El cochlear implants were included in this retrospective study. A negative correlation was observed between electrode-modiolus distance (EMD) at the cochlear base and monosyllabic word discrimination 6 months after implantation. We found no correlation between EMD and hearing outcome at 12 months. The insertion depth/cochlear perimeter ratio appeared to negatively influence the EMD at the base. Indeed, deep insertions in small cochleae appeared to yield smaller EMD and better hearing performance. This observation supports the idea of preplanning the surgery by adapting the electrode array to the length of the available scala tympani.	\N	\N
24157596	Rhythmic disturbances are a hallmark of motor speech disorders, in which the motor control deficits interfere with the outward flow of speech and by extension speech understanding. As the functions of rhythm are language-specific, breakdowns in rhythm should have language-specific consequences for communication. The goals of this paper are to (i) provide a review of the cognitive-linguistic role of rhythm in speech perception in a general sense and crosslinguistically; (ii) present new results of lexical segmentation challenges posed by different types of dysarthria in American English, and (iii) offer a framework for crosslinguistic considerations for speech rhythm disturbances in the diagnosis and treatment of communication disorders associated with motor speech disorders. This review presents theoretical and empirical reasons for considering speech rhythm as a critical component of communication deficits in motor speech disorders, and addresses the need for crosslinguistic research to explore language-universal versus language-specific aspects of motor speech disorders.	\N	\N
24157638	This study sought to determine if a monolingual English listener could rate nasality in English and in Spanish with the same proficiency as a bilingual English-Spanish listener, and to compare nasalance scores with nasality ratings. Speakers for this study were 26 bilingual English-Spanish-speaking children. Speech samples and nasalance scores were obtained simultaneously as each speaker recited one English sentence and one Spanish sentence. A monolingual listener and a bilingual listener rated nasality. For the English sentences, the intrajudge correlation coefficient was r = 0.89 for the monolingual listener and r = 0.89 for the bilingual listener. For the Spanish sentences, the intrajudge correlation coefficient was r = 0.91 for the monolingual listener and r = 0.92 for the bilingual listener. Interjudge agreement was r = 0.86 for rating English sentences and r = 0.78 for rating Spanish sentences. All correlation coefficients were significant (p < 0.001). The correlation coefficients between nasality ratings and nasalance scores were essentially the same for both listeners and both languages. A monolingual and a bilingual judge had high agreement on ratings of nasality for English and Spanish speech. The relationship between nasalance and nasality was not different across languages.	\N	\N
24157861	Quite often, magnetoencephalography (MEG) measurements are contaminated by a series of artifacts that degrade the quality of the various source localization methods applied to them. In particular, eye blinking, minor head movement and related activities are a constant source of measurement contamination. In order to solve this problem, trial selection and rejection is applied, a task that is usually performed manually. The present work shows an automatic trial selection and rejection algorithm based on clustering techniques. These techniques employ a measurement of the dissimilarity of the items belonging to a set. This measure, based on the projection of the eigenvector corresponding to the largest eigenvalue of the covariance matrix, is provided and its rationale is explained. Subsequently, covariance matrices belonging to the selected cluster are averaged and used in the well-known Linearly Constrained Minimum Variance (LCMV) Beamformer. The results show a marked improvement of the specificity of the localization algorithm compared to the application of the LCMV without clustering. The method shows a marked reduction in computational cost compared with other data cleaning procedure widely used: Independent Component Analysis (ICA). Thus, we propose clustering techniques to be used in brain localization activity algorithms.	\N	\N
24161466	A current view proposes that the right inferior frontal cortex (IFC) is particularly responsible for attentive decoding and cognitive evaluation of emotional cues in human vocalizations. Although some studies seem to support this view, an exhaustive review of all recent imaging studies points to an important functional role of both the right and the left IFC in processing vocal emotions. Second, besides a supposed predominant role of the IFC for an attentive processing and evaluation of emotional voices in IFC, these recent studies also point to a possible role of the IFC in preattentive and implicit processing of vocal emotions. The studies specifically provide evidence that both the right and the left IFC show a similar anterior-to-posterior gradient of functional activity in response to emotional vocalizations. This bilateral IFC gradient depends both on the nature or medium of emotional vocalizations (emotional prosody versus nonverbal expressions) and on the level of attentive processing (explicit versus implicit processing), closely resembling the distribution of terminal regions of distinct auditory pathways, which provide either global or dynamic acoustic information. Here we suggest a functional distribution in which several IFC subregions process different acoustic information conveyed by emotional vocalizations. Although the rostro-ventral IFC might categorize emotional vocalizations, the caudo-dorsal IFC might be specifically sensitive to their temporal features.	\N	\N
24163248	Aphasic deficits are usually only interpreted in terms of domain-specific language processes. However, effective human communication and tests that probe this complex cognitive skill are also dependent on domain-general processes. In the clinical context, it is a pragmatic observation that impaired attention and executive functions interfere with the rehabilitation of aphasia. One system that is important in cognitive control is the salience network, which includes dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and adjacent cortex in the superior frontal gyrus (midline frontal cortex). This functional imaging study assessed domain-general activity in the midline frontal cortex, which was remote from the infarct, in relation to performance on a standard test of spoken language in 16 chronic aphasic patients both before and after a rehabilitation programme. During scanning, participants heard simple sentences, with each listening trial followed immediately by a trial in which they repeated back the previous sentence. Listening to sentences in the context of a listen-repeat task was expected to activate regions involved in both language-specific processes (speech perception and comprehension, verbal working memory and pre-articulatory rehearsal) and a number of task-specific processes (including attention to utterances and attempts to overcome pre-response conflict and decision uncertainty during impaired speech perception). To visualize the same system in healthy participants, sentences were presented to them as three-channel noise-vocoded speech, thereby impairing speech perception and assessing whether this evokes domain general cognitive systems. As expected, contrasting the more difficult task of perceiving and preparing to repeat noise-vocoded speech with the same task on clear speech demonstrated increased activity in the midline frontal cortex in the healthy participants. The same region was activated in the aphasic patients as they listened to standard (undistorted) sentences. Using a region of interest defined from the data on the healthy participants, data from the midline frontal cortex was obtained from the patients. Across the group and across different scanning sessions, activity correlated significantly with the patients' communicative abilities. This correlation was not influenced by the sizes of the lesion or the patients' chronological ages. This is the first study that has directly correlated activity in a domain general system, specifically the salience network, with residual language performance in post-stroke aphasia. It provides direct evidence in support of the clinical intuition that domain-general cognitive control is an essential factor contributing to the potential for recovery from aphasic stroke.	\N	\N
24183205	To evaluate both monaural and binaural processing skills in a group of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and to determine the degree to which personal frequency modulation (radio transmission) (FM) listening systems could ameliorate their listening difficulties. Auditory temporal processing (amplitude modulation detection), spatial listening (integration of binaural difference cues), and functional hearing (speech perception in background noise) were evaluated in 20 children with ASD. Ten of these subsequently underwent a 6-week device trial in which they wore the FM system for up to 7 hours per day. Auditory temporal processing and spatial listening ability were poorer in subjects with ASD than in matched controls (temporal: P = .014 [95% CI -6.4 to -0.8 dB], spatial: P = .003 [1.0 to 4.4 dB]), and performance on both of these basic processing measures was correlated with speech perception ability (temporal: r = -0.44, P = .022; spatial: r = -0.50, P = .015). The provision of FM listening systems resulted in improved discrimination of speech in noise (P < .001 [11.6% to 21.7%]). Furthermore, both participant and teacher questionnaire data revealed device-related benefits across a range of evaluation categories including Effect of Background Noise (P = .036 [-60.7% to -2.8%]) and Ease of Communication (P = .019 [-40.1% to -5.0%]). Eight of the 10 participants who undertook the 6-week device trial remained consistent FM users at study completion. Sustained use of FM listening devices can enhance speech perception in noise, aid social interaction, and improve educational outcomes in children with ASD.	\N	\N
24216384	To investigate automatic event-related potentials (ERPs) to an auditory change in migraine patients. Auditory ERPs were recorded in 22 female patients suffering from menstrually-related migraine and in 20 age-matched control subjects, in three sessions: in the middle of the menstrual cycle, before and during menses. In each session, 200 trains of tone-bursts each including two duration deviants were presented in a passive listening condition. In all sessions, duration deviance elicited a mismatch negativity (MMN) showing no difference between the two groups. However, migraine patients showed an increased N1 orienting component to all incoming stimuli and a prolonged N2b to deviance. They also presented a different modulation of P3a amplitude along the menstrual cycle, which tended to normalise during migraine attacks. None of the studied ERP components showed a default of habituation. This passive paradigm highlighted increased automatic attention orienting to auditory changes but normal auditory sensory processing in migraineurs. Our observations suggest normal auditory processing up to attention triggering but enhanced activation of attention-related frontal networks in migraineurs.	\N	\N
24219698	In Williams Syndrome (WS), a known genetic deletion results in atypical brain function with strengths in face and language processing. We examined how genetic influences on brain activity change with development. In three studies, event-related potentials (ERPs) from large samples of children, adolescents, and adults with the full genetic deletion for WS were compared to typically developing controls, and two adults with partial deletions for WS. Studies 1 and 2 identified ERP markers of brain plasticity in WS across development. Study 3 suggested that, in adults with partial deletions for WS, specific genes may be differentially implicated in face and language processing.	\N	\N
24231421	A technology of backup alarms based on the use of a broadband signal has recently gained popularity in many countries. In this study, the performance of this broadband technology is compared to that of a conventional tonal alarm and a multi-tone alarm from a worker-safety standpoint. Field measurements of sound pressure level patterns behind heavy vehicles were performed in real work environments and psychoacoustic measurements (sound detection thresholds, equal loudness, perceived urgency and sound localization) were carried out in the laboratory with human subjects. Compared with the conventional tonal alarm, the broadband alarm generates a much more uniform sound field behind vehicles, is easier to localize in space and is judged slighter louder at representative alarm levels. Slight advantages were found with the tonal alarm for sound detection and for perceived urgency at low levels, but these benefits observed in laboratory conditions would not overcome the detrimental effects associated with the large and abrupt variations in sound pressure levels (up to 15-20 dB within short distances) observed in the field behind vehicles for this alarm, which are significantly higher than those obtained with the broadband alarm. Performance with the multi-tone alarm generally fell between that of the tonal and broadband alarms on most measures.	\N	\N
24231629	This study aimed to (1) determine the sensitivity of the electrically evoked auditory change complex (eACC) to changes in stimulating electrode position; and (2) investigate the association between results of eACC measures and behavioral electrode discrimination and their association with speech-perception performance in pediatric cochlear implant (CI) users who have auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD). Fifteen children with ANSD ranging in age between 5.4 and 18.6 years participated in this study. All subjects used Cochlear Nucleus devices. For each subject, open-set speech-perception ability was assessed using the Phonetically Balanced Kindergarten word lists presented at 60 dB SPL, using monitored live voice in a sound booth. Behavioral and objective measures of electrode discrimination were assessed in a nonclinical test environment. The stimuli used to elicit these measures were 800 msec biphasic pulse trains delivered by a direct interface to the CI. Data were collected from two basic stimulation conditions. In the standard condition, the entire pulse train was delivered to a mid-array electrode (electrode 11 or 12) at the maximum comfortable level (C level). In the change condition, the stimulus was split into two 400 msec pulse train segments presented sequentially on two different electrodes. The stimulation level of the second 400 msec pulse train was loudness balanced to the C level of the mid-array electrode used in the standard condition. The separation between the pair of stimulating electrodes was systematically varied. For behavioral electrode-discrimination measures, each subject was required to determine whether he or she heard one or two sounds for stimuli presented in different stimulation conditions. For the eACC measures, two replicates of 100 artifact-free sweeps were recorded for each stimulation condition. The eACC in response to changes in stimulating electrode position was recorded from all subjects with ANSD using direct electrical stimulation. Electrode-discrimination thresholds determined with the eACC and behavioral measures were consistent. Children with ANSD using CIs who showed poorer speech performance also required larger separations between the stimulating electrode pair to reliably elicit the eACC than subjects with better speech-perception performance. There was a robust correlation between electrode-discrimination capacities and speech-perception performances in subjects tested in this study. The effect of electrode separation on eACC amplitudes was not monotonic. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using eACC to evaluate electrode-discrimination capacities in children with ANSD. These results suggest that the eACC elicited by changes in stimulating electrode position holds great promise as an objective tool for evaluating spectral-pattern detection in such subjects, which may be predictive of their potential speech-perception performance.	\N	\N
24232062	Children with auditory neuropathy (AN) have variable hearing on pure tone testing, and the presence of speech and language delays often play a major role in the decision to offer cochlear implantation (CI) in this population. Despite this fact, the speech and language outcomes in this group after CI are not well described. This study compares speech and language outcomes after CI in a subset of the pediatric AN population that does not have a confounding cognitive disorder with those of their peers with cochlear hearing loss (CoHL). Retrospective chart review. Tertiary referral center. Seventeen pediatric patients with AN who received a CI and a group of children with CoHL who received a CI were the subjects of this study. The 2 groups demonstrated similar ages at implant. Children with cognitive delays were excluded from each group. Cochlear implantation. All subjects were evaluated preoperatively and postoperatively with standardized age appropriate speech and language measures, including the Expressive Vocabulary Test (EVT), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), and Preschool Language Scale (PLS). There was no significant difference between the groups on age of activation of the CI. Children with a diagnosis of AN had a significantly lower unaided pure tone average preoperatively as compared with children with cochlear hearing loss; however, there was no significant difference between the groups on either their preimplantation or postimplantation speech and language scores. Children with a diagnosis of AN without associated cognitive or developmental disorders have speech and language outcomes comparable to other children who received a CI.	\N	\N
24236696	Evidence in animals and humans indicates that there are sensitive periods during development, times when experience or stimulation has a greater influence on behavior and brain structure. Sensitive periods are the result of an interaction between maturational processes and experience-dependent plasticity mechanisms. Previous work from our laboratory has shown that adult musicians who begin training before the age of 7 show enhancements in behavior and white matter structure compared with those who begin later. Plastic changes in white matter and gray matter are hypothesized to co-occur; therefore, the current study investigated possible differences in gray matter structure between early-trained (ET; <7) and late-trained (LT; >7) musicians, matched for years of experience. Gray matter structure was assessed using voxel-wise analysis techniques (optimized voxel-based morphometry, traditional voxel-based morphometry, and deformation-based morphometry) and surface-based measures (cortical thickness, surface area and mean curvature). Deformation-based morphometry analyses identified group differences between ET and LT musicians in right ventral premotor cortex (vPMC), which correlated with performance on an auditory motor synchronization task and with age of onset of musical training. In addition, cortical surface area in vPMC was greater for ET musicians. These results are consistent with evidence that premotor cortex shows greatest maturational change between the ages of 6-9 years and that this region is important for integrating auditory and motor information. We propose that the auditory and motor interactions required by musical practice drive plasticity in vPMC and that this plasticity is greatest when maturation is near its peak.	\N	\N
24236753	Does temporal regularity facilitate prediction in audition? To test this, we recorded human event-related potentials to frequent standard tones and infrequent pitch deviant tones, pre-attentively delivered within isochronous and anisochronous (20% onset jitter) rapid sequences. Deviant tones were repeated, either with high or low probability. Standard tone repetition sets a first-order prediction, which is violated by deviant tone onset, leading to a first-order prediction error response (Mismatch Negativity). The response to highly probable deviant repetitions is, however, attenuated relative to less probable repetitions, reflecting the formation of higher-order sensory predictions. Results show that temporal regularity is required for higher-order predictions, but does not modulate first-order prediction error responses. Inverse solution analyses (Variable Resolution Electrical Tomography; VARETA) localized the error response attenuation to posterior regions of the left superior temporal gyrus. In a control experiment with a slower stimulus rate, we found no evidence for higher-order predictions, and again no effect of temporal information on first-order prediction error. We conclude that: (i) temporal regularity facilitates the establishing of higher-order sensory predictions, i.e. 'knowing what next', in fast auditory sequences; (ii) first-order prediction error relies predominantly on stimulus feature mismatch, reflecting the adaptive fit of fast deviance detection processes.	\N	\N
24244617	Due to their different propagation times, visual and auditory signals from external events arrive at the human sensory receptors with a disparate delay. This delay consistently varies with distance, but, despite such variability, most events are perceived as synchronic. There is, however, contradictory data and claims regarding the existence of compensatory mechanisms for distance in simultaneity judgments. In this paper we have used familiar audiovisual events--a visual walker and footstep sounds--and manipulated the number of depth cues. In a simultaneity judgment task we presented a large range of stimulus onset asynchronies corresponding to distances of up to 35 meters. We found an effect of distance over the simultaneity estimates, with greater distances requiring larger stimulus onset asynchronies, and vision always leading. This effect was stronger when both visual and auditory cues were present but was interestingly not found when depth cues were impoverished. These findings reveal that there should be an internal mechanism to compensate for audiovisual delays, which critically depends on the depth information available.	\N	\N
24257810	Remifentanil (Ultiva(®)) is a potent ultra-short acting mu-opioid receptor agonist used for perioperative pain treatment and anaesthesia. So far, it is not known how sensitive the cognitive processing of auditory perception elicited by the mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm is to opioids. The present exploratory study investigated how the opioid remifentanil modulates different stages of auditory processing as reflected in the MMN(m) and P3a(m). We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) during auditory stimulation under remifentanil or placebo infusion in 20 healthy participants. For the MMN, a gender effect was found for tones deviating in frequency (± 10%) from the standard tone. Remifentanil increased the amplitude of the frequency MMN at F3 in females but not in males. No effect of treatment was found for the MMN(m) or the novel P3a(m). These results suggest that while the bottom-up stimulus change detection system for auditory stimuli appears to be relatively insensitive to opioids, the automatic attention switch caused by the change detection seems to be modulated by the opioid system in females. The multiple deviant paradigm including novel sounds is a promising tool for investigating pharmacological manipulation of different stages of auditory processing. Furthermore, combining the two techniques will yield more specific information about the drug effects on MMN(m).	\N	\N
24259564	One of the more enduring mysteries of neuroscience is how the visual system constructs robust maps of the world that remain stable in the face of frequent eye movements. Here we show that encoding the position of objects in external space is a relatively slow process, building up over hundreds of milliseconds. We display targets to which human subjects saccade after a variable preview duration. As they saccade, the target is displaced leftwards or rightwards, and subjects report the displacement direction. When subjects saccade to targets without delay, sensitivity is poor; but if the target is viewed for 300-500 ms before saccading, sensitivity is similar to that during fixation with a strong visual mask to dampen transients. These results suggest that the poor displacement thresholds usually observed in the "saccadic suppression of displacement" paradigm are a result of the fact that the target has had insufficient time to be encoded in memory, and not a result of the action of special mechanisms conferring saccadic stability. Under more natural conditions, trans-saccadic displacement detection is as good as in fixation, when the displacement transients are masked.	\N	\N
24259673	Viewers can recognize the gist of a scene (i.e., its holistic semantic representation, such as its category) in less time than a single fixation, and backward masking has traditionally been employed as a means to determine that time course. The masks used in those paradigms are often characterized by either specific amplitude spectra only, or amplitude and phase spectra-defined structural properties. However, it remains unclear whether there would be a differential contribution of amplitude only or amplitude + phase defined image statistics to the effective backward masking of rapid scene categorization. The current study addresses this issue. Experiments 1-3 explored amplitude spectra defined contributions to category masking and revealed that the slope of the amplitude spectrum was more important for modulating scene category masking strength than amplitude orientation. Further, the masking effects followed an "amplitude spectrum slope similarity principle" whereby the more similar the amplitude spectrum slope of the mask was to the target's amplitude spectrum slope, the stronger the masking. Experiment 5 showed that, when holding mask amplitude spectrum slope approximately constant, both categorically specific unrecognizable amplitude only and amplitude + phase statistical regularities disrupted rapid scene categorization. Specifically, the masking effects observed in Experiment 5 followed a target-mask categorical dissimilarity principle whereby the more dissimilar the mask category is to the target image category, the stronger the masking. Overall, the results support the notion that amplitude only or amplitude + phase-defined image statistics differentially contribute to the effective backward masking of rapid scene gist recognition.	\N	\N
24265213	This study assesses the effects of adding low- or high-frequency information to the band-limited telephone-processed speech on bimodal listeners' telephone speech perception in quiet environments. In the proposed experiments, bimodal users were presented under quiet listening conditions with wideband speech (WB), bandpass-filtered telephone speech (300-3,400 Hz, BP), high-pass filtered speech (f > 300 Hz, HP, i.e., distorted frequency components above 3,400 Hz in telephone speech were restored), and low-pass filtered speech (f < 3,400 Hz, LP, i.e., distorted frequency components below 300 Hz in telephone speech were restored). Results indicated that in quiet environments, for all four types of stimuli, listening with both hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implant (CI) was significantly better than listening with CI alone. For both bimodal and CI-alone modes, there were no statistically significant differences between the LP and BP scores and between the WB and HP scores. However, the HP scores were significantly better than the BP scores. In quiet conditions, both CI alone and bimodal listening achieved the largest benefits when telephone speech was augmented with high rather than low-frequency information. These findings provide support for the design of algorithms that would extend higher frequency information, at least in quiet environments.	\N	\N
24268879	Timing performance becomes less precise for longer intervals, which makes it difficult to achieve simultaneity in synchronisation with a rhythm. The metrical structure of music, characterised by hierarchical levels of binary or ternary subdivisions of time, may function to increase precision by providing additional timing information when the subdivisions are explicit. This hypothesis was tested by comparing synchronisation performance across different numbers of metrical levels conveyed by loudness of sounds, such that the slowest level was loudest and the fastest was softest. Fifteen participants moved their hand with one of 9 inter-beat intervals (IBIs) ranging from 524 to 3,125 ms in 4 metrical level (ML) conditions ranging from 1 (one movement for each sound) to 4 (one movement for every 8th sound). The lowest relative variability (SD/IBI<1.5%) was obtained for the 3 longest IBIs (1600-3,125 ms) and MLs 3-4, significantly less than the smallest value (4-5% at 524-1024 ms) for any ML 1 condition in which all sounds are identical. Asynchronies were also more negative with higher ML. In conclusion, metrical subdivision provides information that facilitates temporal performance, which suggests an underlying neural multi-level mechanism capable of integrating information across levels.	\N	\N
24270967	An important parameter for characterization of the acoustic quality of closed rooms is reverberation. There is a rising interest in evaluating the ability of cochlear implant (CI) users to understand speech in real-world environments. Whereas the influence of noise on speech perception has been widely investigated, much less is known about the detrimental effect of reverberation. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of reverberation time on the speech perception of CI users and subjects with normal hearing. A reverberated version of the sentences of the Oldenburg sentence test (OLSA) which is a widely used German test to measure speech reception thresholds (SRT) in cochlear implant users was generated using professional audio processing software. The reverberation times used were 0.7, 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 s. For these four reverberation times and for a non-reverberated control condition, the SRT was measured in eight adult CI users and in eight subjects with normal hearing. To characterize the detrimental effect of reverberation the SRT differences between the reverberated and non-reverberated conditions were calculated. These SRT differences revealed a significant effect of reverberation in CI users with, e.g. a mean SRT increase of 2.9 dB in CI users and 0.9 dB in subjects with normal hearing for a reverberation time of 0.7 s. A strong correlation was found between the SRT increase and the SRT in the non-reverberated condition, highlighting the problems of poor performers in reverberant environments. The results of the current investigation indicated that reverberation results in decreased speech understanding of CI users.	\N	\N
24274362	Infant vocalizations and "looming sounds" are classes of environmental stimuli that are critically important to survival but can have dramatically different emotional valences. Here, we simultaneously presented listeners with a stationary infant vocalization and a 3D virtual looming tone for which listeners made auditory time-to-arrival judgments. Negatively valenced infant cries produced more cautious (anticipatory) estimates of auditory arrival time of the tone over a no-vocalization control. Positively valenced laughs had the opposite effect, and across all conditions, men showed smaller anticipatory biases than women. In Experiment 2, vocalization-matched vocoded noise stimuli did not influence concurrent auditory time-to-arrival estimates compared with a control condition. In Experiment 3, listeners estimated the egocentric distance of a looming tone that stopped before arriving. For distant stopping points, women estimated the stopping point as closer when the tone was presented with an infant cry than when it was presented with a laugh. For near stopping points, women showed no differential effect of vocalization type. Men did not show differential effects of vocalization type at either distance. Our results support the idea that both the sex of the listener and the emotional valence of infant vocalizations can influence auditory motion perception and can modulate motor responses to other behaviorally relevant environmental sounds. We also find support for previous work that shows sex differences in emotion processing are diminished under conditions of higher stress.	\N	\N
24293020	Multisensory enhancement, as a facilitation phenomenon, is responsible for superior behavioral performance when an individual is responding to cross-modal versus modality-specific stimuli. However, the event-related potential (ERP) counterparts of behavioral multisensory enhancement are not well known. We recorded ERPs and behavioral data from 14 healthy volunteers with three types of target stimuli (modality-specific, bimodal, and trimodal) to examine the spatio-temporal electrophysiological characteristics of multisensory enhancement by comparing behavioral data with ERPs. We found a strong correlation between P3 latency and behavioral performance in terms of reaction time (RT) (R = 0.98, P <0.001), suggesting that P3 latency constitutes a temporal measure of behavioral multisensory enhancement. In addition, a fast RT and short P3 latency were found when comparing the modality-specific visual target with the modality-specific auditory and somatosensory targets. Our results indicate that behavioral multisensory enhancement can be identified by the latency and source distribution of the P3 component. These findings may advance our understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of multisensory enhancement.	\N	\N
24306440	Vection is the illusion of self-motion in the absence of real physical movement. The aim of the present study was to analyze how multisensory inputs (visual and auditory) contribute to the perception of vection. Participants were seated in a stationary position in front of a large, curved projection display and were exposed to a virtual scene that constantly rotated around the yaw-axis, simulating a 360° rotation. The virtual scene contained either only visual, only auditory, or a combination of visual and auditory cues. Additionally, simulated rotation speed (90°/s vs. 60°/s) and the number of sound sources (1 vs. 3) were varied for all three stimulus conditions. All participants were exposed to every condition in a randomized order. Data specific to vection latency, vection strength, the severity of motion sickness (MS), and postural steadiness were collected. Results revealed reduced vection onset latencies and increased vection strength when auditory cues were added to the visual stimuli, whereas MS and postural steadiness were not affected by the presence of auditory cues. Half of the participants reported experiencing auditorily induced vection, although the sensation was rather weak and less robust than visually induced vection. Results demonstrate that the combination of visual and auditory cues can enhance the sensation of vection.	\N	\N
24313638	This study examined the time-course of reading single words in children and adults using masked repetition priming and the recording of event-related potentials. The N250 and N400 repetition priming effects were used to characterize form- and meaning-level processing, respectively. Children had larger amplitude N250 effects than adults for both shorter and longer duration primes. Children did not differ from adults on the N400 effect. The difference on the N250 suggests that automaticity for form processing is still maturing in children relative to adults, while the lack of differentiation on the N400 effect suggests that meaning processing is relatively mature by late childhood. The overall similarity in the children's repetition priming effects to adults' effects is in line with theories of reading acquisition, according to which children rapidly transition to an orthographic strategy for fast access to semantic information from print.	\N	\N
24315729	Goal-directed behavior is well-known to show declines in elderly individuals, possibly because of alterations in dopaminergic neural transmission. The dopaminergic system is modulated by a number of other different factors. One of these factors, which has attracted a considerable amount of interest in neurobiology, but has only rarely been examined with respect to its possible modulatory role for cognitive functions in elderly individuals, is latent Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) infection. Latent T. gondii infection may be of relevance to goal-directed behavior as it alters dopaminergic neural transmission. We examine goal-directed behavior in T. gondii IgG positive and negative elderly subjects in auditory distraction paradigm. We apply event-related potentials to examine which cognitive subprocesses are affected by latent T. gondii infection on a neurophysiological level. We show that latent T. gondii infection compromises the management of auditory distraction in elderly by specifically delaying processes of attentional allocation and disengagement. The results show that latent T. gondii infection is neglected but an important neurobiological modulator of cognitive functions in elderly individuals.	\N	\N
24320112	There are increasing reports that individual variation in behavioral and neurophysiological measures of infant speech processing predicts later language outcomes, and specifically concurrent or subsequent vocabulary size. If such findings are held up under scrutiny, they could both illuminate theoretical models of language development and contribute to the prediction of communicative disorders. A qualitative, systematic review of this emergent literature illustrated the variety of approaches that have been used and highlighted some conceptual problems regarding the measurements. A quantitative analysis of the same data established that the bivariate relation was significant, with correlations of similar strength to those found for well-established nonlinguistic predictors of language. Further exploration of infant speech perception predictors, particularly from a methodological perspective, is recommended.	\N	\N
24321583	The voice is a primary work tool for call center operators, but the main risk factors for voice disorders in this category have not yet been clarified. This study aimed to analyze the vocal behavior in call center operators and search for correlations between the daily voice dose and the self-perceived voice-related handicap. Prospective. Ninety-two call center operators (aged 24-50 years) underwent ambulatory phonation monitoring during a working day and were administered the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) questionnaire and a questionnaire concerning smoking habits, symptoms, and extrawork activities requiring intensive voice use. Mean percentage phonation time (PT) during work was 14.74% and ranged from 4% to 31%. There was a significant difference between the percentage PT in working time and in extrawork time; however, subjects with high percentage PT in working time maintained a high value also in extrawork time. The mean PT was 87.5 ± 35.8 minutes and was not correlated with age, gender, number of work hours, symptoms, extraprofessional voice use, and VHI scores. The mean amplitude was significantly higher in subjects with longer PT and higher pitch (P < 0.001). VHI score (median = 9) was slightly higher than in the general population but not related to the number of work hours, indicating that work time was not a critical factor in causing the perception of voice problems. Our study provides data about the voice behavior of a large cohort of call center operators and demonstrates that the number of work hours and the percentage PT are not statistically related to the perception of voice disturbances in this working category.	\N	\N
24323099	In the study of the spatial characteristics of the visual channels, the power spectrum model of visual masking is one of the most widely used. When the task is to detect a signal masked by visual noise, this classical model assumes that the signal and the noise are previously processed by a bank of linear channels and that the power of the signal at threshold is proportional to the power of the noise passing through the visual channel that mediates detection. The model also assumes that this visual channel will have the highest ratio of signal power to noise power at its output. According to this, there are masking conditions where the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) occurs in a channel centered in a spatial frequency different from the spatial frequency of the signal (off-frequency looking). Under these conditions the channel mediating detection could vary with the type of noise used in the masking experiment and this could affect the estimation of the shape and the bandwidth of the visual channels. It is generally believed that notched noise, white noise and double bandpass noise prevent off-frequency looking, and high-pass, low-pass and bandpass noises can promote it independently of the channel's shape. In this study, by means of a procedure that finds the channel that maximizes the SNR at its output, we performed numerical simulations using the power spectrum model to study the characteristics of masking caused by six types of one-dimensional noise (white, high-pass, low-pass, bandpass, notched, and double bandpass) for two types of channel's shape (symmetric and asymmetric). Our simulations confirm that (1) high-pass, low-pass, and bandpass noises do not prevent the off-frequency looking, (2) white noise satisfactorily prevents the off-frequency looking independently of the shape and bandwidth of the visual channel, and interestingly we proved for the first time that (3) notched and double bandpass noises prevent off-frequency looking only when the noise cutoffs around the spatial frequency of the signal match the shape of the visual channel (symmetric or asymmetric) involved in the detection. In order to test the explanatory power of the model with empirical data, we performed six visual masking experiments. We show that this model, with only two free parameters, fits the empirical masking data with high precision. Finally, we provide equations of the power spectrum model for six masking noises used in the simulations and in the experiments.	\N	\N
24336606	Sensory-specific cortices appear to be sensitive to information from another modality. Here we investigate whether the human brain automatically extracts the phonological information in visual words in early visual processing. We continuously presented native Chinese speakers peripherally with Chinese homophone characters in an oddball paradigm, while they performed a visual detection task presented in the centre of the visual field. We found the lexical tone phonology embedded in the characters is processed automatically by the brain of native speakers, as revealed by whole-head electrical recordings of the mismatch negativity (MMN). Source solution further revealed the MMN involved the neural activations from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex (130-460 ms). The spatial-temporal dynamics indicate a visual-auditory interaction in the early, automatic processing of phonological information in visual words.	\N	\N
24349800	Perceptual learning can be specific to a trained stimulus or optimally generalized to novel stimuli with the breadth of generalization being imperative for how we structure perceptual training programs. Adapting an established auditory interval discrimination paradigm to utilise complex signals, we trained human adults on a standard interval for either 2, 4, or 10 days. We then tested the standard, alternate frequency, interval, and stereo input conditions to evaluate the rapidity of specific learning and breadth of generalization over the time course. In comparison with previous research using simple stimuli, the speed of perceptual learning and breadth of generalization were more rapid and greater in magnitude, including novel generalization to an alternate temporal interval within stimulus type. We also investigated the long term maintenance of learning and found that specific and generalized learning was maintained over 3 and 6 months. We discuss these findings regarding stimulus complexity in perceptual learning and how they can inform the development of effective training protocols.	\N	\N
24361298	Prestin, the motor protein of cochlear outer hair cells, was identified 14 years ago. Prestin-based outer hair cell motility is responsible for the exquisite sensitivity and frequency selectivity seen in the mammalian cochlea. Prestin is the 5th member of an eleven-member membrane transporter superfamily of SLC26A proteins. Unlike its paralogs, which are capable of transporting anions across the cell membrane, prestin primarily functions as a motor protein with unique capability of performing direct and reciprocal electromechanical conversion on microsecond time scale. Significant progress in the understanding of its structure and the molecular mechanism has been made in recent years using electrophysiological, biochemical, comparative genomics, structural bioinformatics, molecular dynamics simulation, site-directed mutagenesis and domain-swapping techniques. This article reviews recent advances of the structural and functional properties of prestin with focus on the areas that are critical but still controversial in understanding the molecular mechanism of how prestin works: The structural domains for voltage sensing and interaction with anions and for conformational change. Future research directions and potential application of prestin are also discussed. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled <Annual Reviews 2014>.	\N	\N
24365660	SIRT1 is a highly conserved NAD(+)-dependent protein deacetylase known to have protective effects against a variety of age-related diseases. However, there is a lack of information concerning SIRT1 expression in the cochlea and auditory cortex of C57BL/6 mice, a mouse model of age-related hearing loss. Using RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry, we show that SIRT1 is abundantly expressed in the inner hair cells, strial marginal cells, strial intermediate cells, type I and type IV fibrocytes of the spiral ligament and spiral ganglion neurons. In addition, moderate SIRT1 is also detected in the outer hair cells and neurons of the auditory cortex. Associated with elevated hearing thresholds and hair cells loss during aging, there is also a significant reduction of SIRT1 expression in the cochlea and auditory cortex. The expression pattern of SIRT1 in the peripheral and central auditory system suggests that SIRT1 may play an important role in auditory function and therefore may serve as a protective molecule against age-related hearing loss.	\N	\N
24383225	In current terminology, auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is a disease involving the disruption of the temporal coding of acoustic signals in auditory nerve fibres, resulting in the impairment of auditory perceptions that rely on temporal cues. There is debate about almost every aspect of the disorder, including aetiology, lesion sites, and the terminology used to describe it. ANSD is a heterogeneous disease despite similar audiological findings. The absence of an auditory brainstem response (ABR) and the presence of otoacoustic emissions (OAE) suggest an ANSD profile. However, to determine the exact anatomical site of the disorder, more in-depth audiological and electrophysiological tests must be combined with imaging, genetics and neurological examinations. Greater diagnostic specificity is therefore needed to provide these patients with more adequate treatment.	\N	\N
24384079	Previous research has suggested that electrically coupled frequency modulation (FM) systems substantially improved speech-recognition performance in noise in individuals with cochlear implants (CIs). However, there is limited evidence to support the use of electromagnetically coupled (neck loop) FM receivers with contemporary CI sound processors containing telecoils. The primary goal of this study was to compare speech-recognition performance in noise and subjective ratings of adolescents and adults using one of three contemporary CI sound processors coupled to electromagnetically and electrically coupled FM receivers from Oticon. A repeated-measures design was used to compare speech-recognition performance in noise and subjective ratings without and with the FM systems across three test sessions (Experiment 1) and to compare performance at different FM-gain settings (Experiment 2). Descriptive statistics were used in Experiment 3 to describe output differences measured through a CI sound processor. Experiment 1 included nine adolescents or adults with unilateral or bilateral Advanced Bionics Harmony (n = 3), Cochlear Nucleus 5 (n = 3), and MED-EL OPUS 2 (n = 3) CI sound processors. In Experiment 2, seven of the original nine participants were tested. In Experiment 3, electroacoustic output was measured from a Nucleus 5 sound processor when coupled to the electromagnetically coupled Oticon Arc neck loop and electrically coupled Oticon R2. In Experiment 1, participants completed a field trial with each FM receiver and three test sessions that included speech-recognition performance in noise and a subjective rating scale. In Experiment 2, participants were tested in three receiver-gain conditions. Results in both experiments were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance. Experiment 3 involved electroacoustic-test measures to determine the monitor-earphone output of the CI alone and CI coupled to the two FM receivers. The results in Experiment 1 suggested that both FM receivers provided significantly better speech-recognition performance in noise than the CI alone; however, the electromagnetically coupled receiver provided significantly better speech-recognition performance in noise and better ratings in some situations than the electrically coupled receiver when set to the same gain. In Experiment 2, the primary analysis suggested significantly better speech-recognition performance in noise for the neck-loop versus electrically coupled receiver, but a second analysis, using the best performance across gain settings for each device, revealed no significant differences between the two FM receivers. Experiment 3 revealed monitor-earphone output differences in the Nucleus 5 sound processor for the two FM receivers when set to the +8 setting used in Experiment 1 but equal output when the electrically coupled device was set to a +16 gain setting and the electromagnetically coupled device was set to the +8 gain setting. Individuals with contemporary sound processors may show more favorable speech-recognition performance in noise electromagnetically coupled FM systems (i.e., Oticon Arc), which is most likely related to the input processing and signal processing pathway within the CI sound processor for direct input versus telecoil input. Further research is warranted to replicate these findings with a larger sample size and to develop and validate a more objective approach to fitting FM systems to CI sound processors.	\N	\N
24384084	To validate diagnostic pure-tone audiometry in schools without a sound-treated environment using an audiometer that incorporates insert earphones covered by circumaural earcups and real-time environmental noise monitoring. A within-subject repeated measures design was employed to compare air (250 to 8000 Hz) and bone (250 to 4000 Hz) conduction pure-tone thresholds measured in natural school environments with thresholds measured in a sound-treated booth. 149 children (54% female) with an average age of 6.9 yr (SD = 0.6; range = 5-8). Average difference between the booth and natural environment thresholds was 0.0 dB (SD = 3.6) for air conduction and 0.1 dB (SD = 3.1) for bone conduction. Average absolute difference between the booth and natural environment was 2.1 dB (SD = 2.9) for air conduction and 1.6 dB (SD = 2.7) for bone conduction. Almost all air- (96%) and bone-conduction (97%) threshold comparisons between the natural and booth test environments were within 0 to 5 dB. No statistically significant differences between thresholds recorded in the natural and booth environments for air- and bone-conduction audiometry were found (p > 0.01). Diagnostic air- and bone-conduction audiometry in schools, without a sound-treated room, is possible with sufficient earphone attenuation and real-time monitoring of environmental noise. Audiological diagnosis on-site for school screening may address concerns of false-positive referrals and poor follow-up compliance and allow for direct referral to audiological and/or medical intervention.	\N	\N
24386403	The objective was to determine if one of the neural temporal features, neural adaptation, can account for the across-subject variability in behavioral measures of temporal processing and speech perception performance in cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Neural adaptation is the phenomenon in which neural responses are the strongest at the beginning of the stimulus and decline following stimulus repetition (e.g., stimulus trains). It is unclear how this temporal property of neural responses relates to psychophysical measures of temporal processing (e.g., gap detection) or speech perception. The adaptation of the electrical compound action potential (ECAP) was obtained using 1000 pulses per second (pps) biphasic pulse trains presented directly to the electrode. The adaptation of the late auditory evoked potential (LAEP) was obtained using a sequence of 1-kHz tone bursts presented acoustically, through the cochlear implant. Behavioral temporal processing was measured using the Random Gap Detection Test at the most comfortable listening level. Consonant nucleus consonant (CNC) word and AzBio sentences were also tested. The results showed that both ECAP and LAEP display adaptive patterns, with a substantial across-subject variability in the amount of adaptation. No correlations between the amount of neural adaptation and gap detection thresholds (GDTs) or speech perception scores were found. The correlations between the degree of neural adaptation and demographic factors showed that CI users having more LAEP adaptation were likely to be those implanted at a younger age than CI users with less LAEP adaptation. The results suggested that neural adaptation, at least this feature alone, cannot account for the across-subject variability in temporal processing ability in the CI users. However, the finding that the LAEP adaptive pattern was less prominent in the CI group compared to the normal hearing group may suggest the important role of normal adaptation pattern at the cortical level in speech perception.	\N	\N
24389260	The left temporal pole (LTP) has been posited to be a heteromodal hub for retrieving proper names for semantically unique entities. Previous investigations have demonstrated that LTP is important for retrieving names for famous faces and unique landmarks. However, whether such a relationship would hold for unique entities apprehended through stimulus modalities other than vision has not been well established, and such evidence is critical to adjudicate claims about the "heteromodal" nature of the LTP. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the LTP would be important for naming famous voices. Individuals with LTP lesions were asked to recognize and name famous persons speaking in audio clips. Relative to neurologically normal and brain damaged comparison participants, patients with LTP lesions were able to recognize famous persons from their voices normally, but were selectively impaired in naming famous persons from their voices. The current results extend previous research and provide further support for the notion that the LTP is a convergence region serving as a heteromodal hub for retrieving the names of semantically unique entities.	\N	\N
24391928	The brain is able to realign asynchronous signals that approximately coincide in both space and time. Given that many experience-based links between visual and auditory stimuli are established in the absence of spatiotemporal proximity, we investigated whether or not temporal realignment arises in these conditions. Participants received a 3-min exposure to visual and auditory stimuli that were separated by 706 ms and appeared either from the same (Experiment 1) or from different spatial positions (Experiment 2). A simultaneity judgment task (SJ) was administered right afterwards. Temporal realignment between vision and audition was observed, in both Experiment 1 and 2, when comparing the participants' SJs after this exposure phase with those obtained after a baseline exposure to audiovisual synchrony. However, this effect was present only when the visual stimuli preceded the auditory stimuli during the exposure to asynchrony. A similar pattern of results (temporal realignment after exposure to visual-leading asynchrony but not after exposure to auditory-leading asynchrony) was obtained using temporal order judgments (TOJs) instead of SJs (Experiment 3). Taken together, these results suggest that temporal recalibration still occurs for visual and auditory stimuli that fall clearly outside the so-called temporal window for multisensory integration and appear from different spatial positions. This temporal realignment may be modulated by long-term experience with the kind of asynchrony (vision-leading) that we most frequently encounter in the outside world (e.g., while perceiving distant events).	\N	\N
24398259	There is currently no consensus regarding what measures are most valid to demonstrate perceptual processing without awareness. Likewise, whether conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms or lie on a continuum remains a matter of debate. Here, we addressed these issues by comparing the time courses of subjective reports, objective discrimination performance and response priming during meta-contrast masking, under similar attentional demands. We found these to be strikingly similar, suggesting that conscious perception and unconscious processing cannot be dissociated by their time course. Our results also demonstrate that unconscious processing, indexed by response priming, occurs, and that objective discrimination performance indexes the same conscious processes as subjective visibility reports. Finally, our results underscore the role of attention by showing that how much attention the stimulus receives relative to the mask, rather than whether processing is measured by conscious discrimination or by priming, determines the time course of meta-contrast masking.	\N	\N
24402676	While deafness-induced plasticity has been investigated in the visual and auditory domains, not much is known about language processing in audiovisual multimodal environments for patients with restored hearing via cochlear implant (CI) devices. Here, we examined the effect of agreeing or conflicting visual inputs on auditory processing in deaf patients equipped with degraded artificial hearing. Ten post-lingually deafened CI users with good performance, along with matched control subjects, underwent H 2 (15) O-positron emission tomography scans while carrying out a behavioral task requiring the extraction of speech information from unimodal auditory stimuli, bimodal audiovisual congruent stimuli, and incongruent stimuli. Regardless of congruency, the control subjects demonstrated activation of the auditory and visual sensory cortices, as well as the superior temporal sulcus, the classical multisensory integration area, indicating a bottom-up multisensory processing strategy. Compared to CI users, the control subjects exhibited activation of the right ventral premotor-supramarginal pathway. In contrast, CI users activated primarily the visual cortices more in the congruent audiovisual condition than in the null condition. In addition, compared to controls, CI users displayed an activation focus in the right amygdala for congruent audiovisual stimuli. The most notable difference between the two groups was an activation focus in the left inferior frontal gyrus in CI users confronted with incongruent audiovisual stimuli, suggesting top-down cognitive modulation for audiovisual conflict. Correlation analysis revealed that good speech performance was positively correlated with right amygdala activity for the congruent condition, but negatively correlated with bilateral visual cortices regardless of congruency. Taken together these results suggest that for multimodal inputs, cochlear implant users are more vision-reliant when processing congruent stimuli and are disturbed more by visual distractors when confronted with incongruent audiovisual stimuli. To cope with this multimodal conflict, CI users activate the left inferior frontal gyrus to adopt a top-down cognitive modulation pathway, whereas normal hearing individuals primarily adopt a bottom-up strategy.	\N	\N
24405904	Although HIV is associated with decreased emotional and cognitive functioning, the mechanisms through which affective changes can alter cognitive processes in HIV-infected individuals are unknown. We aimed to clarify this question through testing the extent to which emotionally negative stimuli prime attention to a subsequent infrequently occurring auditory tone in HIV+ compared to HIV- females. Attention to emotional compared to non-emotional pictures was measured via the LPP ERP. Subsequent attention was indexed through the N1 and late processing negativity ERP. We also assessed mood and cognitive functioning in both groups. In HIV- females, emotionally negative pictures, compared to neutral pictures, resulted in an enhanced LPP to the pictures and an enhanced N1 to subsequent tones. The HIV+ group did not show a difference in the LPP measure between picture categories, and accordingly, did not show a priming effect to the subsequent infrequent tones. The ERP findings, combined with neuropsychological deficits, suggest that HIV+ females show impairments in attention to emotionally-laden stimuli and that this impairment might be related to a loss of affective priming. This study is the first to provide physiological evidence that the LPP, a measure of attention to emotionally-charged visual stimuli, is reduced in HIV-infected individuals. These results set the stage for future work aimed at localizing brain activation to emotional stimuli in HIV+ individuals.	\N	\N
24414279	Speech production, both overt and covert, down-regulates the activation of auditory cortex. This is thought to be due to forward prediction of the sensory consequences of speech, contributing to a feedback control mechanism for speech production. Critically, however, these regulatory effects should be specific to speech content to enable accurate speech monitoring. To determine the extent to which such forward prediction is content-specific, we recorded the brain's neuromagnetic responses to heard multisyllabic pseudowords during covert rehearsal in working memory, contrasted with a control task. The cortical auditory processing of target syllables was significantly suppressed during rehearsal compared with control, but only when they matched the rehearsed items. This critical specificity to speech content enables accurate speech monitoring by forward prediction, as proposed by current models of speech production. The one-to-one phonological motor-to-auditory mappings also appear to serve the maintenance of information in phonological working memory. Further findings of right-hemispheric suppression in the case of whole-item matches and left-hemispheric enhancement for last-syllable mismatches suggest that speech production is monitored by 2 auditory-motor circuits operating on different timescales: Finer grain in the left versus coarser grain in the right hemisphere. Taken together, our findings provide hemisphere-specific evidence of the interface between inner and heard speech.	\N	\N
24423729	Across the animal kingdom, sensations resulting from an animal's own actions are processed differently from sensations resulting from external sources, with self-generated sensations being suppressed. A forward model has been proposed to explain this process across sensorimotor domains. During vocalization, reduced processing of one's own speech is believed to result from a comparison of speech sounds to corollary discharges of intended speech production generated from efference copies of commands to speak. Until now, anatomical and functional evidence validating this model in humans has been indirect. Using EEG with anatomical MRI to facilitate source localization, we demonstrate that inferior frontal gyrus activity during the 300ms before speaking was associated with suppressed processing of speech sounds in auditory cortex around 100ms after speech onset (N1). These findings indicate that an efference copy from speech areas in prefrontal cortex is transmitted to auditory cortex, where it is used to suppress processing of anticipated speech sounds. About 100ms after N1, a subsequent auditory cortical component (P2) was not suppressed during talking. The combined N1 and P2 effects suggest that although sensory processing is suppressed as reflected in N1, perceptual gaps may be filled as reflected in the lack of P2 suppression, explaining the discrepancy between sensory suppression and preserved sensory experiences. These findings, coupled with the coherence between relevant brain regions before and during speech, provide new mechanistic understanding of the complex interactions between action planning and sensory processing that provide for differentiated tagging and monitoring of one's own speech, processes disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.	\N	\N
24424293	To assess the role of the efferent auditory system by inhibition of contralateral otoacoustic emission in dyslexic children with auditory processing disorders. The study sample was 34 children: 17 with dyslexia and 17 age-matched controls. Sensitive speech tests (low-pass filtered, time-compressed, distorted and dichotic) were performed to assess coexisting auditory processing disorder. Distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) values were measured in basal condition and with contralateral broadband noise signal delivered via an earphone transducer at 60 dB SPL. The lower scores at sensitive speech testing confirmed the association of an auditory processing disorder in the dyslexic children. DPOAE values were significantly attenuated by contralateral inhibition only in the control group (p=0.001; dyslexics, p=0.19); attenuation was not significant at any frequency in the dyslexic group. The differences in DPOAE attenuation between the groups, although not statistically significant, suggest alterations in the auditory efferent system in the dyslexic population. These alterations may affect language perception. If confirmed in further studies with larger samples, these results could provide insight into a possible pathophysiological background of dyslexia.	\N	\N
24434131	Cochlear implantation provides children with a significant hearing loss the potential to engage in phonological processing via audition; however these children can still have poor or inadequately detailed mental (phonological) representations of speech and as such phonological awareness and reading difficulties. Heterogeneous participant profiles, particularly varying modes of communication have clouded the research regarding reading outcomes of children using a cochlear implant. The objective of this study was to explore the relationships between word reading and reading comprehension outcomes, and a range of variables of a relatively homogenous group of children using cochlear implants. Forty-seven oral communicating children using a cochlear implant and who had attended auditory-verbal therapy served as participants. They were administered a comprehensive battery of 10 different assessments covering 22 different tasks across the domains of speech perception, speech production, language, phonological processing and reading. Correlation and principal component analyses were used to examine the relationships between outcome areas. Audiologic and demographic variables were not significantly related to reading outcomes, with the exception of family size. Language and word reading were most strongly related to reading comprehension, while phonological awareness and language were most strongly related to word reading. It is proposed that the development of well-specified phonological representations might underlie these relationships. For oral communicating children using a cochlear implant, good reading outcomes are linked to better language and phonological processing abilities.	\N	\N
24437764	Preferences of concert hall acoustics are explored with preference mapping. The investigation is performed on previously gathered data from individual vocabulary profiling of nine concert halls and three pieces of symphonic music, namely, excerpts of compositions by Beethoven, Bruckner, and Mozart. Individual preferences are regressed onto a latent three-dimensional sensory space obtained by multiple factor analysis of descriptive sensory data. Overlaying individually estimated preference surfaces onto one another produces preference maps which illustrates both the overall preference of the stimuli as well as differences between individual listeners. A comparison of the maps between music motifs illustrates how each music signal affects the weighting of different acoustical qualities in preference judgments. Differences in preferences between individuals are pronounced in the excerpts of Beethoven and Bruckner, while the responses are more homogeneous for Mozart music motif. Overall, proximity is identified as the main aspect associated with preference, but also loudness, envelopment, and bass are important. A correlation analysis of objective parameters and subjective perceptions substantiates the importance of lateral sound energy for good concert hall acoustics. Particularly, the lateral early energy fraction at high frequencies is found to be associated with the perception of proximity, and hence, also with preference.	\N	\N
24437852	The purpose of this study was to determine the overall impact of early and late reflections on the intelligibility of reverberated speech by cochlear implant listeners. Two specific reverberation times were assessed. For each reverberation time, sentences were presented in three different conditions wherein the target signal was filtered through the early, late or entire part of the acoustic impulse response. Results obtained with seven cochlear implant listeners indicated that while early reflections neither enhanced nor reduced overall speech perception performance, late reflections severely reduced speech intelligibility in both reverberant conditions tested.	\N	\N
24453339	The temporal envelope of speech is an important cue contributing to speech intelligibility. Theories about the neural foundations of speech perception postulate that the left and right auditory cortices are functionally specialized in analyzing speech envelope information at different time scales: the right hemisphere is thought to be specialized in processing syllable rate modulations, whereas a bilateral or left hemispheric specialization is assumed for phoneme rate modulations. Recently, it has been found that this functional hemispheric asymmetry is different in individuals with language-related disorders such as dyslexia. Most studies were, however, performed in adults and school-aged children, and only a little is known about how neural auditory processing at these specific rates manifests and develops in very young children before reading acquisition. Yet, studying hemispheric specialization for processing syllable and phoneme rate modulations in preliterate children may reveal early neural markers for dyslexia. In the present study, human cortical evoked potentials to syllable and phoneme rate modulations were measured in 5-year-old children at high and low hereditary risk for dyslexia. The results demonstrate a right hemispheric preference for processing syllable rate modulations and a symmetric pattern for phoneme rate modulations, regardless of hereditary risk for dyslexia. These results suggest that, while hemispheric specialization for processing syllable rate modulations seems to be mature in prereading children, hemispheric specialization for phoneme rate modulation processing may still be developing. These findings could have important implications for the development of phonological and reading skills.	\N	\N
24456178	Spectral modulation detection (SMD) provides a psychoacoustic estimate of spectral resolution. The SMD threshold for an implanted ear is highly correlated with speech understanding and is thus a non-linguistic, psychoacoustic index of speech understanding. This measure, however, is time and equipment intensive and thus not practical for clinical use. Thus the purpose of the current study was to investigate the efficacy of a quick SMD task with the following three study aims: (1) to investigate the correlation between the long psychoacoustic, and quick SMD tasks, (2) to determine the test/retest variability of the quick SMD task, and (3) to evaluate the relationship between the quick SMD task and speech understanding. This study included a within-subjects, repeated-measures design. Seventy-six adult cochlear implant recipients participated. The results were as follows: (1) there was a significant correlation between the long psychoacoustic, and quick SMD tasks, (2) the test-retest variability of the quick SMD task was highly significant and, (3) there was a significant positive correlation between the quick SMD task and monosyllabic word recognition. The results of this study represent the direct clinical translation of a research-proven task of SMD into a quick, clinically feasible format.	\N	\N
24457086	Due to extensive variability in the phonetic realizations of words, there may be few or no proximal spectro-temporal cues that identify a word's onset or even its presence. Dilley and Pitt (2010) showed that the rate of context speech, distal from a to-be-recognized word, can have a sizeable effect on whether or not a word is perceived. This investigation considered whether there is a distinct role for distal rhythm in the disappearing word effect. Listeners heard sentences that had a grammatical interpretation with or without a critical function word (FW) and transcribed what they heard (e.g., are in Jill got quite mad when she heard there are birds can be removed and Jill got quite mad when she heard their birds is still grammatical). Consistent with a perceptual grouping hypothesis, participants were more likely to report critical FWs when distal rhythm (repeating ternary or binary pitch patterns) matched the rhythm in the FW-containing region than when it did not. Notably, effects of distal rhythm and distal rate were additive. Results demonstrate a novel effect of distal rhythm on the amount of lexical material listeners hear, highlighting the importance of distal timing information and providing new constraints for models of spoken word recognition.	\N	\N
24464088	Bimodal stimulation, or stimulation of a cochlear implant (CI) together with a contralateral hearing aid (HA), can improve speech perception in noise However, this benefit is variable, and some individuals even experience interference with bimodal stimulation. One contributing factor to this variability may be differences in binaural spectral integration (BSI) due to abnormal auditory experience. CI programming introduces interaural pitch mismatches, in which the frequencies allocated to the electrodes (and contralateral HA) differ from the electrically stimulated cochlear frequencies. Previous studies have shown that some, but not all, CI users adapt pitch perception to reduce this mismatch. The purpose of this study was to determine whether broadened BSI may also reduce the perception of mismatch. Interaural pitch mismatches and dichotic pitch fusion ranges were measured in 21 bimodal CI users. Seventeen subjects with wide fusion ranges also conducted a task to pitch match various fused electrode-tone pairs. All subjects showed abnormally wide dichotic fusion frequency ranges of 1-4 octaves. The fusion range size was weakly correlated with the interaural pitch mismatch, suggesting a link between broad binaural pitch fusion and large interaural pitch mismatch. Dichotic pitch averaging was also observed, in which a new binaural pitch resulted from the fusion of the original monaural pitches, even when the pitches differed by as much as 3-4 octaves. These findings suggest that abnormal BSI, indicated by broadened fusion ranges and spectral averaging between ears, may account for speech perception interference and nonoptimal integration observed with bimodal compared with monaural hearing device use.	\N	\N
24465675	Perception of our environment is a multisensory experience; information from different sensory systems like the auditory, visual and tactile is constantly integrated. Complex tasks that require high temporal and spatial precision of multisensory integration put strong demands on the underlying networks but it is largely unknown how task experience shapes multisensory processing. Long-term musical training is an excellent model for brain plasticity because it shapes the human brain at functional and structural levels, affecting a network of brain areas. In the present study we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate how audio-tactile perception is integrated in the human brain and if musicians show enhancement of the corresponding activation compared to non-musicians. Using a paradigm that allowed the investigation of combined and separate auditory and tactile processing, we found a multisensory incongruency response, generated in frontal, cingulate and cerebellar regions, an auditory mismatch response generated mainly in the auditory cortex and a tactile mismatch response generated in frontal and cerebellar regions. The influence of musical training was seen in the audio-tactile as well as in the auditory condition, indicating enhanced higher-order processing in musicians, while the sources of the tactile MMN were not influenced by long-term musical training. Consistent with the predictive coding model, more basic, bottom-up sensory processing was relatively stable and less affected by expertise, whereas areas for top-down models of multisensory expectancies were modulated by training.	\N	\N
24482186	Tinnitus is described as the perception of sound or noise in the absence of real acoustic stimulation. In the current absence of a cure for tinnitus, clinical management typically focuses on reducing the effects of co-morbid symptoms such as distress or hearing loss. Hearing loss is commonly co-morbid with tinnitus and so logic implies that amplification of external sounds by hearing aids will reduce perception of the tinnitus sound and the distress associated with it. To assess the effects of hearing aids specifically in terms of tinnitus benefit in patients with tinnitus and co-existing hearing loss. We searched the Cochrane Ear, Nose and Throat Disorders Group Trials Register; the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL); PubMed; EMBASE; CINAHL; Web of Science; Cambridge Scientific Abstracts; ICTRP and additional sources for published and unpublished trials. The date of the search was 19 August 2013. Randomised controlled trials and non-randomised controlled trials recruiting adults with subjective tinnitus and some degree of hearing loss, where the intervention involves amplification with hearing aids and this is compared to interventions involving other medical devices, other forms of standard or complementary therapy, or combinations of therapies, no intervention or placebo interventions. Three authors independently screened all selected abstracts. Two authors independently extracted data and assessed those potentially suitable studies for risk of bias. For studies meeting the inclusion criteria, we used the mean difference (MD) to compare hearing aids with other interventions and controls. One randomised controlled trial (91 participants) was included in this review. We judged the trial to have a low risk of bias for method of randomisation and outcome reporting, and an unclear risk of bias for other criteria. No non-randomised controlled trials meeting our inclusion criteria were identified. The included study measured change in tinnitus severity (primary measure of interest) using a tinnitus questionnaire measure, and change in tinnitus loudness (secondary measure of interest) on a visual analogue scale. Other secondary outcome measures of interest, namely change in the psychoacoustic characteristics of tinnitus, change in self reported anxiety, depression and quality of life, and change in neurophysiological measures, were not investigated in this study. The included study compared hearing aid use to sound generator use. The estimated effect on change in tinnitus loudness or severity as measured by the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score was compatible with benefits for both hearing aids or sound generators but no difference was found between the two alternative treatments (MD -0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) -7.92 to 6.12) (100-point scale); moderate quality evidence. No negative or adverse events were reported. The current evidence base for hearing aid prescription for tinnitus is limited. To be useful, future studies should make appropriate use of blinding and be consistent in their use of outcome measures. Whilst hearing aids are sometimes prescribed as part of tinnitus management, there is currently no evidence to support or refute their use as a more routine intervention for tinnitus.	\N	\N
24486809	Novel stimuli reliably attract attention, suggesting that novelty may disrupt performance when it is task-irrelevant. However, under certain circumstances novel stimuli can also elicit a general alerting response having beneficial effects on performance. In a series of experiments we investigated whether different aspects of novelty--stimulus novelty, contextual novelty, surprise, deviance, and relative complexity--lead to distraction or facilitation. We used a version of the visual oddball paradigm in which participants responded to an occasional auditory target. Participants responded faster to this auditory target when it occurred during the presentation of novel visual stimuli than of standard stimuli, especially at SOAs of 0 and 200 ms (Experiment 1). Facilitation was absent for both infrequent simple deviants and frequent complex images (Experiment 2). However, repeated complex deviant images did facilitate responses to the auditory target at the 200 ms SOA (Experiment 3). These findings suggest that task-irrelevant deviant visual stimuli can facilitate responses to an unrelated auditory target in a short 0-200 millisecond time-window after presentation. This only occurs when the deviant stimuli are complex relative to standard stimuli. We link our findings to the novelty P3, which is generated under the same circumstances, and to the adaptive gain theory of the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system (Aston-Jones and Cohen, 2005), which may explain the timing of the effects.	\N	\N
24496290	Growing evidence suggests that children who are deaf and use cochlear implants (CIs) can communicate effectively using spoken language. Research has reported that age of implantation and length of experience with the CI play an important role in a predicting a child's linguistic development. In recent years, the increase in the number of children receiving bilateral CIs (BiCIs) has led to interest in new variables that may also influence the development of hearing, speech, and language abilities, such as length of bilateral listening experience and the length of time between the implantation of the two CIs. One goal of the present study was to determine how a cohort of children with BiCIs performed on standardized measures of language and nonverbal cognition. This study examined the relationship between performance on language and nonverbal intelligence quotient (IQ) tests and the ages at implantation of the first CI and second CI. This study also examined whether early bilateral activation is related to better language scores. Children with BiCIs (n = 39; ages 4 to 9 years) were tested on two standardized measures, the Test of Language Development and the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised, to evaluate their expressive/receptive language skills and nonverbal IQ/memory. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to evaluate whether BiCI hearing experience predicts language performance. While large intersubject variability existed, on average, almost all the children with BiCIs scored within or above normal limits on measures of nonverbal cognition. Expressive and receptive language scores were highly variable, less likely to be above the normative mean, and did not correlate with Length of first CI Use, defined as length of auditory experience with one cochlear implant, or Length of second CI Use, defined as length of auditory experience with two cochlear implants. All children in the present study had BiCIs. Most IQ scores were either at or above that found in the general population of typically hearing children. However, there was greater variability in their performance on a standardized test of expressive and receptive language. This cohort of children, who are mainstreamed in schools at age-appropriate grades, whose mothers' education is high, and whose families' socioecononomic status is high, had, as a group, on average, language scores within the same range as the normative sample of hearing children. Further research identifying the predictors that contribute to the high variability in both expressive and receptive language scores in children with BiCIs will provide useful information that can aid in clinical management and decision making.	\N	\N
24497938	The vast majority of people experience involuntary musical imagery (INMI) or 'earworms'; perceptions of spontaneous, repetitive musical sound in the absence of an external source. The majority of INMI episodes are not bothersome, while some cause disruption ranging from distraction to anxiety and distress. To date, little is known about how the majority of people react to INMI, in particular whether evaluation of the experience impacts on chosen response behaviours or if attempts at controlling INMI are successful or not. The present study classified 1046 reports of how people react to INMI episodes. Two laboratories in Finland and the UK conducted an identical qualitative analysis protocol on reports of INMI reactions and derived visual descriptive models of the outcomes using grounded theory techniques. Combined analysis carried out across the two studies confirmed that many INMI episodes were considered neutral or pleasant, with passive acceptance and enjoyment being among the most popular response behaviours. A significant number of people, however, reported on attempts to cope with unwanted INMI. The most popular and effective behaviours in response to INMI were seeking out the tune in question, and musical or verbal distraction. The outcomes of this study contribute to our understanding of the aetiology of INMI, in particular within the framework of memory theory, and present testable hypotheses for future research on successful INMI coping strategies.	\N	\N
24506533	We examined infants' oscillatory brain activity during a live interaction with an adult who showed them novel objects. Activation in the alpha frequency range was assessed. Nine-month-old infants responded with desynchronization of alpha-band activity when looking at an object together with an adult during a social interaction involving eye contact. When infant and experimenter only looked at the object without engaging in eye contact, no such effect was observed. Results are interpreted in terms of activation of a generic semantic knowledge system induced by eye contact during a social interaction.	\N	\N
24518404	It was hypothesized that cochlear implant (CI) subjects would be able to correctly identify 1, 2, and 3 simultaneous pitches through direct electrical stimulation. We further hypothesized that the location on the implant array and the fundamental frequency of the pitches would have an impact on the performance. "They gave me back speech but not music" is a sentence commonly heard by CI subjects. One of the reasons is that in music, multiple streams are frequently played at the same time, which is an essential feature of harmony. Current CI speech processors do not allow CI users to perceive such complex polyphonic sounds. In the present study, the authors assessed the ability of CI subjects to perceive simultaneous modulation frequencies based on direct electrical stimulation. Ten CI subjects were asked to identify 1, 2, and 3 simultaneous pitches applied on different electrodes using sinusoidal amplitude modulation. All stimuli were loudness balanced before the actual identification task. Subjects were able to identify 1, 2, and 3 simultaneous pitches. The further the distance between the 2 electrodes, the better was the performance in the 2-pitch condition. The distance between the modulation frequencies had a significant effect on the performance in the 2-and 3-pitch condition. Subjects are able to identify complex polyphonic stimuli based on the number of active electrodes. The additional polyphonic rate pitch cue improves performance in some conditions.	\N	\N
24553776	Sounds emitted by different sources arrive at our ears as a mixture that must be disentangled before meaningful information can be retrieved. It is still a matter of debate whether this decomposition happens automatically or requires the listener's attention. These opposite positions partly stem from different methodological approaches to the problem. We propose an integrative approach that combines the logic of previous measurements targeting either auditory stream segregation (interpreting a mixture as coming from two separate sources) or integration (interpreting a mixture as originating from only one source). By means of combined behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures, our paradigm has the potential to measure stream segregation and integration at the same time, providing the opportunity to obtain positive evidence of either one. This reduces the reliance on zero findings (i.e., the occurrence of stream integration in a given condition can be demonstrated directly, rather than indirectly based on the absence of empirical evidence for stream segregation, and vice versa). With this two-way approach, we systematically manipulate attention devoted to the auditory stimuli (by varying their task relevance) and to their underlying structure (by delivering perceptual tasks that require segregated or integrated percepts). ERP results based on the mismatch negativity (MMN) show no evidence for a modulation of stream integration by attention, while stream segregation results were less clear due to overlapping attention-related components in the MMN latency range. We suggest future studies combining the proposed two-way approach with some improvements in the ERP measurement of sequential stream segregation.	\N	\N
24556905	The aim of this study was to investigate the efficacy of a direct acoustic cochlear implant (DACI) for speech understanding in noise in patients suffering from severe to profound mixed hearing loss (MHL) due to various etiologies compared to the preoperative best-aided condition. The study was performed at five tertiary referral centers in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Poland and Spain). Nineteen adult subjects with severe to profound MHL due to (advanced) otosclerosis, ear canal fibrosis, chronic otitis media, tympanosclerosis or previous cholesteatoma were implanted with a DACI (Codacs™ Investigational Device) combined with a conventional stapes prosthesis. Unaided and aided speech reception scores in quiet and in noise, preoperative and postoperative air and bone conduction thresholds and aided and unaided sound field thresholds were measured prospectively during the study. Subjective benefit analysis was determined through the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit questionnaire. Quality of life was measured by the Health Utilities Index. All subjects were fitted preoperatively with hearing aids and/or a bone conduction implant on a headband before DACI implantation. This allows direct comparison between different hearing rehabilitation solutions. The mean speech reception threshold in noise improved significantly by 7.9 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) after activation of the DACI compared to the preoperative best-aided condition. For all 19 subjects, a mean postoperative aided speech reception threshold of 2.6 dB SNR (standard deviation: 8.3 dB) was measured. On average, no significant shift in the bone conduction thresholds was noted 4-5 months after implantation. A mean sound field threshold improvement of 46 and 16 dB was measured compared to the preoperative unaided and best-aided condition, respectively. Speech perception tests in quiet showed a mean improvement of the word recognition scores by 65 and 48% at 65 dB SPL compared to the preoperative unaided and best-aided condition, respectively. In summary, DACI provides an effective improvement of the speech perception in noise compared to the best-aided condition in subjects suffering from severe to profound MHL.	\N	\N
24559662	The minimum time interval between two stimuli that can be reliably detected is called the gap detection threshold. The present study examines whether an unconscious state, natural sleep affects the gap detection threshold. Event-related potentials were recorded in 10 young adults while awake and during all-night sleep to provide an objective estimate of this threshold. These subjects were presented with 2, 4, 8 or 16ms gaps occurring in 1.5 duration white noise. During wakefulness, a significant N1 was elicited for the 8 and 16ms gaps. N1 was difficult to observe during stage N2 sleep, even for the longest gap. A large P2 was however elicited and was significant for the 8 and 16ms gaps. Also, a later, very large N350 was elicited by the 16ms gap. An N1 and P2 was significant only for the 16ms gap during REM sleep. ERPs to gaps occurring in noise segments can therefore be successfully elicited during natural sleep. The gap detection threshold is similar in the waking and sleeping states.	\N	\N
24561213	The present study investigated the joint impact of target-flanker similarity and of spatial frequency content on the crowding effect in letter identification. We presented spatial frequency filtered letters to neurologically intact non-dyslexic readers while manipulating target-flanker distance, target eccentricity and target-flanker confusability (letter similarity metric based on published letter confusion matrices). The results show that high target-flanker confusability magnifies crowding. They also reveal an intricate pattern of interactions of the spatial frequency content of the stimuli with target eccentricity, flanker distance and similarity. The findings are congruent with the notion that crowding results from the inappropriate pooling of target and flanker features and that this integration is more likely to match a response template at a subsequent decision stage with similar than dissimilar flankers. In addition, the evidence suggests that crowding from similar flankers is biased towards relatively high spatial frequencies and that crowding shifts towards lower spatial frequencies as target eccentricity is increased.	\N	\N
24566800	Learning in perceptual tasks is typically highly specific to the trained stimulus parameters. However, can learning be specific to a stimulus parameter that is perceptually indistinguishable from another? We assessed this question using a perceived sound location task in which the perceived sound location was created through either an interaural time difference (ITD) cue or an interaural level difference (ILD) cue. We used the same transient, broadband sound (clicks) for both cues, and after training on one of the cues, listeners switched cue mid-session. This allowed us to assess cue specificity or transfer when the subjectively unnoticed cue switch occurred. One group of listeners improved their ITD performance as a function of training, but deteriorated in performance when switching to ILD in mid training session. Another group of listeners started with ILD training; their improved performance level did not deteriorate as they switched to the ITD cue. This transfer asymmetry was not hypothesized, and we therefore extended our study with a second data collection. Both the training effect and the transfer asymmetry remained after the second data collection. Our results indicate (a) listeners can improve both their ITD and ILD performance for click sounds, extending previous findings on tones; (b) learning can be specific to a stimulus parameter that is indistinguishable from another, as ITD learning did not transfer to ILD performance; but (c) ILD learning can transfer to ITD performance. This transfer asymmetry may have occurred because of how ITD and ILD are coded in early brainstem areas.	\N	\N
24568205	The melodic contour of speech forms an important perceptual aspect of tonal and nontonal languages and an important limiting factor on the intelligibility of speech heard through a cochlear implant. Previous work exploring the neural correlates of speech comprehension identified a left-dominant pathway in the temporal lobes supporting the extraction of an intelligible linguistic message, whereas the right anterior temporal lobe showed an overall preference for signals clearly conveying dynamic pitch information [Johnsrude, I. S., Penhune, V. B., & Zatorre, R. J. Functional specificity in the right human auditory cortex for perceiving pitch direction. Brain, 123, 155-163, 2000; Scott, S. K., Blank, C. C., Rosen, S., & Wise, R. J. Identification of a pathway for intelligible speech in the left temporal lobe. Brain, 123, 2400-2406, 2000]. The current study combined modulations of overall intelligibility (through vocoding and spectral inversion) with a manipulation of pitch contour (normal vs. falling) to investigate the processing of spoken sentences in functional MRI. Our overall findings replicate and extend those of Scott et al. [Scott, S. K., Blank, C. C., Rosen, S., & Wise, R. J. Identification of a pathway for intelligible speech in the left temporal lobe. Brain, 123, 2400-2406, 2000], where greater sentence intelligibility was predominately associated with increased activity in the left STS, and the greatest response to normal sentence melody was found in right superior temporal gyrus. These data suggest a spatial distinction between brain areas associated with intelligibility and those involved in the processing of dynamic pitch information in speech. By including a set of complexity-matched unintelligible conditions created by spectral inversion, this is additionally the first study reporting a fully factorial exploration of spectrotemporal complexity and spectral inversion as they relate to the neural processing of speech intelligibility. Perhaps surprisingly, there was little evidence for an interaction between the two factors-we discuss the implications for the processing of sound and speech in the dorsolateral temporal lobes.	\N	\N
24576508	We investigated the effects of linguistic experience and language familiarity on the perception of audio-visual (A-V) synchrony in fluent speech. In Experiment 1, we tested a group of monolingual Spanish- and Catalan-learning 8-month-old infants to a video clip of a person speaking Spanish. Following habituation to the audiovisually synchronous video, infants saw and heard desynchronized clips of the same video where the audio stream now preceded the video stream by 366, 500, or 666 ms. In Experiment 2, monolingual Catalan and Spanish infants were tested with a video clip of a person speaking English. Results indicated that in both experiments, infants detected a 666 and a 500 ms asynchrony. That is, their responsiveness to A-V synchrony was the same regardless of their specific linguistic experience or familiarity with the tested language. Compared to previous results from infant studies with isolated audiovisual syllables, these results show that infants are more sensitive to A-V temporal relations inherent in fluent speech. Furthermore, the absence of a language familiarity effect on the detection of A-V speech asynchrony at eight months of age is consistent with the broad perceptual tuning usually observed in infant response to linguistic input at this age.	\N	\N
24581119	Music conveys emotion by manipulating musical structures, particularly musical mode- and tempo-impact. The neural correlates of musical mode and tempo perception revealed by electroencephalography (EEG) have not been adequately addressed in the literature. This study used independent component analysis (ICA) to systematically assess spatio-spectral EEG dynamics associated with the changes of musical mode and tempo. Empirical results showed that music with major mode augmented delta-band activity over the right sensorimotor cortex, suppressed theta activity over the superior parietal cortex, and moderately suppressed beta activity over the medial frontal cortex, compared to minor-mode music, whereas fast-tempo music engaged significant alpha suppression over the right sensorimotor cortex. The resultant EEG brain sources were comparable with previous studies obtained by other neuroimaging modalities, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). In conjunction with advanced dry and mobile EEG technology, the EEG results might facilitate the translation from laboratory-oriented research to real-life applications for music therapy, training and entertainment in naturalistic environments.	\N	\N
24581190	The use of adequate assessment tools in health care is crucial for the management of care. The lack of specific tools in Portugal for assessing the performance of children who use cochlear implants motivated the translation and adaptation of the EARS (Evaluation of Auditory Responses to Speech) test battery into European Portuguese. This test battery is today one of the most commonly used by (re)habilitation teams of deaf children who use cochlear implants worldwide. The goal to be achieved with the validation of EARS was to provide (re)habilitation teams an instrument that enables: (i) monitoring the progress of individual (re)habilitation, (ii) managing a (re)habilitation program according to objective results, comparable between different (re)habilitation teams, (iii) obtaining data that can be compared with the results of international teams, and (iv) improving engagement and motivation of the family and other professionals from local teams. For the test battery translation and adaptation process, the adopted procedures were the following: (i) translation of the English version into European Portuguese by a professional translator, (ii) revision of the translation performed by an expert panel, including doctors, speech-language pathologists and audiologists, (iii) adaptation of the test stimuli by the team's speechlanguage pathologist, and (iv) further review by the expert panel. For each of the tests that belong to the EARS battery, the introduced adaptations and adjustments are presented, combining the characteristics and objectives of the original tests with the linguistic and cultural specificities of the Portuguese population. The difficulties that have been encountered during the translation and adaptation process and the adopted solutions are discussed. Comparisons are made with other versions of the EARS battery. We defend that the translation and the adaptation process followed for the EARS test battery into European Portuguese was correctly conducted, respecting the characteristics of the original instruments and adapting the test stimuli to the linguistic and cultural reality of the Portuguese population, thus meeting the goals that have been set.	\N	\N
24581551	There is evidence that people with psychosis display a "jump-to-conclusions" (JTC) reasoning style, and that this bias may be specific to delusions. A "jump-to-perceptions" (JTP) cognitive bias has also been found and is typically linked to hallucinations. However, there is some evidence for an association between JTP and delusions, and its specificity to hallucinations remains unclear. It has been suggested that these biases are related and products of shared cognitive processes. This study examined the symptom specificity of JTC and JTP, and the relationship between them, in a sample of 98 individuals with delusions divided into 'hallucinators' (n=51) and 'non-hallucinators' (n=47). Biases were assessed using the beads task and visual and auditory perceptual tasks. As predicted, both groups demonstrated a JTC bias, but the 'hallucinators' showed a more pronounced JTP style in both modalities. The presence of JTC and JTP biases did not co-occur: making a decision on the beads task after two or fewer draws was not related to visual JTP, and was associated with a less marked JTP bias in the auditory perceptual task. No differences were found in JTP or JTC between participants with and without a schizophrenia diagnosis. JTP, but not JTC, was associated with the presence of hallucinations. These findings suggest that the JTC and JTP biases show specificity to delusions and hallucinations, respectively, and not to diagnosis. There was no evidence that they are the product of shared cognitive processes, further supporting their specificity.	\N	\N
24597272	Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.	\N	\N
24603717	Objective identification and description of mimicked calls is a primary component of any study on avian vocal mimicry but few studies have adopted a quantitative approach. We used spectral feature representations commonly used in human speech analysis in combination with various distance metrics to distinguish between mimicked and non-mimicked calls of the greater racket-tailed drongo, Dicrurus paradiseus and cross-validated the results with human assessment of spectral similarity. We found that the automated method and human subjects performed similarly in terms of the overall number of correct matches of mimicked calls to putative model calls. However, the two methods also misclassified different subsets of calls and we achieved a maximum accuracy of ninety five per cent only when we combined the results of both the methods. This study is the first to use Mel-frequency Cepstral Coefficients and Relative Spectral Amplitude - filtered Linear Predictive Coding coefficients to quantify vocal mimicry. Our findings also suggest that in spite of several advances in automated methods of song analysis, corresponding cross-validation by humans remains essential.	\N	\N
24604542	Two experiments were conducted to study effects of modality, temporal position, and their interaction on comparisons of successive stimuli. In Experiment 1, intramodal (tone-tone and line-line) and crossmodal (tone-line and line-tone) stimulus pairs, with two interstimulus intervals (ISIs), 400 and 2,000 ms, were presented. Participants indicated which stimulus was the "stronger." Time-order errors (TOEs) were assessed using the D% measure and were found in all types of pairs. Variation in TOEs across conditions was well accounted for by changes in parameters (stimulus weights, reference levels) in an extended version of Hellström's sensation weighting (SW) model. With an ISI of 2,000 ms, the first stimulus had a lower weight (less impact on the response) than did the second stimulus. More negative TOEs were found with the longer ISI in all pair types except tone-line. In Experiment 2, participants indicated which of two lines was the longer or which of two tones was the louder. An intra- or crossmodal anchor, or no anchor, was interpolated between the stimuli. Anchoring tended to reduce the weight of the first stimulus, suggesting interference with memory, and to yield negative TOEs. Intramodal anchors yielded reduced weights of both stimuli, most dramatically for tones, suggesting an additional effect of stimulus interference. Response times decreased with crossmodal anchors. For line-line pairs, strong negative TOEs were found. In both experiments, the variation in TOE across conditions was well accounted for by the SW model.	\N	\N
24606282	An experiment was carried out to determine whether the level of the speech fluency disorder can be estimated by means of automatic acoustic measurements. These measures analyze, for example, the amount of silence in a recording or the number of abrupt spectral changes in a speech signal. All the measures were designed to take into account symptoms of stuttering. In the experiment, 118 audio recordings of read speech by Czech native speakers were employed. The results indicate that the human-made rating of the speech fluency disorder in read speech can be predicted on the basis of automatic measurements. The number of abrupt spectral changes in the speech segments turns out to be the most appropriate measure to describe the overall speech performance. The results also imply that there are measures with good results describing partial symptoms (especially fixed postures without audible airflow).	\N	\N
24611258	Previous researchers have found that participants associate higher frequencies with locations that are higher in space and lower frequencies with lower locations, creating a phenomenological-spatial association for the frequency of auditory tones. With such an association, the frequency of an auditory tone could potentially bias movements along multiple axes. This hypothesis was tested. In four experiments, nine frequencies (250-1,250 Hz) were binaurally presented to blindfolded participants (n = 10, 12, 20, & 9; M age = 22 yr.) who indicated the perceived location of the stimuli on a measurement scale oriented in the vertical, the horizontal (Experiment 1), or depth dimension (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, participants were asked to indicate the perceived location of the frequencies on a two-dimensional vertical board located in front of them. In Experiment 4, participants indicated the perceived location in three-dimensional space. An optoelectronic device recorded at all locations. Analyses of constant error indicated a spatial association in the vertical, horizontal, and depth dimensions when responses were restricted to only one dimension (Experiments 1 & 2). Higher frequencies were perceived to be located higher, farther to the right, and farther away from the body than lower frequencies. However, this spatial association was only exhibited in the vertical dimension when the responses were unconstrained in two dimensions (vertical and horizontal; Experiment 3) and all three dimensions (Experiment 4). Although this spatial association is a robust phenomenon, it appears that the association only biases actions when indicating perceived locations in the vertical dimension during unconstrained responses.	\N	\N
24616980	To investigate the changes of electrode impedance, THR/MCL values, and dynamic range (DR) in Combi 40+ cochlear implant after implantation. A respective study was carried out collecting 20 consecutively implanted children's electrode impedances, THR/MCL values, and DR at seven time point during the first three years after implantation. Their variation and correlations were analyzed. Overall, electrode impedances were lowest during the operation, and significantly rise to the highest at the first stimulation, then followed by a gradual decrease. After three months, electrode impedance of apical and medial cochlear segment were basically stable, while that of the basal segment was gradually increased. Dynamic range (DR) of apical and medial group electrode increased early after the operation and showed a stabilization from the second year, whereas that of basal group have a downward trend since the first year. However, the electric charge of each group increased significantly after three months, and then become stable after first year. Otherwise, a stronger negative rectilinear correlation was found between impedance changes with DR than with THR/MCL level. The electrode impedances vary clue to different electrode position. Measuring the electrode impedance can effectively evaluate the working status of Combi C40+ cochlear implant. The dynamic range of the electrode was negatively correlated with the impedances, which made it possible to predict the width of the dynamic range by measuring the impedance 3 or 6 months after operation.	\N	\N
24622027	The safety of implanting a titanium microactuator into the lateral wall of cat scala tympani was assessed by comparing preoperative and postoperative auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds for 1 to 3 months. The safety of directly stimulating cochlear perilymph with an implantable hearing system requires maintaining preoperative hearing levels. This cat study is an essential step in the development of the next generation of fully implantable hearing devices for humans. Following GLP surgical standards, a 1-mm cochleostomy was drilled into the lateral wall of the scala tympani, and a nonfunctioning titanium anchor/microactuator assembly was inserted in 8 cats. The scala media was damaged in the 1 cat. ABR thresholds with click and 4- and 8-kHz stimuli were measured preoperatively and compared with postoperative thresholds at 1, 2, and 3 months. Nonimplanted ear thresholds were also measured to establish statistical significance for threshold shifts (>28.4 dB). Two audiologists independently interpreted thresholds. Postoperatively, 7 cats implanted in the scala tympani demonstrated no significant ABR threshold shift for click stimulus; one shifted ABR thresholds to 4- and 8-kHz stimuli. The eighth cat, with surgical damage to the scala media, maintained stable click threshold but had a significant shift to 4- and 8-kHz stimuli. This cat study provides no evidence of worsening hearing thresholds after fenestration of the scala tympani and insertion of a titanium anchor/microactuator, provided there is no surgical trauma to the scala media and the implanted device is securely anchored in the cochleostomy. These 2 issues have been resolved in the development of a fully implantable hearing system for humans. The long-term hearing stability (combined with histologic studies) reaffirm that the microactuator is well tolerated by the cat cochlea.	\N	\N
24622351	Pure-tone auditory thresholds in children are below the standardized hearing threshold levels described by ). The development of hearing ability in Chinese and German children at different ages is analyzed and compared with data in the literature. Extended high frequencies above 8 kHz are included due to their vulnerability to noise. Ninety-one children in China and 197 children at a typical primary school in Germany underwent audiometric tests at 17 frequencies ranging from 125 Hz to 16 kHz. To analyze effects of age the children were assessed in age groups of 6 to 9, 9 to 12, and 13 to 16 years of age. Children in China and Germany have the poorest hearing sensitivity at low frequencies (below 1 kHz) and the best sensitivity at the extended high frequencies above 8 kHz. The mean deviations (both ears) from the standard thresholds for adults 18 to 25 years of age, averaged over all frequencies, are 6.7 dB for Chinese and 7.1 dB for German children in the youngest age groups. In the Chinese age group of 9- to 12-year olds the averaged threshold is 4.5 dB and for the same German age group 3.6 dB. For the Chinese age group of 13- to 16-year olds the averaged threshold is 3.3 dB. The improvements of the older German age group compared with the younger are significant at p < 0.05 and are nearly twice as high compared with the comparable Chinese age groups. Age-dependent improvements of hearing ability are evident in children and should be considered in evaluating audiometric test results. Audiometric tests in the extended high-frequency range could be used as an early warning system for future degeneration of hearing ability.	\N	\N
24623783	The earliest stages of cortical processing of speech sounds take place in the auditory cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have provided evidence that the human articulatory motor cortex contributes also to speech processing. For example, stimulation of the motor lip representation influences specifically discrimination of lip-articulated speech sounds. However, the timing of the neural mechanisms underlying these articulator-specific motor contributions to speech processing is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether they depend on attention. Here, we used magnetoencephalography and TMS to investigate the effect of attention on specificity and timing of interactions between the auditory and motor cortex during processing of speech sounds. We found that TMS-induced disruption of the motor lip representation modulated specifically the early auditory-cortex responses to lip-articulated speech sounds when they were attended. These articulator-specific modulations were left-lateralized and remarkably early, occurring 60-100 ms after sound onset. When speech sounds were ignored, the effect of this motor disruption on auditory-cortex responses was nonspecific and bilateral, and it started later, 170 ms after sound onset. The findings indicate that articulatory motor cortex can contribute to auditory processing of speech sounds even in the absence of behavioral tasks and when the sounds are not in the focus of attention. Importantly, the findings also show that attention can selectively facilitate the interaction of the auditory cortex with specific articulator representations during speech processing.	\N	\N
24627167	In research investigating Stroop or Simon effects, data are typically analyzed at the level of mean response time (RT), with results showing faster responses for compatible than for incompatible trials. However, this analysis provides only limited information as it glosses over the shape of the RT distributions and how they may differ across tasks and experimental conditions. These limitations have encouraged the analysis of RT distributions using delta plots. In the present review, we aim to bring together research on distributional properties of auditory and visual interference effects. Extending previous reviews on distributional properties of the Simon effect, we additionally review studies reporting distributional analyses of Stroop effects. We show that distributional analyses of sequential effects (i.e., taking into account congruency of the previous trial) capture important similarities and differences of interference effects across tasks (Simon, Stroop) as well as across sensory modalities, despite some challenges associated to this approach.	\N	\N
24627209	In multisensory research, faster responses are commonly observed when multimodal stimuli are presented, as compared to unimodal target presentations. This so-called redundant-signals effect can be explained by several frameworks, including separate-activation and coactivation models. The redundant-signals effect has been investigated in a large number of studies; however, most of those studies have been limited to the rejection of separate-activation models. Coactivation models have been analyzed in only a few studies, primarily using simple response tasks. Here, we investigated the mechanism of multisensory integration underlying go/no-go and choice responses to redundant auditory-visual stimuli. In the present study, the mean and variance of response times, as well as the accuracy rates of go/no-go and choice responses, were used to test a coactivation model based on the linear superposition of diffusion processes (Schwarz, 1994) within two absorbing barriers. The diffusion superposition model accurately describes the means and variances of response times as well as the proportions of correct responses observed in the two tasks. Linear superposition thus seems to be a general principle in the integration of redundant information provided by different sensory channels, and is not restricted to simple responses. The results connect existing theories of multisensory integration with theories on choice behavior.	\N	\N
24632322	Two experiments investigated the cognitive skills that underlie children's susceptibility to semantic and phonological false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, performance on the Verbal Similarities subtest of the British Ability Scales (BAS) II (Elliott, Smith, & McCulloch, 1997) predicted correct and false recall of semantic lures. In Experiment 2, performance on the Yopp-Singer Test of Phonemic Segmentation (Yopp, 1988) did not predict correct recall, but inversely predicted the false recall of phonological lures. Auditory short-term memory was a negative predictor of false recall in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. The findings are discussed in terms of the formation of gist and verbatim traces as proposed by fuzzy trace theory (Reyna & Brainerd, 1998) and the increasing automaticity of associations as proposed by associative activation theory (Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009).	\N	\N
24633379	In order to acquire language, children require speech input. The prosody of the speech input plays an important role. In most cultures adults modify their code when communicating with children. Compared to normal speech this code differs especially with regard to prosody. For this review a selective literature search in PubMed and Scopus was performed. Prosodic characteristics are a key feature of spoken language. By analysing prosodic features, children gain knowledge about underlying grammatical structures. Child-directed speech (CDS) is modified in a way that meaningful sequences are highlighted acoustically so that important information can be extracted from the continuous speech flow more easily. CDS is said to enhance the representation of linguistic signs. Taking into consideration what has previously been described in the literature regarding the perception of suprasegmentals, CDS seems to be able to support language acquisition due to the correspondence of prosodic and syntactic units. However, no findings have been reported, stating that the linguistically reduced CDS could hinder first language acquisition.	\N	\N
24635583	The attentional blink (AB) refers to the decline in report accuracy of a second target (T2) when presented shortly after a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of distractors. It is known that masking T1 increases the magnitude of the AB, and masking a single target (equivalent to T1) in a RSVP stream attenuates the P3 to the target in correct trials. The major purpose of the present study was to clarify how these two effects may be integrated. An intervening distractor was presented at lag 1 (T1+1), at lag 2 (T1+2), or at neither of these two lags (no distractor). T2 was always presented at lag 3, as the last item in the stream. The P3 to T1 was attenuated and the P3 to T2 delayed in the T1+1 condition compared to the two other distractor conditions. These results clearly show that masking T1 attenuates the P3 to T1 and delays the P3 to T2 in the AB. Implications for extant theories of the AB are discussed.	\N	\N
24637103	Processing local elements of hierarchical patterns at a superior level and independently from an intact global influence is a well-established characteristic of autistic visual perception. However, whether this confirmed finding has an equivalent in the auditory modality is still unknown. To fill this gap, 18 autistics and 18 typical participants completed a melodic decision task where global and local level information can be congruent or incongruent. While focusing either on the global (melody) or local level (group of notes) of hierarchical auditory stimuli, participants have to decide whether the focused level is rising or falling. Autistics showed intact global processing, a superior performance when processing local elements and a reduced global-to-local interference compared to typical participants. These results are the first to demonstrate that autistic processing of auditory hierarchical stimuli closely parallels processing of visual hierarchical stimuli. When analyzing complex auditory information, autistic participants present a local bias and a more autonomous local processing, but not to the detriment of global processing.	\N	\N
24639401	Blind people rely more on vocal cues when they recognize a person's identity than sighted people. Indeed, a number of studies have reported better voice recognition skills in blind than in sighted adults. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated changes in the functional organization of neural systems involved in voice identity processing following congenital blindness. A group of congenitally blind individuals and matched sighted control participants were tested in a priming paradigm, in which two voice stimuli (S1, S2) were subsequently presented. The prime (S1) and the target (S2) were either from the same speaker (person-congruent voices) or from two different speakers (person-incongruent voices). Participants had to classify the S2 as either a old or a young person. Person-incongruent voices (S2) compared with person-congruent voices elicited an increased activation in the right anterior fusiform gyrus in congenitally blind individuals but not in matched sighted control participants. In contrast, only matched sighted controls showed a higher activation in response to person-incongruent compared with person-congruent voices (S2) in the right posterior superior temporal sulcus. These results provide evidence for crossmodal plastic changes of the person identification system in the brain after visual deprivation.	\N	\N
24642285	We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine brain activity related to the maintenance of non-verbal pitch information in auditory short-term memory (ASTM). We focused on brain activity that increased with the number of items effectively held in memory by the participants during the retention interval of an auditory memory task. We used very simple acoustic materials (i.e., pure tones that varied in pitch) that minimized activation from non-ASTM related systems. MEG revealed neural activity in frontal, temporal, and parietal cortices that increased with a greater number of items effectively held in memory by the participants during the maintenance of pitch representations in ASTM. The present results reinforce the functional role of frontal and temporal cortices in the retention of pitch information in ASTM. This is the first MEG study to provide both fine spatial localization and temporal resolution on the neural mechanisms of non-verbal ASTM for pitch in relation to individual differences in the capacity of ASTM. This research contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms mediating the representation and maintenance of basic non-verbal auditory features in the human brain.	\N	\N
24655365	Previous studies have shown that in semi-spontaneous speech, individuals with Broca's and anomic aphasia produce relatively many direct speech constructions. It has been claimed that in 'healthy' communication direct speech constructions contribute to the liveliness, and indirectly to the comprehensibility, of speech. To examine the effects of the occurrence of direct speech constructions on the perceived liveliness and speech comprehensibility of narratives produced by individuals with and without aphasia. Thirty-seven naive listeners rated 30 speech fragments with and without direct speech from ten speakers with and ten speakers without aphasia. The fragments originated from semi-structured interviews. The raters scored the perceived liveliness and the perceived comprehensibility of these fragments. For both groups of speakers, fragments containing direct speech constructions received higher scores for liveliness than fragments without direct speech constructions. However, no effect of direct speech was found on perceived comprehensibility. This is the first research to demonstrate that communication is perceived as more lively when it contains direct speech than when it does not, but yet is not more comprehensible. Individuals with Broca's and anomic aphasia are known to produce regularly direct speech constructions in elicited narratives. Given that liveliness is known to increase listeners' involvement and to help listeners stay focused, we suggest that this relative increase in direct speech by aphasic speakers may reflect a strategy to increase not only the liveliness of their discourse, but also listener focus and involvement.	\N	\N
24658600	Extended stabilization of gaze leads to disappearance of dim visual targets presented peripherally. This phenomenon, known as Troxler fading, is thought to result from neuronal adaptation. Intense targets also disappear intermittently when surrounded by a moving pattern (the "mask"), a phenomenon known as motion-induced blindness (MIB). The similar phenomenology and dynamics of these disappearances may suggest that also MIB is, likewise, solely due to adaptation, which may be amplified by the presence of the mask. Here we directly compared the dependence of both phenomena on target contrast. Observers reported the disappearance and reappearance of a target of varying intensity (contrast levels: 8%-80%). MIB was induced by adding a mask that moved at one of various different speeds. The results revealed a lawful effect of contrast in both MIB and Troxler fading, but with opposite trends. Increasing target contrast increased (doubled) the rate of disappearance events for MIB, but decreased the disappearance rate to half in Troxler fading. The target mean invisible period decreased equally strongly with target contrast in MIB and in Troxler fading. The results suggest that both MIB and Troxler are equally affected by contrast adaptation, but that the rate of MIB is governed by an additional mechanism, possibly involving antagonistic processes between neuronal populations processing target and mask. Our results link MIB to other bi-stable visual phenomena that involve neuronal competition (such as binocular rivalry), which exhibit an analogous dependency on the strength of the competing stimulus components.	\N	\N
24658601	The goal of this study was to create and validate a new set of sentence lists that could be used to evaluate the speech-perception abilities of listeners with hearing loss in cases where adult materials are inappropriate due to difficulty level or content. The authors aimed to generate a large number of sentence lists with an equivalent level of difficulty for the evaluation of performance over time and across conditions. The original Pediatric AzBio sentence corpus included 450 sentences recorded from one female talker. All sentences included in the corpus were successfully repeated by kindergarten and first-grade students with normal hearing. The mean intelligibility of each sentence was estimated by processing each sentence through a cochlear implant simulation and calculating the mean percent correct score achieved by 15 normal-hearing listeners. After sorting sentences by mean percent correct scores, 320 sentences were assigned to 16 lists of equivalent difficulty. List equivalency was then validated by presenting all sentence lists, in a novel random order, to adults and children with hearing loss. A final-validation stage examined single-list comparisons from adult and pediatric listeners tested in research or clinical settings. The results of the simulation study allowed for the creation of 16 lists of 20 sentences. The average intelligibility of each list ranged from 78.4 to 78.7%. List equivalency was then validated, when the results of 16 adult cochlear implant users and 9 pediatric hearing aid and cochlear implant users revealed no significant differences across lists. The binomial distribution model was used to account for the inherent variability observed in the lists. This model was also used to generate 95% confidence intervals for one and two list comparisons. A retrospective analysis of 361 instances from 78 adult cochlear implant users and 48 instances from 36 pediatric cochlear implant users revealed that the 95% confidence intervals derived from the model captured 94% of all responses (385 of 409). The cochlear implant simulation was shown to be an effective method for estimating the intelligibility of individual sentences for use in the evaluation of cochlear implant users. Furthermore, the method used for constructing equivalent sentence lists and estimating the inherent variability of the materials has also been validated. Thus, the AzBio Pediatric Sentence Lists are equivalent and appropriate for the assessment of speech-understanding abilities of children with hearing loss as well as adults for whom performance on AzBio sentences is near the floor.	\N	\N
24671776	Learning about objects often requires making arbitrary associations among multisensory properties, such as the taste and appearance of a food or the face and voice of a person. However, the multisensory properties of individual objects usually are statistically constrained, such that some properties are more likely to co-occur than others, on the basis of their category. For example, male faces are more likely to co-occur with characteristically male voices than with female voices. Here, we report evidence that these natural multisensory statistics play a critical role in the learning of novel, arbitrary associative pairs. In Experiment 1, we found that learning of pairs consisting of human voices and gender-congruent faces was superior to learning of pairs consisting of human voices and gender-incongruent faces or of pairs consisting of human voices and pictures of inanimate objects (plants and rocks). In Experiment 2, we found that this "categorical congruency" advantage extended to nonhuman stimuli, as well-namely, to pairs of class-congruent animal pictures and vocalizations (e.g., dogs and barks) versus class-incongruent pairs (e.g., dogs and bird chirps). These findings suggest that associating multisensory properties that are statistically consistent with the various objects that we encounter in our daily lives is a privileged form of learning.	\N	\N
24686722	PURPOSE Several acoustic cues specify any single phonemic contrast. Nonetheless, adult, native speakers of a language share weighting strategies, showing preferential attention to some properties over others. Cochlear implant (CI) signal processing disrupts the salience of some cues: In general, amplitude structure remains readily available, but spectral structure less so. This study asked how well speech recognition is supported if CI users shift attention to salient cues not weighted strongly by native speakers. METHOD Twenty adults with CIs participated. The /bɑ/-/wɑ/ contrast was used because spectral and amplitude structure varies in correlated fashion for this contrast. Adults with normal hearing weight the spectral cue strongly but the amplitude cue negligibly. Three measurements were made: labeling decisions, spectral and amplitude discrimination, and word recognition. RESULTS Outcomes varied across listeners: Some weighted the spectral cue strongly, some weighted the amplitude cue, and some weighted neither. Spectral discrimination predicted spectral weighting. Spectral weighting explained the most variance in word recognition. Age of onset of hearing loss predicted spectral weighting but not unique variance in word recognition. CONCLUSION The weighting strategies of listeners with normal hearing likely support speech recognition best, so efforts in implant design, fitting, and training should focus on developing those strategies.	\N	\N
24687127	The purpose of this research was to compare the perception of Japanese vowel length contrasts by 4 groups of listeners who differed in their familiarity with length contrasts in their first language (L1; i.e., American English, Italian, Japanese, and Thai). Of the 3 nonnative groups, native Thai listeners were expected to outperform American English and Italian listeners, because vowel length is contrastive in their L1. Native Italian listeners were expected to demonstrate a higher level of accuracy for length contrasts than American English listeners, because the former are familiar with consonant (but not vowel) length contrasts (i.e., singleton vs. geminate) in their L1. A 2-alternative forced-choice AXB discrimination test that included 125 trials was administered to all the participants, and the listeners' discrimination accuracy (d') was reported. As expected, Japanese listeners were more accurate than all 3 nonnative groups in their discrimination of Japanese vowel length contrasts. The 3 nonnative groups did not differ from one another in their discrimination accuracy despite varying experience with length contrasts in their L1. Only Thai listeners were more accurate in their length discrimination when the target vowel was long than when it was short. Being familiar with vowel length contrasts in L1 may affect the listeners' cross-language perception, but it does not guarantee that their L1 experience automatically results in efficient processing of length contrasts in unfamiliar languages. The extent of success may be related to how length contrasts are phonetically implemented in listeners' L1.	\N	\N
24690415	When musical notes are combined to make a chord, the closeness of fit of the combined spectrum to a single harmonic series (the 'harmonicity' of the chord) predicts the perceived consonance (how pleasant and stable the chord sounds; McDermott, Lehr, & Oxenham, 2010). The distinction between consonance and dissonance is central to Western musical form. Harmonicity is represented in the temporal firing patterns of populations of brainstem neurons. The current study investigates the role of brainstem temporal coding of harmonicity in the perception of consonance. Individual preference for consonant over dissonant chords was measured using a rating scale for pairs of simultaneous notes. In order to investigate the effects of cochlear interactions, notes were presented in two ways: both notes to both ears or each note to different ears. The electrophysiological frequency following response (FFR), reflecting sustained neural activity in the brainstem synchronised to the stimulus, was also measured. When both notes were presented to both ears the perceptual distinction between consonant and dissonant chords was stronger than when the notes were presented to different ears. In the condition in which both notes were presented to the both ears additional low-frequency components, corresponding to difference tones resulting from nonlinear cochlear processing, were observable in the FFR effectively enhancing the neural harmonicity of consonant chords but not dissonant chords. Suppressing the cochlear envelope component of the FFR also suppressed the additional frequency components. This suggests that, in the case of consonant chords, difference tones generated by interactions between notes in the cochlea enhance the perception of consonance. Furthermore, individuals with a greater distinction between consonant and dissonant chords in the FFR to individual harmonics had a stronger preference for consonant over dissonant chords. Overall, the results provide compelling evidence for the role of neural temporal coding in the perception of consonance, and suggest that the representation of harmonicity in phase locked neural firing drives the perception of consonance.	\N	\N
24701988	Studies of facial affect recognition by people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have shown this to be a significant problem. Vocal affect recognition also appears to be challenging for this population, but little is known about the degree to which one modality is impaired compared to the other. This study compared facial and vocal affect recognition of high and low intensity emotion expressions in people with moderate-to-severe TBI. The Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 (Adult Faces; Voices) was administered to 203 participants with TBI. Adults with TBI identified vocal emotion expressions with greater accuracy than facial emotion expressions. Facial affect recognition impairment was identified in 34% of participants, 22% were classified as having vocal affect recognition impairment and 15% showed impairment in both modalities. Participants were significantly less accurate at identifying low vs high intensity emotion expressions in both modalities. Happy facial expressions were significantly better identified than all other emotions. Errors were distributed across the emotion categories for vocal expressions. The degree of facial affect impairment was significantly greater than vocal affect impairment in this sample of people with moderate-to-severe TBI. Low intensity emotion expressions were particularly problematic and an advantage for positively valenced facial emotion expressions was indicated.	\N	\N
24702433	In this paper, the authors analyze the auditory rehabilitation after cochlear implantation in adults with hearing impairment after head trauma, comparing their performance with that of other cochlear implant (CI) adult users who have post-lingual hearing impairment with other etiologies. The participants were divided into two groups: group 1 (N = 14) composed of CI adult users who have acquired severe to profound hearing loss after head trauma; group 2 (N = 231) composed of CI adult users who have severe to profound hearing loss from other etiologies. Performance was assessed using the following tests: tonal audiometry, speech audiometry, consonantal phonemes identification test, 100 words test, 100 words through the telephone test, monosyllables test, numbers test, sentences test, and sentences through the telephone test. Average results from group 1 were lower when compared with those of group 2 in all the tests used. No statistically significant difference was found for most tests. Statistically significant difference was found for consonantal phonemes identification test, 100 words through the telephone test, monosyllables test (when analyzed regarding the phonemes correctly repeated), and sentences through the telephone test. The performance of the group of CI adult users who have acquired hearing impairment after head trauma was globally lower than that observed on the group of hearing impairment with other etiologies. However, the difference was not statistically significant for most tests. Despite this difference in performance, the results from the group of CI adult users who have acquired hearing impairment after head trauma show the effectiveness of auditory rehabilitation through cochlear implantation in these situations.	\N	\N
24703829	Exploding head syndrome is characterized by the perception of abrupt, loud noises when going to sleep or waking up. They are usually painless, but associated with fear and distress. In spite of the fact that its characteristic symptomatology was first described approximately 150 y ago, exploding head syndrome has received relatively little empirical and clinical attention. Therefore, a comprehensive review of the scientific literature using Medline, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and PubMed was undertaken. After first discussing the history, prevalence, and associated features, the available polysomnography data and five main etiological theories for exploding head syndrome are summarized. None of these theories has yet reached dominance in the field. Next, the various methods used to assess and treat exploding head syndrome are discussed, as well as the limited outcome data. Finally, recommendations for future measure construction, treatment options, and differential diagnosis are provided.	\N	\N
24707789	Syntactic priming occurs when structural information from one sentence influences processing of a subsequently encountered sentence (Bock, 1986; Ledoux et al., 2007). This article reports 2 eye-tracking experiments investigating the effects of a prime sentence on the processing of a target sentence that shared aspects of syntactic form. The experiments were designed to determine the degree to which lexical overlap between prime and target sentences produced larger effects, comparable to the widely observed "lexical boost" in production experiments (Pickering & Branigan, 1998; Pickering & Ferreira, 2008). The current experiments showed that priming effects during online comprehension were in fact larger when a verb was repeated across the prime and target sentences (see also Tooley et al., 2009). The finding of larger priming effects with lexical repetition supports accounts under which syntactic form representations are connected to individual lexical items (e.g., Tomasello, 2003; Vosse & Kempen, 2000, 2009).	\N	\N
24708425	Visual illusions can reveal unconscious representations and processes at work in perception. Here we report a robust illusion that involves the misperception of moving, partially occluded objects. When a dynamically occluded object is seen through 2 misaligned apertures, the object appears misaligned in the direction of the apertures, creating the Aperture Capture Illusion. Specifically, when part of a dynamically occluded object disappears behind an occluding surface and then another part of the object comes into view immediately afterward, the 2 parts appear misaligned in the direction of the offset of the apertures through which they were seen. This illusion can be nulled: Separating the 2 object parts to increase the time interval between their appearance produced the percept of alignment. The ability to null the illusion in this manner demonstrates that dynamically occluded regions of moving objects continue to persist in perceptual awareness but, we argue, are perceived to move at a slower velocity than visible regions. We report 7 experiments establishing the existence of the illusion and ruling out several classes of explanation for it. We interpret the illusion and the ability to nullify it within the context of Palmer, Kellman, and Shipley's (2006) theory of spatiotemporal object formation.	\N	\N
24719237	A briefly flashed target stimulus can become "invisible" when immediately followed by a mask-a phenomenon known as backward masking, which constitutes a major tool in the cognitive sciences. One form of backward masking is termed metacontrast masking. It is generally assumed that in metacontrast masking, the mask suppresses activity on which the conscious perception of the target relies. This assumption biases conclusions when masking is used as a tool-for example, to study the independence between perceptual detection and motor reaction. This is because other models can account for reduced perceptual performance without requiring suppression mechanisms. In this study, we used signal detection theory to test the suppression model against an alternative view of metacontrast masking, referred to as the summation model. This model claims that target- and mask-related activations fuse and that the difficulty in detecting the target results from the difficulty to discriminate this fused response from the response produced by the mask alone. Our data support this alternative view. This study is not a thorough investigation of metacontrast masking. Instead, we wanted to point out that when a different model is used to account for the reduced perceptual performance in metacontrast masking, there is no need to postulate a dissociation between perceptual and motor responses to account for the data. Metacontrast masking, as implemented in the Fehrer-Raab situation, therefore is not a valid method to assess perceptual-motor dissociations.	\N	\N
24728649	Recent findings have suggested that transient attention can be triggered at two locations simultaneously. However, it is unclear whether doing so reduces the effect of attention at each attended location. In two experiments, we explored the consequences of dividing attention. In the first experiment, we compared the effects of one or two cues against an uncued baseline to determine the consequences of dividing attention in a paradigm with four rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) streams. The results indicated that two simultaneous cues increase the accuracy of reporting two targets by almost the same amount as a single cue increases the report of a single target. These results suggest that when attention is divided between multiple locations, the attentional benefit at each location is not reduced in proportion to the total number of cues. A consequent prediction of this finding is that the identification of two RSVP targets should be better when they are presented simultaneously rather than sequentially. In a second experiment, we verified this prediction by finding evidence of lag-0 sparing: Two targets presented simultaneously in different locations were reported more easily than two targets separated by 100 ms. These findings argue against a biased-competition theory of attention. We suggest that visual attention, as triggered by a cue or target, is better described by a convergent gradient-field attention model.	\N	\N
24728874	In autism spectrum disorders (ASD), social motivation theories suggest that the core social communication problems seen in children with ASD arise from diminished responsiveness to social reward. Although clinical and experimental data support these theories, the extent to which the reward deficit in ASD is unique for social rewards remains unclear. With the present investigation, we aimed to provide insight into the degree to which sociality as well as familiarity of reward incentives impact motivated goal-directed behavior in children with ASD. To do so, we directly compared the influence of familiar versus unfamiliar social reward relative to nonsocial, monetary reward in children with ASD relative to age- and IQ-matched typically developing controls (TDC) using a visual and auditory incentive go/nogo task with reward contingencies for successful response inhibitions. We found that children with ASD responded stronger to visual familiar and unfamiliar social reward as well as to nonsocial, monetary reward than TDC. While the present data are at odds with predictions made by social motivation theories, individual variations beyond clinical diagnosis, such as reward exposure across various social settings, help explain the pattern of results. The findings of this study stress the necessity for additional research on intra-individual as well as environmental factors that contribute to social reward responsiveness in individuals with ASD versus other neuropsychiatric disorders such as ADHD or conduct disorder.	\N	\N
24732070	Human subjects performed in several behavioral conditions requiring, or not requiring, selective attention to visual stimuli. Specifically, the attentional task was to recognize strings of digits that had been presented visually. A nonlinear version of the stimulus-frequency otoacoustic emission (SFOAE), called the nSFOAE, was collected during the visual presentation of the digits. The segment of the physiological response discussed here occurred during brief silent periods immediately following the SFOAE-evoking stimuli. For all subjects tested, the physiological-noise magnitudes were substantially weaker (less noisy) during the tasks requiring the most visual attention. Effect sizes for the differences were >2.0. Our interpretation is that cortico-olivo influences adjusted the magnitude of efferent activation during the SFOAE-evoking stimulation depending upon the attention task in effect, and then that magnitude of efferent activation persisted throughout the silent period where it also modulated the physiological noise present. Because the results were highly similar to those obtained when the behavioral conditions involved auditory attention, similar mechanisms appear to operate both across modalities and within modalities. Supplementary measurements revealed that the efferent activation was spectrally global, as it was for auditory attention.	\N	\N
24746946	Action representations associated with object use may be incidentally activated during visual object processing, and the time course of such activations may be influenced by lexical-semantic context (e.g., Lee, Middleton, Mirman, Kalénine, & Buxbaum (2012). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39(1), 257-270). In this study we used the "visual world" eye-tracking paradigm to examine whether a deficit in producing skilled object-use actions (apraxia) is associated with abnormalities in incidental activation of action information, and assessed the neuroanatomical substrates of any such deficits. Twenty left hemisphere stroke patients, ten of whom were apraxic, performed a task requiring identification of a named object in a visual display containing manipulation-related and unrelated distractor objects. Manipulation relationships among objects were not relevant to the identification task. Objects were cued with neutral ("S/he saw the…."), or action-relevant ("S/he used the….") sentences. Non-apraxic participants looked at use-related non-target objects significantly more than at unrelated non-target objects when cued both by neutral and action-relevant sentences, indicating that action information is incidentally activated. In contrast, apraxic participants showed delayed activation of manipulation-based action information during object identification when cued by neutral sentences. The magnitude of delayed activation in the neutral sentence condition was reliably predicted by lower scores on a test of gesture production to viewed objects, as well as by lesion loci in the inferior parietal and posterior temporal lobes. However, when cued by a sentence containing an action verb, apraxic participants showed fixation patterns that were statistically indistinguishable from non-apraxic controls. In support of grounded theories of cognition, these results suggest that apraxia and temporal-parietal lesions may be associated with abnormalities in incidental activation of action information from objects. Further, they suggest that the previously-observed facilitative role of action verbs in the retrieval of object-related action information extends to participants with apraxia.	\N	\N
24746955	Selective attention to phonology, i.e., the ability to attend to sub-syllabic units within spoken words, is a critical precursor to literacy acquisition. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence has demonstrated that a left-lateralized network of frontal, temporal, and posterior language regions, including the visual word form area, supports this skill. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the temporal dynamics of selective attention to phonology during spoken word perception. We tested the hypothesis that selective attention to phonology dynamically modulates stimulus encoding by recruiting left-lateralized processes specifically while the information critical for performance is unfolding. Selective attention to phonology was captured by manipulating listening goals: skilled adult readers attended to either rhyme or melody within auditory stimulus pairs. Each pair superimposed rhyming and melodic information ensuring identical sensory stimulation. Selective attention to phonology produced distinct early and late topographic ERP effects during stimulus encoding. Data-driven source localization analyses revealed that selective attention to phonology led to significantly greater recruitment of left-lateralized posterior and extensive temporal regions, which was notably concurrent with the rhyme-relevant information within the word. Furthermore, selective attention effects were specific to auditory stimulus encoding and not observed in response to cues, arguing against the notion that they reflect sustained task setting. Collectively, these results demonstrate that selective attention to phonology dynamically engages a left-lateralized network during the critical time-period of perception for achieving phonological analysis goals. These findings suggest a key role for selective attention in on-line phonological computations. Furthermore, these findings motivate future research on the role that neural mechanisms of attention may play in phonological awareness impairments thought to underlie developmental reading disabilities.	\N	\N
24751993	Voice pitch is an important information-bearing component of language that is subject to experience dependent plasticity at both early cortical and subcortical stages of processing. We have already demonstrated that pitch onset component (Na) of the cortical pitch response (CPR) is sensitive to flat pitch and its salience … CPR responses from Chinese listeners were elicited by three citation forms varying in pitch acceleration and duration. Results showed that the pitch onset component (Na) was invariant to changes in acceleration. In contrast, Na–Pb and Pb–Nb showed a systematic decrease in the interpeak latency and decrease in amplitude with increase in pitch acceleration that followed the time course of pitch change across the three stimuli. A strong correlation with pitch acceleration was observed for these two components only – a putative index of pitch-relevant neural activity associated with the more rapidly-changing portions of the pitch contour. Pc–Nc marks unambiguously the stimulus offset … and their functional roles as related to sensory and cognitive properties of the stimulus. [Corrected]	\N	\N
24754984	To retrospectively analyze the auditory and speech development of young children with bilateral congenital aural atresia after using bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) softband. From August 2010 to January 2013, a total of 12 patients aged at a range of 3 months to 6 years with bilateral aural atresia using BAHA softband were divided into under 4-year-old group (n = 7, an average age of 14 months) and over 4-year-old group (n = 5, an average age of 77 months). The air and bone auditory thresholds of the under 4-year-old group were assessed by auditory brainstem response (ABR). The Infant-Toddler Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale (IT-MAIS) was used to evaluate early auditory development.Soundfield pure tone audiometry (PTA) was applied in the over 4-year-old group. The Standard Chinese lexical neighborhood test (LNT) was conducted to evaluate the speech discrimination scores unaided and aided for 6, 12 and 24 months. For the under 4-year-old group, the unaided air and bone conduction hearing thresholds were 70-90(73 ± 12) and 15-25(21 ± 4) dB nHL respectively.IT-MAIS score improved significantly after using softband for 6 months in comparisons with unaided situations. The average hearing threshold of patients in the over 4-year-old group was (63 ± 6) dB HL unaided versus (31 ± 4)dB HL aided. The average decline in pure-tone threshold was (32 ± 3)dB HL with BAHA softbands and LNT demonstrated improvements in the speech discrimination score. The differences of paired comparison were significant (all P < 0.05). The hearing ability of children with bilateral congenital aural atresia improves significantly after using BAHA softband. And its application at a young age can guarantee a relatively normal hearing development and avoid oral communication impairment.	\N	\N
24764068	The effects on multisensory integration have rarely been examined in amblyopia. The McGurk effect is a well-established audiovisual illusion that is manifested when an auditory phoneme is presented concurrently with an incongruent visual phoneme. Visually healthy viewers will hear a phoneme that does not match the actual auditory stimulus, having been perceptually influenced by the visual phoneme. This study examines audiovisual integration in adults with amblyopia. Twenty-two subjects with amblyopia and 25 visually healthy controls participated. Participants viewed videos of combinations of visual and auditory phonemes, and were asked to report what they heard. Some videos had congruent video and audio (control), whereas others had incongruent video and audio (McGurk). The McGurk effect is strongest when the visual phoneme dominates over the audio phoneme, resulting in low auditory accuracy on the task. Adults with amblyopia demonstrated a weaker McGurk effect than visually healthy controls (P = 0.01). The difference was greatest when viewing monocularly with the amblyopic eye, and it was also evident when viewing binocularly or monocularly with the fellow eye. No correlations were found between the strength of the McGurk effect and either visual acuity or stereoacuity in subjects with amblyopia. Subjects with amblyopia and controls showed a similar response pattern to different speakers and syllables, and subjects with amblyopia consistently demonstrated a weaker effect than controls. Abnormal visual experience early in life can have negative consequences for audiovisual integration that persists into adulthood in people with amblyopia.	\N	\N
24770403	To clarify the responsible gene for a family associated with hearing loss but having no well-known mitochondrial mutations. A Japanese family showing late-onset, progressive, and ski-sloping sensorineural hearing loss. Whole mitochondrial genome sequencing identified the 1673T>C mutation, a novel mitochondrial DNA mutation in the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. Whole mitochondrial genome sequencing is a powerful tool to identify the responsible gene for plausible mitochondrially inherited families. This is additional evidence that mitochondrial gene mutations may cause late-onset, progressive, and ski-sloping sensorineural hearing loss.	\N	\N
24778251	Although it is well accepted that the speech motor system (SMS) is activated during speech perception, the functional role of this activation remains unclear. Here we test the hypothesis that the redundant motor activation contributes to categorical speech perception under adverse listening conditions. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, participants identified one of four phoneme tokens (/ba/, /ma/, /da/, or /ta/) under one of six signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels (-12, -9, -6, -2, 8 dB, and no noise). Univariate and multivariate pattern analyses were used to determine the role of the SMS during perception of noise-impoverished phonemes. Results revealed a negative correlation between neural activity and perceptual accuracy in the left ventral premotor cortex and Broca's area. More importantly, multivoxel patterns of activity in the left ventral premotor cortex and Broca's area exhibited effective phoneme categorization when SNR ≥ -6 dB. This is in sharp contrast with phoneme discriminability in bilateral auditory cortices and sensorimotor interface areas (e.g., left posterior superior temporal gyrus), which was reliable only when the noise was extremely weak (SNR > 8 dB). Our findings provide strong neuroimaging evidence for a greater robustness of the SMS than auditory regions for categorical speech perception in noise. Under adverse listening conditions, better discriminative activity in the SMS may compensate for loss of specificity in the auditory system via sensorimotor integration.	\N	\N
24778384	The activation of listener's motor system during speech processing was first demonstrated by the enhancement of electromyographic tongue potentials as evoked by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over tongue motor cortex. This technique is, however, technically challenging and enables only a rather coarse measurement of this motor mirroring. Here, we applied TMS to listeners' tongue motor area in association with ultrasound tissue Doppler imaging to describe fine-grained tongue kinematic synergies evoked by passive listening to speech. Subjects listened to syllables requiring different patterns of dorso-ventral and antero-posterior movements (/ki/, /ko/, /ti/, /to/). Results show that passive listening to speech sounds evokes a pattern of motor synergies mirroring those occurring during speech production. Moreover, mirror motor synergies were more evident in those subjects showing good performances in discriminating speech in noise demonstrating a role of the speech-related mirror system in feed-forward processing the speaker's ongoing motor plan.	\N	\N
24779648	This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate discourse-coherence processing. Because there are scant data on ERP indices of discourse coherence in typical adults, it is important to study a non-clinical population before examining clinical populations. Twelve adults listened to a story with sentences in a coherent versus incoherent order. Sequences of nonsense syllables served as a control. ERPs in the 200-400 ms time window, reflecting phonological and lexical processing, and in the 600-900 ms time window, reflecting later discourse processing for integration, were investigated. Results revealed a right anterior and posterior positivity that was greater for coherent than for incoherent discourse during the 600-900 ms time window. These findings point to an index of discourse coherence and further suggest that ERPs can be used as a clinical tool to study discourse-processing disorders in populations with brain damage, such as aphasia and traumatic brain injury.	\N	\N
24793771	Auditory filter theory dictates a physiological compromise between frequency and temporal resolution of cochlear signal processing. We examined neurophysiological correlates of these spectrotemporal tradeoffs in the human auditory system using auditory evoked brain potentials and psychophysical responses. Temporal resolution was assessed using scalp-recorded auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) elicited by paired clicks. The inter-click interval (ICI) between successive pulses was parameterized from 0.7 to 25 ms to map ABR amplitude recovery as a function of stimulus spacing. Behavioral frequency difference limens (FDLs) and auditory filter selectivity (Q10 of psychophysical tuning curves) were obtained to assess relations between behavioral spectral acuity and electrophysiological estimates of temporal resolvability. Neural responses increased monotonically in amplitude with increasing ICI, ranging from total suppression (0.7 ms) to full recovery (25 ms) with a temporal resolution of ∼3-4 ms. ABR temporal thresholds were correlated with behavioral Q10 (frequency selectivity) but not FDLs (frequency discrimination); no correspondence was observed between Q10 and FDLs. Results suggest that finer frequency selectivity, but not discrimination, is associated with poorer temporal resolution. The inverse relation between ABR recovery and perceptual frequency tuning demonstrates a time-frequency tradeoff between the temporal and spectral resolving power of the human auditory system.	\N	\N
24795958	This study investigates how speed of motion is processed in language. In three eye-tracking experiments, participants were presented with visual scenes and spoken sentences describing fast or slow events (e.g., The lion ambled/dashed to the balloon). Results showed that looking time to relevant objects in the visual scene was affected by the speed of verb of the sentence, speaking rate, and configuration of a supporting visual scene. The results provide novel evidence for the mental simulation of speed in language and show that internal dynamic simulations can be played out via eye movements toward a static visual scene.	\N	\N
24801737	Two experiments used the progressive demasking (PD) task to examine age differences in the ability to inhibit higher frequency competitors during the process of identifying a visually degraded word. In Experiment 1, older adults exhibited a larger inhibitory neighborhood frequency effect (i.e., slower identification of words with many higher frequency competitors) than younger adults, but additional analyses indicated that this difference could be explained by general slowing rather than a deficit in inhibitory abilities. In Experiment 2, a primed version of the PD task was used to promote hypothesis testing by semantically priming the target word (e.g., cry-weep) or a higher frequency competitor of the target (e.g, day-weep) prior to the onset of the demasking sequence. Although older adults were more likely to make identification errors consistent with an inhibitory deficit (e.g., identifying weep as week), these errors were infrequent overall and there was no corresponding evidence of a larger interference effect in the older adults' identification latencies. Taken together, performance in these two tasks provides little evidence of reduced inhibitory functioning in older adults. The implications for the inhibitory deficit hypothesis of cognitive aging and directions for future are discussed.	\N	\N
24807850	The Finnish Matrix Test is the first sentence test in noise for the Finnish language. It was developed according to the HearCom standards and provides reliable speech intelligibility measurements with highly comparable results with the other international matrix tests. The aim of the study was to develop an accurate speech intelligibility test in noise for the Finnish language that is comparable across different languages. We chose a matrix sentence test, which comprises a base matrix of 10 names, verbs, numerals, adjectives and nouns. Test lists were formed from this matrix quasi randomly, providing test sentences of the same syntactical structure. The speech material corresponds to everyday spoken language and the phoneme distribution is representative of the Finnish language. The test was optimized by determining the speech recognition thresholds of the individual words and subsequently by applying level corrections of up to ±3 dB. Evaluation measurements were performed to check the equivalence of the different test lists with respect to speech intelligibility and to provide reference values for further clinical applications. After training, the mean speech recognition threshold (SRT) and the slope of the final test lists were -10.1 ± 0.1 dB signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR)and 16.7 ± 1.2%/dB, respectively (measurements at constant level; inter-list variability). The mean SRT and the slope of the test subjects were -10.1 ± 0.7 dB SNR and 17.5 ± 2.2%/dB (measurements at constant level; inter-subject variability). The expected SRT range for normal-hearing young adults for adaptive measurements is -9.7 ± 0.7 dB SNR.	\N	\N
24814580	The goal of the present research was to provide direct evidence for the cross-language interaction of phonologies at the sub-lexical level by using the masked onset priming paradigm. More specifically, we investigated whether there is a cross-language masked onset priming effect (MOPE) with L2 (English) primes and L1 (Russian) targets and whether it is modulated by the orthographic similarity of primes and targets. Primes and targets had onsets that overlapped either only phonologically, only orthographically, both phonologically and orthographically, or did not have any overlap. Phonological overlap, but not orthographic overlap, between primes and targets led to faster naming latencies. In contrast, the ERP data provided evidence for effects of both phonological and orthographic overlap. Finally, the time-course of phonological and orthographic processing for our bilinguals mirrored the time-course previously reported for monolinguals in the ERP data. These results provide evidence for shared representations at the sub-lexical level for a bilingual's two languages.	\N	\N
24815281	Reduced spectral resolution negatively impacts speech perception, particularly perception of vowels and consonant place. This study assessed impact of number of spectral channels on vowel discrimination by 6-month-old infants with normal hearing by comparing three listening conditions: Unprocessed speech, 32 channels, and 16 channels. Auditory stimuli (/ti/ and /ta/) were spectrally reduced using a noiseband vocoder and presented to infants with normal hearing via visual habituation. Results supported a significant effect of number of channels on vowel discrimination by 6-month-old infants. No differences emerged between unprocessed and 32-channel conditions in which infants looked longer during novel stimulus trials (i.e., discrimination). The 16-channel condition yielded a significantly different pattern: Infants demonstrated no significant difference in looking time to familiar vs novel stimulus trials, suggesting infants cannot discriminate /ti/ and /ta/ with only 16 channels. Results support effects of spectral resolution on vowel discrimination. Relative to published reports, young infants need more spectral detail than older children and adults to perceive spectrally degraded speech. Results have implications for development of perception by infants with hearing loss who receive auditory prostheses.	\N	\N
24828221	There are many clinically available tests for the assessment of auditory processing skills in children and adults. However, there is limited data available on the maturational effects on the performance on these tests. The current study investigated maturational effects on auditory processing abilities using three psychophysical measures: temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF), iterated ripple noise (IRN) perception, and spectral ripple discrimination (SRD). A cross-sectional study. Three groups of subjects were tested: 10 adults (18-30 yr), 10 older children (12-18 yr), and 10 young children (8-11 yr) Temporal envelope processing was measured by obtaining thresholds for amplitude modulation detection as a function of modulation frequency (TMTF; 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128 Hz). Temporal fine structure processing was measured using IRN, and spectral processing was measured using SRD. The results showed that young children had significantly higher modulation thresholds at 4 Hz (TMTF) compared to the other two groups and poorer SRD scores compared to adults. The results on IRN did not differ across groups. The results suggest that different aspects of auditory processing mature at different age periods and these maturational effects need to be considered while assessing auditory processing in children.	\N	\N
24838018	The multisensory response enhancement (MRE), occurring when the response to a visual target integrated with a spatially congruent sound is stronger than the response to the visual target alone, is believed to be mediated by the superior colliculus (SC) (Stein & Meredith, 1993). Here, we used a focused attention paradigm to show that the spatial congruency effect occurs with red (SC-effective) but not blue (SC-ineffective) visual stimuli, when presented with spatially congruent sounds. To isolate the chromatic component of SC-ineffective targets and to demonstrate the selectivity of the spatial congruency effect we used the random luminance modulation technique (Experiment 1) and the tritanopic technique (Experiment 2). Our results indicate that the spatial congruency effect does not require the distribution of attention over different sensory modalities and provide correlational evidence that the SC mediates the effect.	\N	\N
24842067	Auditory feedback plays an important role in children's speech development by providing the child with information about speech outcomes that is used to learn and fine-tune speech motor plans. The use of auditory feedback in speech motor learning has been extensively studied in adults by examining oral motor responses to manipulations of auditory feedback during speech production. Children are also capable of adapting speech motor patterns to perceived changes in auditory feedback; however, it is not known whether their capacity for motor learning is limited by immature auditory-perceptual abilities. Here, the link between speech perceptual ability and the capacity for motor learning was explored in two groups of 5- to 7-year-old children who underwent a period of auditory perceptual training followed by tests of speech motor adaptation to altered auditory feedback. One group received perceptual training on a speech acoustic property relevant to the motor task while a control group received perceptual training on an irrelevant speech contrast. Learned perceptual improvements led to an enhancement in speech motor adaptation (proportional to the perceptual change) only for the experimental group. The results indicate that children's ability to perceive relevant speech acoustic properties has a direct influence on their capacity for sensory-based speech motor adaptation.	\N	\N
24850915	Many everyday skilled actions depend on moving in time with signals that are embedded in complex auditory streams (e.g. musical performance, dancing or simply holding a conversation). Such behaviour is apparently effortless; however, it is not known how humans combine auditory signals to support movement production and coordination. Here, we test how participants synchronize their movements when there are potentially conflicting auditory targets to guide their actions. Participants tapped their fingers in time with two simultaneously presented metronomes of equal tempo, but differing in phase and temporal regularity. Synchronization therefore depended on integrating the two timing cues into a single-event estimate or treating the cues as independent and thereby selecting one signal over the other. We show that a Bayesian inference process explains the situations in which participants choose to integrate or separate signals, and predicts motor timing errors. Simulations of this causal inference process demonstrate that this model provides a better description of the data than other plausible models. Our findings suggest that humans exploit a Bayesian inference process to control movement timing in situations where the origin of auditory signals needs to be resolved.	\N	\N
24851348	Learning and discovery seem often to begin with noting patterns. Human infants are skilled at pattern detection, even patterns only definable at an abstract level, which is key to their acquisition of complex knowledge systems such as language and music. However, research examining infants' abstract rule learning has generated inconsistent results. We propose that apparent domain differences in infants' abstract rule learning may be the result of extraneous stimulus variation and discrepancies in the methodologies employed across studies probing this skill. We discuss how a behavioral methodology indexing infants' online learning would be valuable in furthering understanding of infants' (as well as adults') abstract rule learning and its neurophysiological concomitants. We outline current research aimed at developing such an index, and we propose future research, pairing such techniques with neurophysiological methods, aimed at shining more light on human skill at discovering structure.	\N	\N
24856208	Human early visual cortex was traditionally thought to process simple visual features such as orientation, contrast, and spatial frequency via feedforward input from the lateral geniculate nucleus (e.g., [1]). However, the role of nonretinal influence on early visual cortex is so far insufficiently investigated despite much evidence that feedback connections greatly outnumber feedforward connections [2-5]. Here, we explored in five fMRI experiments how information originating from audition and imagery affects the brain activity patterns in early visual cortex in the absence of any feedforward visual stimulation. We show that category-specific information from both complex natural sounds and imagery can be read out from early visual cortex activity in blindfolded participants. The coding of nonretinal information in the activity patterns of early visual cortex is common across actual auditory perception and imagery and may be mediated by higher-level multisensory areas. Furthermore, this coding is robust to mild manipulations of attention and working memory but affected by orthogonal, cognitively demanding visuospatial processing. Crucially, the information fed down to early visual cortex is category specific and generalizes to sound exemplars of the same category, providing evidence for abstract information feedback rather than precise pictorial feedback. Our results suggest that early visual cortex receives nonretinal input from other brain areas when it is generated by auditory perception and/or imagery, and this input carries common abstract information. Our findings are compatible with feedback of predictive information to the earliest visual input level (e.g., [6]), in line with predictive coding models [7-10].	\N	\N
24858108	Rapidly approaching (looming) sounds are ecologically salient stimuli that are perceived as nearer than they are due to overestimation of their loudness change and underestimation of their distance (Neuhoff, 1998; Seifritz et al., 2002). Despite evidence for crossmodal influence by looming sounds onto visual areas (Romei, Murray, Cappe, & Thut, 2009, 2013; Tyll et al., 2013), it is unknown whether such sounds bias visual percepts in similar ways. Nearer objects appear to be larger and brighter than distant objects. If looming sounds impact visual processing, then visual stimuli paired with looming sounds should be perceived as brighter and larger, even when the visual stimuli do not provide motion cues, i.e. are static. In Experiment 1 we found that static visual objects paired with looming tones (but not static or receding tones) were perceived as larger and brighter than their actual physical properties, as if they appear closer to the observer. In a second experiment, we replicate and extend the findings of Experiment 1. Crucially, we did not find evidence of such bias by looming sounds when visual processing was disrupted via masking or when catch trials were presented, ruling out simple response bias. Finally, in a third experiment we found that looming tones do not bias visual stimulus characteristics that do not carry visual depth information such as shape, providing further evidence that they specifically impact in-depth visual processing. We conclude that looming sounds impact visual perception through a mechanism transferring in-depth sound motion information onto the relevant in-depth visual dimensions (such as size and luminance but not shape) in a crossmodal remapping of information for a genuine, evolutionary advantage in stimulus detection.	\N	\N
24869445	Two studies examined adult cochlear implant (CI) users' ability to match auditory rhythms occurring in music to visual rhythms occurring in dance (Cha Cha, Slow Swing, Tango and Jive). In Experiment 1, adults CI users (n = 10) and hearing controls matched a music excerpt to choreographed dance sequences presented as silent videos. In Experiment 2, participants matched a silent video of a dance sequence to music excerpts. CI users were successful in detecting timing congruencies across music and dance at well above-chance levels suggesting that they were able to process distinctive auditory and visual rhythm patterns that characterized each style. However, they were better able to detect cross-modal timing congruencies when the reference was an auditory rhythm than when the reference was a visual rhythm. Learning strategies that encourage cross-modal learning of musical rhythms may have applications in developing novel rehabilitative strategies to enhance music perception and appreciation outcomes of child implant users.	\N	\N
24872325	In the present study we investigate the rules governing the perception of audiovisual synchrony within spatio-temporally cluttered visual environments. Participants viewed a ring of 19 discs modulating in luminance while hearing an amplitude modulating tone. Each disc modulated with a unique temporal phase (40 ms intervals), with only one synchronized to the tone. Participants searched for the synchronised disc whose spatial location varied randomly across trials. Square-wave modulation facilitated search: the synchronized disc was frequently chosen, with tight response distributions centred near zero-phase lag. In the sinusoidal condition responses were equally distributed over the 19 discs regardless of phase. To investigate whether subjective synchrony in the square-wave condition was limited by spatial or temporal factors we repeated the experiment with either reduced spatial density (9 discs) or temporal density (80 ms phase intervals). Reduced temporal density greatly facilitated synchrony perception but left the synchrony bandwidth unchanged, while no influence of spatial density was found. We conclude that audio-visual synchrony is not strongly constrained by the spatial or temporal density of the visual display, but by a temporal window within which audio-visual events are perceived as synchronous, with a full bandwidth of ~185 ms.	\N	\N
24878593	One of the main issues within the field of social robotics is to endow robots with the ability to direct attention to people with whom they are interacting. Different approaches follow bio-inspired mechanisms, merging audio and visual cues to localize a person using multiple sensors. However, most of these fusion mechanisms have been used in fixed systems, such as those used in video-conference rooms, and thus, they may incur difficulties when constrained to the sensors with which a robot can be equipped. Besides, within the scope of interactive autonomous robots, there is a lack in terms of evaluating the benefits of audio-visual attention mechanisms, compared to only audio or visual approaches, in real scenarios. Most of the tests conducted have been within controlled environments, at short distances and/or with off-line performance measurements. With the goal of demonstrating the benefit of fusing sensory information with a Bayes inference for interactive robotics, this paper presents a system for localizing a person by processing visual and audio data. Moreover, the performance of this system is evaluated and compared via considering the technical limitations of unimodal systems. The experiments show the promise of the proposed approach for the proactive detection and tracking of speakers in a human-robot interactive framework.	\N	\N
24880672	To assess treatment outcomes via acoustic voice laboratory measurements before and after intervention in patients with common voice problems and Determine if outcome sensitivity of certain voice laboratory measures varies with disorder type. Retrospective and single-blinded. In this study, 40 patients with a single voice disorder diagnosis of either benign vocal fold lesions (lesions), primary muscle tension dysphonia (MTD-1), vocal fold atrophy (atrophy) or unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) underwent baseline testing, a single intervention-type (phonosurgery/voice therapy), and follow-up testing at uniform time points. Ten patients per diagnosis group were analyzed before and after treatment. Time- and frequency-based acoustic measures taken from vowels and sentences as well as patient-perceptual analysis (Voice Handicap Index-10) were reviewed. Statistically significant improvements were observed for three of four groups. Patients with muscle tension dysphonia displayed an improvement in Cepstral Spectral Index of Dysphonia speech (CSID) (P < 0.05). Patients with lesions had improved Voice Handicap Index-10 (P < 0.05), cepstral peak prominence (CPP) vowel standard deviation (P < 0.05), and CPP speech (P < 0.05). Patients with atrophy did not demonstrate significant improvement in any measure. Patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis showed an improvement in CSID speech (P < 0.05) and CPP speech (P < 0.05). In addition, strong effect sizes were observed for many of the acoustic parameters studied. For all groups except atrophy, treatment was successful in improving patient perception of voice handicap and/or some acoustic voice parameters. A disorder-specific response to frequency-based acoustic measures was found.	\N	\N
24887110	Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) is a common human disorder, affecting one in three Americans aged 60 and over. Previous studies have shown that presbyacusis is associated with a loss of non-sensory cells in the cochlear lateral wall. Sox10 is a transcription factor crucial to the development and maintenance of neural crest-derived cells including some non-sensory cell types in the cochlea. Mutations of the Sox10 gene are known to cause various combinations of hearing loss and pigmentation defects in humans. This study investigated the potential relationship between Sox10 gene expression and pathological changes in the cochlear lateral wall of aged CBA/CaJ mice and human temporal bones from older donors. Cochlear tissues prepared from young adult (1-3 month-old) and aged (2-2.5 year-old) mice, and human temporal bone donors were examined using quantitative immunohistochemical analysis and transmission electron microscopy. Cells expressing Sox10 were present in the stria vascularis, outer sulcus and spiral prominence in mouse and human cochleas. The Sox10(+) cell types included marginal and intermediate cells and outer sulcus cells, including those that border the scala media and those extending into root processes (root cells) in the spiral ligament. Quantitative analysis of immunostaining revealed a significant decrease in the number of Sox10(+) marginal cells and outer sulcus cells in aged mice. Electron microscopic evaluation revealed degenerative alterations in the surviving Sox10(+) cells in aged mice. Strial marginal cells in human cochleas from donors aged 87 and older showed only weak immunostaining for Sox10. Decreases in Sox10 expression levels and a loss of Sox10(+) cells in both mouse and human aged ears suggests an important role of Sox10 in the maintenance of structural and functional integrity of the lateral wall. A loss of Sox10(+) cells may also be associated with a decline in the repair capabilities of non-sensory cells in the aged ear.	\N	\N
24893743	RTs in conversation, with average gaps of 200 msec and often less, beat standard RTs, despite the complexity of response and the lag in speech production (600 msec or more). This can only be achieved by anticipation of timing and content of turns in conversation, about which little is known. Using EEG and an experimental task with conversational stimuli, we show that estimation of turn durations are based on anticipating the way the turn would be completed. We found a neuronal correlate of turn-end anticipation localized in ACC and inferior parietal lobule, namely a beta-frequency desynchronization as early as 1250 msec, before the end of the turn. We suggest that anticipation of the other's utterance leads to accurately timed transitions in everyday conversations.	\N	\N
24897885	Twenty-four Japanese undergraduate pairs (12 male and 12 female pairs) participated as witnesses to a simulated criminal event. Although the witness pairs watched the same video together, through wireless headphones they experienced two different auditory versions with four differing items without being aware of the discrepancies. After the presentation, the witnesses were led to discuss six items, including two critical ones they had heard differently and another four they had heard in common. Witness memory performance was assessed individually with multiple-choice questionnaires in three sessions: before the discussion, after the discussion, and 1 week later. The results showed that participants tended to conform to their co-witness more often on the discussed items than on the not-discussed items. Source monitoring analyses on the four critical items revealed that even those participants who conformed were mostly cognizant of the source of their information just after the discussion, but they were prone to source-monitoring errors a week later.	\N	\N
24904404	Auditory perception and auditory imagery have been shown to activate overlapping brain regions. We hypothesized that these phenomena also share a common underlying neural representation. To assess this, we used electrocorticography intracranial recordings from epileptic patients performing an out loud or a silent reading task. In these tasks, short stories scrolled across a video screen in two conditions: subjects read the same stories both aloud (overt) and silently (covert). In a control condition the subject remained in a resting state. We first built a high gamma (70-150 Hz) neural decoding model to reconstruct spectrotemporal auditory features of self-generated overt speech. We then evaluated whether this same model could reconstruct auditory speech features in the covert speech condition. Two speech models were tested: a spectrogram and a modulation-based feature space. For the overt condition, reconstruction accuracy was evaluated as the correlation between original and predicted speech features, and was significant in each subject (p < 10(-5); paired two-sample t-test). For the covert speech condition, dynamic time warping was first used to realign the covert speech reconstruction with the corresponding original speech from the overt condition. Reconstruction accuracy was then evaluated as the correlation between original and reconstructed speech features. Covert reconstruction accuracy was compared to the accuracy obtained from reconstructions in the baseline control condition. Reconstruction accuracy for the covert condition was significantly better than for the control condition (p < 0.005; paired two-sample t-test). The superior temporal gyrus, pre- and post-central gyrus provided the highest reconstruction information. The relationship between overt and covert speech reconstruction depended on anatomy. These results provide evidence that auditory representations of covert speech can be reconstructed from models that are built from an overt speech data set, supporting a partially shared neural substrate.	\N	\N
24908166	Aging is associated with declines in auditory processing including speech comprehension abilities. Here, we evaluated both brainstem and cortical speech-evoked brain responses to elucidate how aging impacts the neural transcription and transfer of speech information between functional levels of the auditory nervous system. Behaviorally, older adults showed slower, more variable speech classification performance than younger listeners, which coincided with reduced brainstem amplitude and increased, but delayed, cortical speech-evoked responses. Mild age-related hearing loss showed differential correspondence with neurophysiological responses showing negative (brainstem) and positive (cortical) correlations with brain activity. Spontaneous brain activity, that is, "neural noise," did not differ between older and younger adults. Yet, mutual information and correlations computed between brainstem and cortex revealed higher redundancy (i.e., lower interdependence) in speech information transferred along the auditory pathway implying less neural flexibility in older adults. Results are consistent with the notion that weakened speech encoding in brainstem is overcompensated by increased cortical dysinhibition in the aging brain. Findings suggest aging negatively impacts speech listening abilities by distorting the hierarchy of speech representations, reducing neural flexibility through increased neural redundancy, and ultimately impairing the acoustic-phonetic mapping necessary for robust speech understanding.	\N	\N
24931795	Alpha oscillations are a prominent electrophysiological signal measured across a wide range of species and cortical and subcortical sites. Alpha oscillations have been viewed for a long time as an "idling" rhythm, purely reflecting inactive sites. Despite earlier evidence from neurophysiology, awareness that alpha oscillations can substantially influence perception and behavior has grown only recently in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence for an active role of alpha for perception comes mainly from several visual, near-threshold experiments. In the current review, we extend this view by summarizing studies showing how alpha-defined brain states relate to illusory perception, i.e. cases of perceptual reports that are not "objectively" verifiable by distinct stimuli or stimulus features. These studies demonstrate that ongoing or prestimulus alpha oscillations substantially influence the perception of auditory, visual or multisensory illusions.	\N	\N
24935820	Action perception and recognition are core abilities fundamental for human social interaction. A parieto-frontal network (the mirror neuron system) matches visually presented biological motion information onto observers' motor representations. This process of matching the actions of others onto our own sensorimotor repertoire is thought to be important for action recognition, providing a non-mediated "motor perception" based on a bidirectional flow of information along the mirror parieto-frontal circuits. State-of-the-art machine learning strategies for hand action identification have shown better performances when sensorimotor data, as opposed to visual information only, are available during learning. As speech is a particular type of action (with acoustic targets), it is expected to activate a mirror neuron mechanism. Indeed, in speech perception, motor centers have been shown to be causally involved in the discrimination of speech sounds. In this paper, we review recent neurophysiological and machine learning-based studies showing (a) the specific contribution of the motor system to speech perception and (b) that automatic phone recognition is significantly improved when motor data are used during training of classifiers (as opposed to learning from purely auditory data).	\N	\N
24936610	All languages employ certain phonetic contrasts when distinguishing words. Infant speech perception is rapidly attuned to these contrasts before many words are learned, thus phonetic attunement is thought to proceed independently of lexical and referential knowledge. Here, evidence to the contrary is provided. Ninety-eight 9-month-old English-learning infants were trained to perceive a non-native Cantonese tone contrast.Two object–tone audiovisual pairings were consistently presented, which highlighted the target contrast (Object A with Tone X; Object B with Tone Y). Tone discrimination was then assessed. Results showed improved tone discrimination if object–tone pairings were perceived as being referential word labels, although this effect was modulated by vocabulary size. Results suggest how lexical and referential knowledge could play a role in phonetic attunement.	\N	\N
24945666	Naturalistic stimuli, such as normal speech and narratives, are opening up intriguing prospects in neuroscience, especially when merging neuroimaging with machine learning methodology. Here we propose a task-optimized spatial filtering strategy for uncovering individual magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses to audiobook stories. Ten subjects listened to 1-h-long recording once, as well as to 48 repetitions of a 1-min-long speech passage. Employing response replicability as statistical validity and utilizing unsupervised learning methods, we trained spatial filters that were able to generalize over datasets of an individual. For this blind-signal-separation (BSS) task, we derived a version of multi-set similarity-constrained canonical correlation analysis (SimCCA) that theoretically provides maximal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in this setting. Irrespective of significant noise in unaveraged MEG traces, the method successfully uncovered feasible time courses up to ~120 Hz, with the most prominent signals below 20 Hz. Individual trial-to-trial correlations of such time courses reached the level of 0.55 (median 0.33 in the group) at ~0.5 Hz, with considerable variation between subjects. By this filtering, the SNR increased up to 20 times. In comparison, independent component analysis (ICA) or principal component analysis (PCA) did not improve SNR notably. The validity of the extracted brain signals was further assessed by inspecting their associations with the stimulus, as well as by mapping the contributing cortical signal sources. The results indicate that the proposed methodology effectively reduces noise in MEG recordings to that extent that brain responses can be seen to nonrecurring audiobook stories. The study paves the way for applications aiming at accurately modeling the stimulus-response-relationship by tackling the response variability, as well as for real-time monitoring of brain signals of individuals in naturalistic experimental conditions.	\N	\N
24946201	To examine active inhibition of irrelevant stimuli and evaluate its neural basis using functional near infrared spectroscopy in patients with attention deficits after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Case control study. Ten patients with TBI and 10 healthy control subjects participated in this study. The Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT) was performed with (distracting PASAT) and without (PASAT) distracting Japanese kana phonetic characters presented between each number. A block design was used. Subjects alternately performed each task three times. Healthy controls performed better than patients with TBI on both the tasks. When performing the PASAT, healthy controls showed significant activity in every region of interest except the right lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), but patients with TBI showed significant activity only in the left anterior PFC and left lateral PFC. When performing the distracting PASAT, the right lateral PFC was active in healthy controls, but not in patients with TBI. These results confirm that patients with moderate-to-severe TBI were affected by distractors that influenced order processing. It is suggested that the working memory of patients with TBI was affected by distracting stimuli, whereas that of healthy individuals was not.	\N	\N
24963624	Recent experimental evidence suggests that the perception of temporal intervals is influenced by the temporal context in which they are presented. A longstanding example is the time-order-error, wherein the perception of two intervals relative to one another is influenced by the order in which they are presented. Here, we test whether the perception of temporal intervals in an absolute judgment task is influenced by the preceding temporal context. Human subjects participated in a temporal bisection task with no anchor durations (partition method). Intervals were demarcated by a Gaussian blob (visual condition) or burst of white noise (auditory condition) that persisted for one of seven logarithmically spaced sub-second intervals. Crucially, the order in which stimuli were presented was first-order counterbalanced, allowing us to measure the carryover effect of every successive combination of intervals. The results demonstrated a number of distinct findings. First, the perception of each interval was biased by the prior response, such that each interval was judged similarly to the preceding trial. Second, the perception of each interval was also influenced by the prior interval, such that perceived duration shifted away from the preceding interval. Additionally, the effect of decision bias was larger for visual intervals, whereas auditory intervals engendered greater perceptual carryover. We quantified these effects by designing a biologically-inspired computational model that measures noisy representations of time against an adaptive memory prior while simultaneously accounting for uncertainty, consistent with a Bayesian heuristic. We found that our model could account for all of the effects observed in human data. Additionally, our model could only accommodate both carryover effects when uncertainty and memory were calculated separately, suggesting separate neural representations for each. These findings demonstrate that time is susceptible to similar carryover effects as other basic stimulus attributes, and that the brain rapidly adapts to temporal context.	\N	\N
24975235	Matrix sentence tests use words from a fixed word matrix to compose syntactically equivalent, but semantically unpredictable sentences. These tests are suitable for monitoring performance of cochlear implant (CI) users by repeated speech intelligibility testing. This study evaluates the Dutch matrix sentence test in CI users in quiet and in noise. It then investigates the possibility to improve the test-retest reliability for CI users by selecting subsets of sentences. Repeated speech intelligibility testing was performed in quiet and in noise. The effect of sentence selection on the test-retest reliability was predicted by computer simulations and experimentally evaluated using a cross-over design. Fifteen post-lingually deafened CI users, of which eleven participated in the cross-over study. The test-retest reliability equaled 2.3 dB in quiet and 1.3 dB in noise. The simulations predicted an improvement in test-retest reliability, especially in quiet. The cross-over study did not confirm the predictions. The results of the study suggest that the homogeneity of the sentences is not the prime component underlying the test-retest reliability. The Dutch matrix speech material and the selected subsets of sentences were equally suitable for speech intelligibility testing in CI users.	\N	\N
24993019	Conversation scenes are a typical example in which classical models of visual attention dramatically fail to predict eye positions. Indeed, these models rarely consider faces as particular gaze attractors and never take into account the important auditory information that always accompanies dynamic social scenes. We recorded the eye movements of participants viewing dynamic conversations taking place in various contexts. Conversations were seen either with their original soundtracks or with unrelated soundtracks (unrelated speech and abrupt or continuous natural sounds). First, we analyze how auditory conditions influence the eye movement parameters of participants. Then, we model the probability distribution of eye positions across each video frame with a statistical method (Expectation-Maximization), allowing the relative contribution of different visual features such as static low-level visual saliency (based on luminance contrast), dynamic low level visual saliency (based on motion amplitude), faces, and center bias to be quantified. Through experimental and modeling results, we show that regardless of the auditory condition, participants look more at faces, and especially at talking faces. Hearing the original soundtrack makes participants follow the speech turn-taking more closely. However, we do not find any difference between the different types of unrelated soundtracks. These eyetracking results are confirmed by our model that shows that faces, and particularly talking faces, are the features that best explain the gazes recorded, especially in the original soundtrack condition. Low-level saliency is not a relevant feature to explain eye positions made on social scenes, even dynamic ones. Finally, we propose groundwork for an audiovisual saliency model.	\N	\N
24993189	Multiple sound reflections from room materials and a listener's head induce slight spectral modifications of sounds. This coloration depends on the listener and source positions, and on the room itself. This study investigated whether coloration could help segregate competing sources. Obligatory streaming was evaluated for diotic speech-shaped noises using a rhythmic discrimination task. Thresholds for detecting anisochrony were always significantly higher when stimuli differed in spectrum. The tested differences corresponded to three spatial configurations involving different levels of head and room coloration. These results suggest that, despite the generally deleterious effects of reverberation on speech intelligibility, coloration could favor source segregation.	\N	\N
24993221	Prosodic rhythm in speech [the alternation of "Strong" (S) and "weak" (w) syllables] is cued, among others, by slow rates of amplitude modulation (AM) within the speech envelope. However, it is unclear exactly which envelope modulation rates and statistics are the most important for the rhythm percept. Here, the hypothesis that the phase relationship between "Stress" rate (∼2 Hz) and "Syllable" rate (∼4 Hz) AMs provides a perceptual cue for speech rhythm is tested. In a rhythm judgment task, adult listeners identified AM tone-vocoded nursery rhyme sentences that carried either trochaic (S-w) or iambic patterning (w-S). Manipulation of listeners' rhythm perception was attempted by parametrically phase-shifting the Stress AM and Syllable AM in the vocoder. It was expected that a 1π radian phase-shift (half a cycle) would reverse the perceived rhythm pattern (i.e., trochaic → iambic) whereas a 2π radian shift (full cycle) would retain the perceived rhythm pattern (i.e., trochaic → trochaic). The results confirmed these predictions. Listeners judgments of rhythm systematically followed Stress-Syllable AM phase-shifts, but were unaffected by phase-shifts between the Syllable AM and the Sub-beat AM (∼14 Hz) in a control condition. It is concluded that the Stress-Syllable AM phase relationship is an envelope-based modulation statistic that supports speech rhythm perception.	\N	\N
24993222	Perceptual compensation for coarticulation (PCCA) refers to listener responses consistent with perceptual reduction of the acoustic effects of the coarticulatory context on a target sound. The robustness of PCCA across individuals and across tasks have not been studied together previously. This study reports the results of two experiments designed to determine the robustness of perceptual compensation for vocalic influence on sibilant perception across tasks and the stability of such compensatory response within an individual. Identification and discrimination data, collected in the laboratory and on Amazon's Mechanical Turk, showed that individuals are moderately stable in their PCCA responses across tasks and the level of stability is consistent across both the lab-based and the internet-based cohorts, although some differences are observed.	\N	\N
24995901	Residual inhibition (RI) is the temporary inhibition of tinnitus by use of masking stimuli when the device is turned off. The main aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of RI induced by auditory electrical stimulation (AES) in the primary auditory pathways using early auditory-evoked potentials (AEPs) in subjective idiopathic tinnitus (SIT) subjects. A randomized placebo-controlled study was conducted on forty-four tinnitus subjects. All enrolled subjects based on the responses to AES, were divided into two groups of RI and Non-RI (NRI). The results of the electrocochleography (ECochG), auditory brain stem response (ABR) and brain stem transmission time (BTT) were determined and compared pre- and post-AES in the studied groups. The mean differences in the compound action potential (CAP) amplitudes and III/V and I/V amplitude ratios were significantly different between the RI, NRI and PES controls. BTT was significantly decreased associated with RI. The observed changes in AEP associated with RI suggested some peripheral and central auditory alterations. Synchronized discharges of the auditory nerve fibers and inhibition of the abnormal activity of the cochlear nerve by AES may play important roles associated with RI. Further comprehensive studies are required to determine the mechanisms of RI more precisely.	\N	\N
25000379	The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of dialect upon the perception of dysarthric speech. Speakers and listeners were self-identifying as either Caucasian American or African American. Three speakers were Caucasian American, three were African American. Four speakers had experienced a CVA and were dysarthric. Listeners were age matched and were equally divided for gender. Readers recorded 14 word sentences from the Assessment of Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech. Listeners provided ratings of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and acceptability. Own-race biases were found for all measures; however, significant findings were found for intelligibility and comprehensibility in that the Caucasian Americans provided significantly higher scores for Caucasian American speakers. Clinical implications are discussed.	\N	\N
25003309	The idea that the human mind can be divided into distinct (but interacting) functional modules is an important presupposition in many theories of cognition. While previous research on modularity predominantly studied input domains (e.g., vision) or central processes, the present study focused on cognitive representations of output domains. Specifically, we asked to what extent output domain representations are encapsulated (i.e., immune to influence from other domains, representing a key feature of modularity) by studying determinants of interference between simultaneous action demands (oculomotor and vocal responses). To examine the degree of encapsulation, we compared single- vs. dual-response performance triggered by single stimuli. Experiment 1 addressed the role of stimulus modality under dimensionally overlapping response requirements (stimuli and responses were spatial and compatible throughout). In Experiment 2, we manipulated the presence of dimensional overlap across responses. Substantial performance costs associated with dual-response (vs. single-response) demands were observed across response modalities, conditions, and experiments. Dimensional overlap combined with shared spatial codes across responses enabled response-code priming (i.e., beneficial crosstalk between output domains). Overall, the results are at odds with the idea of strong encapsulation of output system representations and show how processing content determines the extent of interdependency between output domains in cognition.	\N	\N
25018691	In schizophrenia, evoked 40-Hz auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) are impaired, which reflects the sensory deficits in this disorder, and baseline spontaneous oscillatory activity also appears to be abnormal. It has been debated whether the evoked ASSR impairments are due to the possible increase in baseline power. GABAergic interneuron-specific NMDA receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction mutant mice mimic some behavioral and pathophysiological aspects of schizophrenia. To determine the presence and extent of sensory deficits in these mutant mice, we recorded spontaneous local field potential (LFP) activity and its click-train evoked ASSRs from primary auditory cortex of awake, head-restrained mice. Baseline spontaneous LFP power in the pre-stimulus period before application of the first click trains was augmented at a wide range of frequencies. However, when repetitive ASSR stimuli were presented every 20 s, averaged spontaneous LFP power amplitudes during the inter-ASSR stimulus intervals in the mutant mice became indistinguishable from the levels of control mice. Nonetheless, the evoked 40-Hz ASSR power and their phase locking to click trains were robustly impaired in the mutants, although the evoked 20-Hz ASSRs were also somewhat diminished. These results suggested that NMDAR hypofunction in cortical GABAergic neurons confers two brain state-dependent LFP abnormalities in the auditory cortex; (1) a broadband increase in spontaneous LFP power in the absence of external inputs, and (2) a robust deficit in the evoked ASSR power and its phase-locking despite of normal baseline LFP power magnitude during the repetitive auditory stimuli. The "paradoxically" high spontaneous LFP activity of the primary auditory cortex in the absence of external stimuli may possibly contribute to the emergence of schizophrenia-related aberrant auditory perception.	\N	\N
25036146	The objective of this study was to examine how the level of current required for cochlear implant listeners to detect single-channel electrical pulse trains relates to loudness perception on the same channel. The working hypothesis was that channels with relatively high thresholds, when measured with a focused current pattern, interface poorly to the auditory nerve. For such channels, a smaller dynamic range between perceptual threshold and the most comfortable loudness would result, in part, from a greater sensitivity to changes in electrical field spread compared to low-threshold channels. The narrower range of comfortable listening levels may have important implications for speech perception. Data were collected from eight, adult cochlear implant listeners implanted with the HiRes90k cochlear implant (Advanced Bionics Corp.). The partial tripolar (pTP) electrode configuration, consisting of one intracochlear active electrode, two flanking electrodes carrying a fraction (σ) of the return current, and an extracochlear ground, was used for stimulation. Single-channel detection thresholds and most comfortable listening levels were acquired using the most focused pTP configuration possible (σ ≥ 0.8) to identify three channels for further testing-those with the highest, median, and lowest thresholds-for each subject. Threshold, equal-loudness contours (at 50% of the monopolar dynamic range), and loudness growth functions were measured for each of these three test channels using various pTP fractions. For all test channels, thresholds increased as the electrode configuration became more focused. The rate of increase with the focusing parameter σ was greatest for the high-threshold channel compared to the median- and low-threshold channels. The 50% equal-loudness contours exhibited similar rates of increase in level across test channels and subjects. Additionally, test channels with the highest thresholds had the narrowest dynamic ranges (for σ ≥ 0.5) and steepest growth of loudness functions for all electrode configurations. Together with previous studies using focused stimulation, the results suggest that auditory responses to electrical stimuli at both threshold and suprathreshold current levels are not uniform across the electrode array of individual cochlear implant listeners. Specifically, the steeper growth of loudness and thus smaller dynamic ranges observed for high-threshold channels are consistent with a degraded electrode-neuron interface, which could stem from lower numbers of functioning auditory neurons or a relatively large distance between the neurons and electrodes. These findings may have potential implications for how stimulation levels are set during the clinical mapping procedure, particularly for speech-processing strategies that use focused electrical fields.	\N	\N
25041936	In vision an extensive literature supports the existence of competitive dual-processing systems of category learning that are grounded in neuroscience and are partially-dissociable. The reflective system is prefrontally-mediated and uses working memory and executive attention to develop and test rules for classifying in an explicit fashion. The reflexive system is striatally-mediated and operates by implicitly associating perception with actions that lead to reinforcement. Although categorization is fundamental to auditory processing, little is known about the learning systems that mediate auditory categorization and even less is known about the effects of individual difference in the relative efficiency of the two learning systems. Previous studies have shown that individuals with elevated depressive symptoms show deficits in reflective processing. We exploit this finding to test critical predictions of the dual-learning systems model in audition. Specifically, we examine the extent to which the two systems are dissociable and competitive. We predicted that elevated depressive symptoms would lead to reflective-optimal learning deficits but reflexive-optimal learning advantages. Because natural speech category learning is reflexive in nature, we made the prediction that elevated depressive symptoms would lead to superior speech learning. In support of our predictions, individuals with elevated depressive symptoms showed a deficit in reflective-optimal auditory category learning, but an advantage in reflexive-optimal auditory category learning. In addition, individuals with elevated depressive symptoms showed an advantage in learning a non-native speech category structure. Computational modeling suggested that the elevated depressive symptom advantage was due to faster, more accurate, and more frequent use of reflexive category learning strategies in individuals with elevated depressive symptoms. The implications of this work for dual-process approach to auditory learning and depression are discussed.	\N	\N
25059267	Chronic tinnitus affects 5-15% of the general population; in 1% of individuals with tinnitus this condition severely affects their quality of life. Pharmacological treatment is one of the options for the management of tinnitus patients, but their efficacy remains controversial. AIM. To evaluate the level of evidence to support the use of different drugs in reducing the severity of tinnitus. The pharmacological groups that have been investigated for the treatment of tinnitus include anesthetics, anticonvulsants, antidepressants, antihistamines, benzodiazepines, diuretics, corticosteroids, and of other substances. Intravenous lidocaine seems to be effective, but the short duration of the effect and the adverse reactions prevent its use. Compared with placebo, carbamazepine and gabapentine have not demonstrated effectiveness although they may be effective in some patients with auditory nerve vascular compression or myoclonus. Tricyclic antidepressants are no more effective than placebo at reducing tinnitus severity although they may improve comorbid depression. There is insufficient evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and benzodiazepines. Acamprosate may decrease the severity of tinnitus, but the level of evidence is low. There are no consistent results in the studies with intratympanic gentamicin or steroids in tinnitus associated with Meniere's disease. The use of pharmacotherapy in reducing the severity of tinnitus is not well supported by prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials. Various drugs have been shown to be effective in some studies, but the clinical evidence is limited. Large randomized clinical trials are needed.	\N	\N
25085738	We establish a new dissociation between the roles of working memory (WM) cognitive control and visual maintenance in selective attention as measured by the efficiency of distractor rejection. The extent to which focused selective attention can prevent distraction has been shown to critically depend on the level and type of load involved in the task. High perceptual load that consumes perceptual capacity leads to reduced distractor processing, whereas high WM load that reduces WM ability to exert priority-based executive cognitive control over the task results in increased distractor processing (e.g., Lavie, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(2), 75-82, 2005). WM also serves to maintain task-relevant visual representations, and such visual maintenance is known to recruit the same sensory cortices as those involved in perception (e.g., Pasternak & Greenlee, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6(2), 97-107, 2005). These findings led us to hypothesize that loading WM with visual maintenance would reduce visual capacity involved in perception, thus resulting in reduced distractor processing-similar to perceptual load and opposite to WM cognitive control load. Distractor processing was assessed in a response competition task, presented during the memory interval (or during encoding; Experiment 1a) of a WM task. Loading visual maintenance or encoding by increased set size for a memory sample of shapes, colors, and locations led to reduced distractor response competition effects. In contrast, loading WM cognitive control with verbal rehearsal of a random letter set led to increased distractor effects. These findings confirm load theory predictions and provide a novel functional distinction between the roles of WM maintenance and cognitive control in selective attention.	\N	\N
25089573	One of the leading theories for dyslexia suggests that it is the result of a difficulty in auditory temporal processing (ATP). This theory, as well as others, is supported by studies showing group differences and correlation between phonological awareness and ATP. However, these studies do not provide causal relationship. In the current study the authors aimed to test causal relationship between ATP and phonological awareness by comparing the performance of dyslexic and normal reader students in phonological awareness tasks before and after a short-term (5-day) training in either temporal processing (dichotic temporal order judgment; TOJ), nontemporal processing (intensity discrimination), or no training. TOJ training resulted in significant reduction of TOJ threshold and increase in phonological awareness tasks' scores. Intensity discrimination training resulted in a decrease of intensity discrimination threshold, but with no change in phonological awareness tasks. Those who had no training, had no change in TOJ and intensity discrimination thresholds, as well as in the phonological awareness tasks. These results show that (a) a short-term training in temporal processing with no other perceptual cues for adult dyslexic and normal readers can be efficient in improving their phonological awareness; and (b) phonological awareness (dis) ability has causal relationship to ATP.	\N	\N
25096110	Three-month-olds discriminate resolved harmonic complexes on the basis of missing fundamental (MF) pitch. In view of reported difficulty in discriminating unresolved complexes at 7 months and striking changes in the organization of the auditory system during early infancy, infants' ability to discriminate unresolved complexes is of some interest. This study investigated the ability of 3-month-olds, 7-month-olds, and adults to discriminate the pitch of unresolved harmonic complexes using an observer-based method. Stimuli were MF complexes bandpass filtered with a -12 dB/octave slope, combined in random phase, presented at 70 dB sound pressure level (SPL) for 650 ms with a 50 ms rise/fall with a pink noise at 65 dB SPL. The conditions were (1) "LOW" unresolved harmonics (2500-4500 Hz) based on MFs of 160 and 200 Hz and (2) "HIGH" unresolved harmonics (4000-6000 Hz) based on MFs of 190 and 200 Hz. To demonstrate MF discrimination, participants had to ignore spectral changes in complexes with the same fundamental and respond only when the fundamental changed. Nearly all infants tested categorized complexes by MF pitch suggesting discrimination of pitch extracted from unresolved harmonics by 3 months. Adults also categorized the complexes by MF pitch, although musically trained adults were more successful than musically untrained adults.	\N	\N
25096125	This paper investigated how auditory and vibrotactile feedback information is integrated within the context of violin quality evaluation. Fifteen violinists evaluated three violins on four criteria-"Rich Sound," "Loud and Powerful," "Alive and Responsive," and "Pleasure"-during a perceptual experiment. Violinists first evaluated the violins one at a time under three experimental conditions: (1) playing, (2) listening to it (played by a professional player) in an active way by fingering the score on an isolated neck, (3) same as (2) with vibrotactile feedback provided at the isolated neck. Violinists were then asked to evaluate the violins through pairwise comparisons under condition (3): Each violin was paired with itself while the level of vibrations of the isolated neck was either the original one or divided by two. The first part of the experiment demonstrated that Loud and Powerful judgments were affected by the presence of vibrations given that violins were rated louder in condition (3) than in (2). In the second part, violins were rated more positively with original vibration level at the isolated neck than with half the level, for all criteria but Alive and Responsive. Consistently with sensory interaction, the magnitude of the enhancement remained relatively constant across violins.	\N	\N
25111522	Assess surgical complications, postoperative residual hearing, and speech perception outcomes of placement of a middle ear implant on the round window in conductive and mixed hearing loss cases. Single-subject, repeated-measures design where each subject served as his or her own control. Tertiary referral medical systems. Eighteen subjects with either conductive or mixed hearing loss who could not benefit from conventional amplification were enrolled in a clinical trial investigating vibratory stimulation of the round window. The floating mass transducer (FMT) was positioned in the round window niche. Unaided residual hearing, and aided sound field thresholds and speech perception abilities were evaluated preoperatively, and at 1, 3, 6, and 10 months post-activation of the external speech processor. Six subjects experienced complications that either required further medical management or resolved on their own. There was no difference in residual bone conduction thresholds or unaided word discrimination over time. All subjects experienced a significant improvement in aided speech perception abilities as compared to preoperative performance. Subjects with conductive and mixed hearing loss with placement of the FMT in the round window niche experienced improved sound field thresholds and speech perception, without compromising residual hearing thresholds. Vibratory stimulation of the round window via a middle ear implant may be an appropriate treatment option for patients with conductive and mixed hearing loss. Additional research is needed on the preferred placement of the FMT, improvement of functional gain, and methods to limit postoperative complications and need for revision surgery.	\N	\N
25118919	To correlate the findings of an open-field audiometry with the thresholds of steady-state auditory-evoked potentials (SSAEPs) found in infants of up to 6 months of age with sensorineural hearing loss. This study included 19 infants with sensorineural hearing loss (8 males and 11 females), with minimum age of 2 months and maximum age of 6 months. The SSAEPs were assessed at 500 and 2000 Hz, and the audiometry was performed in open field through observation of behavioral responses to sound stimuli, at the same frequencies. We observed a significant correlation between the findings of both tests conducted at 500 and 2000 Hz, with p-values of 0.002 and 0.013, respectively. There was no statistical difference between ears (p=0.532) and genders (p=0.615). We conclude that there was a significant correlation between the SSAEP thresholds and the findings of the open-field audiometry. Therefore, we can affirm that the SSAEPs are a viable examination, able to predict the degree and configuration of hearing loss in infants of up to 6 months of age, and that they can be included in the clinical routine of hearing assessments conducted in children.	\N	\N
25133472	Hearing preservation (HP) surgery was initiated more than 10 years ago for combined electric and acoustic stimulation (EAS). Preserved residual low-frequency hearing has been demonstrated to improve speech perception in noise as well as music appreciation in EAS users up to 2 years. Multiple study groups aimed to evaluate initial loss of residual hearing (RH) as a consequence of HP surgery. However, after 1 year and 2 years of follow-up, further decline was reported. This study aimed to determine RH, speech perception, and the subjective benefits of EAS 10 years after HP surgery. Nine postlingual EAS partially deaf patients who underwent HP surgery at Antwerp University Hospital were included in this study (11 implanted ears). Hearing preservation (0% = loss of hearing; >0%-25% = minimal HP; >25%-75% = partial HP; >75% = complete HP), speech perception and subjective benefits were evaluated preoperatively; at 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 months postoperatively; and annually thereafter. Complete HP was obtained in three of 11 ears; partial HP in five of 11 ears; and minimal HP in two of 11 ears, measured during their most recent follow-up. One subject lost his RH completely across time. The mean rate of HP was 48% (ranging from 6 months up to 10 years postoperatively). Speech perception analysis up to 10 years showed a continuous statistically significant improvement. The maximum subjective benefit was reached 3 months after implantation and subsequently remained statistically significant unchanged for the next 10 years. Long-term HP in EAS users after HP surgery is feasible, although a small continuous decline of HP rate of 3% per year was observed (measured from first fitting up to 6 years postoperative). Nevertheless, a continuous improvement was found in the speech perception results of the EAS users across 10 years. Moreover, the positive subjective benefit, assessed 3 months postoperative, remained stable up to 10 years.	\N	\N
25143548	When a high harmonic is removed from a cosine-phase harmonic complex, we hear a sine tone pop out of the perception; the sine tone has the pitch of the high harmonic, while the tone complex has the pitch of its fundamental frequency, f0. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as Duifhuis Pitch (DP). This paper describes, for the first time, the cortical representation of DP observed with magnetoencephalography. In experiment 1, conditions that produce the perception of a DP were observed to elicit a classic onset response in auditory cortex (P1m, N1m, P2m), and an increment in the sustained field (SF) established in response to the tone complex. Experiment 2 examined the effect of the phase spectrum of the complex tone on the DP activity: Schroeder-phase negative waves elicited a transient DP complex with a similar shape to that observed with cosine-phase waves but with much longer latencies. Following the transient DP activity, the responses of the negative and positive Schroeder-phase waves converged, and the increment in the SF slowly died away. In the absence of DP, the two Schroeder-phase conditions with low peak factors both produced larger SFs than cosine-phase waves with large peak factors. A model of the auditory periphery that includes coupling between adjacent frequency channels is used to explain the early neuromagnetic activity observed in auditory cortex.	\N	\N
25153664	This study was designed to evaluate the binaural effects from bimodal hearing according to the aided hearing threshold in the nonimplanted ear. Subjects included 17 individuals who continued to use a hearing aid (HA) in the nonimplanted ear for more than 6 months postoperatively. Speech perception and sound localization were tested with unilateral cochlear implantation (CI) and bimodal hearing with and without background noise. Materials were presented at an average of 70 dB sound pressure level from a front loudspeaker in a quiet condition and then with background noise at a signal-to-noise ratio of +10 dB HL. Speech perception scores were based on percent-correct performance of repeating a spoken word under each condition. Sound localization scores were obtained by averaging the sum of angle differences between the active loudspeaker and the loudspeaker indicated by the subject. Speech perception scores (mean ± SD) of unilateral CI and bimodal hearing were 63.3% ± 17.7% and 73.1% ± 18.5% under the quiet condition (p = 0.029) and 65.5% ± 21.9% and 70.9% ± 23.6% under the noisy condition (p = 0.01), respectively. Angle differences (mean ± SD) of unilateral CI and bimodal hearing were 72.8 ± 27.4 degrees and 84.1 ± 29.9 degrees under the quiet condition (p = 0.052) and 79.3 ± 26.9 degrees and 77.3 ± 22.0 degrees under the noisy condition (p = 0.906), respectively. Patients were divided into two groups according to their aided hearing thresholds: Group 1 (aided hearing threshold ≤50 dB HL; n = 8) and Group 2 (aided hearing threshold >50 dB HL; n = 9). The speech perception scores of bimodal hearing in each group were 85.3% ± 13.3% and 60.8% ± 17.5% (p = 0.023) under the quiet condition and 82.7% ± 9.0% and 59.4% ± 26.8% under the noisy condition (p = 0.052), respectively. For sound localization, the angle differences of bimodal hearing in each group were 54 ± 28.6 degrees and 83.9 ± 11.9 degrees under the quiet condition (p = 0.042) and 63.0 ± 23.5 degrees and 89 ± 22.6 degrees under the noisy condition (p = 0.049), respectively. Based on the relationship between the aided hearing level and bimodal hearing performance, this current study suggests that bimodal benefits for sound localization and speech perception in noise are significant but only when sound detection is adequate for the hearing aids. Therefore, bimodal hearing could be applied to selective patients with favorable aided hearing levels.	\N	\N
25153739	Unconscious priming is sensitive to contextual factors. The present study examined this adaptive process using masked arrow primes (< or >). Some targets required specific "fixed" left/right responses (< or >) and others required "free" left/right responses (<>). Different groups (n = 30 each) received response-congruent primes (SOA = 75 msec.) on 0.2, 0.5, or 0.8 of the fixed-response trials. Fixed responses were facilitated by congruent primes and free responses were faster when congruent with the prime. Critically, these masked priming effects emerged only in the 0.8 group. The pattern of extant prime-proportion effects in this paradigm best supports an adaptive associative-strength account rather than memory-recruitment or response-bias-suppression accounts.	\N	\N
25155249	Computational modeling and eye-tracking were used to investigate how phonological and semantic information interact to influence the time course of spoken word recognition. We extended our recent models (Chen & Mirman, 2012; Mirman, Britt, & Chen, 2013) to account for new evidence that competition among phonological neighbors influences activation of semantically related concepts during spoken word recognition (Apfelbaum, Blumstein, & McMurray, 2011). The model made a novel prediction: Semantic input modulates the effect of phonological neighbors on target word processing, producing an approximately inverted-U-shaped pattern with a high phonological density advantage at an intermediate level of semantic input-in contrast to the typical disadvantage for high phonological density words in spoken word recognition. This prediction was confirmed with a new analysis of the Apfelbaum et al. data and in a visual world paradigm experiment with preview duration serving as a manipulation of strength of semantic input. These results are consistent with our previous claim that strongly active neighbors produce net inhibitory effects and weakly active neighbors produce net facilitative effects.	\N	\N
25156097	The primary objective of the study was to investigate the feasibility, reliability, and validity of the Dutch digits in noise (DIN) test for measuring speech recognition in hearing aid and cochlear implant users and compare results to the standard sentences-in-noise (SIN) test. The relation between speech reception thresholds for DIN test and SIN test was analysed to determine the validity of the DIN test. As linguistic skills were expected to make different contributions in these tests, their influence was analysed. Participants were 12 normal-hearing listeners, 24 hearing aid users, and 24 cochlear implant users. The DIN test was feasible for more participants than the SIN test. Intraclass correlation coefficients showed high reliability. The standard error of measurement was smaller for the DIN test than for the SIN test. DIN test and SIN test were highly correlated (r = 0.95 and r = 0.56 for NH+ HA and CI users respectively). In the regression analysis no significant contribution of basic linguistic skills or personal factors was found. In the assessment of speech recognition in noise of aided hearing-impaired listeners with hearing aids or cochlear implants, the DIN test is a feasible, reliable and valid test.	\N	\N
25156757	In four experiments in which participants searched for multiple target digits we hypothesized that search should be fastest when the targets are arranged closely together on the number line without any intervening distractor digits, i.e., the targets form a contiguous and coherent group. In Experiment 1 search performance was better for targets defined by numerical magnitude than parity (i.e., evenness); this result supports our hypothesis but could also be due to the linear separability of targets from distractors or the numerical distance between them. Experiment 2 controlled for target-distractor linear separability and numerical distance, yielding faster search when targets were surrounded by distractors on the number line than when they surrounded distractors. This result is consistent with target contiguity and coherence but also with grouping by similarity of target shapes. Experiment 3 controlled for all three alternative explanations (linear separability, numerical distance, and shape similarity) and search performance was better for contiguous targets than separated targets. In Experiment 4 search performance was better for a coherent target group than one with intervening distractors. Of the possibilities we considered, only the hypothesis based on the contiguity and coherence of the target group on the number line can account for the results from all four experiments.	\N	\N
25158373	To evaluate cochlear functioning in patients (18-45 years old) with varying stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Using purposive sampling, 50 participants, 10 in each of the 5 stages of CKD, were selected and underwent pure tone audiometric testing and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs). Significant differences (p < 0.05) were found between pure tone audiometry and DPOAEs in detecting early cochlear dysfunction in the high-frequency range in stages 3 (6,000/5,000 Hz; p = 0.00), 4 (6,000/5,000 Hz; p < 0.03) and 5 (4,000/3,333 Hz; p < 0.01, 8,000/6,667 Hz: p < 0.05) with DPOAEs being more sensitive in identifying early cochlear dysfunction. Patients in stages 1 and 2 presented with normal puretone thresholds and DPOAEs, suggesting that cochlear functioning in these patients was normal. Early cochlear dysfunction, thereby indicating a subclinical hearing loss, was identified in stages 3, 4 and 5 by DPOAE testing. In addition, blood test results, drug intake and concomitant conditions were recorded and analysed which suggested a relationship between reduced cochlear functioning and increased electrolyte levels, treatment regimens and concomitant conditions. Participants in the later stages of CKD presented with early cochlear dysfunction, presenting with subclinical hearing loss. It was postulated that this subclinical hearing loss resulted from a combination of electrolytic, urea and creatinine imbalances, together with concomitant medical conditions and ototoxic drug intake. It was concluded that audiological monitoring be included in the management of patients with CKD and that DPOAEs be introduced as part of the test battery to monitor cochlear function in patients with varying degrees of CKD.	\N	\N
25170790	Absolute pitch (AP) is the rare ability to identify or produce different pitches without using reference tones. At least two sequential processing stages are assumed to contribute to this phenomenon. The first recruits a pitch memory mechanism at an early stage of auditory processing, whereas the second is driven by a later cognitive mechanism (pitch labeling). Several investigations have used active tasks, but it is unclear how these two mechanisms contribute to AP during passive listening. The present work investigated the temporal dynamics of tone processing in AP and non-AP (NAP) participants by using EEG. We applied a passive oddball paradigm with between- and within-tone category manipulations and analyzed the MMN reflecting the early stage of auditory processing and the P3a response reflecting the later cognitive mechanism during the second processing stage. Results did not reveal between-group differences in MMN waveforms. By contrast, the P3a response was specifically associated with AP and sensitive to the processing of different pitch types. Specifically, AP participants exhibited smaller P3a amplitudes, especially in between-tone category conditions, and P3a responses correlated significantly with the age of commencement of musical training, suggesting an influence of early musical exposure on AP. Our results reinforce the current opinion that the representation of pitches at the processing level of the auditory-related cortex is comparable among AP and NAP participants, whereas the later processing stage is critical for AP. Results are interpreted as reflecting cognitive facilitation in AP participants, possibly driven by the availability of multiple codes for tones.	\N	\N
25173195	Speaker's voice occupies a central role as the cornerstone of auditory social interaction. Here, we review the evidence suggesting that speaker's voice constitutes an integral context cue in auditory memory. Investigation into the nature of voice representation as a memory cue is essential to understanding auditory memory and the neural correlates which underlie it. Evidence from behavioral and electrophysiological studies suggest that while specific voice reinstatement (i.e., same speaker) often appears to facilitate word memory even without attention to voice at study, the presence of a partial benefit of similar voices between study and test is less clear. In terms of explicit memory experiments utilizing unfamiliar voices, encoding methods appear to play a pivotal role. Voice congruency effects have been found when voice is specifically attended at study (i.e., when relatively shallow, perceptual encoding takes place). These behavioral findings coincide with neural indices of memory performance such as the parietal old/new recollection effect and the late right frontal effect. The former distinguishes between correctly identified old words and correctly identified new words, and reflects voice congruency only when voice is attended at study. Characterization of the latter likely depends upon voice memory, rather than word memory. There is also evidence to suggest that voice effects can be found in implicit memory paradigms. However, the presence of voice effects appears to depend greatly on the task employed. Using a word identification task, perceptual similarity between study and test conditions is, like for explicit memory tests, crucial. In addition, the type of noise employed appears to have a differential effect. While voice effects have been observed when white noise is used at both study and test, using multi-talker babble does not confer the same results. In terms of neuroimaging research modulations, characterization of an implicit memory effect reflective of voice congruency is currently lacking.	\N	\N
25175541	Development of a sense of self is a fundamental process needed for human social interaction. Although functional neuroimaging studies have revealed the importance of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in self-referencing, how this function develops in infancy remains poorly understood. To determine the cerebral basis underlying processing of self-related stimuli, we used behavioral measures and functional multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure prefrontal cortical responses in 6-month-old infants hearing their own names. We also investigated the influence of a mother's voice on name perception in infants - an ability that plays a crucial role in the recognition of social signals. Experiment 1 measured the behavioral preferences of infants for their own names and for other names, spoken either by their mothers or by strangers. Results showed that infants significantly preferred their own name to other names, regardless of speaker type. Experiment 2 examined hemodynamic responses to the same four conditions in the prefrontal cortex. Compared with other names, hearing their own names, especially when spoken by their mother, elicited greater activity in the infant's dorsal mPFC. Furthermore, the magnitude of the cerebral response correlated with the degree of behavioral preference only when involving their mother's voice. These findings suggest that, particularly in the context of their mothers' voice, the dorsal mPFC of infants is already sensitive to social signals related to self at 6 months. At the same time, familiarity and affection related processing are also discussed as possible factors modulating dorsal mPFC activation at this age.	\N	\N
25178986	Working memory (WM) is a latent cognitive structure that serves to store and manipulate a limited amount of information over a short time period. How information is maintained in WM remains a debated issue: it is unclear whether stimuli from different sensory domains are maintained under distinct mechanisms or maintained under the same mechanism. Previous neuroimaging research on this issue to date has focused on individual brain regions and has not provided a comprehensive view of the functional networks underlying multi-domain WM. To study the functional networks involved in visual and auditory WM, we applied constrained principal component analysis (CPCA) to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) dataset acquired when participants performed a change-detection task requiring them to remember only visual, only auditory, or both visual and auditory stimuli. Analysis revealed evidence of both [1] domain-specific networks responsive to either visual or auditory WM (but not both), and [2] domain-general networks responsive to both visual and auditory WM. The domain-specific networks showed load-dependent activations during only encoding, whereas a domain-general network was sensitive to WM load across encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. The latter domain-general network likely reflected attentional processes involved in WM encoding, retrieval, and possibly maintenance as well. These results do not support the domain-specific account of WM maintenance but instead favor the domain-general theory that items from different sensory domains are maintained under the same mechanism.	\N	\N
25178987	Current views suggest that autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are characterised by enhanced low-level auditory discrimination abilities. Little is known, however, about whether enhanced abilities are universal in ASD and how they relate to symptomatology. We tested auditory discrimination for intensity, frequency and duration in 21 adults with ASD and 21 IQ and age-matched controls. Contrary to predictions, there were significant deficits in ASD on all acoustic parameters. The findings suggest that low-level auditory discrimination ability varies widely within ASD and this variability relates to IQ level, and influences the severity of restricted and repetitive behaviours (RRBs). We suggest that it is essential to further our understanding of the potential contributing role of sensory perception ability on the emergence of RRBs.	\N	\N
25186122	Sensory over-responsivity (SOR) refers to an exaggerated, intense, or prolonged behavioral response to ordinary sensory stimuli. The relationship of SOR to psychiatric disorders remains poorly understood. The current study examined the SOR construct within typically developing children with clinically significant anxiety, including the prevalence and course of SOR symptoms and relationship between SOR symptoms, demographic factors, and psychopathology. Children presenting at an anxiety specialty clinic (n = 88) completed a psychiatric diagnostic assessment, which included parent-report measures of SOR, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and global behavior and child-report measures of anxiety, depression, and OCD. Sensory over-responsivity symptoms were very common: 93.2% were bothered by at least 1 tactile or auditory sensation, and the mean number of bothersome sensations was 9.2 (SD = 7.4). SOR symptoms were reported to be "moderately bothersome" on average and to onset at an early age. Sensory Over-Responsivity Inventory (SensOR) scores did not differ by psychiatric disorder diagnosis, but SensOR scores significantly correlated with measures of OCD and depression. Higher SensOR scores were associated with greater global impairment. A high rate of SOR symptom occurrence was observed in this sample of children seeking anxiety treatment, suggesting that SOR may not be entirely independent of anxiety and may be closely associated with OCD. Future research on the validity and nosology of SOR using psychiatric samples is warranted.	\N	\N
25190408	This study examines how visual speech information affects native judgments of the intelligibility of speech sounds produced by non-native (L2) speakers. Native Canadian English perceivers as judges perceived three English phonemic contrasts (/b-v, θ-s, l-ɹ/) produced by native Japanese speakers as well as native Canadian English speakers as controls. These stimuli were presented under audio-visual (AV, with speaker voice and face), audio-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) conditions. The results showed that, across conditions, the overall intelligibility of Japanese productions of the native (Japanese)-like phonemes (/b, s, l/) was significantly higher than the non-Japanese phonemes (/v, θ, ɹ/). In terms of visual effects, the more visually salient non-Japanese phonemes /v, θ/ were perceived as significantly more intelligible when presented in the AV compared to the AO condition, indicating enhanced intelligibility when visual speech information is available. However, the non-Japanese phoneme /ɹ/ was perceived as less intelligible in the AV compared to the AO condition. Further analysis revealed that, unlike the native English productions, the Japanese speakers produced /ɹ/ without visible lip-rounding, indicating that non-native speakers' incorrect articulatory configurations may decrease the degree of intelligibility. These results suggest that visual speech information may either positively or negatively affect L2 speech intelligibility.	\N	\N
25190410	Hearing-aid noise reduction should reduce background noise, but not disturb the target speech. This objective is difficult because noise reduction suffers from a trade-off between the amount of noise removed and signal distortion. It is unknown if this important trade-off differs between normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. This study separated the negative effect of noise reduction (distortion) from the positive effect (reduction of noise) to allow the measurement of the detection threshold for noise-reduction (NR) distortion. Twelve NH subjects and 12 subjects with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss participated in this study. The detection thresholds for distortion were determined using an adaptive procedure with a three-interval, two-alternative forced-choice paradigm. Different levels of distortion were obtained by changing the maximum amount of noise reduction. Participants were also asked to indicate their preferred NR strength. The detection threshold for overall distortion was higher for HI subjects than for NH subjects, suggesting that stronger noise reduction can be applied for HI listeners without affecting the perceived sound quality. However, the preferred NR strength of HI listeners was closer to their individual detection threshold for distortion than in NH listeners. This implies that HI listeners tolerate fewer audible distortions than NH listeners.	\N	\N
25190427	The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and efficiency of an observer-based, two-interval forced-choice infant psychophysical testing procedure. Ten of 11 infants (7-9 months of age) achieved a criterion of 80%-correct detection of a 50-dB sound pressure level noise band in a single testing session. Fewer trials were needed to reach criterion using the two-interval procedure than previously reported for the single-interval observer-based psychophysical procedure [Olsho, Koch, Halpin, and Carter (1987). Devel. Psychol. 23, 627-640]. These results provide preliminary evidence that the two-interval procedure is feasible and efficient while controlling for observer and listener response bias.	\N	\N
25191774	This study aims to establish whether mothers of children with specific language impairments (SLI) have reduced emotional competence and whether individual dimensions of maternal emotional competence are related to emotional and behavioral problems in children. The clinical sample comprised 97 preschool children (23 girls) with SLI from, while the peer sample comprised 60 (34 girls) developmentally normal preschool children. The emotional competence of mothers was evaluated using the Emotional Competence Questionnaire (ESCQ-45). Emotional and behavioral difficulties in children were assessed by mothers, speech therapists, and teachers, using Achenbach's CBCL and CTRF scales. A lower emotional competence was found in mothers of children with specific language impairments. Mothers in clinical and peer samples differed in their ability to express emotions, while there was no statistically significant difference in their ability to recognize and manage emotions. Poor emotional regulation in mothers was linked to increased emotional reactivity, anxiety, and depressive manifestations in children with SLI, as well as to their speech comprehension. Emotional expression in mothers seems to be important for psychopathology in children with SLI, and their expressive and receptive speech. Our findings suggest that, in addition to the rehabilitation of children with SLI, clinical practice should implement preventative work with parents to enhance their emotional competence.	\N	\N
25196948	Research on how lexical tone is neuroanatomically represented in the human brain is central to our understanding of cortical regions subserving language. Past studies have exclusively focused on tone perception of the spoken language, and little is known as to the lexical tone processing in reading visual words and its associated brain mechanisms. In this study, we performed two experiments to identify neural substrates in Chinese tone reading. First, we used a tone judgment paradigm to investigate tone processing of visually presented Chinese characters. We found that, relative to baseline, tone perception of printed Chinese characters were mediated by strong brain activation in bilateral frontal regions, left inferior parietal lobule, left posterior middle/medial temporal gyrus, left inferior temporal region, bilateral visual systems, and cerebellum. Surprisingly, no activation was found in superior temporal regions, brain sites well known for speech tone processing. In activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis to combine results of relevant published studies, we attempted to elucidate whether the left temporal cortex activities identified in Experiment one is consistent with those found in previous studies of auditory lexical tone perception. ALE results showed that only the left superior temporal gyrus and putamen were critical in auditory lexical tone processing. These findings suggest that activation in the superior temporal cortex associated with lexical tone perception is modality-dependent.	\N	\N
25198514	A growing body of evidence suggests that conscious visual awareness is not a prerequisite for human fear learning. For instance, humans can learn to be fearful of subliminal fear relevant images--images depicting stimuli thought to have been fear relevant in our evolutionary context, such as snakes, spiders, and angry human faces. Such stimuli could have a privileged status in relation to manipulations used to suppress usually salient images from awareness, possibly due to the existence of a designated sub-cortical 'fear module'. Here we assess this proposition, and find it wanting. We use binocular masking to suppress awareness of images of snakes and wallabies (particularly cute, non-threatening marsupials). We find that subliminal presentations of both classes of image can induce differential fear conditioning. These data show that learning, as indexed by fear conditioning, is neither contingent on conscious visual awareness nor on subliminal conditional stimuli being fear relevant.	\N	\N
25200176	Following prolonged exposure to asynchronous multisensory signals, the brain adapts to reduce the perceived asynchrony. Here, in three separate experiments, participants performed a synchrony judgment task on audiovisual, audiotactile or visuotactile stimuli and we used inter-trial analyses to examine whether temporal recalibration occurs rapidly on the basis of a single asynchronous trial. Even though all combinations used the same subjects, task and design, temporal recalibration occurred for audiovisual stimuli (i.e., the point of subjective simultaneity depended on the preceding trial's modality order), but none occurred when the same auditory or visual event was combined with a tactile event. Contrary to findings from prolonged adaptation studies showing recalibration for all three combinations, we show that rapid, inter-trial recalibration is unique to audiovisual stimuli. We conclude that recalibration occurs at two different timescales for audiovisual stimuli (fast and slow), but only on a slow timescale for audiotactile and visuotactile stimuli.	\N	\N
25211190	Children with a history of amblyopia, even if resolved, exhibit impaired visual-auditory integration and perceive speech differently. To determine whether a history of amblyopia is associated with abnormal visual-auditory speech integration. Retrospective observational study at an academic pediatric ophthalmologic clinic with an average of 4 years of follow-up. Participants were at least 3 years of age and without any history of neurologic or hearing disorders. Of 39 children originally in our study, 6 refused to participate. The remaining 33 participants completed the study. Twenty-four participants (mean [SD] age, 7.0 [1.5] years) had a history of amblyopia in 1 eye, with a visual acuity of at least 20/20 in the nonamblyopic eye. Nine controls (mean [SD] age, 8.0 [3.4] years) were recruited from referrals for visually insignificant etiologies or through preschool-screening eye examinations; all had 20/20 in both eyes. Participants were presented with a video demonstrating the McGurk effect (ie, a stimulus presenting an audio track playing the sound /pa/ and a separate video track of a person articulating /ka/). Normal visual-auditory integration produces the perception of hearing a fusion sound /ta/. Participants were asked to report which sound was perceived, /ka/, /pa/, or /ta/. Prevalence of perception of the fusion /ta/ sound. Prior to the study, amblyopic children were hypothesized to less frequently perceive /ta/. The McGurk effect was perceived by 11 of the 24 participants with amblyopia (45.8%) and all 9 controls (100%) (adjusted odds ratio, 22.3 [95% CI, 1.2-426.0]; P = .005). The McGurk effect was perceived by 100% of participants with amblyopia that was resolved by 5 years of age and by 100% of participants whose onset at amblyopia developed at or after 5 years of age. However, only 18.8% of participants with amblyopia that was unresolved by 5 years of age (n = 16) perceived the McGurk effect (adjusted odds ratio, 27.0 [95% CI, 1.1-654.0]; P = .02). This pilot study suggests that children with a history of amblyopia have impaired visual-auditory speech perception. Early childhood appears to serve as an approximate time point for the development of successful visual-auditory fusion, by which time amblyopia must have either resolved or begun. Interventions to resolve amblyopia may not only influence visual acuity but may also influence the perception of sound.	\N	\N
25217343	Attentional control theory suggests that heightened anxiety, whether due to trait or state factors, causes an increased vulnerability to distraction even when the distracters are emotionally neutral. Recent passive oddball studies appear to support this theory in relation to the distraction caused by emotionally neutral sounds. However such studies have manipulated emotional state via the content of task stimuli, thus potentially confounding changes in emotion with differences in task demands. To identify the effect of anxiety on the distraction caused by emotionally neutral sounds, 50 participants completed a passive oddball task requiring emotionally neutral sounds to be ignored. Crucially, state anxiety was manipulated independent of the task stimuli (via unrelated audiovisual stimuli) thus removing confounds relating to task demands. Neither state or trait anxiety was found to influence the susceptibility to distraction by emotionally neutral sounds. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate concerning the impact of emotion on attention.	\N	\N
25219227	To enhance speech recognition, as well as Mandarin tone recognition in noice, we proposed a speech coding strategy called zero-crossing of fine structure in low frequency (LFFS) for cochlear implant based on low frequency non-uniform sampling (LFFS for short). In the range of frequency perceived boundary of human ear, we used zero-crossing time of the fine structure to generate the stimulus pulse sequences based on the frequency selection rule. Acoustic simulation results showed that although on quiet background the performance of LFFS was similar to continuous interleaved sampling (CIS), on the noise background the performance of LFFS in Chinese tones, words and sentences were significantly better than CIS. In addition to this, we also got better Mandarin recognition factors distribution by using the improved index distribution model. LFFS contains more tonal information which was able to effectively improve Mandarin recognition of the cochlear implant.	\N	\N
25231617	Whenever the visual stream is abruptly disturbed by eye movements, blinks, masks, or flashes of light, the visual system needs to retrieve the new locations of current targets and to reconstruct the timing of events to straddle the interruption. This process may introduce position and timing errors. We here report that very similar errors are seen in human subjects across three different paradigms when disturbances are caused by either eye movements, as is well known, or, as we now show, masking. We suggest that the characteristic effects of eye movements on position and time, spatial and temporal compression and saccadic suppression of displacement, are consequences of the interruption and the subsequent reconnection and are seen also when visual input is masked without any eye movements. Our data show that compression and suppression effects are not solely a product of ocular motor activity but instead can be properties of a correspondence process that links the targets of interest across interruptions in visual input, no matter what their source.	\N	\N
25234404	In this study, we investigated the role of interactive auditory feedback in modulating the inadvertent forward drift experienced while attempting to walk in place with closed eyes following a few minutes of treadmill walking. Simulations of footstep sounds upon surface materials such as concrete and snow were provided by means of a system composed of headphones and shoes augmented with sensors. In a control condition, participants could hear their actual footstep sounds. Results showed an overall enhancement of the forward drift after treadmill walking independent of the sound perceived, while the strength of the aftereffect, measured as the proportional increase (posttest/pretest) in forward drift, was higher under the influence of snow compared to both concrete and actual sound. In addition, a higher knee angle flexion was found during the snow sound condition both before and after treadmill walking. Behavioral results confirmed those of a perceptual questionnaire, which showed that the snow sound was effective in producing strong pseudo-haptic illusions. Our results provide evidence that the walking in place aftereffect results from a recalibration of haptic, visuo-motor but also sound-motor control systems. Self-motion perception is multimodal.	\N	\N
25234884	The medial olivocochlear reflex (MOCR) modulates cochlear amplifier gain and is thought to facilitate the detection of signals in noise. High-resolution distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) were recorded in teens, young, middle-aged, and elderly adults at moderate levels using primary tones swept from 0.5 to 4 kHz with and without a contralateral acoustic stimulus (CAS) to elicit medial efferent activation. Aging effects on magnitude and phase of the 2f1-f2 DPOAE and on its components were examined, as was the link between speech-in-noise performance and MOCR strength. Results revealed a mild aging effect on the MOCR through middle age for frequencies below 1.5 kHz. Additionally, positive correlations were observed between strength of the MOCR and performance on select measures of speech perception parsed into features. The elderly group showed unexpected results including relatively large effects of CAS on DPOAE, and CAS-induced increases in DPOAE fine structure as well as increases in the amplitude and phase accumulation of DPOAE reflection components. Contamination of MOCR estimates by middle ear muscle contractions cannot be ruled out in the oldest subjects. The findings reiterate that DPOAE components should be unmixed when measuring medial efferent effects to better consider and understand these potential confounds.	\N	\N
25234912	With a cochlear implant, when stimulation from multiple channels is interleaved, the perceived loudness is greater than the loudness associated with any of the individual channels presented in isolation. This phenomenon is known as loudness summation. This study examined if loudness summation with monopolar and tripolar stimulation were equivalent at two loudnesses and two spacing configurations. Results suggest that loudness summation is similar for monopolar and tripolar modes. However, larger summation differences were observed for softer sounds and louder sounds with a larger spatial separation. The results are consistent with the idea that loudness summation is dependent on channel interaction and have implications for implementing current-focused processing strategies.	\N	\N
25238461	Language comprehension is more than a process of decoding the literal meaning of a speaker's utterance. Instead, by making the assumption that speakers choose their words to be informative in context, listeners routinely make pragmatic inferences that go beyond the linguistic data. If language learners make these same assumptions, they should be able to infer word meanings in otherwise ambiguous situations. We use probabilistic tools to formalize these kinds of informativeness inferences-extending a model of pragmatic language comprehension to the acquisition setting-and present four experiments whose data suggest that preschool children can use informativeness to infer word meanings and that adult judgments track quantitatively with informativeness.	\N	\N
25243992	Less proficient basic auditory processing has been previously connected to dyslexia. However, it is unclear whether a low proficiency level is a correlate of having a familial risk for reading problems, or whether it causes dyslexia. In this study, children's processing of amplitude rise time (ART), intensity and frequency differences was measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). ERP components of interest are components reflective of auditory change detection; the mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN). All groups had an MMN to changes in ART and frequency, but not to intensity. Our results indicate that fluent readers at risk for dyslexia, poor readers at risk for dyslexia and fluent reading controls have an LDN to changes in ART and frequency, though the scalp activation of frequency processing was different for familial risk children. On intensity, only controls showed an LDN. Contrary to previous findings, our results suggest that neither ART nor frequency processing is related to reading fluency. Furthermore, our results imply that diminished sensitivity to changes in intensity and differential lateralization of frequency processing should be regarded as correlates of being at familial risk for dyslexia, that do not directly relate to reading fluency.	\N	\N
25246562	Temporal cues are important for discerning word boundaries and syllable segments in speech; their perception facilitates language acquisition and development. Beat synchronization and neural encoding of speech reflect precision in processing temporal cues and have been linked to reading skills. In poor readers, diminished neural precision may contribute to rhythmic and phonological deficits. Here we establish links between beat synchronization and speech processing in children who have not yet begun to read: preschoolers who can entrain to an external beat have more faithful neural encoding of temporal modulations in speech and score higher on tests of early language skills. In summary, we propose precise neural encoding of temporal modulations as a key mechanism underlying reading acquisition. Because beat synchronization abilities emerge at an early age, these findings may inform strategies for early detection of and intervention for language-based learning disabilities.	\N	\N
25248621	We used a haptic enumeration task to investigate whether enumeration can be facilitated by perceptual grouping in the haptic modality. Eight participants were asked to count tangible dots as quickly and accurately as possible, while moving their finger pad over a tactile display. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the number and organization of the dots, while keeping the total exploration area constant. The dots were either evenly distributed on a horizontal line (baseline condition) or organized into groups based on either proximity (dots placed in closer proximity to each other) or configural cues (dots placed in a geometric configuration). In Experiment 2, we varied the distance between the subsets of dots. We hypothesized that when subsets of dots can be grouped together, the enumeration time will be shorter and accuracy will be higher than in the baseline condition. The results of both experiments showed faster enumeration for the configural condition than for the baseline condition, indicating that configural grouping also facilitates haptic enumeration. In Experiment 2, faster enumeration was also observed for the proximity condition than for the baseline condition. Thus, perceptual grouping speeds up haptic enumeration by both configural and proximity cues, suggesting that similar mechanisms underlie perceptual grouping in both visual and haptic enumeration.	\N	\N
25251488	A continuing debate in language acquisition research is whether there are critical periods (CPs) in development during which the system is most responsive to environmental input. Recent advances in neurobiology provide a mechanistic explanation of CPs, with the balance between excitatory and inhibitory processes establishing the onset and molecular brakes establishing the offset of windows of plasticity. In this article, we review the literature on human speech perception development within the context of this CP model, highlighting research that reveals the interplay of maturational and experiential influences at key junctures in development and presenting paradigmatic examples testing CP models in human subjects. We conclude with a discussion of how a mechanistic understanding of CP processes changes the nature of the debate: The question no longer is, "Are there CPs?" but rather what processes open them, keep them open, close them, and allow them to be reopened.	\N	\N
25255646	The aim of this study was to investigate distinctive change in the hearing impaired elderly listeners, especially about speech recognition. Subjects were 525 patients (235 males, 290 females), from 60 to 98 years of age who had visited the Hearing Aid Clinic of Otorhinolaryngology, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology Hospital, between June 2001 and December 2012. Pure-tone air conduction threshold determination was administered to each subject. The speech audiometry materials used to define speech discrimination ability were Japanese monosyllabic word lists, 67S word lists. Sex- and age-specific trends in maximum discrimination score (MDS) and rollover index (RI) were shown in this study. RI was computed by the formula (PBmax-PBmin)/PBmax. PBmax has almost the same meaning as MDS in Japan. PBmin represented the lowest PB score above the test intensity level of PBmax. Mean MDSs were 80.8% in their sixties, 75.3% in their seventies, 60.7% in their eighties, and 45.5% in their nineties. The rate of decrease in mean MDS per decade accelerated in the older generation. Mean RIs were 0.18 in patients in their sixties, 0.24 in their seventies, 0.30 in their eighties, and 0.30 in their nineties. It increased until the age of eighties. In the model 1, multiple logistic analyses were performed to examine the effect of age (in 10-year increments), sex and mean hearing levels in pure tone average of values at 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 Hz (in 10 dB increments) on the MDS < 60%. Significant associations were observed between MDS < 60% and age (odds ratio, 3.03; 95% confidence interval, 2.38 to 3.85), and mean hearing levels in pure tone average of values at 500, 1000, 2000, 4000 Hz (2.33; 2.03 to 2.68). Sex was not associated with MDS < 60%. In the model 2, multiple logistic analyses adjusted for age and sex were performed to examine the effect of hearing level at test frequencies of 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz (in 10 dB increments)on the MDS < 60%. Significant associations were observed between MDS < 60% and hearing level at 250 Hz (2.04; 1.44 to 2.89), and 2000 Hz (1.46; 1.16 to 1.83), and 4000 Hz(1.24; 1.02 to 1.50). These outcomes suggest that the important point in qualifying the fitting of hearing aid is to present the list words at an adequate sound pressure level for evaluation of speech understanding especially in the hearing impaired elderly listeners.	\N	\N
25276437	The present study investigated 24 individuals suffering from chronic tinnitus (TI) and 24 nonaffected controls (CO). We recorded resting-state EEG and collected psychometric data to obtain information about how chronic tinnitus experience affects the cognitive and emotional state of TI. The study was meant to disentangle TI with high distress from those who suffer less from persistent tinnitus based on both neurophysiological and behavioral data. A principal component analysis of psychometric data uncovers two distinct independent dimensions characterizing the individual tinnitus experience. These independent states are distress and presence, the latter is described as the perceived intensity of sound experience that increases with tinnitus duration devoid of any considerable emotional burden. Neuroplastic changes correlate with the two independent components. TI with high distress display increased EEG activity in the oscillatory range around 25 Hz (upper β-band) that agglomerates over frontal recording sites. TI with high presence show enhanced EEG signal strength in the δ-, α-, and lower γ-bands (30-40 Hz) over bilateral temporal and left perisylvian electrodes. Based on these differential patterns we suggest that the two dimensions, namely, distress and presence, should be considered as independent dimensions of chronic subjective tinnitus.	\N	\N
25299833	The present study aimed to determine the extent of hearing preservation retrospectively after atraumatic cochlear implant (CI) surgery using a specialized surgical technique and specially designed flexible electrode to minimize cochlear trauma. Retrospective study. Academic tertiary care center. A consecutive series of 34 patients who had some preoperative residual hearing were included in this study. Patients underwent CI surgery with a flexible 28-mm electrode using a round window insertion technique. All patients had at least 6 months of postoperative follow-up including audiometric testing and speech perception determined using the Freiburg monosyllable word test and the Oldenburger Sentence Test in noise. Audiometric testing served as a proxy for the evaluation of cochlear trauma and hearing preservation. Hearing was preserved to within 20 dB of preoperative low-frequency pure-tone audiometry (PTA) in 40.7% of patients. Hearing was preserved to within 20 dB of preoperative high-frequency PTA in 35.7% of patients. Overall, a deterioration in hearing thresholds was observed between preoperative assessment and first fitting. Speech perception improved significantly over time after surgery. Using appropriate surgical techniques, and electrodes specially designed to minimize cochlear trauma, hearing preservation can be achieved.	\N	\N
25301014	To isolate the neural mechanisms associated with recognizing objects from those processing basic visual properties, control stimuli are required that contain the same perceptual properties as the objects but are unrecognizable. We demonstrate that conventional methods for generating control stimuli (phase scrambling, box scrambling, texture scrambling) yield poor controls because they dramatically distort the basic visual properties (e.g., spatial frequency, perceptual organization) to which even the earliest stages of visual processing are sensitive. We developed a new scrambling method, using a diffeomorphic transformation that preserves the basic perceptual properties of the image while removing meaning. We acquired perceptual ratings to determine the least amount of scrambling necessary to remove recognition. We hypothesized that our "diffeomorphic" images would produce neural activity at the earliest stages of the visual system that more closely matched activity in response to intact images relative to the other scrambling methods. To test this hypothesis, we used the HMAX computational model of object recognition and compared the simulated neural activity at the earliest stages of the visual system (layers S1, C1, and S2) between a set of 149 images scrambled using each distortion method to their intact version. We found that scrambled "diffeomorphed" images were indistinguishable to intact images in each layer of the model, but all of the other distortion methods yielded quite different patterns. Our results indicate that "diffeomorphed" images serve as more appropriate control stimuli in neuroimaging studies that aim to disentangle the representations of perceptual and semantic object properties.	\N	\N
25315376	Under normal conditions, human speech is remarkably robust to degradation by noise and other distortions. However, people with hearing loss, including those with cochlear implants, often experience great difficulty in understanding speech in noisy environments. Recent work with normal-hearing listeners has shown that the amplitude fluctuations inherent in noise contribute strongly to the masking of speech. In contrast, this study shows that speech perception via a cochlear implant is unaffected by the inherent temporal fluctuations of noise. This qualitative difference between acoustic and electric auditory perception does not seem to be due to differences in underlying temporal acuity but can instead be explained by the poorer spectral resolution of cochlear implants, relative to the normally functioning ear, which leads to an effective smoothing of the inherent temporal-envelope fluctuations of noise. The outcome suggests an unexpected trade-off between the detrimental effects of poorer spectral resolution and the beneficial effects of a smoother noise temporal envelope. This trade-off provides an explanation for the long-standing puzzle of why strong correlations between speech understanding and spectral resolution have remained elusive. The results also provide a potential explanation for why cochlear-implant users and hearing-impaired listeners exhibit reduced or absent masking release when large and relatively slow temporal fluctuations are introduced in noise maskers. The multitone maskers used here may provide an effective new diagnostic tool for assessing functional hearing loss and reduced spectral resolution.	\N	\N
25322936	Social learning in infancy is known to be facilitated by multimodal (e.g., visual, tactile, and verbal) cues provided by caregivers. In parallel with infants' development, recent research has revealed that maternal neural activity is altered through interaction with infants, for instance, to be sensitive to infant-directed speech (IDS). The present study investigated the effect of mother- infant multimodal interaction on maternal neural activity. Event-related potentials (ERPs) of mothers were compared to non-mothers during perception of tactile-related words primed by tactile cues. Only mothers showed ERP modulation when tactile cues were incongruent with the subsequent words, and only when the words were delivered with IDS prosody. Furthermore, the frequency of mothers' use of those words was correlated with the magnitude of ERP differentiation between congruent and incongruent stimuli presentations. These results suggest that mother-infant daily interactions enhance multimodal integration of the maternal brain in parenting contexts.	\N	\N
25324090	Brief exposure to time-compressed speech yields both learning and generalization. Whether such learning continues over the course of multi-session training and if so whether it is more or less specific than exposure-induced learning is not clear, because the outcomes of intensive practice with time-compressed speech have rarely been reported. The goal here was to determine whether prolonged training on time-compressed speech yields additional learning and generalization beyond that induced by brief exposure. Listeners practiced the semantic verification of time-compressed sentences for one or three training sessions. Identification of trained and untrained tokens was subsequently compared between listeners who trained for one or three sessions, listeners who were briefly exposed to 20 time-compressed sentences and naive listeners. Trained listeners outperformed the other groups of listeners on the trained condition, but only the group that was trained for three sessions outperformed the other groups when tested with untrained tokens. These findings suggest that although learning of distorted speech can occur rapidly, more stable learning and generalization might be achieved with longer, multi-session practice. It is suggested that the findings are consistent with the framework proposed by the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual learning.	\N	\N
25324114	This paper presents an efficient method to compute the numerical solutions of transmission-line (TL) cochlear models, and its application on the model of Verhulst et al. The stability region of the model is extended by adopting a variable step numerical method to solve the system of ordinary differential equations that describes it, and by adopting an adaptive scheme to take in account variations in the system status within each numerical step. The presented method leads to improve simulations numerical accuracy and large computational savings, leading to employ TL models for more extensive simulations than currently possible.	\N	\N
25325841	To determine factors related to high levels of speech recognition in patients with the auditory brainstem implant (ABI). Retrospective case review. International multicenter data from hospitals and tertiary referral facilities. Patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) and bilateral vestibular schwannomas. ABIs were placed after the removal of vestibular schwannomas. Demographic and surgical data were collected from 26 patients with ABIs who achieved scores of better than 30% correct identification of sentences presented in quiet listening conditions and without lipreading cues. Scores better than 30% speech recognition of standard sentence test materials (HINT or equivalent) in quiet listening conditions were obtained in 26 of the 84 NF2 patients (31%). ABI speech recognition was correlated with surgical position, length of deafness, the number of distinct pitch electrodes, perceptual levels, and ABI stimulation rate, but not correlated with tumor size, tumor stage, the number of electrodes used, or electrophysiological recordings. This paper presents the consensus opinion from a meeting of surgeons to compare outcomes across ABI surgical centers. The consensus opinion was that brainstem trauma is a primary factor in the variability of outcomes in NF2 patients. The significant co-factors in outcomes implied that ABI surgery should be accomplished with great care to minimize physical and venous trauma to the brainstem. It is clear that high levels of speech recognition, including high levels of open-set speech recognition, are possible with the ABI even in patients with NF2 and large tumors.	\N	\N
25329080	How is semantic memory influenced by individual differences under conditions of distraction? This question was addressed by observing how participants recalled visual target words--drawn from a single category--while ignoring spoken distractor words that were members of either the same or a different (single) category. Working memory capacity (WMC) was related to disruption only with synchronous, not asynchronous, presentation, and distraction was greater when the words were presented synchronously. Subsequent experiments found greater negative priming of distractors among individuals with higher WMC, but this may be dependent on targets and distractors being comparable category exemplars. With less dominant category members as distractors, target recall was impaired--relative to control--only among individuals with low WMC. The results highlight the role of cognitive control resources in target-distractor selection and the individual-specific cost implications of such cognitive control.	\N	\N
25333740	Words are made up of speech sounds. Almost all accounts of child speech development assume that children learn the pronunciation of first language (L1) speech sounds by imitation, most claiming that the child performs some kind of auditory matching to the elements of ambient speech. However, there is evidence to support an alternative account and we investigate the non-imitative child behavior and well-attested caregiver behavior that this account posits using Elija, a computational model of an infant. Through unsupervised active learning, Elija began by discovering motor patterns, which produced sounds. In separate interaction experiments, native speakers of English, French and German then played the role of his caregiver. In their first interactions with Elija, they were allowed to respond to his sounds if they felt this was natural. We analyzed the interactions through phonemic transcriptions of the caregivers' utterances and found that they interpreted his output within the framework of their native languages. Their form of response was almost always a reformulation of Elija's utterance into well-formed sounds of L1. Elija retained those motor patterns to which a caregiver responded and formed associations between his motor pattern and the response it provoked. Thus in a second phase of interaction, he was able to parse input utterances in terms of the caregiver responses he had heard previously, and respond using his associated motor patterns. This capacity enabled the caregivers to teach Elija to pronounce some simple words in their native languages, by his serial imitation of the words' component speech sounds. Overall, our results demonstrate that the natural responses and behaviors of human subjects to infant-like vocalizations can take a computational model from a biologically plausible initial state through to word pronunciation. This provides support for an alternative to current auditory matching hypotheses for how children learn to pronounce.	\N	\N
25345762	Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) is strictly related to inner ear vascular injuries and recently to some atherosclerotic risk factors. The pathogenic role of inflammatory molecules in atherosclerosis is well established. However, there is little knowledge about the potential role of inflammatory cytokines and adhesion molecules on SSNHL etiology. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of proinflammatory genetic polymorphisms of the MCP-1 (CCL2), E-selectin, and interleukin (IL)-6 gene in SSNHL patients. We evaluated the frequency and distribution of selected single nucleotide polymorphisms of the MCP-1 (CCL2), E-selectin, and IL-6 gene in 87 SSNHL patients and 107 healthy controls. Our results did not show significant difference between the compared groups for MCP-1 and E-selectin genes, whereas a significant difference was reported for the IL-6 gene (P < .0001). The main finding of our study is that the 174G/G polymorphism (with a wider distribution of wt/wt genotype in SSNHL patients than in the healthy controls) of the IL-6 gene is significantly associated with the risk of SSNHL, which is consistent with a previous finding on serum levels of IL-6 in SSNHL. It is possible that the variant acts as a triggering agent of different lipidemia-related phenotypes. Both the -174G/G polymorphism and elevated IL-6 levels in SSNHL patients could suggest that IL-6 plays a role in the inner ear involvement by atherosclerotic inflammatory events.	\N	\N
25349105	To assess spoken language comprehension in non-speaking children with severe cerebral palsy (CP) and to explore possible associations with motor type and disability. Eighty-seven non-speaking children (44 males, 43 females, mean age 6y 8mo, SD 2y 1mo) with spastic (54%) or dyskinetic (46%) CP (Gross Motor Function Classification System [GMFCS] levels IV [39%] and V [61%]) underwent spoken language comprehension assessment with the computer-based instrument for low motor language testing (C-BiLLT), a new and validated diagnostic instrument. A multiple linear regression model was used to investigate which variables explained the variation in C-BiLLT scores. Associations between spoken language comprehension abilities (expressed in z-score or age-equivalent score) and motor type of CP, GMFCS and Manual Ability Classification System (MACS) levels, gestational age, and epilepsy were analysed with Fisher's exact test. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Chronological age, motor type, and GMFCS classification explained 33% (R=0.577, R(2) =0.33) of the variance in spoken language comprehension. Of the children aged younger than 6 years 6 months, 52.4% of the children with dyskinetic CP attained comprehension scores within the average range (z-score ≥-1.6) as opposed to none of the children with spastic CP. Of the children aged older than 6 years 6 months, 32% of the children with dyskinetic CP reached the highest achievable age-equivalent score compared to 4% of the children with spastic CP. No significant difference in disability was found between CP-related variables (MACS levels, gestational age, epilepsy), with the exception of GMFCS which showed a significant difference in children aged younger than 6 years 6 months (p=0.043). Despite communication disabilities in children with severe CP, particularly in dyskinetic CP, spoken language comprehension may show no or only moderate delay. These findings emphasize the importance of introducing alternative and/or augmentative communication devices from early childhood.	\N	\N
25350759	We examined neural indices of pre-attentive phonological and attentional auditory discrimination in children with developmental language disorder (DLD, n = 23) and typically developing (n = 16) peers from a geographically isolated Russian-speaking population with an elevated prevalence of DLD. Pre-attentive phonological MMN components were robust and did not differ in two groups. Children with DLD showed attenuated P3 and atypically distributed P2 components in the attentional auditory discrimination task; P2 and P3 amplitudes were linked to working memory capacity, development of complex syntax, and vocabulary. The results corroborate findings of reduced processing capacity in DLD and support a multifactorial view of the disorder.	\N	\N
25372405	A major cue to the location of a sound source is the interaural time difference (ITD)-the difference in sound arrival time at the two ears. The neural representation of this auditory cue is unresolved. The classic model of ITD coding, dominant for a half-century, posits that the distribution of best ITDs (the ITD evoking a neuron's maximal response) is unimodal and largely within the range of ITDs permitted by head-size. This is often interpreted as a place code for source location. An alternative model, based on neurophysiology in small mammals, posits a bimodal distribution of best ITDs with exquisite sensitivity to ITDs generated by means of relative firing rates between the distributions. Recently, an optimal-coding model was proposed, unifying the disparate features of these two models under the framework of efficient coding by neural populations. The optimal-coding model predicts that distributions of best ITDs depend on head size and sound frequency: for high frequencies and large heads it resembles the classic model, for low frequencies and small head sizes it resembles the bimodal model. The optimal-coding model makes key, yet unobserved, predictions: for many species, including humans, both forms of neural representation are employed, depending on sound frequency. Furthermore, novel representations are predicted for intermediate frequencies. Here, we examine these predictions in neurophysiological data from five mammalian species: macaque, guinea pig, cat, gerbil and kangaroo rat. We present the first evidence supporting these untested predictions, and demonstrate that different representations appear to be employed at different sound frequencies in the same species.	\N	\N
25375171	Gender dysphoria (also known as "transsexualism") is characterized as a discrepancy between anatomical sex and gender identity. Research points towards neurobiological influences. Due to the sexually dimorphic characteristics of the human voice, voice gender perception provides a biologically relevant function, e.g. in the context of mating selection. There is evidence for a better recognition of voices of the opposite sex and a differentiation of the sexes in its underlying functional cerebral correlates, namely the prefrontal and middle temporal areas. This fMRI study investigated the neural correlates of voice gender perception in 32 male-to-female gender dysphoric individuals (MtFs) compared to 20 non-gender dysphoric men and 19 non-gender dysphoric women. Participants indicated the sex of 240 voice stimuli modified in semitone steps in the direction to the other gender. Compared to men and women, MtFs showed differences in a neural network including the medial prefrontal gyrus, the insula, and the precuneus when responding to male vs. female voices. With increased voice morphing men recruited more prefrontal areas compared to women and MtFs, while MtFs revealed a pattern more similar to women. On a behavioral and neuronal level, our results support the feeling of MtFs reporting they cannot identify with their assigned sex.	\N	\N
25379450	Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in language and social-emotional cognition. Yet, findings of emotion recognition from affective prosody in individuals with ASD are inconsistent. This study investigated emotion recognition and neural processing of affective prosody in high-functioning adults with ASD relative to neurotypical (NT) adults. Individuals with ASD showed mostly typical brain activation of the fronto-temporal and subcortical brain regions in response to affective prosody. Yet, the ASD group showed a trend towards increased activation of the right caudate during processing of affective prosody and rated the emotional intensity lower than NT individuals. This is likely associated with increased attentional task demands in this group, which might contribute to social-emotional impairments.	\N	\N
25382428	To verify the receiver in the ear and receiver in the aid adaptations by measuring in situ the speech perception and users' level of satisfaction. The study was approved by the research ethics committee (Process: 027/2011). Twenty subjects older than 18 years with audiological diagnosis of mild and moderate bilateral descending sensorineural hearing loss were evaluated. The subjects were divided into two groups, where G1 (group 1) was fitted with open-fit hearing aids with the built-in receiver unit (receiver in the ear) and G2 (group 2) was fitted with open-fit hearing aids with RITE. A probe microphone measurement was performed to check the gain and output provided by the amplification and for assessment of speech perception with Hearing in Noise Test with and without hearing aids. After a period of six weeks of use without interruption, the subjects returned for follow-up and answered the Satisfaction with Amplification in Daily Life questionnaire, and were again subjected to Hearing in Noise Test. Both groups presented better test results for speech recognition in the presence of noise. Groups 1 and 2 were satisfied with the use of hearing aids and improved speech recognition in silent and noisy situations with hearing aids.	\N	\N
25382429	There is still no consensus in the literature as to the best acoustic stimulus for capturing vestibular evoked myogenic potential (VEMP). Low-frequency tone bursts are generally more effective than high-frequency, but recent studies still use clicks. Reproducibility is an important analytical parameter to observe the reliability of responses. To determine the reproducibility of p13 and n23 latency and amplitude of the VEMP for stimuli with different tone-burst frequencies, and to define the best test frequency. Cross-sectional cohort study. VEMP was captured in 156 ears, on the sternocleidomastoid muscle, using 100 tone-burst stimuli at frequencies of 250, 500, 1000, and 2000Hz, and sound intensity of 95dB nHL. Responses were replicated, that is, recorded three times on each side. No significant difference was observed for p13 and n23 latencies of the VEMP, captured at three moments with tone-burst stimuli at 250, 500, and 1000Hz. Only the frequency of 2000Hz showed a difference between captures of this potential (p<0.001). p13 and n23 amplitude analysis was also similar in the test-retest for all frequencies analyzed. p13 and n23 latencies and amplitudes of VEMP for tone-burst stimuli at frequencies of 250, 500, and 1000Hz are reproducible.	\N	\N
25424987	The closure positive shift (CPS) event related potential (ERP) is commonly used as a neural measure of phrase boundary perception in speech. The present study investigated whether the CPS was elicited by acoustic cues at phrase boundaries in English. ERPs were recorded when participants listened passively to sentences with either early or late phrase boundaries. The closure positive shift (CPS) ERP was elicited at both early and late phrase boundaries. However, the latency, amplitude, and scalp distribution of these passive CPS ERPs in English sentences differed to active CPS ERPs measured in non-English sentences in previous studies. These results show that acoustic cues at the phrase boundaries in English are sufficient to elicit the CPS, and suggest that different processes might be involved in the generation of the CPS in active and passive conditions.	\N	\N
25438583	The present study assessed brain activity changes related to perception of consonant and dissonant chords by musicians and non-musicians. Perception of dissonant chords in non-musicians was accompanied by increase of lower theta activity over right anterior regions, while consonant chords induced greater theta activity over left anterior regions; this pattern of asymmetrical activation was not observed in musicians. ERP analysis revealed that musicians had greater amplitude of early components (P100, N200) than non-musicians irrespective of chord type. The obtained results reflect more efficient musical harmony processing and, possibly, less emotional perception of chords in musicians.	\N	\N
25445998	The localization of neuronal generators during an ERP study, using a high-density electroencephalogram (HD-EEG) equipment was made on three Evoked Related Potential (ERP) components, i.e., the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), the P300 and the N400. Furthermore, the ERP characteristics, their field distribution and the area of their maximum field intensity were extracted and compared between young and elderly, as well as between females and males. A two tone oddball experiment was conducted, involving 27 young adults and 18 elderly, healthy and right handed, and HD-EEG data were acquired. These data were then subjected to auditory ERPs extraction and thorough statistical analysis. The derived experimental results revealed significant age-related differences to both the latencies and the amplitudes of the MMN and the P300 and the topographic distribution of the HD-EEG amplitudes. Additionally, a shift in the maximum intensities from frontal to temporal lobe with aging appeared in the case of the P300, whereas no effect was observed for the MMN component. No statistical significant differences (p>0.05) due to age was found in N400 characteristics. Finally, gender-related differences were significant in the response time of the subjects, finding males response faster. The level and the location of the maximum intensity of sources also differed between genders, especially in young subjects. These findings justify the enhanced potential of HD-EEG data to accurately reflect the age and gender dependencies at the three components of simple auditory ERPs and pave the way for the investigation of neurodegenerative pathologies, such as the Alzheimer's disease.	\N	\N
25446245	Perceptual grouping is the process of organizing sounds into perceptually meaningful elements. Psychological studies have found that tones presented as a regular frequency or temporal pattern are grouped according to gestalt principles, such as similarity, proximity, and good continuity. Predictive coding theory suggests that this process helps create an internal model for the prediction of sounds in a tone sequence and that an omission-related brain response reflects the violation of this prediction. However, it remains unclear which brain areas are related to this process, especially in paying attention to the stimuli. To clarify this uncertainty, the present study investigated the neural correlates of perceptual grouping effects. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded the evoked response fields (ERFs) of amateur musicians and nonmusicians to sound omissions in tone sequences with a regular or random pattern of three different frequencies during an omission detection task. Omissions in the regular sequences were detected faster and evoked greater activity in the left Heschl's gyrus (HG), right postcentral gyrus, and bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) than did omissions in the irregular sequences. Additionally, an interaction between musical experience and regularity was found in the left HG/STG. Tone-evoked responses did not show this difference, indicating that the expertise effect did not reflect the superior tone processing acquired by amateur musicians due to musical training. These results suggest that perceptual grouping based on repetition of a pattern of frequencies affects the processing of omissions in tone sequences and induces more activation of the bilateral auditory cortex by violating internal models. The interaction in the left HG/STG may suggest different styles of processing for musicians and nonmusicians, although this difference was not reflected at the behavioral level.	\N	\N
25447067	The effects of ear of presentation and competing speech on N400s to spoken words in context were examined in a dichotic sentence priming paradigm. Auditory sentence contexts with a strong or weak semantic bias were presented in isolation to the right or left ear, or with a competing signal presented in the other ear at a SNR of -12 dB. Target words were congruent or incongruent with the sentence meaning. Competing speech attenuated N400s to both congruent and incongruent targets, suggesting that the demand imposed by a competing signal disrupts the engagement of semantic comprehension processes. Bias strength affected N400 amplitudes differentially depending upon ear of presentation: weak contexts presented to the le/RH produced a more negative N400 response to targets than strong contexts, whereas no significant effect of bias strength was observed for sentences presented to the re/LH. The results are consistent with a model of semantic processing in which the RH relies on integrative processing strategies in the interpretation of sentence-level meaning.	\N	\N
25448166	In this article, we review the PET neuroimaging literature, which indicates peculiarities of brain networks involved in speech restoration after cochlear implantation. We consider data on implanted patients during stimulation as well as during resting state, which indicates basic long-term reorganisation of brain functional architecture. On the basis of our analysis of neuroimaging literature and considering our own studies, we indicate that auditory recovery in deaf patients after cochlear implantation partly relies on visual cues. The brain develops mechanisms of audio-visual integration as a strategy to achieve high levels of speech recognition. It turns out that this neuroimaging evidence is in line with behavioural findings of better audiovisual integration in these patients. Thus, strong visually and audio-visually based rehabilitation during the first months after cochlear implantation would significantly improve and fasten the functional recovery of speech intelligibility and other auditory functions in these patients. We provide perspectives for further neuroimaging studies in cochlear implanted patients, which would help understand brain organisation to restore auditory cognitive processing in the implanted patients and would potentially suggest novel approaches for their rehabilitation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled <Lasker Award>.	\N	\N
25459663	In his pioneering research on the neural mechanisms of filial imprinting, Gabriel Horn has gone a long way to fulfilling Karl Lashley's dream of finding the 'engram' or memory trace in the brain. Here we review recent research into the engram(s) of song learning in songbirds, particularly zebra finches. When juvenile songbirds learn their songs from a tutor, they form and alter a central representation of the tutor song, known as the 'template'. Secondary auditory regions in the caudal medial pallium are likely to contain the neural substrate for the representation of tutor song, but the roles of the different regions remain to be elucidated. Female zebra finches do not sing, but nevertheless form an auditory memory of their father's song, for which the neural substrate is located in the caudomedial pallium. In males that are learning their songs, there is continual interaction between the secondary auditory regions and sensorimotor regions, similar to the interaction between Broca's and Wernicke's areas in human infants acquiring speech and language.	\N	\N
25460240	Visual attention and perceptual grouping both help us from being overloaded by the vast amount of information, and attentional search is delayed when a target overlaps with a snake-like collinear distractor (Jingling & Tseng, 2013). We assessed whether awareness of the collinear distractor is required for this modulation. We first identified that visible long (=9 elements), but not short (=3 elements) collinear distractor slowed observers' detection of an overlapping target. Then we masked part of a long distractor (=9 elements) with continuous flashing color patches (=6 elements) so that the combined dichoptic percept to observers' awareness was a short collinear distractor (=3 elements). We found that the invisible collinear parts, like visible ones, can form a continuous contour to impair search, suggesting that conscious awareness is not a pre-requisite for contour integration and its interaction with selective attention.	\N	\N
25461917	Recent studies have demonstrated the positive effects of musical training on the perception of vocally expressed emotion. This study investigated the effects of musical training on event-related potential (ERP) correlates of emotional prosody processing. Fourteen musicians and fourteen control subjects listened to 228 sentences with neutral semantic content, differing in prosody (one third with neutral, one third with happy and one third with angry intonation), with intelligible semantic content (semantic content condition--SCC) and unintelligible semantic content (pure prosody condition--PPC). Reduced P50 amplitude was found in musicians. A difference between SCC and PPC conditions was found in P50 and N100 amplitude in non-musicians only, and in P200 amplitude in musicians only. Furthermore, musicians were more accurate in recognizing angry prosody in PPC sentences. These findings suggest that auditory expertise characterizing extensive musical training may impact different stages of vocal emotional processing.	\N	\N
25463460	Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central auditory system. Altered GABAergic neurotransmission has been found in both the inferior colliculus and the auditory cortex in animal models of presbycusis. Edited magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), using the MEGA-PRESS sequence, is the most widely used technique for detecting GABA in the human brain. However, to date there has been a paucity of studies exploring changes to the GABA concentrations in the auditory region of patients with presbycusis. In this study, sixteen patients with presbycusis (5 males/11 females, mean age 63.1 ± 2.6 years) and twenty healthy controls (6 males/14 females, mean age 62.5 ± 2.3 years) underwent audiological and MRS examinations. Pure tone audiometry from 0.125 to 8 kHz and tympanometry were used to assess the hearing abilities of all subjects. The pure tone average (PTA; the average of hearing thresholds at 0.5, 1, 2 and 4 kHz) was calculated. The MEGA-PRESS sequence was used to measure GABA+ concentrations in 4 × 3 × 3 cm(3) volumes centered on the left and right Heschl's gyri. GABA+ concentrations were significantly lower in the presbycusis group compared to the control group (left auditory regions: p = 0.002, right auditory regions: p = 0.008). Significant negative correlations were observed between PTA and GABA+ concentrations in the presbycusis group (r = -0.57, p = 0.02), while a similar trend was found in the control group (r = -0.40, p = 0.08). These results are consistent with a hypothesis of dysfunctional GABAergic neurotransmission in the central auditory system in presbycusis and suggest a potential treatment target for presbycusis.	\N	\N
25463556	Previous research has revealed that the inhibition of return (IOR) effect emerges when individuals respond to a target at the same location as their own previous response or the previous response of a co-actor. The latter social IOR effect is thought to occur because the observation of co-actor's response evokes a representation of that action in the observer and that the observation-evoked response code subsequently activates the inhibitory mechanisms underlying IOR. The present study was conducted to determine if knowledge of the co-actor's response alone is sufficient to evoke social IOR. Pairs of participants completed responses to targets that appeared at different button locations. Button contact generated location-contingent auditory stimuli (high and low tones in Experiment 1 and colour words in Experiment 2). In the Full condition, the observer saw the response and heard the auditory stimuli. In the Auditory Only condition, the observer did not see the co-actor's response, but heard the auditory stimuli generated via button contact to indicate response endpoint. It was found that, although significant individual and social IOR effects emerged in the Full conditions, there were no social IOR effects in the Auditory Only conditions. These findings suggest that knowledge of the co-actor's response alone via auditory information is not sufficient to activate the inhibitory processes leading to IOR. The activation of the mechanisms that lead to social IOR seems to be dependent on processing channels that code the spatial characteristics of action.	\N	\N
25468188	Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share common etiological factors and pathophysiological pathways and have overlapping clinical features. Only few studies have directly compared early auditory information processing in the two disorders. The objective of this study was to investigate the M100 and M200 auditory responses in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and compare them with healthy controls using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Whole-head MEG data were acquired during an auditory oddball paradigm in 24 schizophrenia patients, 26 bipolar I disorder patients, and 31 healthy controls. The strengths and latencies of M100 and M200 in both hemispheres and the dipole source localizations were investigated from the standard stimuli. The M100 and M200 dipolar sources were localized to the left and right posterior portion of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) in all the subjects. An asymmetric pattern of M100 and M200 auditory response with more anterior sources in the right STG was observed in the healthy controls. However, both the schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients showed a symmetric M100 and M200 source pattern. When compared with the healthy control group, both patient groups showed significantly reduced M100 and M200 source strength in both hemispheres. Our study suggests that early auditory information processing deficits may be similar in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and may be related to abnormalities of the STG.	\N	\N
25470620	The aim was to investigate whether frequency compression (FC) hearing aids provide additional benefit to that conferred by conventional amplification. Participants wore the same hearing aid with FC enabled and disabled for six weeks (ABA design) in each condition. Speech recognition tests (in both quiet and in noise) were administered alongside two questionnaires. Performance was compared across the two signal processing conditions and at different time points. Twelve experienced hearing-aid users (aged 65-84 years old) with moderate-to-severe high-frequency hearing loss participated in the study. FC resulted in statistically significantly higher mean scores in all of the administered speech tests. Improvements over time were limited to high frequency phoneme perception. No effect of FC on self-report outcomes was observed. FC may lead to significant improvements in speech perception outcomes in both quiet and noise for many individuals. No participant was significantly disadvantaged by the use of FC.	\N	\N
25480080	Although there is an emerging consensus that both musical and linguistic pitch processing can be problematic for individuals with a developmental disorder termed congenital amusia, the nature of such a pitch-processing deficit, especially that demonstrated in a speech setting, remains unclear. Therefore, this study tested the performance of native Mandarin speakers, both with and without amusia, on discrimination and imitation tasks for Cantonese level tones, aiming to shed light on this issue. Results suggest that the impact of the phonological deficit, coupled with that of the domain-general pitch deficit, could provide a more comprehensive interpretation of Mandarin amusics' speech impairment. Specifically, when there was a high demand for pitch sensitivity, as in fine-grained pitch discriminations, the operation of the pitch-processing deficit played the more predominant role in modulating amusics' speech performance. But when the demand was low, as in discriminating naturally produced Cantonese level tones, the impact of the phonological deficit was more pronounced compared to that of the pitch-processing deficit. However, despite their perceptual deficits, Mandarin amusics' imitation abilities were comparable to controls'. Such selective impairment in tonal perception suggests that the phonological deficit more severely implicates amusics' input pathways.	\N	\N
25481793	Auditory categorization is a vital skill for perceiving the acoustic environment. Categorization depends on the discriminability of the sensory input as well as on the ability of the listener to adaptively make use of the relevant features of the sound. Previous studies on categorization have focused either on speech sounds when studying discriminability or on visual stimuli when assessing optimal cue utilization. Here, by contrast, we examined neural sensitivity to stimulus discriminability and optimal cue utilization when categorizing novel, non-speech auditory stimuli not affected by long-term familiarity. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, listeners categorized sounds from two category distributions, differing along two acoustic dimensions: spectral shape and duration. By introducing spectral degradation after the first half of the experiment, we manipulated both stimulus discriminability and the relative informativeness of acoustic cues. Degradation caused an overall decrease in discriminability based on spectral shape, and therefore enhanced the informativeness of duration. A relative increase in duration-cue utilization was accompanied by increased activity in left parietal cortex. Further, discriminability modulated right planum temporale activity to a higher degree when stimuli were spectrally degraded than when they were not. These findings provide support for separable contributions of parietal and posterior temporal areas to perceptual categorization. The parietal cortex seems to support the selective utilization of informative stimulus cues, while the posterior superior temporal cortex as a primarily auditory brain area supports discriminability particularly under acoustic degradation.	\N	\N
25485662	In recent years, a number of models of orthographic coding have been proposed in which the orthographic code consists of a set of units representing bigrams (open-bigram models). Three masked priming experiments were undertaken in an attempt to evaluate this idea: a conventional masked priming experiment, a sandwich priming experiment (Lupker & Davis, 2009) and an experiment involving a masked prime same-different task (Norris & Kinoshita, 2008). Three prime types were used, first-letter superset primes (e.g., wjudge-JUDGE), last-letter superset primes (e.g., judgew-JUDGE) and standard substitution-letter primes (e.g., juwge-JUDGE). In none of the experiments was there any evidence that the superset primes were more effective primes, the prediction made by open-bigram models. In fact, in the second and third experiments, first-letter superset primes were significantly worse primes than the other two prime types. These results provide no evidence for the existence of open-bigram units. They also suggest that prime-target mismatches at the first position produce orthographic codes that are less similar than mismatches at other positions. Implications for models of orthographic coding are discussed.	\N	\N
25486807	The spatial specificity of auditory aftereffect was studied after a short-time adaptation (5 s) to the broadband noise (20-20000 Hz). Adapting stimuli were sequences of noise impulses with the constant amplitude, test stimuli--with the constant and changing amplitude: an increase of amplitude of impulses in sequence was perceived by listeners as approach of the sound source, while a decrease of amplitude--as its withdrawal. The experiments were performed in an anechoic chamber. The auditory aftereffect was estimated under the following conditions: the adapting and test stimuli were presented from the loudspeaker located at a distance of 1.1 m from the listeners (the subjectively near spatial domain) or 4.5 m from the listeners (the subjectively near spatial domain) or 4.5 m from the listeners (the subjectively far spatial domain); the adapting and test stimuli were presented from different distances. The obtained data showed that perception of the imitated movement of the sound source in both spatial domains had the common characteristic peculiarities that manifested themselves both under control conditions without adaptation and after adaptation to noise. In the absence of adaptation for both distances, an asymmetry of psychophysical curves was observed: the listeners estimated the test stimuli more often as approaching. The overestimation by listeners of test stimuli as the approaching ones was more pronounced at their presentation from the distance of 1.1 m, i. e., from the subjectively near spatial domain. After adaptation to noise the aftereffects showed spatial specificity in both spatial domains: they were observed only at the spatial coincidence of adapting and test stimuli and were absent at their separation. The aftereffects observed in two spatial domains were similar in direction and value: the listeners estimated the test stimuli more often as withdrawing as compared to control. The result of such aftereffect was restoration of the symmetry of psychometric curves and of the equiprobable estimation of direction of movement of test signals.	\N	\N
25487588	A pilot study found the masking level difference (MLD) normal value of Chinese aged from 10 to 40, served to clinical practice. Seventy-three normal persons with hearing threshold < 20 dB and no disorder of otology were divided into three groups: classified 10-20 age as A group, 21-30 age as B group, 31-40 age as C group. MLD of age, gender and race were determined by the audiometer with dual channel by playing audio test disc. Same tests were compared with English language. The mean value of MLD in Chinese was (11.1 ± 3.4) dB and the 95% normal reference values were between 4.4 to 17.8 dB . There was no difference in term of gender. The value of MLD increased with age. In the term of language, foreign showed high value of MLD than that of Chinese. The measuring of MLD depends on age and language but not depends on gender. The normal threshold of MLD depends on age and language should be measured when normal values were applied to assess MLD in clinical practice.	\N	\N
25495831	Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) show enhanced perceptual and memory abilities in the domain of pitch, but also perceptual deficits in other auditory domains. The present study investigated their skills with respect to "echoic memory," a form of short-term sensory memory intimately tied to auditory perception, using a developmental perspective. We tested 23 high-functioning participants with ASD and 26 typically developing (TD) participants, distributed in two age groups (children vs. young adults; mean ages: ∼11 and ∼21 years). By means of an adaptive psychophysical procedure, we measured the longest period for which periodic (i.e., repeated) noise could be reliably discriminated from nonperiodic (i.e., plain random) noise. On each experimental trial, a single noise sample was presented to the participant, who had to classify this sound as periodic or nonperiodic. The TD adults performed, on average, much better than the other three groups, who performed similarly overall. As a function of practice, the measured thresholds improved for the TD participants, but did not change for the ASD participants. Thresholds were not correlated to performance in a test assessing verbal memory. The variance of the participants' response biases was larger among the ASD participants than among the TD participants. The results mainly suggest that echoic memory takes a long time to fully develop in TD humans, and that this development stops prematurely in persons with ASD.	\N	\N
25497692	Listeners vary substantially in their ability to recognize speech in noisy environments. Here we examined the role of genetic variation on individual differences in speech recognition in various noise backgrounds. Background noise typically varies in the levels of energetic masking (EM) and informational masking (IM) imposed on target speech. Relative to EM, release from IM is hypothesized to place greater demand on executive function to selectively attend to target speech while ignoring competing noises. Recent evidence suggests that the long allele variant in exon III of the DRD4 gene, primarily expressed in the prefrontal cortex, may be associated with enhanced selective attention to goal-relevant high-priority information even in the face of interference. We investigated the extent to which this polymorphism is associated with speech recognition in IM and EM conditions. In an unscreened adult sample (Experiment 1) and a larger screened replication sample (Experiment 2), we demonstrate that individuals with the DRD4 long variant show better recognition performance in noise conditions involving significant IM, but not in EM conditions. In Experiment 2, we also obtained neuropsychological measures to assess the underlying mechanisms. Mediation analysis revealed that this listening condition-specific advantage was mediated by enhanced executive attention/working memory capacity in individuals with the long allele variant. These findings suggest that DRD4 may contribute specifically to individual differences in speech recognition ability in noise conditions that place demands on executive function.	\N	\N
25500178	The challenge in getting a decent signal to the brain for users of cochlear implants (CIs) is described. A breakthrough occurred in 1989 that later enabled most users to understand conversational speech with their restored hearing alone. Subsequent developments included stimulation in addition to that provided with a unilateral CI, either with electrical stimulation on both sides or with acoustic stimulation in combination with a unilateral CI, the latter for persons with residual hearing at low frequencies in either or both ears. Both types of adjunctive stimulation produced further improvements in performance for substantial fractions of patients. Today, the CI and related hearing prostheses are the standard of care for profoundly deaf persons and ever-increasing indications are now allowing persons with less severe losses to benefit from these marvelous technologies. The steps in achieving the present levels of performance are traced, and some possibilities for further improvements are mentioned. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled <Lasker Award>.	\N	\N
25502451	A systematic review of the literature to evaluate the clinical outcome of cochlear implantation for patients with single-sided deafness (SSD) or asymmetrical hearing loss (AHL). We searched the PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL databases from their inception up to December 10, 2013 for SSD or AHL and cochlear implantation or their synonyms. In total, 781 articles were retrieved, of which 15 satisfied the eligibility criteria. Our outcomes of interest were speech perception in noise, sound localization, quality of life (QoL), and tinnitus. Critical appraisal showed that six studies reported on less than five patients or that they carried a low directness of evidence or a high risk of bias. Therefore, we extracted the data of nine studies (n = 112). Patient numbers, age, duration of deafness, classification of deafness, pure tone audiometry, follow-up duration, and outcome measurements were extracted from all nine articles. Because of large heterogeneity between studies, we were not able to pool data in a meta-analysis. We therefore summarized the results of the studies specified per outcome. There are no high-level-of-evidence studies concerning cochlear implantation in patients with SSD or AHL. Current literature suggests important benefits of cochlear implantation regarding sound localization, QoL, and tinnitus. Varying results were reported for speech perception in noise, possibly caused by the large clinical heterogeneity between studies. Larger and high-quality studies are certainly warranted.	\N	\N
25512041	The issue of whether human perception of speech and song recruits integrated or dissociated neural systems is contentious. This issue is difficult to address directly since these stimulus classes differ in their physical attributes. We therefore used a compelling illusion (Deutsch et al. 2011) in which acoustically identical auditory stimuli are perceived as either speech or song. Deutsch's illusion was used in a functional MRI experiment to provide a direct, within-subject investigation of the brain regions involved in the perceptual transformation from speech into song, independent of the physical characteristics of the presented stimuli. An overall differential effect resulting from the perception of song compared with that of speech was revealed in right midposterior superior temporal sulcus/right middle temporal gyrus. A left frontotemporal network, previously implicated in higher-level cognitive analyses of music and speech, was found to co-vary with a behavioural measure of the subjective vividness of the illusion, and this effect was driven by the illusory transformation. These findings provide evidence that illusory song perception is instantiated by a network of brain regions that are predominantly shared with the speech perception network.	\N	\N
25536235	A large number of neuroimaging studies have investigated imagined sensory processing and motor behaviours. These studies have reported neural activation patterns for imagined processes that resemble those of real sensory and motor events. The widespread use of such methods has raised questions about the extent to which imagined sensorimotor events mimic their overt counterparts, including their ability to elicit sensorimotor interactions. Direct behavioural evidence of imagery-induced multisensory interactions has been found recently in tasks involving auditory and visual processing. An influence of sensory imagery on the control of motor action, however, has not been investigated previously. Here, we show that both real and imagined moving sounds induce involuntary ocular movement in a nonvisual tracking task. The present data build on the results of previous studies of sensory imagery by showing that such conditions activate sensory neural areas. Moreover, we show an engagement of functional sensorimotor networks for imagined stimuli in a manner similar to the processing of real auditory stimuli.	\N	\N
25536844	A central problem in recent research on speech production concerns the question to what extent speakers adapt their linguistic expressions to the needs of their addressees. It is claimed that speakers sometimes leak information about objects that are only visible for them and not for their listeners. Previous research only takes the occurrence of adjectives as evidence for the leakage of privileged information. The present study hypothesizes that leaked information is also encoded in the prosody of those adjectives. A production experiment elicited adjectives that leak information and adjectives that do not leak information. An acoustic analysis and prominence rating task showed that adjectives that leak information were uttered with a higher pitch and perceived as more prominent compared to adjectives that do not leak information. Furthermore, a guessing task suggested that the adjectives' prosody relates to how listeners infer possible privileged information.	\N	\N
25545633	Past experience of everyday life activities, which forms the basis of our knowledge about the world, greatly affects how we understand stories. Yet, little is known about how this influence is instantiated in the human brain. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how past experience facilitates functional connectivity during the comprehension of stories rich in perceptual and motor details. We found that comprehenders' past experience with the scenes and actions described in the narratives selectively modulated functional connectivity between lower- and higher-level areas within the neural systems for visual and motor processing, respectively. These intramodal interactions may play an important role in integrating personal knowledge about a narrated situation with an evolving discourse representation. This study provides empirical evidence consistent with the idea that regions related to visual and motor processing are involved in the reenactment of experience as proposed by theories of embodied cognition.	\N	\N
25549509	The motor system is engaged when we perceive movement in the environment, even when we have no sensorimotor experience of that movement. It has been suggested that this ability relies on internal models that comprise specific exteroceptive representations, such as audition and vision. It has been shown that, for human movements, the quality of perception depends on the closeness between the perceived movement and the perceiver's own capability of reproducing it. Thus, if we are able to reproduce a movement, we also have the interoceptive motor memories that enable us to run internal models and perceive the same movements more accurately when merely observed. In a behavioral study we investigated if participants would be able to distinguish between self-produced and other-produced movement sounds from a previously recorded hurdling performance. We also analyzed if participants' discriminative ability would vary as a function of specific sound features, examining rhythmic step structure and amplitude range. The results reveal that participants were able to distinguish between their own and others' movement sounds. However, changing either rhythmic step structure or amplitude range of the sounds did not influence this self-other discrimination. We suggest that identification of one's own movement sounds is holistically achieved as an auditory gestalt.	\N	\N
25567437	To investigate the functional evaluation of auditory cortex by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before cochlear implantation (CI). Twenty-one children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) (7 cases with normal inner ear structure, 3 cases with large vestibular aqueduct syndrome, 1 case with cochlear nerve hypoplasia) and 7 children with normal hearing were examined by fMRI under sedation. The subjects received acoustic stimuli at four random frequencies (500, 1 000, 2 000, 4 000 Hz) during fMRI examination. Tones were interleaved with silence in a block-periodic fMRI design with 16-second on-off intervals.Each stimulus repeated twice and the total acquisition time was 4 minutes and 28 seconds. Activation was identified in the auditory cortex of the 28 subjects in response to monaural and binaural acoustic stimulation, which was shown in the transverse temporal gyrus (Heschl gyrus), the thalamus and both.Of the 21 patients with SNHL, contralateral dominance was shown in six cases, ipsilateral dominance in five cases and bilateral equilibrium in 10 cases when one ear was exposed to the stimuli. Of the seven children with normal hearing, contralateral dominance was shown in three cases, ipsilateral dominance in two cases and bilateral equilibrium in two cases.No significant difference of the activation intensity in auditory cortex was shown between children with SNHL and normal hearing (P > 0.05). Good hearing recovery was obtained in the 21 patients after CI. No significant difference in the level of hearing and speech rehabilitation was shown between children with LVAS and with normal inner ear structure.Listening behavior response threshold was 55 dBHL in the case with cochlear nerve hypoplasia 10 months after CI. fMRI would be a feasible means of evaluating the function of the auditory cortex, which can be used for assessing the function of the entire auditory system prior to CI combined with ABR and imaging.	\N	\N
25575604	Cochlear implant users show a profile of residual, yet poorly understood, musical abilities. An ability that has received little to no attention in this population is entrainment to a musical beat. We show for the first time that a heterogeneous group of cochlear implant users is able to find the beat and move their bodies in time to Latin Merengue music, especially when the music is presented in unpitched drum tones. These findings not only reveal a hidden capacity for feeling musical rhythm through the body in the deaf and hearing impaired population, but illuminate promising avenues for designing early childhood musical training that can engage implanted children in social musical activities with benefits potentially extending to non-musical domains.	\N	\N
25596462	Emotional verbal messages are typically encountered in meaningful contexts, for instance, during face-to-face communication in social situations. Yet, they are often investigated by confronting single participants with isolated words on a computer screen, thus potentially lacking ecological validity. In the present study we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during emotional word processing in communicative situations provided by videos of a speaker, assuming that emotion effects should be augmented by the presence of a speaker addressing the listener. Indeed, compared to non-communicative situations or isolated word processing, emotion effects were more pronounced, started earlier and lasted longer in communicative situations. Furthermore, while the brain responded most strongly to negative words when presented in isolation, a positivity bias with more pronounced emotion effects for positive words was observed in communicative situations. These findings demonstrate that communicative situations--in which verbal emotions are typically encountered--strongly enhance emotion effects, underlining the importance of social and meaningful contexts in processing emotional and verbal messages.	\N	\N
25603582	Learning and transfer were investigated for a categorical structure that could be mapped without loss of information from 1 sensory modality to another. The category space was composed of 3 nonoverlapping, linearly separable categories whose members were structured, temporal events. Each stimulus was composed of a sequence of on-off events that varied in duration and number of subevents (complexity). Categories were learned visually, haptically, or auditorily and transferred to the same or another modality. Despite the.isomorphism across modalities, significant differences appeared in both learning and transfer. The visual modality showed an early learning advantage, with information on the transfer test preserved best when encoded visually during learning, worst when encoded haptically, with auditory encoding intermediate. False recognition rates were elevated when categories were learned haptically and transferred to another modality. In general, classification accuracy was highest for the category prototype, with false recognition of the category prototype higher in the cross-modality conditions. The results are discussed in terms of current theories in modality transfer including the difficulties inherent when calculation of similarity must be considered in a cross-modal situation.	\N	\N
25611595	Most general theories on serial order working memory (WM) assume the existence of position markers that are bound to the to-be-remembered items to keep track of the serial order. So far, the exact cognitive/neural characteristics of these markers have remained largely underspecified, while direct empirical evidence for their existence is mostly lacking. In the current study we demonstrate that retrieval from verbal serial order WM can be facilitated or hindered by spatial cuing: begin elements of a verbal WM sequence are retrieved faster after cuing the left side of space, while end elements are retrieved faster after cuing the right side of space. In direct complement to our previous work--where we showed the reversed impact of WM retrieval on spatial processing--we argue that the current findings provide us with a crucial piece of evidence suggesting a direct and functional involvement of space in verbal serial order WM. We outline the idea that serial order in verbal WM is coded within a spatial coordinate system with spatial attention being involved when searching through WM, and we discuss how this account can explain several hallmark observations related to serial order WM.	\N	\N
25620313	Despite a robust hearing conservation program, military personnel continue to be at high risk for noise induced hearing loss (NIHL). For more than a decade, a number of laboratories have investigated the use of antioxidants as a safe and effective adjunct to hearing conservation programs. Of the antioxidants that have been investigated, N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has consistently reduced permanent NIHL in the laboratory, but its clinical efficacy is still controversial. This study provides a prospective, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial investigating the safety profile and the efficacy of NAC to prevent hearing loss in a military population after weapons training. Of the 566 total study subjects, 277 received NAC while 289 were given placebo. The null hypothesis for the rate of STS was not rejected based on the measured results. While no significant differences were found for the primary outcome, rate of threshold shifts, the right ear threshold shift rate difference did approach significance (p = 0.0562). No significant difference was found in the second primary outcome, percentage of subjects experiencing an adverse event between placebo and NAC groups (26.7% and 27.4%, respectively, p = 0.4465). Results for the secondary outcome, STS rate in the trigger hand ear, did show a significant difference (34.98% for placebo-treated, 27.14% for NAC-treated, p-value = 0.0288). Additionally, post-hoc analysis showed significant differences in threshold shift rates when handedness was taken into account. While the secondary outcomes and post-hoc analysis suggest that NAC treatment is superior to the placebo, the present study design failed to confirm this. The lack of significant differences in overall hearing loss between the treatment and placebo groups may be due to a number of factors, including suboptimal dosing, premature post-exposure audiograms, or differences in risk between ears or subjects. Based on secondary outcomes and post hoc analyses however, further studies seem warranted and are needed to clarify dose response and the factors that may have played a role in the observed results.	\N	\N
25620314	This study explored the role of formant transitions and F0-contour continuity in binding together speech sounds into a coherent stream. Listening to a repeating recorded word produces verbal transformations to different forms; stream segregation contributes to this effect and so it can be used to measure changes in perceptual coherence. In experiment 1, monosyllables with strong formant transitions between the initial consonant and following vowel were monotonized; each monosyllable was paired with a weak-transitions counterpart. Further stimuli were derived by replacing the consonant-vowel transitions with samples from adjacent steady portions. Each stimulus was concatenated into a 3-min-long sequence. Listeners only reported more forms in the transitions-removed condition for strong-transitions words, for which formant-frequency discontinuities were substantial. In experiment 2, the F0 contour of all-voiced monosyllables was shaped to follow a rising or falling pattern, spanning one octave. Consecutive tokens either had the same contour, giving an abrupt F0 change between each token, or alternated, giving a continuous contour. Discontinuous sequences caused more transformations and forms, and shorter times to the first transformation. Overall, these findings support the notion that continuity cues provided by formant transitions and the F0 contour play an important role in maintaining the perceptual coherence of speech.	\N	\N
25631452	Schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) have reduced structural integrity in the left arcuate fasciculus (AFL) compared to healthy controls. However, it is neither known whether these changes are specific to AVH, as opposed to hallucinations or schizophrenia per se, nor how radial and/or axial diffusivity are altered. This study aimed to test the hypothesis that reductions to the structural integrity of the AFL are specifically associated with AVH in schizophrenia. Diffusion tensor imaging scans and clinical data were obtained from the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank for 39 schizophrenia patients with lifetime AVH (18 current, 21 remitted), 74 schizophrenia patients with no lifetime AVH (40 with lifetime hallucinations in other modalities, 34 no lifetime hallucinations) and 40 healthy controls. Fractional anisotropy was significantly reduced in the AFL of patients with lifetime AVH compared to both healthy controls (Cohen's d=1.24) and patients without lifetime AVH (d=.72), including compared to the specific subsets of patients without AVH who either had hallucinations in other modalities (d=.69) or no history of any hallucinations (d=.73). Radial, but not axial, diffusivity was significantly increased in patients with lifetime AVH compared to both healthy controls (d=.89) and patients without lifetime AVH (d=.39). Evidence was found for a non-linear relation between fractional anisotropy in the AFL and state AVH. Reduced integrity of the AFL is specifically associated with AVH, as opposed to schizophrenia in general or hallucinations in other modalities. Increased radial diffusivity suggests dysmyelination or demyelination of the AFL may play a role in AVH.	\N	\N
25632078	Despite recent progress in our understanding of sensorimotor integration in speech learning, a comprehensive framework to investigate its neural basis is lacking at behaviorally relevant timescales. Structural and functional imaging studies in humans have helped us identify brain networks that support speech but fail to capture the precise spatiotemporal coordination within the networks that takes place during speech learning. Here we use neuronal oscillations to investigate interactions within speech motor networks in a paradigm of speech motor adaptation under altered feedback with continuous recording of EEG in which subjects adapted to the real-time auditory perturbation of a target vowel sound. As subjects adapted to the task, concurrent changes were observed in the theta-gamma phase coherence during speech planning at several distinct scalp regions that is consistent with the establishment of a feedforward map. In particular, there was an increase in coherence over the central region and a decrease over the fronto-temporal regions, revealing a redistribution of coherence over an interacting network of brain regions that could be a general feature of error-based motor learning in general. Our findings have implications for understanding the neural basis of speech motor learning and could elucidate how transient breakdown of neuronal communication within speech networks relates to speech disorders.	\N	\N
25644083	French-learning infants have language-specific difficulties in processing lexical stress due to the lack of lexical stress in French. These difficulties in discriminating between words with stress-initial (trochaic) and stress-final (iambic) patterns emerge by 10months of age in the easier context of low variability (using a single item pronounced with a trochaic pattern vs. an iambic pattern) as well as in the more challenging context of high segmental variability (using lists of segmentally different trochaic and iambic items). These findings raise the question of stress pattern perception in simultaneous bilinguals learning French and a second language using stress at the lexical level. Bijeljac-Babic, Serres, Höhle, and Nazzi (2012) established that at 10 months of age, in the simpler context of low variability, such bilinguals have better stress discrimination abilities than French-learning monolinguals. The current study explored whether this advantage extends to the more challenging context of high segmental variability. Results first establish stress pattern discrimination in a group of bilingual 10-month-olds learning French and one language with (variable) lexical stress, but not in French-learning 10-month-old monolinguals. Second, discrimination in bilinguals appeared not to be affected by the language balance of the infants, suggesting that sensitivity to stress patterns might be maintained in these bilingual infants provided that they hear at least 30% of a language with lexical stress.	\N	\N
25653380	In the diverse mechanosensory systems that animals evolved, the waveform of stimuli can be encoded by phase locking in spike trains of primary afferents. Coding of the fine structure of sounds via phase locking is thought to be critical for hearing. The upper frequency limit of phase locking varies across species and is unknown in humans. We applied a method developed previously, which is based on neural adaptation evoked by forward masking, to analyze mass potentials recorded on the cochlea and auditory nerve in the cat. The method allows us to separate neural phase locking from receptor potentials. We find that the frequency limit of neural phase locking obtained from mass potentials was very similar to that reported for individual auditory nerve fibers. The results suggest that this is a promising approach to examine neural phase locking in humans with normal or impaired hearing or in other species for which direct recordings from primary afferents are not feasible.	\N	\N
25656319	Models of speech production explain event-related suppression of the auditory cortical response as reflecting a comparison between auditory predictions and feedback. The present MEG study was designed to test two predictions from this framework: (1) whether the reduced auditory response varies as a function of the mismatch between prediction and feedback; (2) whether individual variation in this response is predictive of speech-motor adaptation. Participants alternated between online imitation and listening tasks. In the imitation task, participants began each trial producing the same vowel (/e/) and subsequently listened to and imitated auditorily-presented vowels varying in acoustic distance from /e/. Results replicated suppression, with a smaller M100 during speaking than listening. Although we did not find unequivocal support for the first prediction, participants with less M100 suppression were better at the imitation task. These results are consistent with the enhancement of M100 serving as an error signal to drive subsequent speech-motor adaptation.	\N	\N
25660196	Under certain conditions, sighted and blind humans can use echoes to discern characteristics of otherwise silent objects. Previous research concluded that robust horizontal-plane object localisation ability, without using head movement, depends on information above 2 kHz. While a strong interaural level difference (ILD) cue is available, it was not clear if listeners were using that or the monaural level cue that necessarily accompanies ILD. In this experiment, 13 sighted and normal-hearing listeners were asked to identify the right-vs.-left position of an object in virtual auditory space. Sounds were manipulated to remove binaural cues (binaural vs. diotic presentation) and prevent the use of monaural level cues (using level roving). With low- (<2 kHz) and high- (>2 kHz) frequency bands of noise, performance with binaural presentation and level rove exceeded that expected from use of monaural level cues and that with diotic presentation. It is argued that a high-frequency binaural cue (most likely ILD), and not a monaural level cue, is crucial for robust object localisation without head movement.	\N	\N
25660759	Impairments in neural function are common when oxygen supply to the brain is reduced. This study examined neurocognitive processes that are vulnerable to oxygen deprivation. We induced moderate-to-severe hypoxia in healthy adults, thereby inducing impairments caused by low brain oxygen availability. 22 healthy adults participated in this matched-pairs study with a single-blind, randomised design. Baseline neurocognitive function was examined during a familiarisation trial and participants were assigned to hypoxia (10% O2) or sham (21% O2) groups. Neurocognitive performance was assessed via computerised test battery after 50 min of breathing a gas mixture that reduced arterial oxygen saturation by 20% (p<0.01). Hypoxia severely reduced performance across all neurocognitive domain scores; with significant drops in neurocognitive index (-20%), composite memory (-30%), verbal memory (-34%), visual memory (-23%), processing speed (-36%), executive function (-20%), psychomotor speed (-24%), reaction time (-10%), complex attention (-19%) and cognitive flexibility (-18%; all p<0.05). Practice effects were blocked by hypoxia but occurred in sham for information processing speed (+30%), executive function (+14%), psychomotor speed (+18%), reaction time (+5%), cognitive flexibility (+14%), and overall cognitive functioning (+9%; all p<0.05). Neuropsychological performance decrements caused by acute experimental hypoxia are comparable to cognitive domains impaired with high altitude exposure and mild traumatic brain injury.	\N	\N
25676810	Neurologically healthy individuals use sensory feedback to alter future movements by updating internal models of the effector system and environment. For example, when visual feedback about limb movements or auditory feedback about speech movements is experimentally perturbed, the planning of subsequent movements is adjusted - i.e., sensorimotor adaptation occurs. A separate line of studies has demonstrated that experimentally delaying the sensory consequences of limb movements causes the sensory input to be attributed to external sources rather than to one's own actions. Yet similar feedback delays have remarkably little effect on visuo-motor adaptation (although the rate of learning varies, the amount of adaptation is only moderately affected with delays of 100-200ms, and adaptation still occurs even with a delay as long as 5000ms). Thus, limb motor learning remains largely intact even in conditions where error assignment favors external factors. Here, we show a fundamentally different result for sensorimotor control of speech articulation: auditory-motor adaptation to formant-shifted feedback is completely eliminated with delays of 100ms or more. Thus, for speech motor learning, real-time auditory feedback is critical. This novel finding informs theoretical models of human motor control in general and speech motor control in particular, and it has direct implications for the application of motor learning principles in the habilitation and rehabilitation of individuals with various sensorimotor speech disorders.	\N	\N
25678274	While there is growing understanding of visual selective attention in children, some aspects such as selection in the presence of distractors are not well understood. Adult studies suggest that when presented with a visual search task, an enhanced negativity is seen beginning around 200 ms (the N2pc) that reflects selection of a target item among distractors. However, it is not known if similar selective attention-related activity is seen in children during visual search. This study was designed to investigate the presence of the N2pc in children. Nineteen children (ages 9-12 years) and 21 adults (ages 18-22 years) completed a visual search task in which they were asked to attend to a fixation surrounded by both a target and a distractor stimulus. Three types of displays were analyzed at parietal electrodes P7 and P8; lateral target/lateral distractor, lateral target/midline distractor, and midline target/lateral distractor. Both adults and children showed a significant increased negativity contralateral compared to ipsilateral to the target (reflected in the N2pc) in both displays with a lateral target while no such effect was seen in displays with a midline target. This suggests that children also utilized additional resources to select a target item when distractors are present. These findings demonstrate that the N2pc can be used as a marker of attentional object selection in children.	\N	\N
25681737	Aging usually decreases the ability to understand language under difficult listening conditions. However, aging is also associated with increased between-subject variability. Here, we studied potential sources of inter-individual differences and investigated spoken language understanding of younger and older adults (age ranges 21-35 and 57-74 years, respectively) in a simulated "cocktail-party" scenario. A naturalistic "stock-price monitoring" task was employed in which prices of listed companies were simultaneously recited by four speakers at different locations in space. The participants responded when prices of a target company exceeded specific values, while ignoring all other companies. According to their individual performance levels three subgroups of participants were composed, consisting of 12 high-performing and 12 low-performing older adults, and 12 young adults matching the high-performing older group. The analysis of the event-related brain potentials indicated that all older adults showed delayed attentional control (indicated by a later P2) and reduced speech processing (indicated by a reduced N400), relative to the younger adults. High-performing older adults differed in increased allocation of attention and inhibitory control (indicated by a stronger P2-N2 complex) from their low-performing counterparts. The results are consistent with the idea of an adjustment of mental resources that could help compensating potential deficiencies in peripheral and central auditory processing.	\N	\N
25704552	Grapheme-color synesthetes perceive achromatic graphemes to be inherently colored. In this study grapheme-color synesthetes and non-synesthetes discriminated (1) the color of visual targets presented along with aurally presented digit primes, and (2) the identity of aurally presented digit targets presented with visual color primes. Reaction times to visual color targets were longer when the color of the target was incongruent with the synesthetic percept reported for the prime. Likewise, discriminating aurally presented digit targets took longer when the color of the prime was incongruent with the synesthetic percept for the target. These priming effects were absent in non-synesthetes. We conclude that binding between digits and colors in grapheme-color synesthetes can occur bidirectionally across senses. The results are in line with the idea that synesthesia is the result of linking inducing stimuli (e.g. digits) to synesthetic percepts (colors) at an abstract - supra-modal - conceptual level of processing.	\N	\N
25705651	Noise is a major cause of health disorders in workers and has unique importance in the auditory analysis of people exposed to it. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the arithmetic mean of the auditory thresholds at frequencies of 3, 4, and 6 kHz of workers from five professional categories exposed to occupational noise. We propose a retrospective cross-sectional cohort study to analyze 2.140 audiograms from seven companies having five sectors of activity: one footwear company, one beverage company, two ceramics companies, two metallurgical companies, and two transport companies. When we compared two categories, we noticed a significant difference only for cargo carriers in comparison to the remaining categories. In all activity sectors, the left ear presented the worst values, except for the footwear professionals (P > 0.05). We observed an association between the noise exposure time and the reduction of audiometric values for both ears. Significant differences existed for cargo carriers in relation to other groups. This evidence may be attributed to different forms of exposure. A slow and progressive deterioration appeared as the exposure time increased.	\N	\N
25705995	To investigate audiological and quality of life outcomes for a new active transcutaneous device, called the bone conduction implant (BCI), where the transducer is implanted under intact skin. A clinical study with sound field audiometry and questionnaires at six-month follow-up was conducted with a bone-anchored hearing aid on a softband as reference device. Six patients (age 18-67 years) with mild-to-moderate conductive or mixed hearing loss. The surgical procedure was found uneventful with no adverse events. The first hypothesis that BCI had a statistically significant improvement over the unaided condition was proven by a pure-tone-average improvement of 31.0 dB, a speech recognition threshold improvement in quiet (27.0 dB), and a speech recognition score improvement in noise (51.2 %). At speech levels, the signal-to-noise ratio threshold for BCI was - 5.5 dB. All BCI results were better than, or similar to the reference device results, and the APHAB and GBI questionnaires scores showed statistically significant improvements versus the unaided situation, supporting the second and third hypotheses. The BCI provides significant hearing rehabilitation for patients with mild-to-moderate conductive or mixed hearing impairments, and can be easily and safely implanted under intact skin.	\N	\N
25707867	The magnitude of spatial distance between sound stimuli is critically important for their preattentive discrimination, yet the effect of stimulus context on auditory motion processing is not clear. This study investigated the effects of acoustical change and stimulus context on preattentive spatial change detection. Auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for stationary midline noises and two patterns of sound motion produced by linear or abrupt changes of interaural time differences. Each of the three types of stimuli was used as standard or deviant in different blocks. Context effects on mismatch negativity (MMN) elicited by stationary and moving sound stimuli were investigated by reversing the role of standard and deviant stimuli, while the acoustical stimulus parameters were kept the same. That is, MMN amplitudes were calculated by subtracting ERPs to identical stimuli presented as standard in one block and deviant in another block. In contrast, effects of acoustical change on MMN amplitudes were calculated by subtracting ERPs of standards and deviants presented within the same block. Preattentive discrimination of moving and stationary sounds indexed by MMN was strongly dependent on the stimulus context. Higher MMNs were produced in oddball configurations where deviance represented increments of the sound velocity, as compared to configurations with velocity decrements. The effect of standard-deviant reversal was more pronounced with the abrupt sound displacement than with gradual sound motion.	\N	\N
25722025	Most high-level auditory functions require one to detect the onset and offset of sound sequences as well as registering the rate at which sounds are presented within the sound trains. By recording event-related brain potentials to onsets and offsets of tone trains as well as to changes in the presentation rate, we tested whether these fundamental auditory capabilities are functional at birth. Each of these events elicited significant event-related potential components in sleeping healthy neonates. The data thus demonstrate that the newborn brain is sensitive to these acoustic features suggesting that infants are geared towards the temporal aspects of segregating sound sources, speech and music perception already at birth.	\N	\N
25726273	Auditory processing is remarkably fast and sensitive to the precise temporal structure of acoustic signals over a range of scales, from submillisecond phenomena such as localization to the construction of elementary auditory attributes at tens of milliseconds to basic properties of speech and music at hundreds of milliseconds. In light of the rapid (and often transitory) nature of auditory phenomena, in order to investigate the neurocomputational basis of auditory perception and cognition, a technique with high temporal resolution is appropriate. Here we briefly outline the utility of magnetoencephalography (MEG) for the study of the neural basis of audition. The basics of MEG are outlined in brief, and some of the most-used neural responses are described. We discuss the classic transient evoked fields (e.g., M100), responses elicited by change in a stimulus (e.g., pitch-onset response), the auditory steady-state response, and neural oscillations (e.g., theta-phase tracking). Because of the high temporal resolution and the good spatial resolution of MEG, paired with the convenient location of human auditory cortex for MEG-based recording, electromagnetic recording of this type is well suited to investigate various aspects from audition, from crafted laboratory experiments on pitch perception or scene analysis to naturalistic speech and music tasks.	\N	\N
25730639	In serial recall tasks, presenting items in alternating female and male voices impairs performance relative to the single-voice presentation. This phenomenon, termed the talker-variability effect (TVE), was recently reexamined by Hughes, Marsh, and Jones (2009, 2011), who used the effect as confirmatory evidence for their perceptual-gestural account of serial recall performance. Despite the authors' claim of generalisability, the serial recall paradigm employed did not reflect the standard parameters more generally adopted in verbal short-term memory research. Specifically, the presentation rate of the stimuli was almost 3 times that typically used. We sought to determine if the TVE, as observed by Hughes et al., was generalisable to the standard serial recall task by directly comparing recall performance in talker-variable conditions at fast and slow stimulus presentation rates. Experiment 1 employed a systematic replication of the foundational study undertaken by Hughes et al. (2009). Utilising a novel stimulus set, Experiment 2 provided a subsequent test of the generalisability of the TVE, examining the influence of item properties. Both experiments showed a robust TVE at the atypical fast presentation rate; however, for the slower item presentation, the TVE was unreliable. Furthermore, error analysis suggests that item recall also contributes to the TVE, contrary to the current explanation proposed by Hughes et al. (2009, 2011). The challenge of the present data to the perceptual-gestural account of the TVE is explored. Alternative accounts that focus on the resource cost of categorical speech perception in the context of talker variability are posited.	\N	\N
25732931	Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) is a highly migratory, commercially valuable species potentially vulnerable to acoustic noise generated from human activities which could impact behavior and fitness. Although significant efforts have been made to understand hearing abilities of fishes, the large size and need to continuously swim for respiration have hindered investigations with tuna and other large pelagic species. In this study, Pacific bluefin tuna were trained to respond to a pure tone sound stimulus ranging 325-800 Hz and their hearing abilities quantified using a staircase psychophysical technique. Hearing was most sensitive from 400 to 500 Hz in terms of particle motion (radial acceleration -88 dB re 1 m s(-2); vertical acceleration -86 dB re 1 m s(-2)) and sound pressure (83 dB re 1 μPa). Compared to yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) and kawakawa (Euthynnus affinis), Pacific bluefin tuna has a similar bandwidth of hearing and best frequency, but greater sensitivity overall. Careful calibration of the sound stimulus and experimental tank environment, as well as the adoption of behavioral methodology, demonstrates an experimental approach highly effective for the study of large fish species in the laboratory.	\N	\N
25740512	In normal listeners, the tonal rules of music guide musical expectancy. In a minority of individuals, known as amusics, the processing of tonality is disordered, which results in severe musical deficits. It has been shown that the tonal rules of music are neurally encoded, but not consciously available in amusics. Previous neurophysiological studies have not explicitly controlled the level of attention in tasks where participants ignored the tonal structure of the stimuli. Here, we test whether access to tonal knowledge can be demonstrated in congenital amusia when attention is controlled. Electric brain responses were recorded while asking participants to detect an individually adjusted near-threshold click in a melody. In half the melodies, a note was inserted that violated the tonal rules of music. In a second task, participants were presented with the same melodies but were required to detect the tonal deviation. Both tasks required sustained attention, thus conscious access to the rules of tonality was manipulated. In the click-detection task, the pitch deviants evoked an early right anterior negativity (ERAN) in both groups. In the pitch-detection task, the pitch deviants evoked an ERAN and P600 in controls but not in amusics. These results indicate that pitch regularities are represented in the cortex of amusics, but are not consciously available. Moreover, performing a pitch-judgment task eliminated the ERAN in amusics, suggesting that attending to pitch information interferes with perception of pitch. We propose that an impaired top-down frontotemporal projection is responsible for this disorder.	\N	\N
25740534	When two musical notes with simple frequency ratios are played simultaneously, the resulting musical chord is pleasing and evokes a sense of resolution or "consonance". Complex frequency ratios, on the other hand, evoke feelings of tension or "dissonance". Consonance and dissonance form the basis of harmony, a central component of Western music. In earlier work, we provided evidence that consonance perception is based on neural temporal coding in the brainstem (Bones et al., 2014). Here, we show that for listeners with clinically normal hearing, aging is associated with a decline in both the perceptual distinction and the distinctiveness of the neural representations of different categories of two-note chords. Compared with younger listeners, older listeners rated consonant chords as less pleasant and dissonant chords as more pleasant. Older listeners also had less distinct neural representations of consonant and dissonant chords as measured using a Neural Consonance Index derived from the electrophysiological "frequency-following response." The results withstood a control for the effect of age on general affect, suggesting that different mechanisms are responsible for the perceived pleasantness of musical chords and affective voices and that, for listeners with clinically normal hearing, age-related differences in consonance perception are likely to be related to differences in neural temporal coding.	\N	\N
25744662	Hearing loss is one of the most common symptoms of mitochondrial disorders. However, audiological phenotypes associated with different molecular defects in mtDNA are not yet well characterized. A large cohort of 1499 nonconsanguineous patients aged 5-40 years with hearing loss of unknown etiology was screened for mutations in mtDNA. For further analysis, patients harboring m.1555A>G and m.3243A>G were selected. Hearing status of the patients was assessed by pure tone audiometry. Patterns of audiograms (hearing threshold levels at each examined frequency) were statistically compared among the carriers of the m.1555A>G and the m.3243A>G mutations. We identified 20 patients positive for m.1555A>G mutation and 16 patients positive for m.3243A>G change. The frequency of the above transitions was calculated in our cohort as 1.33% and 1.06%, respectively. Seventeen affected family members carrying the mutations were included into the study. Typical shape of the audiograms in patients with m.1555A>G mutation presented a ski-slope pattern, whereas the audiometric curves among the m.3243A>G individuals had a pantonal shape (a flat curve) with slight downward sloping at the higher frequencies. The differences were statistically significant. The onset of hearing loss was noted earlier among m.1555A>G than m.3243A>G patients (12.5 and 26 years, respectively). Aminoglycoside administration was declared in both groups in 11 and 4 cases respectively, and caused abrupt hearing deterioration in all cases. A pattern of audiogram in patients with mitochondrial deafness may suggest a localization of mtDNA mutation. The pathogenesis of the audiometric differences needs further study.	\N	\N
25768088	Cartilage conduction (CC) is a new form of sound transmission which is induced by a transducer being placed on the aural cartilage. Although the conventional forms of sound transmission to the cochlea are classified into air or bone conduction (AC or BC), previous study demonstrates that CC is not classified into AC or BC (Laryngoscope 124: 1214-1219). Next interesting issue is whether CC is a hybrid of AC and BC. Seven volunteers with normal hearing participated in this experiment. The threshold-shifts by water injection in the ear canal were measured. AC, BC, and CC thresholds at 0.5-4 kHz were measured in the 0%-, 40%-, and 80%-water injection conditions. In addition, CC thresholds were also measured for the 20%-, 60%-, 100%-, and overflowing-water injection conditions. The contributions of the vibrations of the cartilaginous portion were evaluated by the threshold-shifts. For AC and BC, the threshold-shifts by the water injection were 22.6-53.3 dB and within 14.9 dB at the frequency of 0.5-4 kHz, respectively. For CC, when the water was filled within the bony portion, the thresholds were elevated to the same degree as AC. When the water was additionally injected to reach the cartilaginous portion, the thresholds at 0.5 and 1 kHz dramatically decreased by 27.4 and 27.5 dB, respectively. In addition, despite blocking AC by the injected water, the CC thresholds in force level were remarkably lower than those for BC. The vibration of the cartilaginous portion contributes to the sound transmission, particularly in the low frequency range. Although the airborne sound is radiated into the ear canal in both BC and CC, the mechanism underlying its generation is different between them. CC generates airborne sound in the canal more efficiently than BC. The current findings suggest that CC is not a hybrid of AC and BC.	\N	\N
25784489	Electrical stimulation of upper limb nerves evokes a train of high-frequency wavelets (high-frequency oscillations, HFOs) on the human scalp. These HFOs are related to the influence of arousal-promoting structures on somatosensory input processing, and are generated in the primary somatosensory cortex (post-synaptic HFOs) and the terminal tracts of thalamocortical radiations (pre-synaptic HFOs). We previously reported that HFOs do not undergo habituation to repeated stimulations; here, we verified whether HFOs could be modulated by external sensitizing stimuli. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) in 15 healthy volunteers before and after sensitization training with an auditory stimulus. Pre-synaptic HFO amplitudes, reflecting somatosensory thalamic/thalamocortical activity, significantly increased after the sensitizing acoustic stimulation, whereas both the low-frequency N20 SSEP component and post-synaptic HFOs were unaffected. Cross-talk between subcortical arousal-related structures is a probable mechanism for the pre-synaptic HFO effect observed in this study. We propose that part of the ascending somatosensory input encoded in HFOs is specifically able to convey sensitized inputs. This preferential involvement in sensitization mechanisms suggests that HFOs play a critical role in the detection of potentially relevant stimuli, and act at very early stages of somatosensory input processing.	\N	\N
25813739	Perception of simultaneity and temporal order is studied with simultaneity judgment (SJ) and temporal-order judgment (TOJ) tasks. In the former, observers report whether presentation of two stimuli was subjectively simultaneous; in the latter, they report which stimulus was subjectively presented first. SJ and TOJ tasks typically give discrepant results, which has prompted the view that performance is mediated by different processes in each task. We looked at these discrepancies from a model that yields psychometric functions whose parameters characterize the timing, decisional, and response processes involved in SJ and TOJ tasks. We analyzed 12 data sets from published studies in which both tasks had been used in within-subjects designs, all of which had reported differences in performance across tasks. Fitting the model jointly to data from both tasks, we tested the hypothesis that common timing processes sustain simultaneity and temporal-order judgments, with differences in performance arising from task-dependent decisional and response processes. The results supported this hypothesis, also showing that model psychometric functions account for aspects of SJ and TOJ data that classical analyses overlook. Implications for research on perception of simultaneity and temporal order are discussed.	\N	\N
25813742	Previous studies have shown that humans are sensitive to statistical patterns indicating the likely locations, identities, and timings of visual targets. Here we tested whether participants can also use this kind of information to ameliorate the attentional blink (AB)—a reduction in accuracy for the second of two targets (T1, T2) presented at brief intertarget intervals (lags). In particular, we asked whether participants can use patterns arising from differential distributions of intertarget lags across trials to predict the arrival of T2. We tested this by comparing the ABs in an aging versus a nonaging distribution of trials, where aging refers to the increased likelihood of T2, given that it has not yet occurred, when lags occur with equal frequencies. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the aging condition yielded greater T2 accuracy at longer lags than did the nonaging condition. In Experiment 3, we used a more sensitive response time measure to show faster T2 discrimination at shorter lags in the nonaging condition. These results demonstrate that participants can predict the likely onset of T2 by using statistical patterns present in the AB task, and that they can use this ability to more effectively direct limited processing resources.	\N	\N
25827259	Infants' attention is captured by the redundancy of amodal stimulation in multimodal objects and events. Evidence from this study demonstrates that intersensory redundancy can facilitate discrimination of rhythm changes presented in the visual modality alone in visually impaired infants, suggesting that multisensory rehabilitation strategies could prove helpful in this population.	\N	\N
25862624	Animal models of tinnitus complement human findings and potentially deepen our insight into the neural substrates of tinnitus. The fact that animal data are largely based on recordings from the auditory system, in particular from subcortical structures, makes comparison with human electrophysiological data from predominantly cortical areas difficult. Electro/magnetoencephalography and imaging data extend beyond the auditory cortex. The most challenging link to be made is the one between the macroscopic data in humans and the microscopic (single neuron action potentials) and mesoscopic (local field potentials) results obtained in animal models. Since invasive recordings in humans are rare, a bridge needs to be built on the basis of changes in brain rhythms in animals with putative tinnitus.	\N	\N
25878278	There is substantial evidence that sensory deprivation leads to important cross-modal brain reorganization that is paralleled by enhanced perceptual abilities. However, it remains unclear how widespread these enhancements are, and whether they are intercorrelated or arise at the expense of other perceptual abilities. One specific area where such a trade-off might arise is that of spatial hearing, where blind individuals have been shown to possess superior monaural localization abilities in the horizontal plane, but inferior localization abilities in the vertical plane. While both of these tasks likely involve the use of monaural cues due to the absence of any relevant binaural signal, there is currently no proper explanation for this discrepancy, nor has any study investigated both sets of abilities in the same sample of blind individuals. Here, we assess whether the enhancements observed in the horizontal plane are related to the deficits observed in the vertical plane by testing sound localization in both planes in groups of blind and sighted persons. Our results show that the blind individuals who displayed the highest accuracy at localizing sounds monaurally in the horizontal plane are also the ones who exhibited the greater deficit when localizing in the vertical plane. These findings appear to argue against the idea of generalized perceptual enhancements in the early blind, and instead suggest the possibility of a trade-off in the localization proficiency between the two auditory spatial planes, such that learning to use monaural cues for the horizontal plane comes at the expense of using those cues to localize in the vertical plane.	\N	\N
25880903	Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects the timing and rhythmic flow of speech production. When speech is synchronized with an external rhythmic pacing signal (e.g., a metronome), even severe stuttering can be markedly alleviated, suggesting that people who stutter may have difficulty generating an internal rhythm to pace their speech. To investigate this possibility, children who stutter and typically-developing children (n=17 per group, aged 6-11 years) were compared in terms of their auditory rhythm discrimination abilities of simple and complex rhythms. Children who stutter showed worse rhythm discrimination than typically-developing children. These findings provide the first evidence of impaired rhythm perception in children who stutter, supporting the conclusion that developmental stuttering may be associated with a deficit in rhythm processing.	\N	\N
25896774	In this report, we used filtered noise bands to constrain listeners' access to interaural level differences (ILDs) and interaural time differences (ITDs) in a sound source localization task. The samples of interest were listeners with single-sided deafness (SSD) who had been fit with a cochlear implant in the deafened ear (SSD-CI). The comparison samples included listeners with normal hearing and bimodal hearing, i.e., with a cochlear implant in 1 ear and low-frequency acoustic hearing in the other ear. The results indicated that (i) sound source localization was better in the SSD-CI condition than in the SSD condition, (ii) SSD-CI patients rely on ILD cues for sound source localization, (iii) SSD-CI patients show functional localization abilities within 1-3 months after device activation and (iv) SSD-CI patients show better sound source localization than bimodal CI patients but, on average, poorer localization than normal-hearing listeners. One SSD-CI patient showed a level of localization within normal limits. We provide an account for the relative localization abilities of the groups by reference to the differences in access to ILD cues.	\N	\N
25912703	In this review we analyse cochlear implantation in terms of the fundamental aspects of the functioning of the auditory system. Concepts concerning neuronal plasticity applied to electrical stimulation in perinatal and adult deep hypoacusis are reviewed, and the latest scientific bases that justify early implantation following screening for congenital deafness are discussed. Finally, this review aims to serve as an example of the importance of fostering the sub-specialty of neurotology in our milieu, with the aim of bridging some of the gaps between specialties and thus improving both the knowledge in the field of research on auditory pathologies and in the screening of patients. The objectives of this review, targeted above all towards specialists in the field of otorhinolaryngology, are to analyse some significant neurological foundations in order to reach a better understanding of the clinical events that condition the indications and the rehabilitation of patients with cochlear implants, as well as to use this means to foster the growth of the sub-specialty of neurotology.	\N	\N
25914938	The study examined the effect of structural composition, position of occlusion, and education background on response time and accuracy rate of adult participants in recognition of occluded Chinese characters used in graphic design. Based on 18 Chinese characters selected from the top 4,000 most commonly used characters, a recognition experiment was conducted. Results indicated that, for the characters with two different composition structures, the right position was the best position of occlusion because the recognition of the radical or feature of a character would be least affected, leading to a shorter response time and more accurate reading comprehension. Educational background did not have a significant influence on response time and recognition accuracy.	\N	\N
25914939	This study examined the effects of audio-visual aids on anxiety, comprehension test scores, and retention in reading and listening to short stories in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. Reading and listening tests, general and test anxiety, and retention were measured in English-major college students in an experimental group with audio-visual aids (n=83) and a control group without audio-visual aids (n=94) with similar general English proficiency. Lower reading test anxiety, unchanged reading comprehension scores, and better reading short-term and long-term retention after four weeks were evident in the audiovisual group relative to the control group. In addition, lower listening test anxiety, higher listening comprehension scores, and unchanged short-term and long-term retention were found in the audiovisual group relative to the control group after the intervention. Audio-visual aids may help to reduce EFL learners' listening test anxiety and enhance their listening comprehension scores without facilitating retention of such materials. Although audio-visual aids did not increase reading comprehension scores, they helped reduce EFL learners' reading test anxiety and facilitated retention of reading materials.	\N	\N
25948273	The human brain has evolved to operate effectively in highly complex acoustic environments, segregating multiple sound sources into perceptually distinct auditory objects. A recent theory seeks to explain this ability by arguing that stream segregation occurs primarily due to the temporal coherence of the neural populations that encode the various features of an individual acoustic source. This theory has received support from both psychoacoustic and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that use stimuli which model complex acoustic environments. Termed stochastic figure-ground (SFG) stimuli, they are composed of a "figure" and background that overlap in spectrotemporal space, such that the only way to segregate the figure is by computing the coherence of its frequency components over time. Here, we extend these psychoacoustic and fMRI findings by using the greater temporal resolution of electroencephalography to investigate the neural computation of temporal coherence. We present subjects with modified SFG stimuli wherein the temporal coherence of the figure is modulated stochastically over time, which allows us to use linear regression methods to extract a signature of the neural processing of this temporal coherence. We do this under both active and passive listening conditions. Our findings show an early effect of coherence during passive listening, lasting from ∼115 to 185 ms post-stimulus. When subjects are actively listening to the stimuli, these responses are larger and last longer, up to ∼265 ms. These findings provide evidence for early and preattentive neural computations of temporal coherence that are enhanced by active analysis of an auditory scene.	\N	\N
25951749	The debate about the causal role of the motor system in speech perception has been reignited by demonstrations that motor processes are engaged during the processing of speech sounds. Here, we evaluate which aspects of auditory speech processing are affected, and which are not, in a stroke patient with dysfunction of the speech motor system. We found that the patient showed a normal phonemic categorical boundary when discriminating two non-words that differ by a minimal pair (e.g., ADA-AGA). However, using the same stimuli, the patient was unable to identify or label the non-word stimuli (using a button-press response). A control task showed that he could identify speech sounds by speaker gender, ruling out a general labelling impairment. These data suggest that while the motor system is not causally involved in perception of the speech signal, it may be used when other cues (e.g., meaning, context) are not available.	\N	\N
25970594	Previous studies investigating speech perception in noise have typically been conducted with static masker positions. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of spatial separation of source and masker (spatial release from masking, SRM) in a moving masker setup and to evaluate the impact of adaptive beamforming in comparison with fixed directional microphones in cochlear implant (CI) users. Speech reception thresholds (SRT) were measured in S0N0 and in a moving masker setup (S0Nmove) in 12 normal hearing participants and 14 CI users (7 subjects bilateral, 7 bimodal with a hearing aid in the contralateral ear). Speech processor settings were a moderately directional microphone, a fixed beamformer, or an adaptive beamformer. The moving noise source was generated by means of wave field synthesis and was smoothly moved in a shape of a half-circle from one ear to the contralateral ear. Noise was presented in either of two conditions: continuous or modulated. SRTs in the S0Nmove setup were significantly improved compared to the S0N0 setup for both the normal hearing control group and the bilateral group in continuous noise, and for the control group in modulated noise. There was no effect of subject group. A significant effect of directional sensitivity was found in the S0Nmove setup. In the bilateral group, the adaptive beamformer achieved lower SRTs than the fixed beamformer setting. Adaptive beamforming improved SRT in both CI user groups substantially by about 3 dB (bimodal group) and 8 dB (bilateral group) depending on masker type. CI users showed SRM that was comparable to normal hearing subjects. In listening situations of everyday life with spatial separation of source and masker, directional microphones significantly improved speech perception with individual improvements of up to 15 dB SNR. Users of bilateral speech processors with both directional microphones obtained the highest benefit.	\N	\N
26027328	The parallel psychophysical and MMN study focused at the sensitivity of human hearing system to variations in velocity of sound image movement. The motion of sound stimuli with various velocities in the 450 deg/s to 732 deg/s range in increments of 6 deg/s to the left or to the right from the head midline was simulated by introducing linear changes of interaural delay into dichotic stimuli. The psychophysical experiments were designed according to the 2-alternative forced choice paradigm. The subjects were presented by pairs of moving stimuli and were asked to decide which moved faster. The stimuli created for the present study ensured that the subjects performed the discrimination task without relying on associated cues of sound displacement or duration. The psychophysical measures were compared with electrophysiological indexes of sound processing (auditory evoked responses (ERPs) and mismatch negativity (MMN)). Significant MMN was elicited by the difference of 170 deg/s between the reference and test velocity, which corresponded to the relative velocity increase of 38%. At the same time, the difference thresholds for velocity were much higher and exceeded 50%. The results suggest that MMN magnitude depended on the velocity difference between standard and deviant stimuli and was more sensitive to velocity difference than psychophysical measure.	\N	\N
26067532	In peripheral vision, objects that are easily discriminated on their own become less discriminable in the presence of surrounding clutter. This phenomenon is known as crowding.The neural mechanisms underlying crowding are not well understood. Better insight might come from single-neuron recording in nonhuman primates, provided they exhibit crowding; however, previous demonstrations of crowding have been confined to humans. In the present study, we set out to determine whether crowding occurs in rhesus macaque monkeys. We found that animals trained to identify a target letter among flankers displayed three hallmarks of crowding as established in humans. First, at a given eccentricity, increasing the spacing between the target and the flankers improved recognition accuracy. Second, the critical spacing, defined as the minimal spacing at which target discrimination was reliable, was proportional to eccentricity. Third, the critical spacing was largely unaffected by object size. We conclude that monkeys, like humans, experience crowding. These findings open the door to studies of crowding at the neuronal level in the monkey visual system.	\N	\N
26075675	Vibroplasty has offered a new modality of hearing rehabilitation in patients with mixed, conductive, and sensorineural hearing loss who cannot wear hearing aids. Potentially, the positioning of the floating mass transducer (FMT) in vibroplasty surgery has a critical effect on hearing outputs. In this study, the impact on hearing outputs and coupling efficiency are evaluated by comparing various vibroplasty applications in the middle ear. No other study to date has examined the coupling efficiency of round window (RW) versus an ossicular vibroplasty application. Prospective cohort study of patients with underlying ear pathologies who were not able to wear hearing aids. This is an ongoing prospective study of 16 patients. All patients had a standard audiological test battery. Direct drive transfer function analysis results were correlated with bone conduction thresholds to assess the efficiency of the FMT coupling. Speech perception in quiet and quality of life measure questionnaires were used to assess outcomes. Nine patients had round window vibroplasty, six patients had stapes vibroplasty, and one patient had traditional incus vibroplasty. Patients with a soft tissue coupler between the FMT and the RW had significantly reduced coupling efficiency. Patients who had direct RW contact had significantly improved coupling efficiency. Patients who underwent stapes or incus vibroplasty had the greatest coupling efficiency. This study demonstrates that attachment to the stapes or incus provides the best coupling when compared to round window vibroplasty. When applicable, stapes or incus coupling should be the first choice when implementing vibroplasty.	\N	\N
26184883	Communication by sounds requires that the communication channels (i.e. speech/speakers and other sound sources) had been established. This allows to separate concurrently active sound sources, to track their identity, to assess the type of message arriving from them, and to decide whether and when to react (e.g., reply to the message). We propose that these functions rely on a common generative model of the auditory environment. This model predicts upcoming sounds on the basis of representations describing temporal/sequential regularities. Predictions help to identify the continuation of the previously discovered sound sources to detect the emergence of new sources as well as changes in the behavior of the known ones. It produces auditory event representations which provide a full sensory description of the sounds, including their relation to the auditory context and the current goals of the organism. Event representations can be consciously perceived and serve as objects in various cognitive operations.	\N	\N
26222939	To compare children with typical language development (TLD) and evolutional phonological disorder (EPD) regarding the phonemic discrimination and the linguistic performance of language levels (morphological, syntactic, semantic, and perceptual and productive vocabulary). The sample comprised 36 children, aged between 5 years and 7 years and 11 months, with TLD and EPD. Children with EPD were awaiting care in the speech units of two higher education institutions and children with TLD were screened in public schools. For inclusion in the study, the criteria were the following: being authorized by the informed consent and being within the required age group. After the inclusion of children, all subjects underwent the phonemic discrimination test with figures, to the average phrase value test, which assesses the morphosyntactic and semantic/lexical aspects, and the expressive vocabulary test. For statistical evaluation of the influence of variables, Spearman's nonparametric correlation coefficient was used, and for comparison between the groups regarding evaluation performance, Mann-Whitney test was used. Only children with EPD showed influence of phonemic discrimination in other linguistic levels. In addition, a significant difference was observed between the performances of both groups in relation to the phonemic discrimination, vocabulary, and all levels assessed in the questions and description modality. The comparison between both groups showed a statistically significant difference in phonemic discrimination and morphosyntactic and lexical/semantic development, with better performance in the TLD group.	\N	\N
26222946	To analyze the intra- and inter-rater agreement for visual analog scale and numerical scale in task of sustained vowel and to determine numerical cutoff points to visual analog scale corresponding to the degrees of the numeric scale. We selected 205 samples of the usual task of the sustained vowel /a/. Six voice specialists rated the overall degree of vocal deviation, first by visual analog scale and, after two days, by the numeric scale. The results obtained by both scales were compared and the intra- and inter-rater agreement, the correlation between the scales, and the estimated cutoff points using the intraclass correlation and concordance Kappa coefficients, the Spearman coefficient, and analysis of variance, and the values of sensitivity and specificity were analyzed. A strong correlation was observed between the scales. The following numerical cutoff values were found for visual analog scale corresponding to the numerical scale: neutral (degree zero) - 0 to 34 mm; mild (degree one) - 34.1 to 51 mm; moderate (degree two) - 51.1 to 63.5 mm; intense (degree three) - 63.6 to 77.5 mm; and extreme (degree four) - above 77.5 mm. The visual analog scale and numerical scale showed a strong correlation, being observed the greater intra- and inter-rater agreement in visual analog scale. Numerical cutoff values for visual analog scale were found. This correlation enables the comparison between the results found in the evaluation of the overall degree of vocal deviation by both scales, which are widely used in research and in the clinical speech therapy routine.	\N	\N
26356376	During dental treatments, patients may experience negative emotions associated with the procedure. This study was conducted with the aim of using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to visualize cerebral cortical stimulation among dental patients in response to auditory stimuli produced by ultrasonic scaling and power suction equipment. Subjects (n = 7) aged 23-35 years were recruited for this study. All were right-handed and underwent clinical pure-tone audiometry testing to reveal a normal hearing threshold below 20 dB hearing level (HL). As part of the study, subjects initially underwent a dental calculus removal treatment. During the treatment, subjects were exposed to ultrasonic auditory stimuli originating from the scaling handpiece and salivary suction instruments. After dental treatment, subjects were imaged with fMRI while being exposed to recordings of the noise from the same dental instrument so that cerebral cortical stimulation in response to aversive auditory stimulation could be observed. The independent sample confirmatory t-test was used. Subjects also showed stimulation in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, indicating that the ultrasonic auditory stimuli elicited an unpleasant response in the subjects. Patients experienced unpleasant sensations caused by contact stimuli in the treatment procedure. In addition, this study has demonstrated that aversive auditory stimuli such as sounds from the ultrasonic scaling handpiece also cause aversive emotions. This study was indicated by observed stimulation of the auditory cortex as well as the amygdala, indicating that noise from the ultrasonic scaling handpiece was perceived as an aversive auditory stimulus by the subjects. Subjects can experience unpleasant sensations caused by the sounds from the ultrasonic scaling handpiece based on their auditory stimuli.	\N	\N
26380996	The purpose was to evaluate brain plasticity that contributes to speech performance after cochlear implantation (CI) in postlingual elderly (>60 years) patients. Fifteen elderly postlingual deaf patients who underwent preoperative brain fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) and were followed-up for more than 1 year after CI were included. The mean age of these patients was 64.6 years (range, 60-80 years). Based on their sentence score at 1 year after CI surgery, the patients were classified into two groups: poor performers (CID score of <80) and good performers (CID score of ≥80). The duration of deafness, age at operation, preoperative residual hearing, and preoperative brain metabolism were analyzed. SPM5 software was used for FDG-PET image preprocessing and statistical analysis. Neither deafness duration nor preoperative residual hearing was associated with speech performance. The age at operation had little association with speech performance. Deaf patients whose brain metabolism was higher in frontotemporal regions became good CI users but those with higher metabolism in visual association areas became poor CI users. No significant cortical area of higher metabolism was associated with the duration of deafness. Overactivation in the visual processing pathway correlated with a poor CI outcome at 1 year. Deaf patients who are going to be poorer performers with CI devices maintain visual information processing during preoperative silent resting periods.	\N	\N
26381009	The occurrence of oval window atresia is a rare anomaly with conductive hearing loss. Traditional atresia surgeries involve challenging surgical techniques with risks of irreversible inner ear damage. Recent reports on Bonebridge (Medel, Innsbruck, Austria), a novel implantable bone conduction hearing aid system, assert that the device is safe and effective for conductive hearing loss. We present a case of Bonebridge implantation in an eight-year-old girl with bilateral oval window atresia.	\N	\N
26382004	Previewing distracters enhances the efficiency of visual search. Watson and Humphreys (1997) proposed that the preview benefit rests on visual marking, a mechanism which actively encodes distracter locations at preview and inhibits them afterwards at search. As Watson and Humphreys did, we used a letter-color search task to study constraints of visual marking in conjunction search and near-efficient single-feature search with single-colored and homogeneous distracter letters. Search performance was measured for fixed target and distracter features (block design) and for randomly changed features across trials (random design). In single-feature search there was a full preview benefit for both block and random designs. In conjunction search a full preview benefit was obtained only for the block design; randomly changing target and distracter features disrupted the preview benefit. However, the preview benefit was restored when the distracters were organized in spatially coherent blocks. These findings imply that the temporal segregation of old and new items is sufficient for visual marking in near-efficient single-feature search, while in conjunction search it is not. We propose a supplanting grouping principle for the preview benefit: When the new items add a new color, conjunction search is initialized and attentional resources are withdrawn from the marking mechanism. Visual marking can be restored by a second grouping principle that joins with temporal asynchrony. This principle can be either spatial or feature based. In the case of the latter, repetition priming is necessary to establish joint grouping by color and temporal asynchrony.	\N	\N
26463676	The effects of inner ear abnormality on audibility have been explored since the early 20th century when sound detection measures were first used to define and quantify 'hearing loss'. The development in the 1970s of objective measures of cochlear hair cell function (cochlear microphonics, otoacoustic emissions, summating potentials) and auditory nerve/brainstem activity (auditory brainstem responses) have made it possible to distinguish both synaptic and auditory nerve disorders from sensory receptor loss. This distinction is critically important when considering aetiology and management. In this review we address the clinical and pathophysiological features of auditory neuropathy that distinguish site(s) of dysfunction. We describe the diagnostic criteria for: (i) presynaptic disorders affecting inner hair cells and ribbon synapses; (ii) postsynaptic disorders affecting unmyelinated auditory nerve dendrites; (iii) postsynaptic disorders affecting auditory ganglion cells and their myelinated axons and dendrites; and (iv) central neural pathway disorders affecting the auditory brainstem. We review data and principles to identify treatment options for affected patients and explore their benefits as a function of site of lesion.	\N	\N
22284837	Best practices concerning the audiological management of the child diagnosed with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) have not been definitively defined nor fully understood. One reason is that previous studies have demonstrated conflicting findings regarding the outcomes of cochlear implantation for children with ANSD. Thus, the question remains whether children with ANSD are able to achieve similar outcomes following cochlear implantation as those children with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). To assess speech perception outcomes for children with cochlear implants who have a diagnosis of ANSD as well as their age-matched peers who have sensorineural hearing loss. Retrospective study Thirty-five subject pairs (n = 70) ranging in age at implant activation from to 10 to 121 mo (mean 39.2 mo) were included in this retrospective study. Subjects were matched on variables including age at initial implant activation and months of implant use at postoperative test point. Speech recognition scores for monosyllabic and multisyllabic stimuli were compared across the subject groups. For those not developmentally and/or linguistically ready for completion of open-set speech recognition testing with recorded stimuli, GASP (Glendonald Auditory Screening Procedure) word recognition and/or questionnaire data using either the LittlEARS or Meaningful Auditory Integration Scale were compared across the groups. Statistical analysis using a repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) evaluated the effects of etiology (ANSD or SNHL) on postoperative outcomes. The results of this study demonstrate that children with ANSD can clearly benefit from cochlear implantation and that their long-term outcomes are similar to matched peers with SNHL on measures of speech recognition. There were no significant differences across the ANSD and SNHL groups on any of the tested measures. Cochlear implantation is a viable treatment option for children with a diagnosis of ANSD who are not making auditory progress with hearing aids that have been fit using the Desired Sensation Level method (DSL v5.0). Expected outcomes of cochlear implantation for children with ANSD, excluding children with cochlear nerve deficiency, are no different than for children with non-ANSD SNHL. These results are important for counseling families on the expected outcomes and realistic expectations following cochlear implantation for children with ANSD who demonstrate no evidence of cochlear nerve deficiency.	\N	\N
23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	\N	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	\N	\N
19929331	Native language experience plays a critical role in shaping speech categorization, but the exact mechanisms by which it does so are not well understood. Investigating category learning of nonspeech sounds with which listeners have no prior experience allows their experience to be systematically controlled in a way that is impossible to achieve by studying natural speech acquisition, and it provides a means of probing the boundaries and constraints that general auditory perception and cognition bring to the task of speech category learning. In this study, we used a multimodal, video-game-based implicit learning paradigm to train participants to categorize acoustically complex, nonlinguistic sounds. MMN responses to the nonspeech stimuli were collected before and after training, and changes in MMN resulting from the nonspeech category learning closely resemble patterns of change typically observed during speech category learning. Results indicate that changes in mismatch negativity resulting from the nonspeech category learning closely resemble patterns of change typically observed during speech category learning. This suggests that the often-observed "specialized" neural responses to speech sounds may result, at least in part, from the expertise we develop with speech categories through experience rather than from properties unique to speech (e.g., linguistic or vocal tract gestural information). Furthermore, particular characteristics of the training paradigm may inform our understanding of mechanisms that support natural speech acquisition.	\N	\N
20578033	Understanding the basic neural processes that underlie complex higher-order cognitive operations and functional domains is a fundamental goal of cognitive neuroscience. Electroencephalography (EEG) is a non-invasive and relatively inexpensive method for assessing neurophysiological function that can be used to achieve this goal. EEG measures the electrical activity of large, synchronously firing populations of neurons in the brain with electrodes placed on the scalp. This unit outlines the basics of setting up an EEG experiment with human participants, including equipment, and a step-by-step guide to applying and preparing an electrode cap. Also included are support protocols for two event-related potential (ERP) paradigms, P50 suppression, and mismatch negativity (MMN), which are measures of early sensory processing. These paradigms can be used to assess the integrity of early sensory processing in normal individuals and clinical populations, such as individuals with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
20665718	Subjects detected rarely occurring shifts between two simple tone-patterns, in a paradigm that dissociated the effects of rarity from those of pitch, habituation, and attention. Whole-head magnetoencephalography suggested that rare attended pattern-shifts evoked activity first in the superior temporal plane (sTp, peak ~100 ms), then superior temporal sulcus (sTs, peak ~130 ms), then posteroventral prefrontal (pvpF, peak ~230 ms), and anterior temporal cortices (aT, peak ~370 ms). Activity was more prominent in the right hemisphere. After subtracting the effects of nonshift tones (balanced for pitch and habituation status), weak but consistent differential effects of pattern-shifts began in aT at 90-130 ms, spread to sTs and sTp at ∼130 ms, then pvpF, and finally returned to aT. Cingulate activity resembled prefrontal. Responses to pattern shifts were greatly attenuated when the same stimuli were ignored, suggesting that the initial superior temporal activity reflected an attention-related mismatch negativity. The prefrontal activity at ~230 ms corresponded in latency and task correlates with simultaneously recorded event-related potential components N2b and P3a; the subsequent temporal activity corresponded to the P3b. These results were confirmed in sensors specific for frontal or temporal cortex, and thus are independent of the inverse method used. Overall, these results suggest that auditory working memory for temporal patterns begins with detection of the pattern change by an interaction of anterior and superior temporal structures, followed by identification of the event and its consequences led by posteroventral prefrontal and cingulate cortices, and finally, definitive encoding of the event in anterior temporal areas.	\N	\N
20929535	We investigated the processing of task-irrelevant and unexpected novel sounds and its modulation by working-memory load in children aged 9-10 and in adults. Environmental sounds (novels) were embedded amongst frequently presented standard sounds in an auditory-visual distraction paradigm. Each sound was followed by a visual target. In two conditions, participants evaluated the position of a visual stimulus (0-back, low load) or compared the position of the current stimulus with the one two trials before (2-back, high load). Processing of novel sounds were measured with reaction times, hit rates and the auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) Mismatch Negativity (MMN), P3a, Reorienting Negativity (RON) and visual P3b. In both memory load conditions novels impaired task performance in adults whereas they improved performance in children. Auditory ERPs reflect age-related differences in the time-window of the MMN as children showed a positive ERP deflection to novels whereas adults lack an MMN. The attention switch towards the task irrelevant novel (reflected by P3a) was comparable between the age groups. Adults showed more efficient reallocation of attention (reflected by RON) under load condition than children. Finally, the P3b elicited by the visual target stimuli was reduced in both age groups when the preceding sound was a novel. Our results give new insights in the development of novelty processing as they (1) reveal that task-irrelevant novel sounds can result in contrary effects on the performance in a visual primary task in children and adults, (2) show a positive ERP deflection to novels rather than an MMN in children, and (3) reveal effects of auditory novels on visual target processing.	\N	\N
21368051	Certain features of objects or events can be represented by more than a single sensory system, such as roughness of a surface (sight, sound, and touch), the location of a speaker (audition and sight), and the rhythm or duration of an event (by all three major sensory systems). Thus, these properties can be said to be sensory-independent or amodal. A key question is whether common multisensory cortical regions process these amodal features, or does each sensory system contain its own specialized region(s) for processing common features? We tackled this issue by investigating simple duration-detection mechanisms across audition and touch; these systems were chosen because fine duration discriminations are possible in both. The mismatch negativity (MMN) component of the human event-related potential provides a sensitive metric of duration processing and has been elicited independently during both auditory and somatosensory investigations. Employing high-density electroencephalographic recordings in conjunction with intracranial subdural recordings, we asked whether fine duration discriminations, represented by the MMN, were generated in the same cortical regions regardless of the sensory modality being probed. Scalp recordings pointed to statistically distinct MMN topographies across senses, implying differential underlying cortical generator configurations. Intracranial recordings confirmed these noninvasive findings, showing generators of the auditory MMN along the superior temporal gyrus with no evidence of a somatosensory MMN in this region, whereas a robust somatosensory MMN was recorded from postcentral gyrus in the absence of an auditory MMN. The current data clearly argue against a common circuitry account for amodal duration processing.	\N	\N
21483666	Acute stress is a stereotypical, but multimodal response to a present or imminent challenge overcharging an organism. Among the different branches of this multimodal response, the consequences of glucocorticoid secretion have been extensively investigated, mostly in connection with long-term memory (LTM). However, stress responses comprise other endocrine signaling and altered neuronal activity wholly independent of pituitary regulation. To date, knowledge of the impact of such "paracorticoidal" stress responses on higher cognitive functions is scarce. We investigated the impact of an ecological stressor on the ability to direct selective attention using event-related potentials in humans. Based on research in rodents, we assumed that a stress-induced imbalance of catecholaminergic transmission would impair this ability. The stressor consisted of a single cold pressor test. Auditory negative difference (Nd) and mismatch negativity (MMN) were recorded in a tonal dichotic listening task. A time series of such tasks confirmed an increased distractibility occurring 4-7 minutes after onset of the stressor as reflected by an attenuated Nd. Salivary cortisol began to rise 8-11 minutes after onset when no further modulations in the event-related potentials (ERP) occurred, thus precluding a causal relationship. This effect may be attributed to a stress-induced activation of mesofrontal dopaminergic projections. It may also be attributed to an activation of noradrenergic projections. Known characteristics of the modulation of ERP by different stress-related ligands were used for further disambiguation of causality. The conjuncture of an attenuated Nd and an increased MMN might be interpreted as indicating a dopaminergic influence. The selective effect on the late portion of the Nd provides another tentative clue for this. Prior studies have deliberately tracked the adrenocortical influence on cognition, as it has proven most influential with respect to LTM. However, current cortisol-optimized study designs would have failed to detect the present findings regarding attention.	\N	\N
21750713	In the present study we investigated the capacity of the memory store underlying the mismatch negativity (MMN) response in musicians and nonmusicians for complex tone patterns. While previous studies have focused either on the kind of information that can be encoded or on the decay of the memory trace over time, we studied capacity in terms of the length of tone sequences, i.e., the number of individual tones that can be fully encoded and maintained. By means of magnetoencephalography (MEG) we recorded MMN responses to deviant tones that could occur at any position of standard tone patterns composed of four, six or eight tones during passive, distracted listening. Whereas there was a reliable MMN response to deviant tones in the four-tone pattern in both musicians and nonmusicians, only some individuals showed MMN responses to the longer patterns. This finding of a reliable capacity of the short-term auditory store underlying the MMN response is in line with estimates of a three to five item capacity of the short-term memory trace from behavioural studies, although pitch and contour complexity covaried with sequence length, which might have led to an understatement of the reported capacity. Whereas there was a tendency for an enhancement of the pattern MMN in musicians compared to nonmusicians, a strong advantage for musicians could be shown in an accompanying behavioural task of detecting the deviants while attending to the stimuli for all pattern lengths, indicating that long-term musical training differentially affects the memory capacity of auditory short-term memory for complex tone patterns with and without attention. Also, a left-hemispheric lateralization of MMN responses in the six-tone pattern suggests that additional networks that help structuring the patterns in the temporal domain might be recruited for demanding auditory processing in the pitch domain.	\N	\N
21808660	Have you ever shouted your child's name from the kitchen while they were watching television in the living room to no avail, so you shout their name again, only louder? Yet, still no response. The current study provides evidence that young children process loudness changes differently than pitch changes when they are engaged in another task such as watching a video. Intensity level changes were physiologically detected only when they were behaviorally relevant, but frequency level changes were physiologically detected without task relevance in younger children. This suggests that changes in pitch rather than changes in volume may be more effective in evoking a response when sounds are unexpected. Further, even though behavioral ability may appear to be similar in younger and older children, attention-based physiologic responses differ from automatic physiologic processes in children. Results indicate that 1) the automatic auditory processes leading to more efficient higher-level skills continue to become refined through childhood; and 2) there are different time courses for the maturation of physiological processes encoding the distinct acoustic attributes of sound pitch and sound intensity. The relevance of these findings to sound perception in real-world environments is discussed.	\N	\N
22163029	The detection of deviant sounds is a crucial function of the auditory system and is reflected by the automatically elicited mismatch negativity (MMN), an auditory evoked potential at 100 to 250 ms from stimulus onset. It has recently been shown that rarely occurring frequency and location deviants in an oddball paradigm trigger a more negative response than standard sounds at very early latencies in the middle latency response of the human auditory evoked potential. This fast and early ability of the auditory system is corroborated by the finding of neurons in the animal auditory cortex and subcortical structures, which restore their adapted responsiveness to standard sounds, when a rare change in a sound feature occurs. In this study, we investigated whether the detection of intensity deviants is also reflected at shorter latencies than those of the MMN. Auditory evoked potentials in response to click sounds were analyzed regarding the auditory brain stem response, the middle latency response (MLR) and the MMN. Rare stimuli with a lower intensity level than standard stimuli elicited (in addition to an MMN) a more negative potential in the MLR at the transition from the Na to the Pa component at circa 24 ms from stimulus onset. This finding, together with the studies about frequency and location changes, suggests that the early automatic detection of deviant sounds in an oddball paradigm is a general property of the auditory system.	\N	\N
22213909	Behavioural and electrophysiological studies give differing impressions of when auditory discrimination is mature. Ability to discriminate frequency and speech contrasts reaches adult levels only around 12 years of age, yet an electrophysiological index of auditory discrimination, the mismatch negativity (MMN), is reported to be as large in children as in adults. Auditory ERPs were measured in 30 children (7 to 12 years), 23 teenagers (13 to 16 years) and 32 adults (35 to 56 years) in an oddball paradigm with tone or syllable stimuli. For each stimulus type, a standard stimulus (1000 Hz tone or syllable [ba]) occurred on 70% of trials, and one of two deviants (1030 or 1200 Hz tone, or syllables [da] or [bi]) equiprobably on the remaining trials. For the traditional MMN interval of 100–250 ms post-onset, size of mismatch responses increased with age, whereas the opposite trend was seen for an interval from 300 to 550 ms post-onset, corresponding to the late discriminative negativity (LDN). Time-frequency analysis of single trials revealed that the MMN resulted from phase-synchronization of oscillations in the theta (4–7 Hz) range, with greater synchronization in adults than children. Furthermore, the amount of synchronization was significantly correlated with frequency discrimination threshold. These results show that neurophysiological processes underlying auditory discrimination continue to develop through childhood and adolescence. Previous reports of adult-like MMN amplitudes in children may be artefactual results of using peak measurements when comparing groups that differ in variance.	\N	\N
22221004	Deviations from repetitive auditory stimuli evoke a mismatch negativity (MMN). Counterintuitively, omissions of repetitive stimuli do not. Violations of patterns reflecting complex rules also evoke MMN. To detect a MMN to missing stimuli, we developed an auditory gestalt task using one stimulus. Groups of six pips (50 ms duration, 330 ms stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA], 400 trials), were presented with an intertrial interval (ITI) of 750 ms while subjects (n=16) watched a silent video. Occasional deviant groups had missing 4th or 6th tones (50 trials each). Missing stimuli evoked a MMN (p<.05). The missing 4th (-0.8 µV, p<.01) and the missing 6th stimuli (-1.1 µV, p<.05) were more negative than standard 6th stimuli (0.3 µV). MMN can be elicited by a missing stimulus at long SOAs by violation of a gestalt grouping rule. Patterned stimuli appear more sensitive to omissions and ITI than homogenous streams.	\N	\N
22551948	Recent studies show that electrophysiological markers of auditory processing such as the cortical 100 ms response (M100) and the mismatch field, derived from magnetoencephalography, might be used to identify children with autism spectrum disorders--M100 peak latency--and to stratify children with autism according to the degree of language impairment--mismatch field peak latency. The present study examined the latency of right superior temporal gyrus M100 and mismatch field in a cohort of children and young adolescents with specific language impairment (n=17), in comparison with age-matched and nonverbal intelligence quotient-matched typically developing controls (n=21). Neither group showed symptoms associated with autism. Although M100 latency (reflecting early auditory processing) did not distinguish controls from children with specific language impairment, the later 'change detection' mismatch field response was significantly delayed (by >50 ms) in the specific language impairment group. Linear discriminant analysis confirmed the role of mismatch field latency (92%) but not M100 latency (8%) in distinguishing groups. The present results lend support to the claim that a delayed M100 is specific to autism spectrum disorders (with relative independence of degree of language impairment) and that a delayed mismatch field reflects an abnormality more generally associated with language impairment, suggesting that mismatch field delay in the present specific language impairment group and previously reported in autistic children with language impairment may be indicative of a common neural system dysfunction.	\N	\N
22570723	Multisensory learning and resulting neural brain plasticity have recently become a topic of renewed interest in human cognitive neuroscience. Music notation reading is an ideal stimulus to study multisensory learning, as it allows studying the integration of visual, auditory and sensorimotor information processing. The present study aimed at answering whether multisensory learning alters uni-sensory structures, interconnections of uni-sensory structures or specific multisensory areas. In a short-term piano training procedure musically naive subjects were trained to play tone sequences from visually presented patterns in a music notation-like system [Auditory-Visual-Somatosensory group (AVS)], while another group received audio-visual training only that involved viewing the patterns and attentively listening to the recordings of the AVS training sessions [Auditory-Visual group (AV)]. Training-related changes in cortical networks were assessed by pre- and post-training magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of an auditory, a visual and an integrated audio-visual mismatch negativity (MMN). The two groups (AVS and AV) were differently affected by the training. The results suggest that multisensory training alters the function of multisensory structures, and not the uni-sensory ones along with their interconnections, and thus provide an answer to an important question presented by cognitive models of multisensory training.	\N	\N
22815876	The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech sound representations are still a matter of debate. Proponents of 'sparse representations' assume that on the level of speech sounds, only contrastive or otherwise not predictable information is stored in long-term memory. Here, in a passive oddball paradigm, we challenge the neural foundations of such a 'sparse' representation; we use words that differ only in their penultimate consonant ("coronal" [t] vs. "dorsal" [k] place of articulation) and for example distinguish between the German nouns Latz ([lats]; bib) and Lachs ([laks]; salmon). Changes from standard [t] to deviant [k] and vice versa elicited a discernible Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response. Crucially, however, the MMN for the deviant [lats] was stronger than the MMN for the deviant [laks]. Source localization showed this difference to be due to enhanced brain activity in right superior temporal cortex. These findings reflect a difference in phonological 'sparsity': Coronal [t] segments, but not dorsal [k] segments, are based on more sparse representations and elicit less specific neural predictions; sensory deviations from this prediction are more readily 'tolerated' and accordingly trigger weaker MMNs. The results foster the neurocomputational reality of 'representationally sparse' models of speech perception that are compatible with more general predictive mechanisms in auditory perception.	\N	\N
22916282	Auditory deviance detection in humans is indexed by the mismatch negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory evoked potential (AEP) of the electroencephalogram (EEG) occurring at a latency of 100-250 ms after stimulus onset. However, by using classic oddball paradigms, differential responses to regularity violations of simple auditory features have been found at the level of the middle latency response (MLR) of the AEP occurring within the first 50 ms after stimulus (deviation) onset. These findings suggest the existence of fast deviance detection mechanisms for simple feature changes, but it is not clear whether deviance detection among more complex acoustic regularities could be observed at such early latencies. To test this, we examined the pre-attentive processing of rare stimulus repetitions in a sequence of tones alternating in frequency in both long and middle latency ranges. Additionally, we introduced occasional changes in the interaural time difference (ITD), so that a simple-feature regularity could be examined in the same paradigm. MMN was obtained for both repetition and ITD deviants, occurring at 150 ms and 100 ms after stimulus onset respectively. At the level of the MLR, a difference was observed between standards and ITD deviants at the Na component (20-30 ms after stimulus onset), for 800 Hz tones, but not for repetition deviants. These findings suggest that detection mechanisms for deviants to simple regularities, but not to more complex regularities, are already activated in the MLR range, supporting the view that the auditory deviance detection system is organized in a hierarchical manner.	\N	\N
23028971	For the perception of timbre of a musical instrument, the attack time is known to hold crucial information. The first 50 to 150 ms of sound onset reflect the excitation mechanism, which generates the sound. Since auditory processing and music perception in particular are known to be hampered in cochlear implant (CI) users, we conducted an electroencephalography (EEG) study with an oddball paradigm to evaluate the processing of small differences in musical sound onset. The first 60 ms of a cornet sound were manipulated in order to examine whether these differences are detected by CI users and normal-hearing controls (NH controls), as revealed by auditory evoked potentials (AEPs). Our analysis focused on the N1 as an exogenous component known to reflect physical stimuli properties as well as on the P2 and the Mismatch Negativity (MMN). Our results revealed different N1 latencies as well as P2 amplitudes and latencies for the onset manipulations in both groups. An MMN could be elicited only in the NH control group. Together with additional findings that suggest an impact of musical training on CI users' AEPs, our findings support the view that impaired timbre perception in CI users is at partly due to altered sound onset feature detection.	\N	\N
23131615	This study investigated whether the mismatch negativity (MMN) event-related brain potential (ERP) could be evoked by purely top-down, attentional control. An infrequently occurring tone was designated as a target prior to presenting a randomized sequence of five equi-probably occurring tones. MMN elicitation to the tones categorized as "high", "medium", or "low" frequency, and designated as the target, would indicate that the change detection process can be driven solely by top-down control. However, MMNs were not elicited by the categorized tones. Only the N2b and P3b attention-driven target detection components were elicited. These results suggest that top-down factors alone cannot generate mismatch negativity. Standard formation by stimulus-driven factors is required.	\N	\N
23241212	Coloured-hearing (CH) synesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which an acoustic stimulus (the inducer) initiates a concurrent colour perception (the concurrent). Individuals with CH synesthesia "see" colours when hearing tones, words, or music; this specific phenomenon suggesting a close relationship between auditory and visual representations. To date, it is still unknown whether the perception of colours is associated with a modulation of brain functions in the inducing brain area, namely in the auditory-related cortex and associated brain areas. In addition, there is an on-going debate as to whether attention to the inducer is necessarily required for eliciting a visual concurrent, or whether the latter can emerge in a pre-attentive fashion. By using the EEG technique in the context of a pre-attentive mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm, we show that the binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is associated with increased MMN amplitudes in response to deviant tones supposed to induce novel concurrent colour perceptions. Most notably, the increased MMN amplitudes we revealed in the CH synesthetes were associated with stronger intracerebral current densities originating from the auditory cortex, parietal cortex, and ventral visual areas. The automatic binding of tones and colours in CH synesthetes is accompanied by an early pre-attentive process recruiting the auditory cortex, inferior and superior parietal lobules, as well as ventral occipital areas.	\N	\N
23308266	Computational and experimental research has revealed that auditory sensory predictions are derived from regularities of the current environment by using internal generative models. However, so far, what has not been addressed is how the auditory system handles situations giving rise to redundant or even contradictory predictions derived from different sources of information. To this end, we measured error signals in the event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in response to violations of auditory predictions. Sounds could be predicted on the basis of overall probability, i.e., one sound was presented frequently and another sound rarely. Furthermore, each sound was predicted by an informative visual cue. Participants' task was to use the cue and to discriminate the two sounds as fast as possible. Violations of the probability based prediction (i.e., a rare sound) as well as violations of the visual-auditory prediction (i.e., an incongruent sound) elicited error signals in the ERPs (Mismatch Negativity [MMN] and Incongruency Response [IR]). Particular error signals were observed even in case the overall probability and the visual symbol predicted different sounds. That is, the auditory system concurrently maintains and tests contradictory predictions. Moreover, if the same sound was predicted, we observed an additive error signal (scalp potential and primary current density) equaling the sum of the specific error signals. Thus, the auditory system maintains and tolerates functionally independently represented redundant and contradictory predictions. We argue that the auditory system exploits all currently active regularities in order to optimally prepare for future events.	\N	\N
23585888	To localize the neural generators of the musically elicited mismatch negativity with high temporal resolution we conducted a beamformer analysis (Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry, SAM) on magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a previous musical mismatch study. The stimuli consisted of a six-tone melodic sequence comprising broken chords in C- and G-major. The musical sequence was presented within an oddball paradigm in which the last tone was lowered occasionally (20%) by a minor third. The beamforming analysis revealed significant right hemispheric neural activation in the superior temporal (STC), inferior frontal (IFC), superior frontal (SFC) and orbitofrontal (OFC) cortices within a time window of 100-200 ms after the occurrence of a deviant tone. IFC and SFC activation was also observed in the left hemisphere. The pronounced early right inferior frontal activation of the auditory mismatch negativity has not been shown in MEG studies so far. The activation in STC and IFC is consistent with earlier electroencephalography (EEG), optical imaging and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that reveal the auditory and inferior frontal cortices as main generators of the auditory MMN. The observed right hemispheric IFC is also in line with some previous music studies showing similar activation patterns after harmonic syntactic violations. The results demonstrate that a deviant tone within a musical sequence recruits immediately a distributed neural network in frontal and prefrontal areas suggesting that top-down processes are involved when expectation violation occurs within well-known stimuli.	\N	\N
23617597	The human auditory cortex automatically encodes acoustic input from the environment and differentiates regular sound patterns from deviant ones in order to identify important, irregular events. The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) response is a neuronal marker for the detection of sounds that are unexpected, based on the encoded regularities. It is also elicited by violations of more complex regularities and musical expertise has been shown to have an effect on the processing of complex regularities. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the MMN response to salient or less salient deviants by varying the standard probability (70%, 50% and 35%) of a pattern oddball paradigm. To study the effects of musical expertise in the encoding of the patterns, we compared the responses of a group of non-musicians to those of musicians. We observed significant MMN in all conditions, including the least salient condition (35% standards), in response to violations of the predominant tone pattern for both groups. The amplitude of MMN from the right hemisphere was influenced by the standard probability. This effect was modulated by long-term musical training: standard probability changes influenced MMN amplitude in the group of non-musicians only. This study indicates that pattern violations are detected automatically, even if they are of very low salience, both in non-musicians and musicians, with salience having a stronger impact on processing in the right hemisphere of non-musicians. Long-term musical training influences this encoding, in that non-musicians benefit to a greater extent from a good signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. high probability of the standard pattern), while musicians are less dependent on the salience of an acoustic environment.	\N	\N
23708059	The auditory system is organized such that progressively more complex features are represented across successive cortical hierarchical stages. Just when and where the processing of phonemes, fundamental elements of the speech signal, is achieved in this hierarchy remains a matter of vigorous debate. Non-invasive measures of phonemic representation have been somewhat equivocal. While some studies point to a primary role for middle/anterior regions of the superior temporal gyrus (STG), others implicate the posterior STG. Differences in stimulation, task and inter-individual anatomical/functional variability may account for these discrepant findings. Here, we sought to clarify this issue by mapping phonemic representation across left perisylvian cortex, taking advantage of the excellent sampling density afforded by intracranial recordings in humans. We asked whether one or both major divisions of the STG were sensitive to phonemic transitions. The high signal-to-noise characteristics of direct intracranial recordings allowed for analysis at the individual participant level, circumventing issues of inter-individual anatomic and functional variability that may have obscured previous findings at the group level of analysis. The mismatch negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological response elicited by changes in repetitive streams of stimulation, served as our primary dependent measure. Oddball configurations of pairs of phonemes, spectro-temporally matched non-phonemes, and simple tones were presented. The loci of the MMN clearly differed as a function of stimulus type. Phoneme representation was most robust over middle/anterior STG/STS, but was also observed over posterior STG/SMG. These data point to multiple phonemic processing zones along perisylvian cortex, both anterior and posterior to primary auditory cortex. This finding is considered within the context of a dual stream model of auditory processing in which functionally distinct ventral and dorsal auditory processing pathways may be engaged by speech stimuli.	\N	\N
23715097	In this study, we used magnetoencephalography and a mismatch paradigm to investigate speech processing in stroke patients with auditory comprehension deficits and age-matched control subjects. We probed connectivity within and between the two temporal lobes in response to phonemic (different word) and acoustic (same word) oddballs using dynamic causal modelling. We found stronger modulation of self-connections as a function of phonemic differences for control subjects versus aphasics in left primary auditory cortex and bilateral superior temporal gyrus. The patients showed stronger modulation of connections from right primary auditory cortex to right superior temporal gyrus (feed-forward) and from left primary auditory cortex to right primary auditory cortex (interhemispheric). This differential connectivity can be explained on the basis of a predictive coding theory which suggests increased prediction error and decreased sensitivity to phonemic boundaries in the aphasics' speech network in both hemispheres. Within the aphasics, we also found behavioural correlates with connection strengths: a negative correlation between phonemic perception and an inter-hemispheric connection (left superior temporal gyrus to right superior temporal gyrus), and positive correlation between semantic performance and a feedback connection (right superior temporal gyrus to right primary auditory cortex). Our results suggest that aphasics with impaired speech comprehension have less veridical speech representations in both temporal lobes, and rely more on the right hemisphere auditory regions, particularly right superior temporal gyrus, for processing speech. Despite this presumed compensatory shift in network connectivity, the patients remain significantly impaired.	\N	\N
23825422	Hierarchical predictive coding suggests that attention in humans emerges from increased precision in probabilistic inference, whereas expectation biases attention in favor of contextually anticipated stimuli. We test these notions within auditory perception by independently manipulating top-down expectation and attentional precision alongside bottom-up stimulus predictability. Our findings support an integrative interpretation of commonly observed electrophysiological signatures of neurodynamics, namely mismatch negativity (MMN), P300, and contingent negative variation (CNV), as manifestations along successive levels of predictive complexity. Early first-level processing indexed by the MMN was sensitive to stimulus predictability: here, attentional precision enhanced early responses, but explicit top-down expectation diminished it. This pattern was in contrast to later, second-level processing indexed by the P300: although sensitive to the degree of predictability, responses at this level were contingent on attentional engagement and in fact sharpened by top-down expectation. At the highest level, the drift of the CNV was a fine-grained marker of top-down expectation itself. Source reconstruction of high-density EEG, supported by intracranial recordings, implicated temporal and frontal regions differentially active at early and late levels. The cortical generators of the CNV suggested that it might be involved in facilitating the consolidation of context-salient stimuli into conscious perception. These results provide convergent empirical support to promising recent accounts of attention and expectation in predictive coding.	\N	\N
23850664	Over the last four decades, a range of different neuroimaging tools have been used to study human auditory attention, spanning from classic event-related potential studies using electroencephalography to modern multimodal imaging approaches (e.g., combining anatomical information based on magnetic resonance imaging with magneto- and electroencephalography). This review begins by exploring the different strengths and limitations inherent to different neuroimaging methods, and then outlines some common behavioral paradigms that have been adopted to study auditory attention. We argue that in order to design a neuroimaging experiment that produces interpretable, unambiguous results, the experimenter must not only have a deep appreciation of the imaging technique employed, but also a sophisticated understanding of perception and behavior. Only with the proper caveats in mind can one begin to infer how the cortex supports a human in solving the "cocktail party" problem. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Human Auditory Neuroimaging.	\N	\N
23886958	The purpose of the study was to test the hypothesis that sound context modulates the magnitude of auditory distraction, indexed by behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Participants were asked to identify tone duration, while irrelevant changes occurred in tone frequency, tone intensity, and harmonic structure. Frequency deviants were randomly intermixed with standards (Uni-Condition), with intensity deviants (Bi-Condition), and with both intensity and complex deviants (Tri-Condition). Only in the Tri-Condition did the auditory distraction effect reflect the magnitude difference among the frequency and intensity deviants. The mixture of the different types of deviants in the Tri-Condition modulated the perceived level of distraction, demonstrating that the sound context can modulate the effect of deviance level on processing irrelevant acoustic changes in the environment. These findings thus indicate that perceptual contrast plays a role in change detection processes that leads to auditory distraction.	\N	\N
23920129	A better understanding of melodic pitch perception in cochlear implants (CIs) may guide signal processing and/or rehabilitation techniques to improve music perception and appreciation in CI patients. In this study, the mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to infrequent changes in 5-tone pitch contours was obtained in CI users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Melodic contour identification (MCI) was also measured. Results showed that MCI performance was poorer in CI than in NH subjects; the MMNs were missing in all CI subjects for the 1-semitone contours. The MMNs with the 5-semitone contours were observed in a smaller proportion of CI than NH subjects. Results suggest that encoding of pitch contour changes in CI users appears to be degraded, most likely due to the limited pitch cues provided by the CI and deafness-related compromise of brain substrates.	\N	\N
24143195	Unexpected physical increases in the intensity of a frequently occurring "standard" auditory stimulus are experienced as obtrusive. This could either be because of a physical change, the increase in intensity of the "deviant" stimulus, or a psychological change, the violation of the expectancy for the occurrence of the lower intensity standard stimulus. Two experiments were run in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to determine whether "psychological" increments (violation of an expectancy for a lower intensity) would be processed differently than psychological decrements (violation of an expectancy for a higher intensity). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects were presented with auditory tones that alternated between low and high intensity. The subjects ignored the auditory stimuli while watching a video. Deviants were created by repeating the same stimulus. In the first experiment, pairs of stimuli alternating in intensity, were presented in separate increment (H-L...H-L...H-H...H-L, in which H = 80 dB SPL and L = 60 dB SPL) and decrement conditions (L-H...L-H...L-L... L-H, in which H = 90 dB SPL and L = 80 dB SPL). The paradigm employed in the second experiment consisted of an alternating intensity pattern (H-L-H-L-H-H-H-L) or (H-L-H-L-L-L-H-L). Importantly, the stimulus prior to the deviant (the standard) and the actual deviants in both increment and decrement conditions in both experiments were physically identical (80 dB SPL tones). The repetition of the lower intensity tone therefore acted as a psychological rather than a physical decrement (a higher intensity tone was expected) while the repetition of the higher intensity tone acted as a psychological increment (a lower intensity tone was expected). The psychological increments in both experiments elicited a larger amplitude mismatch negativity (MMN) than the decrements. Thus, regardless of whether an acoustic change signals a physical increase in intensity or violates an expected decrease in intensity, a large MMN will be elicited.	\N	\N
24158725	The goal of this review article is to redefine what the mismatch negativity (MMN) component of event-related potentials reflects in auditory scene analysis, and to provide an overview of how the MMN serves as a valuable tool in Cognitive Neuroscience research. In doing so, some of the old beliefs (five common 'myths') about MMN will be dispelled, such as the notion that MMN is a simple feature discriminator and that attention itself modulates MMN elicitation. A revised description of what MMN truly reflects will be provided, which includes a principal focus onto the highly context-dependent nature of MMN elicitation and new terminology to discuss MMN and attention. This revised framework will help clarify what has been a long line of seemingly contradictory results from studies in which behavioral ability to hear differences between sounds and passive elicitation of MMN have been inconsistent. Understanding what MMN is will also benefit clinical research efforts by providing a new picture of how to design appropriate paradigms suited to various clinical populations.	\N	\N
24366694	One of the major challenges in human brain science is the functional hemispheric asymmetry of auditory processing. Behavioral and neurophysiological studies have demonstrated that speech processing is dominantly handled in the left hemisphere, whereas music processing dominantly occurs in the right. Using magnetoencephalography, we measured the auditory mismatch negativity elicited by band-pass filtered click-trains, which deviated from frequently presented standard sound signals in a spectral or temporal domain. The results showed that spectral and temporal deviants were dominantly processed in the right and left hemispheres, respectively. Hemispheric asymmetry was not limited to high-level cognitive processes, but also originated from the pre-attentive neural processing stage represented by mismatch negativity.	\N	\N
24475052	The brain response to auditory novelty comprises two main eeg components: an early mismatch negativity and a late P300. Whereas the former has been proposed to reflect a prediction error, the latter is often associated with working memory updating. Interestingly, these two proposals predict fundamentally different dynamics: prediction errors are thought to propagate serially through several distinct brain areas, while working memory supposes that activity is sustained over time within a stable set of brain areas. Here we test this temporal dissociation by showing how the generalization of brain activity patterns across time can characterize the dynamics of the underlying neural processes. This method is applied to magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings acquired from healthy participants who were presented with two types of auditory novelty. Following our predictions, the results show that the mismatch evoked by a local novelty leads to the sequential recruitment of distinct and short-lived patterns of brain activity. In sharp contrast, the global novelty evoked by an unexpected sequence of five sounds elicits a sustained state of brain activity that lasts for several hundreds of milliseconds. The present results highlight how MEG combined with multivariate pattern analyses can characterize the dynamics of human cortical processes.	\N	\N
24548430	Natural sound environments are dynamic, with overlapping acoustic input originating from simultaneously active sources. A key function of the auditory system is to integrate sensory inputs that belong together and segregate those that come from different sources. We hypothesized that this skill is impaired in individuals with phonological processing difficulties. There is considerable disagreement about whether phonological impairments observed in children with developmental language disorders can be attributed to specific linguistic deficits or to more general acoustic processing deficits. However, most tests of general auditory abilities have been conducted with a single set of sounds. We assessed the ability of school-aged children (7-15 years) to parse complex auditory non-speech input, and determined whether the presence of phonological processing impairments was associated with stream perception performance. A key finding was that children with language impairments did not show the same developmental trajectory for stream perception as typically developing children. In addition, children with language impairments required larger frequency separations between sounds to hear distinct streams compared to age-matched peers. Furthermore, phonological processing ability was a significant predictor of stream perception measures, but only in the older age groups. No such association was found in the youngest children. These results indicate that children with language impairments have difficulty parsing speech streams, or identifying individual sound events when there are competing sound sources. We conclude that language group differences may in part reflect fundamental maturational disparities in the analysis of complex auditory scenes.	\N	\N
24771006	Detecting regularity and change in the environment is crucial for survival, as it enables making predictions about the world and informing goal-directed behavior. In the auditory modality, the detection of regularity involves segregating incoming sounds into distinct perceptual objects (stream segregation). The detection of change from this within-stream regularity is associated with the mismatch negativity, a component of auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs). A central unanswered question is how the detection of regularity and the detection of change are interrelated, and whether attention affects the former, the latter, or both. Here we show that the detection of regularity and the detection of change can be empirically dissociated, and that attention modulates the detection of change without precluding the detection of regularity, and the perceptual organization of the auditory background into distinct streams. By applying frequency spectra analysis on the EEG of subjects engaged in a selective listening task, we found distinct peaks of ERP synchronization, corresponding to the rhythm of the frequency streams, independently of whether the stream was attended or ignored. Our results provide direct neurophysiological evidence of regularity detection in the auditory background, and show that it can occur independently of change detection and in the absence of attention.	\N	\N
25178752	The ability to read passages of information fluently and with comprehension is a basic component of socioeconomic success. Reading ability depends on the integrity of underlying visual and auditory (phonological) systems. This study investigated the integrity of reading ability in schizophrenia relative to the integrity of underlying visual and auditory function. The participants were 45 schizophrenia patients, 19 clinical high-risk patients, and 65 comparison subjects. Reading was assessed using tests sensitive to visual or phonological reading dysfunction. Sensory, neuropsychological, and functional outcome measures were also obtained. Schizophrenia patients displayed reading deficits that were far more severe (effect size >2.0) than would be predicted based on general neurocognitive impairments (effect size 1.0-1.4). The deficits correlated highly with both visual and auditory sensory measures, including impaired mismatch negativity generation (r=0.62, N=51, p=0.0002). Patients with established schizophrenia displayed both visual and phonological impairments, whereas high-risk patients showed isolated visual impairments. More than 70% of schizophrenia patients met criteria for acquired dyslexia, with 50% reading below eighth grade level despite intact premorbid reading ability. Reading deficits also correlated significantly (rp=0.4, N=30, p=0.03) with failure to match parental socioeconomic achievement, over and above contributions of more general cognitive impairment. Patients with schizophrenia display severe deficits in reading ability that represent a potentially remediable cause of impaired socioeconomic function. Such deficits are not presently captured during routine clinical assessment. Deficits most likely develop during the years immediately surrounding illness onset and may contribute to the reduced educational and occupational achievement associated with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
25231619	In animal models, single-neuron response properties such as stimulus-specific adaptation have been described as possible precursors to mismatch negativity, a human brain response to stimulus change. In the present study, we attempted to bridge the gap between human and animal studies by characterising responses to changes in the frequency of repeated tone series in the anesthetised guinea pig using small-animal magnetoencephalography (MEG). We showed that 1) auditory evoked fields (AEFs) qualitatively similar to those observed in human MEG studies can be detected noninvasively in rodents using small-animal MEG; 2) guinea pig AEF amplitudes reduce rapidly with tone repetition, and this AEF reduction is largely complete by the second tone in a repeated series; and 3) differences between responses to the first (deviant) and later (standard) tones after a frequency transition resemble those previously observed in awake humans using a similar stimulus paradigm.	\N	\N
25342520	Neurofeedback is a strong direct training method for brain function, wherein brain activity patterns are measured and displayed as feedback, and trainees try to stabilize the feedback signal onto certain desirable states to regulate their own mental states. Here, we introduce a novel neurofeedback method, using the mismatch negativity (MMN) responses elicited by similar sounds that cannot be consciously discriminated. Through neurofeedback training, without participants' attention to the auditory stimuli or awareness of what was to be learned, we found that the participants could unconsciously achieve a significant improvement in the auditory discrimination of the applied stimuli. Our method has great potential to provide effortless auditory perceptual training. Based on this method, participants do not need to make an effort to discriminate auditory stimuli, and can choose tasks of interest without boredom due to training. In particular, it could be used to train people to recognize speech sounds that do not exist in their native language and thereby facilitate foreign language learning.	\N	\N
25379456	Although sensory processing abnormalities contribute to widespread cognitive and psychosocial impairments in schizophrenia (SZ) patients, scalp-channel measures of averaged event-related potentials (ERPs) mix contributions from distinct cortical source-area generators, diluting the functional relevance of channel-based ERP measures. SZ patients (n = 42) and non-psychiatric comparison subjects (n = 47) participated in a passive auditory duration oddball paradigm, eliciting a triphasic (Deviant-Standard) tone ERP difference complex, here termed the auditory deviance response (ADR), comprised of a mid-frontal mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a positivity, and re-orienting negativity (RON) peak sequence. To identify its cortical sources and to assess possible relationships between their response contributions and clinical SZ measures, we applied independent component analysis to the continuous 68-channel EEG data and clustered the resulting independent components (ICs) across subjects on spectral, ERP, and topographic similarities. Six IC clusters centered in right superior temporal, right inferior frontal, ventral mid-cingulate, anterior cingulate, medial orbitofrontal, and dorsal mid-cingulate cortex each made triphasic response contributions. Although correlations between measures of SZ clinical, cognitive, and psychosocial functioning and standard (Fz) scalp-channel ADR peak measures were weak or absent, for at least four IC clusters one or more significant correlations emerged. In particular, differences in MMN peak amplitude in the right superior temporal IC cluster accounted for 48% of the variance in SZ-subject performance on tasks necessary for real-world functioning and medial orbitofrontal cluster P3a amplitude accounted for 40%/54% of SZ-subject variance in positive/negative symptoms. Thus, source-resolved auditory deviance response measures including MMN may be highly sensitive to SZ clinical, cognitive, and functional characteristics.	\N	\N
21159322	Phonology is a lower-level structural aspect of language involving the sounds of a language and their organization in that language. Numerous behavioral studies utilizing priming, which refers to an increased sensitivity to a stimulus following prior experience with that or a related stimulus, have provided evidence for the role of phonology in visual word recognition. However, most language studies utilizing priming in conjunction with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have focused on lexical-semantic aspects of language processing. The aim of the present study was to investigate the neurobiological substrates of the automatic, implicit stages of phonological processing. While undergoing fMRI, eighteen individuals performed a lexical decision task (LDT) on prime-target pairs including word-word homophone and pseudoword-word pseudohomophone pairs with a prime presentation below perceptual threshold. Whole-brain analyses revealed several cortical regions exhibiting hemodynamic response suppression due to phonological priming including bilateral superior temporal gyri (STG), middle temporal gyri (MTG), and angular gyri (AG) with additional region of interest (ROI) analyses revealing response suppression in the left lateralized supramarginal gyrus (SMG). Homophone and pseudohomophone priming also resulted in different patterns of hemodynamic responses relative to one another. These results suggest that phonological processing plays a key role in visual word recognition. Furthermore, enhanced hemodynamic responses for unrelated stimuli relative to primed stimuli were observed in midline cortical regions corresponding to the default-mode network (DMN) suggesting that DMN activity can be modulated by task requirements within the context of an implicit task.	\N	\N
21500313	The effects of neural activity on cerebral hemodynamics underlie human brain imaging with functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography. However, the threshold and characteristics of the converse effects, wherein the cerebral hemodynamic and metabolic milieu influence neural activity, remain unclear. We tested whether mild hypercapnia (5% CO2 ) decreases the magnetoencephalogram response to auditory pattern recognition and visual semantic tasks. Hypercapnia induced statistically significant decreases in event-related fields without affecting behavioral performance. Decreases were observed in early sensory components in both auditory and visual modalities as well as later cognitive components related to memory and language. Effects were distributed across cortical regions. Decreases were comparable in evoked versus spontaneous spectral power. Hypercapnia is commonly used with hemodynamic models to calibrate the blood oxygenation level-dependent response. Modifying model assumptions to incorporate the current findings produce a modest but measurable decrease in the estimated cerebral metabolic rate for oxygen change with activation. Because under normal conditions, low cerebral pH would arise when bloodflow is unable to keep pace with neuronal activity, the cortical depression observed here may reflect a homeostatic mechanism by which neuronal activity is adjusted to a level that can be sustained by available bloodflow. Animal studies suggest that these effects may be mediated by pH-modulating presynaptic adenosine receptors. Although the data is not clear, comparable changes in cortical pH to those induced here may occur during sleep apnea, sleep, and exercise. If so, these results suggest that such activities may in turn have generalized depressive effects on cortical activity.	\N	\N
22496909	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 voxel-wise 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.	\N	\N
23777481	Numerous studies have provided clues about the ontogeny of lateralization of auditory processing in humans, but most have employed specific subtypes of stimuli and/or have assessed responses in discrete temporal windows. The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to establish changes in hemodynamic activity in the neocortex of preverbal infants (aged 4-11 months) while they were exposed to two distinct types of complex auditory stimuli (full sentences and musical phrases). Measurements were taken from bilateral temporal regions, including both anterior and posterior superior temporal gyri. When the infant sample was treated as a homogenous group, no significant effects emerged for stimulus type. However, when infants' hemodynamic responses were categorized according to their overall changes in volume, two very clear neurophysiological patterns emerged. A high-responder group showed a pattern of early and increasing activation, primarily in the left hemisphere, similar to that observed in comparable studies with adults. In contrast, a low-responder group showed a pattern of gradual decreases in activation over time. Although age did track with responder type, no significant differences between these groups emerged for stimulus type, suggesting that the high- versus low-responder characterization generalizes across classes of auditory stimuli. These results highlight a new way to conceptualize the variable cortical blood flow patterns that are frequently observed across infants and stimuli, with hemodynamic response volumes potentially serving as an early indicator of developmental changes in auditory-processing sensitivity.	\N	\N
22786953	Auditory spatial perception plays a critical role in day-to-day communication. For instance, listeners utilize acoustic spatial information to segregate individual talkers into distinct auditory "streams" to improve speech intelligibility. However, spatial localization is an exceedingly difficult task in everyday listening environments with numerous distracting echoes from nearby surfaces, such as walls. Listeners' brains overcome this unique challenge by relying on acoustic timing and, quite surprisingly, visual spatial information to suppress short-latency (1-10 ms) echoes through a process known as "the precedence effect" or "echo suppression." In the present study, we employed electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the neural time course of echo suppression both with and without the aid of coincident visual stimulation in human listeners. We find that echo suppression is a multistage process initialized during the auditory N1 (70-100 ms) and followed by space-specific suppression mechanisms from 150 to 250 ms. Additionally, we find a robust correlate of listeners' spatial perception (i.e., suppressing or not suppressing the echo) over central electrode sites from 300 to 500 ms. Contrary to our hypothesis, vision's powerful contribution to echo suppression occurs late in processing (250-400 ms), suggesting that vision contributes primarily during late sensory or decision making processes. Together, our findings support growing evidence that echo suppression is a slow, progressive mechanism modifiable by visual influences during late sensory and decision making stages. Furthermore, our findings suggest that audiovisual interactions are not limited to early, sensory-level modulations but extend well into late stages of cortical processing.	\N	\N
25710328	To form a veridical percept of the environment, the brain needs to integrate sensory signals from a common source but segregate those from independent sources. Thus, perception inherently relies on solving the "causal inference problem." Behaviorally, humans solve this problem optimally as predicted by Bayesian Causal Inference; yet, the underlying neural mechanisms are unexplored. Combining psychophysics, Bayesian modeling, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and multivariate decoding in an audiovisual spatial localization task, we demonstrate that Bayesian Causal Inference is performed by a hierarchy of multisensory processes in the human brain. At the bottom of the hierarchy, in auditory and visual areas, location is represented on the basis that the two signals are generated by independent sources (= segregation). At the next stage, in posterior intraparietal sulcus, location is estimated under the assumption that the two signals are from a common source (= forced fusion). Only at the top of the hierarchy, in anterior intraparietal sulcus, the uncertainty about the causal structure of the world is taken into account and sensory signals are combined as predicted by Bayesian Causal Inference. Characterizing the computational operations of signal interactions reveals the hierarchical nature of multisensory perception in human neocortex. It unravels how the brain accomplishes Bayesian Causal Inference, a statistical computation fundamental for perception and cognition. Our results demonstrate how the brain combines information in the face of uncertainty about the underlying causal structure of the world.	\N	\N
20146608	The neural responses to sensory consequences of a self-produced motor act are suppressed compared with those in response to a similar but externally generated stimulus. Previous studies in the somatosensory and auditory systems have shown that the motor-induced suppression of the sensory mechanisms is sensitive to delays between the motor act and the onset of the stimulus. The present study investigated time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback in response to self-produced vocalizations. ERPs were recorded in response to normal and pitch-shifted voice auditory feedback during active vocalization and passive listening to the playback of the same vocalizations. The pitch-shifted stimulus was delivered to the subjects' auditory feedback after a randomly chosen time delay between the vocal onset and the stimulus presentation. Results showed that the neural responses to delayed feedback perturbations were significantly larger than those in response to the pitch-shifted stimulus occurring at vocal onset. Active vocalization was shown to enhance neural responsiveness to feedback alterations only for nonzero delays compared with passive listening to the playback. These findings indicated that the neural mechanisms of auditory feedback processing are sensitive to timing between the vocal motor commands and the incoming auditory feedback. Time-dependent neural processing of auditory feedback may be an important feature of the audio-vocal integration system that helps to improve the feedback-based monitoring and control of voice structure through vocal error detection and correction.	\N	\N
20493828	Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is an increasingly popular non-invasive tool used to record, on a millisecond timescale, the magnetic field changes generated by cortical neural activity. MEG has the advantage, over fMRI for example, that it is a direct measure of neural activity. In the current investigation we used MEG to measure cortical responses to tactile and auditory stimuli in the macaque monkey. We had two aims. First, we sought to determine whether MEG, a technique that may have low spatial accuracy, could be used to distinguish the location and organization of sensory cortical fields in macaque monkeys, a species with a relatively small brain compared to that of the human. Second, we wanted to examine the temporal dynamics of cortical responses in the macaque monkey relative to the human. We recorded MEG data from anesthetized monkeys and, for comparison, from awake humans that were presented with simple tactile and auditory stimuli. Neural source reconstruction of MEG data showed that primary somatosensory and auditory cortex could be differentiated and, further, that separate representations of the digit and lip within somatosensory cortex could be identified in macaque monkeys as well as humans. We compared the latencies of activity from monkey and human data for the three stimulation types and proposed a correspondence between the neural responses of the two species. We thus demonstrate the feasibility of using MEG in the macaque monkey and provide a non-human primate model for examining the relationship between external evoked magnetic fields and their underlying neural sources.	\N	\N
20598152	The detection of any abrupt change in the environment is important to survival. Since memory of preceding sensory conditions is necessary for detecting changes, such a change-detection system relates closely to the memory system. Here we used an auditory change-related N1 subcomponent (change-N1) of event-related brain potentials to investigate cortical mechanisms underlying change detection and echoic memory. Change-N1 was elicited by a simple paradigm with two tones, a standard followed by a deviant, while subjects watched a silent movie. The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a fixed sound pressure deviance (70 dB vs. 75 dB) was negatively correlated with the logarithm of the interval between the standard sound and deviant sound (1, 10, 100, or 1000 ms), while positively correlated with the logarithm of the duration of the standard sound (25, 100, 500, or 1000 ms). The amplitude of change-N1 elicited by a deviance in sound pressure, sound frequency, and sound location was correlated with the logarithm of the magnitude of physical differences between the standard and deviant sounds. The present findings suggest that temporal representation of echoic memory is non-linear and Weber-Fechner law holds for the automatic cortical response to sound changes within a suprathreshold range. Since the present results show that the behavior of echoic memory can be understood through change-N1, change-N1 would be a useful tool to investigate memory systems.	\N	\N
20633569	Studies in all sensory modalities have demonstrated amplification of early brain responses to attended signals, but less is known about the processes by which listeners selectively ignore stimuli. Here we use MEG and a new paradigm to dissociate the effects of selectively attending, and ignoring in time. Two different tasks were performed successively on the same acoustic stimuli: triplets of tones (A, B, C) with noise-bursts interspersed between the triplets. In the COMPARE task subjects were instructed to respond when tones A and C were of same frequency. In the PASSIVE task they were instructed to respond as fast as possible to noise-bursts. COMPARE requires attending to A and C and actively ignoring tone B, but PASSIVE involves neither attending to nor ignoring the tones. The data were analyzed separately for frontal and auditory-cortical channels to independently address attentional effects on low-level sensory versus putative control processing. We observe the earliest attend/ignore effects as early as 100 ms post-stimulus onset in auditory cortex. These appear to be generated by modulation of exogenous (stimulus-driven) sensory evoked activity. Specifically related to ignoring, we demonstrate that active-ignoring-induced input inhibition involves early selection. We identified a sequence of early (<200 ms post-onset) auditory cortical effects, comprised of onset response attenuation and the emergence of an inhibitory response, and provide new, direct evidence that listeners actively ignoring a sound can reduce their stimulus related activity in auditory cortex by 100 ms after onset when this is required to execute specific behavioral objectives.	\N	\N
21233780	The neural origins of the cortical response to rare sensory events remain poorly understood. Using simultaneous event-related potentials and magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the anatomical profile of regional activity at various processing stages during performance of auditory and visual variants of an oddball paradigm. The earliest rarity-detection response was found in sensory-specific cortices, rapidly spreading to tertiary association areas, mesial temporal and frontal cortices by 150-200 ms. P3m-related activity was not found in sensory-specific cortices. On the basis of the anatomic distribution of P3m-related activity, this component is likely to reflect more generalized cognitive abilities hosted by association cortical regions.	\N	\N
21261633	Humans must often focus attention onto relevant sensory signals in the presence of simultaneous irrelevant signals. This type of attention has been explored in vision with the N2pc component, and the present study sought to find an analogous auditory effect. In Experiment 1, two 750-ms sounds were presented simultaneously, one from each of two lateral speakers. On each trial, participants indicated whether one of the two sounds was a pre-defined target. We found that targets elicited an N2ac component: a negativity in the N2 latency range at anterior contralateral electrodes. We also observed a later and more posterior contralateral positivity. Experiment 2 replicated these effects and demonstrated that they arose from competition between attended and unattended tones rather than reflecting lateralized effects of attention for individual tones. The N2ac component may provide a useful tool for studying selective attention within auditory scenes.	\N	\N
21305666	Both sighted and blind individuals can readily interpret meaning behind everyday real-world sounds. In sighted listeners, we previously reported that regions along the bilateral posterior superior temporal sulci (pSTS) and middle temporal gyri (pMTG) are preferentially activated when presented with recognizable action sounds. These regions have generally been hypothesized to represent primary loci for complex motion processing, including visual biological motion processing and audio-visual integration. However, it remained unclear whether, or to what degree, life-long visual experience might impact functions related to hearing perception or memory of sound-source actions. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we compared brain regions activated in congenitally blind versus sighted listeners in response to hearing a wide range of recognizable human-produced action sounds (excluding vocalizations) versus unrecognized, backward-played versions of those sounds. Here, we show that recognized human action sounds commonly evoked activity in both groups along most of the left pSTS/pMTG complex, though with relatively greater activity in the right pSTS/pMTG by the blind group. These results indicate that portions of the postero-lateral temporal cortices contain domain-specific hubs for biological and/or complex motion processing independent of sensory-modality experience. Contrasting the two groups, the sighted listeners preferentially activated bilateral parietal plus medial and lateral frontal networks, whereas the blind listeners preferentially activated left anterior insula plus bilateral anterior calcarine and medial occipital regions, including what would otherwise have been visual-related cortex. These global-level network differences suggest that blind and sighted listeners may preferentially use different memory retrieval strategies when hearing and attempting to recognize action sounds.	\N	\N
21380858	Most ecologically natural sensory inputs are not limited to a single modality. While it is possible to use real ecological materials as experimental stimuli to investigate the neural basis of multi-sensory experience, parametric control of such tokens is limited. By using artificial bimodal stimuli composed of approximations to ecological signals, we aim to observe the interactions between putatively relevant stimulus attributes. Here we use MEG as an electrophysiological tool and employ as a measure the steady-state response (SSR), an experimental paradigm typically applied to unimodal signals. In this experiment we quantify the responses to a bimodal audio-visual signal with different degrees of temporal (phase) congruity, focusing on stimulus properties critical to audiovisual speech. An amplitude modulated auditory signal ('pseudo-speech') is paired with a radius-modulated ellipse ('pseudo-mouth'), with the envelope of low-frequency modulations occurring in phase or at offset phase values across modalities. We observe (i) that it is possible to elicit an SSR to bimodal signals; (ii) that bimodal signals exhibit greater response power than unimodal signals; and (iii) that the SSR power at specific harmonics and sensors differentially reflects the congruity between signal components. Importantly, we argue that effects found at the modulation frequency and second harmonic reflect differential aspects of neural coding of multisensory signals. The experimental paradigm facilitates a quantitative characterization of properties of multi-sensory speech and other bimodal computations.	\N	\N
21807011	In real-world settings, information from multiple sensory modalities is combined to form a complete, behaviorally salient percept - a process known as multisensory integration. While deficits in auditory and visual processing are often observed in schizophrenia, little is known about how multisensory integration is affected by the disorder. The present study examined auditory, visual, and combined audio-visual processing in schizophrenia patients using high-density electrical mapping. An ecologically relevant task was used to compare unisensory and multisensory evoked potentials from schizophrenia patients to potentials from healthy normal volunteers. Analysis of unisensory responses revealed a large decrease in the N100 component of the auditory-evoked potential, as well as early differences in the visual-evoked components in the schizophrenia group. Differences in early evoked responses to multisensory stimuli were also detected. Multisensory facilitation was assessed by comparing the sum of auditory and visual evoked responses to the audio-visual evoked response. Schizophrenia patients showed a significantly greater absolute magnitude response to audio-visual stimuli than to summed unisensory stimuli when compared to healthy volunteers, indicating significantly greater multisensory facilitation in the patient group. Behavioral responses also indicated increased facilitation from multisensory stimuli. The results represent the first report of increased multisensory facilitation in schizophrenia and suggest that, although unisensory deficits are present, compensatory mechanisms may exist under certain conditions that permit improved multisensory integration in individuals afflicted with the disorder.	\N	\N
21958655	Perceptual sensitivities are malleable via learning, even in adults. We trained adults to discriminate complex sounds (periodic, frequency-modulated sweep trains) using two different training procedures, and used psychoacoustic tests and evoked potential measures (the N1-P2 complex) to assess changes in both perceptual and neural sensitivities. Training took place either on a single day, or daily across eight days, and involved discrimination of pairs of stimuli using a single-interval, forced-choice task. In some participants, training started with dissimilar pairs that became progressively more similar across sessions, whereas in others training was constant, involving only one, highly similar, stimulus pair. Participants were better able to discriminate the complex sounds after training, particularly after progressive training, and the evoked potentials elicited by some of the sounds increased in amplitude following training. Significant amplitude changes were restricted to the P2 peak. Our findings indicate that changes in perceptual sensitivities parallel enhanced neural processing. These results are consistent with the proposal that changes in perceptual abilities arise from the brain's capacity to adaptively modify cortical representations of sensory stimuli, and that different training regimens can lead to differences in cortical sensitivities, even after relatively short periods of training.	\N	\N
22367585	In recent years, it has become evident that neural responses previously considered to be unisensory can be modulated by sensory input from other modalities. In this regard, visual neural activity elicited to viewing a face is strongly influenced by concurrent incoming auditory information, particularly speech. Here, we applied an additive-factors paradigm aimed at quantifying the impact that auditory speech has on visual event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited to visual speech. These multisensory interactions were measured across parametrically varied stimulus salience, quantified in terms of signal to noise, to provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms of audiovisual speech perception. First, we measured a monotonic increase of the amplitude of the visual P1-N1-P2 ERP complex during a spoken-word recognition task with increases in stimulus salience. ERP component amplitudes varied directly with stimulus salience for visual, audiovisual, and summed unisensory recordings. Second, we measured changes in multisensory gain across salience levels. During audiovisual speech, the P1 and P1-N1 components exhibited less multisensory gain relative to the summed unisensory components with reduced salience, while N1-P2 amplitude exhibited greater multisensory gain as salience was reduced, consistent with the principle of inverse effectiveness. The amplitude interactions were correlated with behavioral measures of multisensory gain across salience levels as measured by response times, suggesting that change in multisensory gain associated with unisensory salience modulations reflects an increased efficiency of visual speech processing.	\N	\N
22464943	Limited information is available on the relationship between antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and early filtering, or gating, of information, even though this could contribute to the repeatedly reported impairment in ASPD of higher-order information processing. In order to investigate early filtering in ASPD, we compared electrophysiological measures of auditory sensory gating assessed by the paired-click paradigm in males with ASPD (n = 37) to healthy controls (n = 28). Stimulus encoding was measured by P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials; auditory sensory gating (ASG) was measured by a reduction in amplitude of evoked potentials following click repetition. Effects were studied of co-existing past alcohol or drug use disorders, ASPD symptom counts, and trait impulsivity. Controls and ASPD did not differ in P50, N100, or P200 amplitude or ASG. Past alcohol or drug use disorders had no effect. In controls, impulsivity related to improved P50 and P200 gating. In ASPD, P50 or N100 gating was impaired with more symptoms or increased impulsivity, respectively, suggesting impaired early filtering of irrelevant information. In controls the relationship between P50 and P200 gating and impulsivity was reversed, suggesting better gating with higher impulsivity scores. This could reflect different roles of ASG in behavioral regulation in controls versus ASPD.	\N	\N
22547804	Bilingualism profoundly affects the brain, yielding functional and structural changes in cortical regions dedicated to language processing and executive function [Crinion J, et al. (2006) Science 312:1537-1540; Kim KHS, et al. (1997) Nature 388:171-174]. Comparatively, musical training, another type of sensory enrichment, translates to expertise in cognitive processing and refined biological processing of sound in both cortical and subcortical structures. Therefore, we asked whether bilingualism can also promote experience-dependent plasticity in subcortical auditory processing. We found that adolescent bilinguals, listening to the speech syllable [da], encoded the stimulus more robustly than age-matched monolinguals. Specifically, bilinguals showed enhanced encoding of the fundamental frequency, a feature known to underlie pitch perception and grouping of auditory objects. This enhancement was associated with executive function advantages. Thus, through experience-related tuning of attention, the bilingual auditory system becomes highly efficient in automatically processing sound. This study provides biological evidence for system-wide neural plasticity in auditory experts that facilitates a tight coupling of sensory and cognitive functions.	\N	\N
22592306	Poor sensitivity to the interaural time difference (ITD) constrains the ability of human bilateral cochlear implant users to listen in everyday noisy acoustic environments. ITD sensitivity to periodic pulse trains degrades sharply with increasing pulse rate but can be restored at high pulse rates by jittering the interpulse intervals in a binaurally coherent manner (Laback and Majdak. Binaural jitter improves interaural time-difference sensitivity of cochlear implantees at high pulse rates. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105: 814-817, 2008). We investigated the neural basis of the jitter effect by recording from single inferior colliculus (IC) neurons in bilaterally implanted, anesthetized cats. Neural responses to trains of biphasic pulses were measured as a function of pulse rate, jitter, and ITD. An effect of jitter on neural responses was most prominent for pulse rates above 300 pulses/s. High-rate periodic trains evoked only an onset response in most IC neurons, but introducing jitter increased ongoing firing rates in about half of these neurons. Neurons that had sustained responses to jittered high-rate pulse trains showed ITD tuning comparable with that produced by low-rate periodic pulse trains. Thus, jitter appears to improve neural ITD sensitivity by restoring sustained firing in many IC neurons. The effect of jitter on IC responses is qualitatively consistent with human psychophysics. Action potentials tended to occur reproducibly at sparse, preferred times across repeated presentations of high-rate jittered pulse trains. Spike triggered averaging of responses to jittered pulse trains revealed that firing was triggered by very short interpulse intervals. This suggests it may be possible to restore ITD sensitivity to periodic carriers by simply inserting short interpulse intervals at select times.	\N	\N
22628458	Successful integration of auditory and visual inputs is crucial for both basic perceptual functions and for higher-order processes related to social cognition. Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairments in social cognition and are associated with abnormalities in sensory and perceptual processes. Several groups have reported that individuals with ASD are impaired in their ability to integrate socially relevant audiovisual (AV) information, and it has been suggested that this contributes to the higher-order social and cognitive deficits observed in ASD. However, successful integration of auditory and visual inputs also influences detection and perception of nonsocial stimuli, and integration deficits may impair earlier stages of information processing, with cascading downstream effects. To assess the integrity of basic AV integration, we recorded high-density electrophysiology from a cohort of high-functioning children with ASD (7-16 years) while they performed a simple AV reaction time task. Children with ASD showed considerably less behavioral facilitation to multisensory inputs, deficits that were paralleled by less effective neural integration. Evidence for processing differences relative to typically developing children was seen as early as 100 ms poststimulation, and topographic analysis suggested that children with ASD relied on different cortical networks during this early multisensory processing stage.	\N	\N
22735387	Decreased blood hemoglobin (HbB) levels and anemia have been associated with abnormal brainstem auditory evoked responses (BAER). Lead (Pb) exposure has also been associated with anemia and aberrant BAER. This study investigated the relationship between HbB level and BAER wave latency and amplitude in Pb-exposed Andean children. Sixty-six children aged 2 to 15 years (mean age: 9.1; SD: 3.3) living in Pb-contaminated villages were screened for HbB levels, blood Pb (PbB) levels and BAER latencies and amplitudes. The mean HbB level observed in the study group was 11.9 g/dL (SD: 1.4; range: 8.6-14.8 g/dL). The mean HbB level corrected for altitude was 10.3g/dL (SD: 1.4; range: 6.9-13.1 g/dL), and suggestive of anemia. The mean PbB level was 49.3 μg/dL (SD: 30.1; range: 4.4-119.1 μg/dL) and indicative of Pb poisoning. Spearman rho correlation analyses revealed significant associations between the BAER absolute latencies and HbB level, indicating that as the HbB level decreased, the BAER wave latency increased. Children with low HbB levels (≤11 g/dL) showed significantly prolonged absolute latencies of waves I, II, III, IV and V compared to the children with normal HbB levels. Although a significant relationship between HbB and BAER waves was observed, no significant associations between PbB level and BAER parameters were found. Low hemoglobin levels may diminish auditory sensory-neural function, and is therefore an important variable to consider when assessing BAER in children with anemia and/or Pb exposure.	\N	\N
22773777	Many neurons adapt their spike output to accommodate the prevailing sensory environment. Although such adaptation is thought to improve coding of relevant stimulus features, the relationship between adaptation at the neural and behavioral levels remains to be established. Here we describe improved discrimination performance for an auditory spatial cue (interaural time differences, ITDs) following adaptation to stimulus statistics. Physiological recordings in the midbrain of anesthetized guinea pigs and measurement of discrimination performance in humans both demonstrate improved coding of the most prevalent ITDs in a distribution, but with highest accuracy maintained for ITDs corresponding to frontal locations, suggesting the existence of a fovea for auditory space. A biologically plausible model accounting for the physiological data suggests that neural tuning is stabilized by inhibition to maintain high discriminability for frontal locations. The data support the notion that adaptive coding in the midbrain is a key element of behaviorally efficient sound localization in dynamic acoustic environments.	\N	\N
22885999	Event-related potentials (ERPs) to tones that are self-initiated are reduced in their magnitude in comparison with ERPs to tones that are externally generated. This phenomenon has been taken as evidence for an efference copy of the motor command acting to suppress the sensory response. However, self-initiation provides a strong temporal cue for the stimulus which might also contribute to the ERP suppression for self-initiated tones. The current experiment sought to investigate the suppression of monaural tones by temporal cueing and also whether the addition of self-initiation enhanced this suppression. Lastly, the experiment sought to investigate the lateralisation of the ERP suppression via presenting these monaural tones to each ear respectively. We examined source waveforms extracted from the lateralised auditory cortices and measured the modulation of the N1 and P2 components by cueing and self-initiation. Self-initiation significantly reduced the amplitude of the N1 component. Temporal cueing without self-initiation significantly reduced the P2 component. There were no significant differences in the amplitude of either the N1 or the P2 between self-initiation and temporal cuing. There was a significant lateralisation effect on the N1-it being significantly larger contralateral to the ear of stimulation. There was no interaction between lateralisation and side of the temporal cue or side of self-initiation suggesting that the effects of self-initiation and temporal cuing are equal bilaterally. We conclude that a significant proportion of ERP suppression by self-initiation is a result of inherent temporal cueing.	\N	\N
23071654	Selectively attending to task-relevant sounds whilst ignoring background noise is one of the most amazing feats performed by the human brain. Here, we studied the underlying neural mechanisms by recording magnetoencephalographic (MEG) responses of 14 healthy human subjects while they performed a near-threshold auditory discrimination task vs. a visual control task of similar difficulty. The auditory stimuli consisted of notch-filtered continuous noise masker sounds, and of 1020-Hz target tones occasionally (p = 0.1) replacing 1000-Hz standard tones of 300-ms duration that were embedded at the center of the notches, the widths of which were parametrically varied. As a control for masker effects, tone-evoked responses were additionally recorded without masker sound. Selective attention to tones significantly increased the amplitude of the onset M100 response at ~100 ms to the standard tones during presence of the masker sounds especially with notches narrower than the critical band. Further, attention modulated sustained response most clearly at 300-400 ms time range from sound onset, with narrower notches than in case of the M100, thus selectively reducing the masker-induced suppression of the tone-evoked response. Our results show evidence of a multiple-stage filtering mechanism of sensory input in the human auditory cortex: 1) one at early (~100 ms) latencies bilaterally in posterior parts of the secondary auditory areas, and 2) adaptive filtering of attended sounds from task-irrelevant background masker at longer latency (~300 ms) in more medial auditory cortical regions, predominantly in the left hemisphere, enhancing processing of near-threshold sounds.	\N	\N
23145143	It has been previously demonstrated by our group that a visual stimulus made of dynamically changing luminance evokes an echo or reverberation at ~10 Hz, lasting up to a second. In this study we aimed to reveal whether similar echoes also exist in the auditory modality. A dynamically changing auditory stimulus equivalent to the visual stimulus was designed and employed in two separate series of experiments, and the presence of reverberations was analyzed based on reverse correlations between stimulus sequences and EEG epochs. The first experiment directly compared visual and auditory stimuli: while previous findings of ~10 Hz visual echoes were verified, no similar echo was found in the auditory modality regardless of frequency. In the second experiment, we tested if auditory sequences would influence the visual echoes when they were congruent or incongruent with the visual sequences. However, the results in that case similarly did not reveal any auditory echoes, nor any change in the characteristics of visual echoes as a function of audio-visual congruence. The negative findings from these experiments suggest that brain oscillations do not equivalently affect early sensory processes in the visual and auditory modalities, and that alpha (8-13 Hz) oscillations play a special role in vision.	\N	\N
23251704	Cognitive task demands in one sensory modality (T1) can have beneficial effects on a secondary task (T2) in a different modality, due to reduced top-down control needed to inhibit the secondary task, as well as crossmodal spread of attention. This contrasts findings of cognitive load compromising a secondary modality's processing. We manipulated cognitive load within one modality (visual) and studied the consequences of cognitive demands on secondary (auditory) processing. 15 healthy participants underwent a simultaneous EEG-fMRI experiment. Data from 8 participants were obtained outside the scanner for validation purposes. The primary task (T1) was to respond to a visual working memory (WM) task with four conditions, while the secondary task (T2) consisted of an auditory oddball stream, which participants were asked to ignore. The fMRI results revealed fronto-parietal WM network activations in response to T1 task manipulation. This was accompanied by significantly higher reaction times and lower hit rates with increasing task difficulty which confirmed successful manipulation of WM load. Amplitudes of auditory evoked potentials, representing fundamental auditory processing showed a continuous augmentation which demonstrated a systematic relation to cross-modal cognitive load. With increasing WM load, primary auditory cortices were increasingly deactivated while psychophysiological interaction results suggested the emergence of auditory cortices connectivity with visual WM regions. These results suggest differential effects of crossmodal attention on fundamental auditory processing. We suggest a continuous allocation of resources to brain regions processing primary tasks when challenging the central executive under high cognitive load.	\N	\N
23281832	If we initiate a sound by our own motor behavior, the N1 component of the auditory event-related brain potential (ERP) that the sound elicits is attenuated compared to the N1 elicited by the same sound when it is initiated externally. It has been suggested that this N1 suppression results from an internal predictive mechanism that is in the service of discriminating the sensory consequences of one's own actions from other sensory input. As the N1-suppression effect is becoming a popular approach to investigate predictive processing in cognitive and social neuroscience, it is important to exclude an alternative interpretation not related to prediction. According to the attentional account, the N1 suppression is due to a difference in the allocation of attention between self- and externally-initiated sounds. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated the allocation of attention to the sounds in different blocks: Attention was directed either to the sounds, to the own motor acts or to visual stimuli. If attention causes the N1-suppression effect, then manipulating attention should affect the effect for self-initiated sounds. We found N1 suppression in all conditions. The N1 per se was affected by attention, but there was no interaction between attention and self-initiation effects. This implies that self-initiation N1 effects are not caused by attention. The present results support the assumption that the N1-suppression effect for self-initiated sounds indicates the operation of an internal predictive mechanism. Furthermore, while attention had an influence on the N1a, N1b, and N1c components, the N1-suppression effect was confined to the N1b and N1c subcomponents suggesting that the major contribution to the auditory N1-suppression effect is circumscribed to late N1 components.	\N	\N
23301775	Using electrophysiology, we have examined two questions in relation to musical training - namely, whether it enhances sensory encoding of the human voice and whether it improves the ability to ignore irrelevant auditory change. Participants performed an auditory distraction task, in which they identified each sound as either short (350 ms) or long (550 ms) and ignored a change in timbre of the sounds. Sounds consisted of a male and a female voice saying a neutral sound [a], and of a cello and a French Horn playing an F3 note. In some blocks, musical sounds occurred on 80% of trials, while voice sounds on 20% of trials. In other blocks, the reverse was true. Participants heard naturally recorded sounds in half of experimental blocks and their spectrally-rotated versions in the other half. Regarding voice perception, we found that musicians had a larger N1 event-related potential component not only to vocal sounds but also to their never before heard spectrally-rotated versions. We therefore conclude that musical training is associated with a general improvement in the early neural encoding of complex sounds. Regarding the ability to ignore irrelevant auditory change, musicians' accuracy tended to suffer less from the change in timbre of the sounds, especially when deviants were musical notes. This behavioral finding was accompanied by a marginally larger re-orienting negativity in musicians, suggesting that their advantage may lie in a more efficient disengagement of attention from the distracting auditory dimension.	\N	\N
23316957	There is an accumulating body of evidence indicating that neuronal functional specificity to basic sensory stimulation is mutable and subject to experience. Although fMRI experiments have investigated changes in brain activity after relative to before perceptual learning, brain activity during perceptual learning has not been explored. This work investigated brain activity related to auditory frequency discrimination learning using a variational Bayesian approach for source localization, during simultaneous EEG and fMRI recording. We investigated whether the practice effects are determined solely by activity in stimulus-driven mechanisms or whether high-level attentional mechanisms, which are linked to the perceptual task, control the learning process. The results of fMRI analyses revealed significant attention and learning related activity in left and right superior temporal gyrus STG as well as the left inferior frontal gyrus IFG. Current source localization of simultaneously recorded EEG data was estimated using a variational Bayesian method. Analysis of current localized to the left inferior frontal gyrus and the right superior temporal gyrus revealed gamma band activity correlated with behavioral performance. Rapid improvement in task performance is accompanied by plastic changes in the sensory cortex as well as superior areas gated by selective attention. Together the fMRI and EEG results suggest that gamma band activity in the right STG and left IFG plays an important role during perceptual learning.	\N	\N
23326548	Auditory distraction is a failure to maintain focus on a stream of sounds. We investigated the neural correlates of distraction in a selective-listening pitch-discrimination task with high (competing speech) or low (white noise) distraction. High-distraction impaired performance and reduced the N1 peak of the auditory Event-Related Potential evoked by probe tones. In a series of simulations, we explored two theories to account for this effect: disruption of sensory gain or a disruption of inter-trial phase consistency. When compared to these simulations, our data were consistent with both effects of distraction. Distraction reduced the gain of the auditory evoked potential and disrupted the inter-trial phase consistency with which the brain responds to stimulus events. Tones at a non-target, unattended frequency were more susceptible to the effects of distraction than tones within an attended frequency band.	\N	\N
23616340	Previous studies on crossmodal spatial orienting typically used simple and stereotyped stimuli in the absence of any meaningful context. This study combined computational models, behavioural measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate audiovisual spatial interactions in naturalistic settings. We created short videos portraying everyday life situations that included a lateralised visual event and a co-occurring sound, either on the same or on the opposite side of space. Subjects viewed the videos with or without eye-movements allowed (overt or covert orienting). For each video, visual and auditory saliency maps were used to index the strength of stimulus-driven signals, and eye-movements were used as a measure of the efficacy of the audiovisual events for spatial orienting. Results showed that visual salience modulated activity in higher-order visual areas, whereas auditory salience modulated activity in the superior temporal cortex. Auditory salience modulated activity also in the posterior parietal cortex, but only when audiovisual stimuli occurred on the same side of space (multisensory spatial congruence). Orienting efficacy affected activity in the visual cortex, within the same regions modulated by visual salience. These patterns of activation were comparable in overt and covert orienting conditions. Our results demonstrate that, during viewing of complex multisensory stimuli, activity in sensory areas reflects both stimulus-driven signals and their efficacy for spatial orienting; and that the posterior parietal cortex combines spatial information about the visual and the auditory modality.	\N	\N
23624493	Findings in animal models demonstrate that activity within hierarchically early sensory cortical regions can be modulated by cross-sensory inputs through resetting of the phase of ongoing intrinsic neural oscillations. Here, subdural recordings evaluated whether phase resetting by auditory inputs would impact multisensory integration processes in human visual cortex. Results clearly showed auditory-driven phase reset in visual cortices and, in some cases, frank auditory event-related potentials (ERP) were also observed over these regions. Further, when audiovisual bisensory stimuli were presented, this led to robust multisensory integration effects which were observed in both the ERP and in measures of phase concentration. These results extend findings from animal models to human visual cortices, and highlight the impact of cross-sensory phase resetting by a non-primary stimulus on multisensory integration in ostensibly unisensory cortices.	\N	\N
23647558	In the visual modality, perceptual demand on a goal-directed task has been shown to modulate the extent to which irrelevant information can be disregarded at a sensory-perceptual stage of processing. In the auditory modality, the effect of perceptual demand on neural representations of task-irrelevant sounds is unclear. We compared simultaneous ERPs and fMRI responses associated with task-irrelevant sounds across parametrically modulated perceptual task demands in a dichotic-listening paradigm. Participants performed a signal detection task in one ear (Attend ear) while ignoring task-irrelevant syllable sounds in the other ear (Ignore ear). Results revealed modulation of syllable processing by auditory perceptual demand in an ROI in middle left superior temporal gyrus and in negative ERP activity 130-230 msec post stimulus onset. Increasing the perceptual demand in the Attend ear was associated with a reduced neural response in both fMRI and ERP to task-irrelevant sounds. These findings are in support of a selection model whereby ongoing perceptual demands modulate task-irrelevant sound processing in auditory cortex.	\N	\N
23664703	Both faces and voices are rich in socially-relevant information, which humans are remarkably adept at extracting, including a person's identity, age, gender, affective state, personality, etc. Here, we review accumulating evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies which suggest that the cognitive and neural processing mechanisms engaged by perceiving faces or voices are highly similar, despite the very different nature of their sensory input. The similarity between the two mechanisms likely facilitates the multi-modal integration of facial and vocal information during everyday social interactions. These findings emphasize a parsimonious principle of cerebral organization, where similar computational problems in different modalities are solved using similar solutions.	\N	\N
23827717	Learning and maintaining the sounds we use in vocal communication require accurate perception of the sounds we hear performed by others and feedback-dependent imitation of those sounds to produce our own vocalizations. Understanding how the central nervous system integrates auditory and vocal-motor information to enable communication is a fundamental goal of systems neuroscience, and insights into the mechanisms of those processes will profoundly enhance clinical therapies for communication disorders. Gaining the high-resolution insight necessary to define the circuits and cellular mechanisms underlying human vocal communication is presently impractical. Songbirds are the best animal model of human speech, and this review highlights recent insights into the neural basis of auditory perception and feedback-dependent imitation in those animals. Neural correlates of song perception are present in auditory areas, and those correlates are preserved in the auditory responses of downstream neurons that are also active when the bird sings. Initial tests indicate that singing-related activity in those downstream neurons is associated with vocal-motor performance as opposed to the bird simply hearing itself sing. Therefore, action potentials related to auditory perception and action potentials related to vocal performance are co-localized in individual neurons. Conceptual models of song learning involve comparison of vocal commands and the associated auditory feedback to compute an error signal that is used to guide refinement of subsequent song performances, yet the sites of that comparison remain unknown. Convergence of sensory and motor activity onto individual neurons points to a possible mechanism through which auditory and vocal-motor signals may be linked to enable learning and maintenance of the sounds used in vocal communication. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled "Communication Sounds and the Brain: New Directions and Perspectives".	\N	\N
23988583	Experience-dependent characteristics of auditory function, especially with regard to speech-evoked auditory neurophysiology, have garnered increasing attention in recent years. This interest stems from both pragmatic and theoretical concerns as it bears implications for the prevention and remediation of language-based learning impairment in addition to providing insight into mechanisms engendering experience-dependent changes in human sensory function. Musicians provide an attractive model for studying the experience-dependency of auditory processing in humans due to their distinctive neural enhancements compared to nonmusicians. We have only recently begun to address whether these enhancements are observable early in life, during the initial years of music training when the auditory system is under rapid development, as well as later in life, after the onset of the aging process. Here we review neural enhancements in musically trained individuals across the life span in the context of cellular mechanisms that underlie learning, identified in animal models. Musicians' subcortical physiologic enhancements are interpreted according to a cognitive framework for auditory learning, providing a model in which to study mechanisms of experience-dependent changes in human auditory function.	\N	\N
24072639	Neurobiological underpinnings of unusual sensory features in individuals with autism are unknown. Event-related potentials elicited by task-irrelevant sounds were used to elucidate neural correlates of auditory processing and associations with three common sensory response patterns (hyperresponsiveness; hyporesponsiveness; sensory seeking). Twenty-eight children with autism and 39 typically developing children (4-12 year-olds) completed an auditory oddball paradigm. Results revealed marginally attenuated P1 and N2 to standard tones and attenuated P3a to novel sounds in autism versus controls. Exploratory analyses suggested that within the autism group, attenuated N2 and P3a amplitudes were associated with greater sensory seeking behaviors for specific ranges of P1 responses. Findings suggest that attenuated early sensory as well as later attention-orienting neural responses to stimuli may underlie selective sensory features via complex mechanisms.	\N	\N
24119225	Humans are able to extract regularities from complex auditory scenes in order to form perceptually meaningful elements. It has been shown previously that this process depends critically on both the temporal integration of the sensory input over time and the degree of frequency separation between concurrent sound sources. Our goal was to examine the relationship between these two aspects by means of magnetoencephalography (MEG). To achieve this aim, we combined time-frequency analysis on a sensor space level with source analysis. Our paradigm consisted of asymmetric ABA-tone triplets wherein the B-tones were presented temporally closer to the first A-tones, providing different tempi within the same sequence. Participants attended to the slowest B-rhythm whilst the frequency separation between tones was manipulated (0-, 2-, 4- and 10-semitones). The results revealed that the asymmetric ABA-triplets spontaneously elicited periodic-sustained responses corresponding to the temporal distribution of the A-B and B-A tone intervals in all conditions. Moreover, when attending to the B-tones, the neural representations of the A- and B-streams were both detectable in the scenarios which allow perceptual streaming (2-, 4- and 10-semitones). Alongside this, the steady-state responses tuned to the presentation of the B-tones enhanced significantly with increase of the frequency separation between tones. However, the strength of the B-tones related steady-state responses dominated the strength of the A-tones responses in the 10-semitones condition. Conversely, the representation of the A-tones dominated the B-tones in the cases of 2- and 4-semitones conditions, in which a greater effort was required for completing the task. Additionally, the P1 evoked fields' component following the B-tones increased in magnitude with the increase of inter-tonal frequency difference. The enhancement of the evoked fields in the source space, along with the B-tones related activity of the time-frequency results, likely reflect the selective enhancement of the attended B-stream. The results also suggested a dissimilar efficiency of the temporal integration of separate streams depending on the degree of frequency separation between the sounds. Overall, the present findings suggest that the neural effects of auditory streaming could be directly captured in the time-frequency spectrum at the sensor-space level.	\N	\N
24314010	Auditory perceptual learning persistently modifies neural networks in the central nervous system. Central auditory processing comprises a hierarchy of sound analysis and integration, which transforms an acoustical signal into a meaningful object for perception. Based on latencies and source locations of auditory evoked responses, we investigated which stage of central processing undergoes neuroplastic changes when gaining auditory experience during passive listening and active perceptual training. Young healthy volunteers participated in a five-day training program to identify two pre-voiced versions of the stop-consonant syllable 'ba', which is an unusual speech sound to English listeners. Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) brain responses were recorded during two pre-training and one post-training sessions. Underlying cortical sources were localized, and the temporal dynamics of auditory evoked responses were analyzed. After both passive listening and active training, the amplitude of the P2m wave with latency of 200 ms increased considerably. By this latency, the integration of stimulus features into an auditory object for further conscious perception is considered to be complete. Therefore the P2m changes were discussed in the light of auditory object representation. Moreover, P2m sources were localized in anterior auditory association cortex, which is part of the antero-ventral pathway for object identification. The amplitude of the earlier N1m wave, which is related to processing of sensory information, did not change over the time course of the study. The P2m amplitude increase and its persistence over time constitute a neuroplastic change. The P2m gain likely reflects enhanced object representation after stimulus experience and training, which enables listeners to improve their ability for scrutinizing fine differences in pre-voicing time. Different trajectories of brain and behaviour changes suggest that the preceding effect of a P2m increase relates to brain processes, which are necessary precursors of perceptual learning. Cautious discussion is required when interpreting the finding of a P2 amplitude increase between recordings before and after training and learning.	\N	\N
24423729	Across the animal kingdom, sensations resulting from an animal's own actions are processed differently from sensations resulting from external sources, with self-generated sensations being suppressed. A forward model has been proposed to explain this process across sensorimotor domains. During vocalization, reduced processing of one's own speech is believed to result from a comparison of speech sounds to corollary discharges of intended speech production generated from efference copies of commands to speak. Until now, anatomical and functional evidence validating this model in humans has been indirect. Using EEG with anatomical MRI to facilitate source localization, we demonstrate that inferior frontal gyrus activity during the 300ms before speaking was associated with suppressed processing of speech sounds in auditory cortex around 100ms after speech onset (N1). These findings indicate that an efference copy from speech areas in prefrontal cortex is transmitted to auditory cortex, where it is used to suppress processing of anticipated speech sounds. About 100ms after N1, a subsequent auditory cortical component (P2) was not suppressed during talking. The combined N1 and P2 effects suggest that although sensory processing is suppressed as reflected in N1, perceptual gaps may be filled as reflected in the lack of P2 suppression, explaining the discrepancy between sensory suppression and preserved sensory experiences. These findings, coupled with the coherence between relevant brain regions before and during speech, provide new mechanistic understanding of the complex interactions between action planning and sensory processing that provide for differentiated tagging and monitoring of one's own speech, processes disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders.	\N	\N
24695717	Detecting the location of salient sounds in the environment rests on the brain's ability to use differences in sounds arriving at both ears. Functional neuroimaging studies in humans indicate that the left and right auditory hemispaces are coded asymmetrically, with a rightward attentional bias that reflects spatial attention in vision. Neuropsychological observations in patients with spatial neglect have led to the formulation of two competing models: the orientation bias and right-hemisphere dominance models. The orientation bias model posits a symmetrical mapping between one side of the sensorium and the contralateral hemisphere, with mutual inhibition of the ipsilateral hemisphere. The right-hemisphere dominance model introduces a functional asymmetry in the brain's coding of space: the left hemisphere represents the right side, whereas the right hemisphere represents both sides of the sensorium. We used Dynamic Causal Modeling of effective connectivity and Bayesian model comparison to adjudicate between these alternative network architectures, based on human electroencephalographic data acquired during an auditory location oddball paradigm. Our results support a hemispheric asymmetry in a frontoparietal network that conforms to the right-hemisphere dominance model. We show that, within this frontoparietal network, forward connectivity increases selectively in the hemisphere contralateral to the side of sensory stimulation. We interpret this finding in light of hierarchical predictive coding as a selective increase in attentional gain, which is mediated by feedforward connections that carry precision-weighted prediction errors during perceptual inference. This finding supports the disconnection hypothesis of unilateral neglect and has implications for theories of its etiology.	\N	\N
24956028	Listening situations with multiple talkers or background noise are common in everyday communication and are particularly demanding for older adults. Here we review current research on auditory perception in aging individuals in order to gain insights into the challenges of listening under noisy conditions. Informationally rich temporal structure in auditory signals--over a range of time scales from milliseconds to seconds--renders temporal processing central to perception in the auditory domain. We discuss the role of temporal structure in auditory processing, in particular from a perspective relevant for hearing in background noise, and focusing on sensory memory, auditory scene analysis, and speech perception. Interestingly, these auditory processes, usually studied in an independent manner, show considerable overlap of processing time scales, even though each has its own 'privileged' temporal regimes. By integrating perspectives on temporal structure processing in these three areas of investigation, we aim to highlight similarities typically not recognized.	\N	\N
25245785	Atypical processing and integration of sensory inputs are hypothesized to play a role in unusual sensory reactions and social-cognitive deficits in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reports on the relationship between objective metrics of sensory processing and clinical symptoms, however, are surprisingly sparse. Here we examined the relationship between neurophysiological assays of sensory processing and (1) autism severity and (2) sensory sensitivities, in individuals with ASD aged 6-17. Multiple linear regression indicated significant associations between neural markers of auditory processing and multisensory integration, and autism severity. No such relationships were apparent for clinical measures of visual/auditory sensitivities. These data support that aberrant early sensory processing contributes to autism symptoms, and reveal the potential of electrophysiology to objectively subtype autism.	\N	\N
25259525	Auditory selective attention plays an essential role for identifying sounds of interest in a scene, but the neural underpinnings are still incompletely understood. Recent findings demonstrate that neural activity that is time-locked to a particular amplitude-modulation (AM) is enhanced in the auditory cortex when the modulated stream of sounds is selectively attended to under sensory competition with other streams. However, the target sounds used in the previous studies differed not only in their AM, but also in other sound features, such as carrier frequency or location. Thus, it remains uncertain whether the observed enhancements reflect AM-selective attention. The present study aims at dissociating the effect of AM frequency on response enhancement in auditory cortex by using an ongoing auditory stimulus that contains two competing targets differing exclusively in their AM frequency. Electroencephalography results showed a sustained response enhancement for auditory attention compared to visual attention, but not for AM-selective attention (attended AM frequency vs. ignored AM frequency). In contrast, the response to the ignored AM frequency was enhanced, although a brief trend toward response enhancement occurred during the initial 15 s. Together with the previous findings, these observations indicate that selective enhancement of attended AMs in auditory cortex is adaptive under sustained AM-selective attention. This finding has implications for our understanding of cortical mechanisms for feature-based attentional gain control.	\N	\N
25535356	When social animals communicate, the onset of informative content in one modality varies considerably relative to the other, such as when visual orofacial movements precede a vocalization. These naturally occurring asynchronies do not disrupt intelligibility or perceptual coherence. However, they occur on time scales where they likely affect integrative neuronal activity in ways that have remained unclear, especially for hierarchically downstream regions in which neurons exhibit temporally imprecise but highly selective responses to communication signals. To address this, we exploited naturally occurring face- and voice-onset asynchronies in primate vocalizations. Using these as stimuli we recorded cortical oscillations and neuronal spiking responses from functional MRI (fMRI)-localized voice-sensitive cortex in the anterior temporal lobe of macaques. We show that the onset of the visual face stimulus resets the phase of low-frequency oscillations, and that the face-voice asynchrony affects the prominence of two key types of neuronal multisensory responses: enhancement or suppression. Our findings show a three-way association between temporal delays in audiovisual communication signals, phase-resetting of ongoing oscillations, and the sign of multisensory responses. The results reveal how natural onset asynchronies in cross-sensory inputs regulate network oscillations and neuronal excitability in the voice-sensitive cortex of macaques, a suggested animal model for human voice areas. These findings also advance predictions on the impact of multisensory input on neuronal processes in face areas and other brain regions.	\N	\N
25948269	Sensory processing involves identification of stimulus features, but also integration with the surrounding sensory and cognitive context. Previous work in animals and humans has shown fine-scale sensitivity to context in the form of learned knowledge about the statistics of the sensory environment, including relative probabilities of discrete units in a stream of sequential auditory input. These statistics are a defining characteristic of one of the most important sequential signals humans encounter: speech. For speech, extensive exposure to a language tunes listeners to the statistics of sound sequences. To address how speech sequence statistics are neurally encoded, we used high-resolution direct cortical recordings from human lateral superior temporal cortex as subjects listened to words and nonwords with varying transition probabilities between sound segments. In addition to their sensitivity to acoustic features (including contextual features, such as coarticulation), we found that neural responses dynamically encoded the language-level probability of both preceding and upcoming speech sounds. Transition probability first negatively modulated neural responses, followed by positive modulation of neural responses, consistent with coordinated predictive and retrospective recognition processes, respectively. Furthermore, transition probability encoding was different for real English words compared with nonwords, providing evidence for online interactions with high-order linguistic knowledge. These results demonstrate that sensory processing of deeply learned stimuli involves integrating physical stimulus features with their contextual sequential structure. Despite not being consciously aware of phoneme sequence statistics, listeners use this information to process spoken input and to link low-level acoustic representations with linguistic information about word identity and meaning.	\N	\N
22803512	Existing 67-channel event-related potentials, obtained during recognition and working memory paradigms with words or faces, were used to examine early visual processing in schizophrenia patients prone to auditory hallucinations (AH, n = 26) or not (NH, n = 49) and healthy controls (HC, n = 46). Current source density (CSD) transforms revealed distinct, strongly left- (words) or right-lateralized (faces; N170) inferior-temporal N1 sinks (150 ms) in each group. N1 was quantified by temporal PCA of peak-adjusted CSDs. For words and faces in both paradigms, N1 was substantially reduced in AH compared with NH and HC, who did not differ from each other. The difference in N1 between AH and NH was not due to overall symptom severity or performance accuracy, with both groups showing comparable memory deficits. Our findings extend prior reports of reduced auditory N1 in AH, suggesting a broader early perceptual integration deficit that is not limited to the auditory modality.	\N	\N
25231612	Atypical medial olivocochlear (MOC) feedback from brain stem to cochlea has been proposed to play a role in tinnitus, but even well-constructed tests of this idea have yielded inconsistent results. In the present study, it was hypothesized that low sound tolerance (mild to moderate hyperacusis), which can accompany tinnitus or occur on its own, might contribute to the inconsistency. Sound-level tolerance (SLT) was assessed in subjects (all men) with clinically normal or near-normal thresholds to form threshold-, age-, and sex-matched groups: 1) no tinnitus/high SLT, 2) no tinnitus/low SLT, 3) tinnitus/high SLT, and 4) tinnitus/low SLT. MOC function was measured from the ear canal as the change in magnitude of distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAE) elicited by broadband noise presented to the contralateral ear. The noise reduced DPOAE magnitude in all groups ("contralateral suppression"), but significantly more reduction occurred in groups with tinnitus and/or low SLT, indicating hyperresponsiveness of the MOC system compared with the group with no tinnitus/high SLT. The results suggest hyperresponsiveness of the interneurons of the MOC system residing in the cochlear nucleus and/or MOC neurons themselves. The present data, combined with previous human and animal data, indicate that neural pathways involving every major division of the cochlear nucleus manifest hyperactivity and/or hyperresponsiveness in tinnitus and/or low SLT. The overactivation may develop in each pathway separately. However, a more parsimonious hypothesis is that top-down neuromodulation is the driving force behind ubiquitous overactivation of the auditory brain stem and may correspond to attentional spotlighting on the auditory domain in tinnitus and hyperacusis.	\N	\N
21909378	Speech is the most important form of human communication but ambient sounds and competing talkers often degrade its acoustics. Fortunately the brain can use visual information, especially its highly precise spatial information, to improve speech comprehension in noisy environments. Previous studies have demonstrated that audiovisual integration depends strongly on spatiotemporal factors. However, some integrative phenomena such as McGurk interference persist even with gross spatial disparities, suggesting that spatial alignment is not necessary for robust integration of audiovisual place-of-articulation cues. It is therefore unclear how speech-cues interact with audiovisual spatial integration mechanisms. Here, we combine two well established psychophysical phenomena, the McGurk effect and the ventriloquist's illusion, to explore this dependency. Our results demonstrate that conflicting spatial cues may not interfere with audiovisual integration of speech, but conflicting speech-cues can impede integration in space. This suggests a direct but asymmetrical influence between ventral 'what' and dorsal 'where' pathways.	\N	\N
22390292	Human multisensory systems are known to bind inputs from the different sensory modalities into a unified percept, a process that leads to measurable behavioral benefits. This integrative process can be observed through multisensory illusions, including the McGurk effect and the sound-induced flash illusion, both of which demonstrate the ability of one sensory modality to modulate perception in a second modality. Such multisensory integration is highly dependent upon the temporal relationship of the different sensory inputs, with perceptual binding occurring within a limited range of asynchronies known as the temporal binding window (TBW). Previous studies have shown that this window is highly variable across individuals, but it is unclear how these variations in the TBW relate to an individual's ability to integrate multisensory cues. Here we provide evidence linking individual differences in multisensory temporal processes to differences in the individual's audiovisual integration of illusory stimuli. Our data provide strong evidence that the temporal processing of multiple sensory signals and the merging of multiple signals into a single, unified perception, are highly related. Specifically, the width of right side of an individuals' TBW, where the auditory stimulus follows the visual, is significantly correlated with the strength of illusory percepts, as indexed via both an increase in the strength of binding synchronous sensory signals and in an improvement in correctly dissociating asynchronous signals. These findings are discussed in terms of their possible neurobiological basis, relevance to the development of sensory integration, and possible importance for clinical conditions in which there is growing evidence that multisensory integration is compromised.	\N	\N
23664001	The sight and sound of a person speaking or a ball bouncing may seem simultaneous, but their corresponding neural signals are spread out over time as they arrive at different multisensory brain sites. How subjective timing relates to such neural timing remains a fundamental neuroscientific and philosophical puzzle. A dominant assumption is that temporal coherence is achieved by sensory resynchronisation or recalibration across asynchronous brain events. This assumption is easily confirmed by estimating subjective audiovisual timing for groups of subjects, which is on average similar across different measures and stimuli, and approximately veridical. But few studies have examined normal and pathological individual differences in such measures. Case PH, with lesions in pons and basal ganglia, hears people speak before seeing their lips move. Temporal order judgements (TOJs) confirmed this: voices had to lag lip-movements (by ∼200 msec) to seem synchronous to PH. Curiously, voices had to lead lips (also by ∼200 msec) to maximise the McGurk illusion (a measure of audiovisual speech integration). On average across these measures, PH's timing was therefore still veridical. Age-matched control participants showed similar discrepancies. Indeed, normal individual differences in TOJ and McGurk timing correlated negatively: subjects needing an auditory lag for subjective simultaneity needed an auditory lead for maximal McGurk, and vice versa. This generalised to the Stream-Bounce illusion. Such surprising antagonism seems opposed to good sensory resynchronisation, yet average timing across tasks was still near-veridical. Our findings reveal remarkable disunity of audiovisual timing within and between subjects. To explain this we propose that the timing of audiovisual signals within different brain mechanisms is perceived relative to the average timing across mechanisms. Such renormalisation fully explains the curious antagonistic relationship between disparate timing estimates in PH and healthy participants, and how they can still perceive the timing of external events correctly, on average.	\N	\N
24974346	We investigated whether visual speech fills in non-intact auditory speech (excised consonant onsets) in typically developing children from 4 to 14 years of age. Stimuli with the excised auditory onsets were presented in the audiovisual (AV) and auditory-only (AO) modes. A visual speech fill-in effect occurs when listeners experience hearing the same non-intact auditory stimulus (e.g., /-b/ag) as different depending on the presence/absence of visual speech such as hearing /bag/ in the AV mode but hearing /ag/ in the AO mode. We quantified the visual speech fill-in effect by the difference in the number of correct consonant onset responses between the modes. We found that easy visual speech cues /b/ provided greater filling in than difficult cues /g/. Only older children benefited from difficult visual speech cues, whereas all children benefited from easy visual speech cues, although 4- and 5-year-olds did not benefit as much as older children. To explore task demands, we compared results on our new task with those on the McGurk task. The influence of visual speech was uniquely associated with age and vocabulary abilities for the visual speech fill--in effect but was uniquely associated with speechreading skills for the McGurk effect. This dissociation implies that visual speech--as processed by children-is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon underpinned by heterogeneous abilities. These results emphasize that children perceive a speaker's utterance rather than the auditory stimulus per se. In children, as in adults, there is more to speech perception than meets the ear.	\N	\N
24996043	The brain improves speech processing through the integration of audiovisual (AV) signals. Situations involving AV speech integration may be crudely dichotomized into those where auditory and visual inputs contain (1) equivalent, complementary signals (validating AV speech) or (2) inconsistent, different signals (conflicting AV speech). This simple framework may allow the systematic examination of broad commonalities and differences between AV neural processes engaged by various experimental paradigms frequently used to study AV speech integration. We conducted an activation likelihood estimation metaanalysis of 22 functional imaging studies comprising 33 experiments, 311 subjects, and 347 foci examining "conflicting" versus "validating" AV speech. Experimental paradigms included content congruency, timing synchrony, and perceptual measures, such as the McGurk effect or synchrony judgments, across AV speech stimulus types (sublexical to sentence). Colocalization of conflicting AV speech experiments revealed consistency across at least two contrast types (e.g., synchrony and congruency) in a network of dorsal stream regions in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. There was consistency across all contrast types (synchrony, congruency, and percept) in the bilateral posterior superior/middle temporal cortex. Although fewer studies were available, validating AV speech experiments were localized to other regions, such as ventral stream visual areas in the occipital and inferior temporal cortex. These results suggest that while equivalent, complementary AV speech signals may evoke activity in regions related to the corroboration of sensory input, conflicting AV speech signals recruit widespread dorsal stream areas likely involved in the resolution of conflicting sensory signals.	\N	\N
20541597	Auditory perceptual 'restoration' occurs when the auditory system restores an occluded or masked sound of interest. Behavioral work on auditory restoration in humans began over 50 years ago using it to model a noisy environmental scene with competing sounds. It has become clear that not only humans experience auditory restoration: restoration has been broadly conserved in many species. Behavioral studies in humans and animals provide a necessary foundation to link the insights being obtained from human EEG and fMRI to those from animal neurophysiology. The aggregate of data resulting from multiple approaches across species has begun to clarify the neuronal bases of auditory restoration. Different types of neural responses supporting restoration have been found, supportive of multiple mechanisms working within a species. Yet a general principle has emerged that responses correlated with restoration mimic the response that would have been given to the uninterrupted sound of interest. Using the same technology to study different species will help us to better harness animal models of 'auditory scene analysis' to clarify the conserved neural mechanisms shaping the perceptual organization of sound and to advance strategies to improve hearing in natural environmental settings.	\N	\N
20826671	Processing of complex acoustic scenes depends critically on the temporal integration of sensory information as sounds evolve naturally over time. It has been previously speculated that this process is guided by both innate mechanisms of temporal processing in the auditory system, as well as top-down mechanisms of attention and possibly other schema-based processes. In an effort to unravel the neural underpinnings of these processes and their role in scene analysis, we combine magnetoencephalography (MEG) with behavioral measures in humans in the context of polyrhythmic tone sequences. While maintaining unchanged sensory input, we manipulate subjects' attention to one of two competing rhythmic streams in the same sequence. The results reveal that the neural representation of the attended rhythm is significantly enhanced in both its steady-state power and spatial phase coherence relative to its unattended state, closely correlating with its perceptual detectability for each listener. Interestingly, the data reveal a differential efficiency of rhythmic rates of the order of few hertz during the streaming process, closely following known neural and behavioral measures of temporal modulation sensitivity in the auditory system. These findings establish a direct link between known temporal modulation tuning in the auditory system (particularly at the level of auditory cortex) and the temporal integration of perceptual features in a complex acoustic scene, while mediated by processes of attention.	\N	\N
20844143	Segregation of concurrent sounds in complex acoustic environments is a fundamental feature of auditory scene analysis. A powerful cue used by the auditory system to segregate concurrent sounds, such as speakers' voices at a cocktail party, is inharmonicity. This can be demonstrated when a component of a harmonic complex tone is perceived as a separate tone "popping out" from the complex as a whole when it is sufficiently mistuned from its harmonic value. The neural bases of perceptual "pop out" of mistuned harmonics are unclear. We recorded multiunit activity from primary auditory cortex (A1) of behaving monkeys elicited by harmonic complex tones that were either "in tune" or that contained a mistuned third harmonic set at the best frequency of the neural populations. Responses to mistuned sounds were enhanced relative to responses to "in-tune" sounds, thus correlating with the enhanced perceptual salience of the mistuned component. Consistent with human psychophysics of "pop out," response enhancements increased with the degree of mistuning, were maximal for neural populations tuned to the frequency of the mistuned component, and were not observed under comparable stimulus conditions that do not elicit perceptual "pop out." Mistuning was also associated with changes in neuronal temporal response patterns phase locked to "beats" in the stimuli. Intracortical auditory evoked potentials paralleled noninvasive neurophysiological correlates of perceptual "pop out" in humans, further augmenting the translational relevance of the results. Findings suggest two complementary neural mechanisms for "pop out," based on the detection of local differences in activation level or coherence of temporal response patterns across A1.	\N	\N
20975559	Analysis of the auditory environment, source identification and vocal communication all require efficient brain mechanisms for disambiguating, representing and understanding complex natural sounds as 'auditory objects'. Failure of these mechanisms leads to a diverse spectrum of clinical deficits. Here we review current evidence concerning the phenomenology, mechanisms and brain substrates of auditory agnosias and related disorders of auditory object processing. Analysis of lesions causing auditory object deficits has revealed certain broad anatomical correlations: deficient parsing of the auditory scene is associated with lesions involving the parieto-temporal junction, while selective disorders of sound recognition occur with more anterior temporal lobe or extra-temporal damage. Distributed neural networks have been increasingly implicated in the pathogenesis of such disorders as developmental dyslexia, congenital amusia and tinnitus. Auditory category deficits may arise from defective interaction of spectrotemporal encoding and executive and mnestic processes. Dedicated brain mechanisms are likely to process specialized sound objects such as voices and melodies. Emerging empirical evidence suggests a clinically relevant, hierarchical and modular neuropsychological model of auditory object processing that provides a framework for understanding auditory agnosias and makes specific predictions to direct future work.	\N	\N
21196054	Humans and other animals can attend to one of multiple sounds and follow it selectively over time. The neural underpinnings of this perceptual feat remain mysterious. Some studies have concluded that sounds are heard as separate streams when they activate well-separated populations of central auditory neurons, and that this process is largely pre-attentive. Here, we argue instead that stream formation depends primarily on temporal coherence between responses that encode various features of a sound source. Furthermore, we postulate that only when attention is directed towards a particular feature (e.g. pitch) do all other temporally coherent features of that source (e.g. timbre and location) become bound together as a stream that is segregated from the incoherent features of other sources.	\N	\N
21209201	Auditory figure-ground segregation, listeners' ability to selectively hear out a sound of interest from a background of competing sounds, is a fundamental aspect of scene analysis. In contrast to the disordered acoustic environment we experience during everyday listening, most studies of auditory segregation have used relatively simple, temporally regular signals. We developed a new figure-ground stimulus that incorporates stochastic variation of the figure and background that captures the rich spectrotemporal complexity of natural acoustic scenes. Figure and background signals overlap in spectrotemporal space, but vary in the statistics of fluctuation, such that the only way to extract the figure is by integrating the patterns over time and frequency. Our behavioral results demonstrate that human listeners are remarkably sensitive to the appearance of such figures. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment, aimed at investigating preattentive, stimulus-driven, auditory segregation mechanisms, naive subjects listened to these stimuli while performing an irrelevant task. Results demonstrate significant activations in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the superior temporal sulcus related to bottom-up, stimulus-driven figure-ground decomposition. We did not observe any significant activation in the primary auditory cortex. Our results support a role for automatic, bottom-up mechanisms in the IPS in mediating stimulus-driven, auditory figure-ground segregation, which is consistent with accumulating evidence implicating the IPS in structuring sensory input and perceptual organization.	\N	\N
21355664	The effect of context on the identification of common environmental sounds (e.g., dogs barking or cars honking) was tested by embedding them in familiar auditory background scenes (street ambience, restaurants). Initial results with subjects trained on both the scenes and the sounds to be identified showed a significant advantage of about five percentage points better accuracy for sounds that were contextually incongruous with the background scene (e.g., a rooster crowing in a hospital). Further studies with naive (untrained) listeners showed that this incongruency advantage (IA) is level-dependent: there is no advantage for incongruent sounds lower than a Sound/Scene ratio (So/Sc) of -7.5 dB, but there is about five percentage points better accuracy for sounds with greater So/Sc. Testing a new group of trained listeners on a larger corpus of sounds and scenes showed that the effect is robust and not confined to a specific stimulus set. Modeling using spectral-temporal measures showed that neither analyses based on acoustic features, nor semantic assessments of sound-scene congruency can account for this difference, indicating the IA is a complex effect, possibly arising from the sensitivity of the auditory system to new and unexpected events, under particular listening conditions.	\N	\N
21387016	Important sounds can be easily missed or misidentified in the presence of extraneous noise. We describe an auditory illusion in which a continuous ongoing tone becomes inaudible during a brief, non-masking noise burst more than one octave away, which is unexpected given the frequency resolution of human hearing. Participants strongly susceptible to this illusory discontinuity did not perceive illusory auditory continuity (in which a sound subjectively continues during a burst of masking noise) when the noises were short, yet did so at longer noise durations. Participants who were not prone to illusory discontinuity showed robust early electroencephalographic responses at 40-66 ms after noise burst onset, whereas those prone to the illusion lacked these early responses. These data suggest that short-latency neural responses to auditory scene components reflect subsequent individual differences in the parsing of auditory scenes.	\N	\N
21428515	The precedence effect (PE) describes the ability to localize a direct, leading sound correctly when its delayed copy (lag) is present, though not separately audible. The relative contribution of binaural cues in the temporal fine structure (TFS) of lead-lag signals was compared to that of interaural level differences (ILDs) and interaural time differences (ITDs) carried in the envelope. In a localization dominance paradigm participants indicated the spatial location of lead-lag stimuli processed with a binaural noise-band vocoder whose noise carriers introduced random TFS. The PE appeared for noise bursts of 10 ms duration, indicating dominance of envelope information. However, for three test words the PE often failed even at short lead-lag delays, producing two images, one toward the lead and one toward the lag. When interaural correlation in the carrier was increased, the images appeared more centered, but often remained split. Although previous studies suggest dominance of TFS cues, no image is lateralized in accord with the ITD in the TFS. An interpretation in the context of auditory scene analysis is proposed: By replacing the TFS with that of noise the auditory system loses the ability to fuse lead and lag into one object, and thus to show the PE.	\N	\N
21945789	This study investigates how acoustic change-events are represented in a listener's brain when attention is strongly focused elsewhere. Using magneto-encephalography (MEG) we examine whether cortical responses to different kinds of changes in stimulus statistics are similarly influenced by attentional load, and whether the processing of such acoustic changes in auditory cortex depends on modality-specific or general processing resources. We investigated these issues by examining cortical responses to two basic forms of acoustic transitions: (1) Violations of a simple acoustic pattern and (2) the emergence of a regular pattern from a random one. To simulate a complex sensory environment, these patterns were presented concurrently with streams of auditory and visual decoys. Listeners were required to perform tasks of high- and low-attentional-load in these domains. Results demonstrate that while auditory attentional-load does not influence the cortical representation of simple violations of regularity, it significantly reduces the magnitude of responses to the emergence of a regular acoustic pattern, suggesting a fundamentally skewed representation of the unattended auditory scene. In contrast, visual attentional-load had no effect on either transition response, consistent with the hypothesis that processing resources necessary for change detection are modality-specific.	\N	\N
22036957	Parsing of sound sources in the auditory environment or 'auditory scene analysis' is a computationally demanding cognitive operation that is likely to be vulnerable to the neurodegenerative process in Alzheimer's disease. However, little information is available concerning auditory scene analysis in Alzheimer's disease. Here we undertook a detailed neuropsychological and neuroanatomical characterization of auditory scene analysis in a cohort of 21 patients with clinically typical Alzheimer's disease versus age-matched healthy control subjects. We designed a novel auditory dual stream paradigm based on synthetic sound sequences to assess two key generic operations in auditory scene analysis (object segregation and grouping) in relation to simpler auditory perceptual, task and general neuropsychological factors. In order to assess neuroanatomical associations of performance on auditory scene analysis tasks, structural brain magnetic resonance imaging data from the patient cohort were analysed using voxel-based morphometry. Compared with healthy controls, patients with Alzheimer's disease had impairments of auditory scene analysis, and segregation and grouping operations were comparably affected. Auditory scene analysis impairments in Alzheimer's disease were not wholly attributable to simple auditory perceptual or task factors; however, the between-group difference relative to healthy controls was attenuated after accounting for non-verbal (visuospatial) working memory capacity. These findings demonstrate that clinically typical Alzheimer's disease is associated with a generic deficit of auditory scene analysis. Neuroanatomical associations of auditory scene analysis performance were identified in posterior cortical areas including the posterior superior temporal lobes and posterior cingulate. This work suggests a basis for understanding a class of clinical symptoms in Alzheimer's disease and for delineating cognitive mechanisms that mediate auditory scene analysis both in health and in neurodegenerative disease.	\N	\N
22280585	Despite many studies investigating auditory spatial impressions in rooms, few have addressed the impact of simultaneous visual cues on localization and the perception of spaciousness. The current research presents an immersive audiovisual environment in which participants were instructed to make auditory width judgments in dynamic bi-modal settings. The results of these psychophysical tests suggest the importance of congruent audio visual presentation to the ecological interpretation of an auditory scene. Supporting data were accumulated in five rooms of ascending volumes and varying reverberation times. Participants were given an audiovisual matching test in which they were instructed to pan the auditory width of a performing ensemble to a varying set of audio and visual cues in rooms. Results show that both auditory and visual factors affect the collected responses and that the two sensory modalities coincide in distinct interactions. The greatest differences between the panned audio stimuli given a fixed visual width were found in the physical space with the largest volume and the greatest source distance. These results suggest, in this specific instance, a predominance of auditory cues in the spatial analysis of the bi-modal scene.	\N	\N
22371616	Auditory streaming and visual plaids have been used extensively to study perceptual organization in each modality. Both stimuli can produce bistable alternations between grouped (one object) and split (two objects) interpretations. They also share two peculiar features: (i) at the onset of stimulus presentation, organization starts with a systematic bias towards the grouped interpretation; (ii) this first percept has 'inertia'; it lasts longer than the subsequent ones. As a result, the probability of forming different objects builds up over time, a landmark of both behavioural and neurophysiological data on auditory streaming. Here we show that first percept bias and inertia are independent. In plaid perception, inertia is due to a depth ordering ambiguity in the transparent (split) interpretation that makes plaid perception tristable rather than bistable: experimental manipulations removing the depth ambiguity suppressed inertia. However, the first percept bias persisted. We attempted a similar manipulation for auditory streaming by introducing level differences between streams, to bias which stream would appear in the perceptual foreground. Here both inertia and first percept bias persisted. We thus argue that the critical common feature of the onset of perceptual organization is the grouping bias, which may be related to the transition from temporally/spatially local to temporally/spatially global computation.	\N	\N
22371619	Recent studies have shown that auditory scene analysis involves distributed neural sites below, in, and beyond the auditory cortex (AC). However, it remains unclear what role each site plays and how they interact in the formation and selection of auditory percepts. We addressed this issue through perceptual multistability phenomena, namely, spontaneous perceptual switching in auditory streaming (AS) for a sequence of repeated triplet tones, and perceptual changes for a repeated word, known as verbal transformations (VTs). An event-related fMRI analysis revealed brain activity timelocked to perceptual switching in the cerebellum for AS, in frontal areas for VT, and the AC and thalamus for both. The results suggest that motor-based prediction, produced by neural networks outside the auditory system, plays essential roles in the segmentation of acoustic sequences both in AS and VT. The frequency of perceptual switching was determined by a balance between the activation of two sites, which are proposed to be involved in exploring novel perceptual organization and stabilizing current perceptual organization. The effect of the gene polymorphism of catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) on individual variations in switching frequency suggests that the balance of exploration and stabilization is modulated by catecholamines such as dopamine and noradrenalin. These mechanisms would support the noteworthy flexibility of auditory scene analysis.	\N	\N
22371621	Auditory stream segregation involves linking temporally separate acoustic events into one or more coherent sequences. For any non-trivial sequence of sounds, many alternative descriptions can be formed, only one or very few of which emerge in awareness at any time. Evidence from studies showing bi-/multistability in auditory streaming suggest that some, perhaps many of the alternative descriptions are represented in the brain in parallel and that they continuously vie for conscious perception. Here, based on a predictive coding view, we consider the nature of these sound representations and how they compete with each other. Predictive processing helps to maintain perceptual stability by signalling the continuation of previously established patterns as well as the emergence of new sound sources. It also provides a measure of how well each of the competing representations describes the current acoustic scene. This account of auditory stream segregation has been tested on perceptual data obtained in the auditory streaming paradigm.	\N	\N
22612172	Observers often remember a scene as containing information that was not presented but that would have likely been located just beyond the observed boundaries of the scene. This effect is called boundary extension (BE; e.g., Intraub & Richardson, 1989). Previous studies have observed BE in memory for visual and haptic stimuli, and the present experiments examined whether BE occurred in memory for auditory stimuli (prose, music). Experiments 1 and 2 varied the amount of auditory content to be remembered. BE was not observed, but when auditory targets contained more content, boundary restriction (BR) occurred. Experiment 3 presented auditory stimuli with less content and BR also occurred. In Experiment 4, white noise was added to stimuli with less content to equalize the durations of auditory stimuli, and BR still occurred. Experiments 5 and 6 presented trained stories and popular music, and BR still occurred. This latter finding ruled out the hypothesis that the lack of BE in Experiments 1-4 reflected a lack of familiarity with the stimuli. Overall, memory for auditory content exhibited BR rather than BE, and this pattern was stronger if auditory stimuli contained more content. Implications for the understanding of general perceptual processing and directions for future research are discussed.	\N	\N
22753470	A visual scene is perceived in terms of visual objects. Similar ideas have been proposed for the analogous case of auditory scene analysis, although their hypothesized neural underpinnings have not yet been established. Here, we address this question by recording from subjects selectively listening to one of two competing speakers, either of different or the same sex, using magnetoencephalography. Individual neural representations are seen for the speech of the two speakers, with each being selectively phase locked to the rhythm of the corresponding speech stream and from which can be exclusively reconstructed the temporal envelope of that speech stream. The neural representation of the attended speech dominates responses (with latency near 100 ms) in posterior auditory cortex. Furthermore, when the intensity of the attended and background speakers is separately varied over an 8-dB range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker but not to the intensity of the background speaker, suggesting an object-level intensity gain control. In summary, these results indicate that concurrent auditory objects, even if spectrotemporally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are neurally encoded individually in auditory cortex and emerge as fundamental representational units for top-down attentional modulation and bottom-up neural adaptation.	\N	\N
22829899	In natural environments, sensory information is embedded in temporally contiguous streams of events. This is typically the case when seeing and listening to a speaker or when engaged in scene analysis. In such contexts, two mechanisms are needed to single out and build a reliable representation of an event (or object): the temporal parsing of information and the selection of relevant information in the stream. It has previously been shown that rhythmic events naturally build temporal expectations that improve sensory processing at predictable points in time. Here, we asked to which extent temporal regularities can improve the detection and identification of events across sensory modalities. To do so, we used a dynamic visual conjunction search task accompanied by auditory cues synchronized or not with the color change of the target (horizontal or vertical bar). Sounds synchronized with the visual target improved search efficiency for temporal rates below 1.4 Hz but did not affect efficiency above that stimulation rate. Desynchronized auditory cues consistently impaired visual search below 3.3 Hz. Our results are interpreted in the context of the Dynamic Attending Theory: specifically, we suggest that a cognitive operation structures events in time irrespective of the sensory modality of input. Our results further support and specify recent neurophysiological findings by showing strong temporal selectivity for audiovisual integration in the auditory-driven improvement of visual search efficiency.	\N	\N
22844509	In auditory scene analysis, population separation and temporal coherence have been proposed to explain how auditory features are grouped together and streamed over time. The present study investigated whether these two theories can be applied to tactile streaming and whether temporal coherence theory can be applied to crossmodal streaming. The results show that synchrony detection between two tones/taps at different frequencies/locations became difficult when one of the tones/taps was embedded in a perceptual stream. While the taps applied to the same location were streamed over time, the taps applied to different locations were not. This observation suggests that tactile stream formation can be explained by population-separation theory. On the other hand, temporally coherent auditory stimuli at different frequencies were streamed over time, but temporally coherent tactile stimuli applied to different locations were not. When there was within-modality streaming, temporally coherent auditory stimuli and tactile stimuli were not streamed over time, either. This observation suggests the limitation of temporal coherence theory when it is applied to perceptual grouping over time.	\N	\N
23029426	The ability to detect sudden changes in the environment is critical for survival. Hearing is hypothesized to play a major role in this process by serving as an "early warning device," rapidly directing attention to new events. Here, we investigate listeners' sensitivity to changes in complex acoustic scenes-what makes certain events "pop-out" and grab attention while others remain unnoticed? We use artificial "scenes" populated by multiple pure-tone components, each with a unique frequency and amplitude modulation rate. Importantly, these scenes lack semantic attributes, which may have confounded previous studies, thus allowing us to probe low-level processes involved in auditory change perception. Our results reveal a striking difference between "appear" and "disappear" events. Listeners are remarkably tuned to object appearance: change detection and identification performance are at ceiling; response times are short, with little effect of scene-size, suggesting a pop-out process. In contrast, listeners have difficulty detecting disappearing objects, even in small scenes: performance rapidly deteriorates with growing scene-size; response times are slow, and even when change is detected, the changed component is rarely successfully identified. We also measured change detection performance when a noise or silent gap was inserted at the time of change or when the scene was interrupted by a distractor that occurred at the time of change but did not mask any scene elements. Gaps adversely affected the processing of item appearance but not disappearance. However, distractors reduced both appearance and disappearance detection. Together, our results suggest a role for neural adaptation and sensitivity to transients in the process of auditory change detection, similar to what has been demonstrated for visual change detection. Importantly, listeners consistently performed better for item addition (relative to deletion) across all scene interruptions used, suggesting a robust perceptual representation of item appearance.	\N	\N
23145699	Listeners are good at attending to one auditory stream in a crowded environment. However, is there an upper limit of streams present in an auditory scene at which this selective attention breaks down? Here, participants were asked to attend one stream of spoken letters amidst other letter streams. In half of the trials, an initial primer was played, cueing subjects to the sound configuration. Results indicate that performance increases with token repetitions. Priming provided a performance benefit, suggesting that stream selection, not formation, is the bottleneck associated with attention in an overcrowded scene. Results' implications for brain-computer interfaces are discussed.	\N	\N
23423817	A variety of perceptual correspondences between auditory and visual features have been reported, but few studies have investigated how rhythm, an auditory feature defined purely by dynamics relevant to speech and music, interacts with visual features. Here, we demonstrate a novel crossmodal association between auditory rhythm and visual clutter. Participants were shown a variety of visual scenes from diverse categories and asked to report the auditory rhythm that perceptually matched each scene by adjusting the rate of amplitude modulation (AM) of a sound. Participants matched each scene to a specific AM rate with surprising consistency. A spatial-frequency analysis showed that scenes with greater contrast energy in midrange spatial frequencies were matched to faster AM rates. Bandpass-filtering the scenes indicated that greater contrast energy in this spatial-frequency range was associated with an abundance of object boundaries and contours, suggesting that participants matched more cluttered scenes to faster AM rates. Consistent with this hypothesis, AM-rate matches were strongly correlated with perceived clutter. Additional results indicated that both AM-rate matches and perceived clutter depend on object-based (cycles per object) rather than retinal (cycles per degree of visual angle) spatial frequency. Taken together, these results suggest a systematic crossmodal association between auditory rhythm, representing density in the temporal domain, and visual clutter, representing object-based density in the spatial domain. This association may allow for the use of auditory rhythm to influence how visual clutter is perceived and attended.	\N	\N
23516340	Many sound sources can only be recognised from the pattern of sounds they emit, and not from the individual sound events that make up their emission sequences. Auditory scene analysis addresses the difficult task of interpreting the sound world in terms of an unknown number of discrete sound sources (causes) with possibly overlapping signals, and therefore of associating each event with the appropriate source. There are potentially many different ways in which incoming events can be assigned to different causes, which means that the auditory system has to choose between them. This problem has been studied for many years using the auditory streaming paradigm, and recently it has become apparent that instead of making one fixed perceptual decision, given sufficient time, auditory perception switches back and forth between the alternatives-a phenomenon known as perceptual bi- or multi-stability. We propose a new model of auditory scene analysis at the core of which is a process that seeks to discover predictable patterns in the ongoing sound sequence. Representations of predictable fragments are created on the fly, and are maintained, strengthened or weakened on the basis of their predictive success, and conflict with other representations. Auditory perceptual organisation emerges spontaneously from the nature of the competition between these representations. We present detailed comparisons between the model simulations and data from an auditory streaming experiment, and show that the model accounts for many important findings, including: the emergence of, and switching between, alternative organisations; the influence of stimulus parameters on perceptual dominance, switching rate and perceptual phase durations; and the build-up of auditory streaming. The principal contribution of the model is to show that a two-stage process of pattern discovery and competition between incompatible patterns can account for both the contents (perceptual organisations) and the dynamics of human perception in auditory streaming.	\N	\N
23527271	The auditory system creates a neuronal representation of the acoustic world based on spectral and temporal cues present at the listener's ears, including cues that potentially signal the locations of sounds. Discrimination of concurrent sounds from multiple sources is especially challenging. The current study is part of an effort to better understand the neuronal mechanisms governing this process, which has been termed "auditory scene analysis". In particular, we are interested in spatial release from masking by which spatial cues can segregate signals from other competing sounds, thereby overcoming the tendency of overlapping spectra and/or common temporal envelopes to fuse signals with maskers. We studied detection of pulsed tones in free-field conditions in the presence of concurrent multi-tone non-speech maskers. In "energetic" masking conditions, in which the frequencies of maskers fell within the ± 1/3-octave band containing the signal, spatial release from masking at low frequencies (~600 Hz) was found to be about 10 dB. In contrast, negligible spatial release from energetic masking was seen at high frequencies (~4000 Hz). We observed robust spatial release from masking in broadband "informational" masking conditions, in which listeners could confuse signal with masker even though there was no spectral overlap. Substantial spatial release was observed in conditions in which the onsets of the signal and all masker components were synchronized, and spatial release was even greater under asynchronous conditions. Spatial cues limited to high frequencies (>1500 Hz), which could have included interaural level differences and the better-ear effect, produced only limited improvement in signal detection. Substantially greater improvement was seen for low-frequency sounds, for which interaural time differences are the dominant spatial cue.	\N	\N
23691185	Listening to and understanding people in a "cocktail-party situation" is a remarkable feature of the human auditory system. Here we investigated the neural correlates of the ability to localize a particular sound among others in an acoustically cluttered environment with healthy subjects. In a sound localization task, five different natural sounds were presented from five virtual spatial locations during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Activity related to auditory stream segregation was revealed in posterior superior temporal gyrus bilaterally, anterior insula, supplementary motor area, and frontoparietal network. Moreover, the results indicated critical roles of left planum temporale in extracting the sound of interest among acoustical distracters and the precuneus in orienting spatial attention to the target sound. We hypothesized that the left-sided lateralization of the planum temporale activation is related to the higher specialization of the left hemisphere for analysis of spectrotemporal sound features. Furthermore, the precuneus - a brain area known to be involved in the computation of spatial coordinates across diverse frames of reference for reaching to objects - seems to be also a crucial area for accurately determining locations of auditory targets in an acoustically complex scene of multiple sound sources. The precuneus thus may not only be involved in visuo-motor processes, but may also subserve related functions in the auditory modality.	\N	\N
23825404	In a complex auditory scene, a "cocktail party" for example, listeners can disentangle multiple competing sequences of sounds. A recent psychophysical study in our laboratory demonstrated a robust spatial component of stream segregation showing ∼8° acuity. Here, we recorded single- and multiple-neuron responses from the primary auditory cortex of anesthetized cats while presenting interleaved sound sequences that human listeners would experience as segregated streams. Sequences of broadband sounds alternated between pairs of locations. Neurons synchronized preferentially to sounds from one or the other location, thereby segregating competing sound sequences. Neurons favoring one source location or the other tended to aggregate within the cortex, suggestive of modular organization. The spatial acuity of stream segregation was as narrow as ∼10°, markedly sharper than the broad spatial tuning for single sources that is well known in the literature. Spatial sensitivity was sharpest among neurons having high characteristic frequencies. Neural stream segregation was predicted well by a parameter-free model that incorporated single-source spatial sensitivity and a measured forward-suppression term. We found that the forward suppression was not due to post discharge adaptation in the cortex and, therefore, must have arisen in the subcortical pathway or at the level of thalamocortical synapses. A linear-classifier analysis of single-neuron responses to rhythmic stimuli like those used in our psychophysical study yielded thresholds overlapping those of human listeners. Overall, the results indicate that the ascending auditory system does the work of segregating auditory streams, bringing them to discrete modules in the cortex for selection by top-down processes.	\N	\N
23926291	Previously, Gygi and Shafiro (2011) found that when environmental sounds are semantically incongruent with the background scene (e.g., horse galloping in a restaurant), they can be identified more accurately by young normal-hearing listeners (YNH) than sounds congruent with the scene (e.g., horse galloping at a racetrack). This study investigated how age and high-frequency audibility affect this Incongruency Advantage (IA) effect. In Experiments 1a and 1b, elderly listeners ( N = 18 for 1a; N = 10 for 1b) with age-appropriate hearing (EAH) were tested on target sounds and auditory scenes in 5 sound-to-scene ratios (So/Sc) between -3 and -18 dB. Experiment 2 tested 11 YNH on the same sound-scene pairings lowpass-filtered at 4 kHz (YNH-4k). The EAH and YNH-4k groups exhibited an almost identical pattern of significant IA effects, but both were at approximately 3.9 dB higher So/Sc than the previously tested YNH listeners. However, the psychometric functions revealed a shallower slope for EAH listeners compared with YNH listeners for the congruent stimuli only, suggesting a greater difficulty for the EAH listeners in attending to sounds expected to occur in a scene. These findings indicate that semantic relationships between environmental sounds in soundscapes are mediated by both audibility and cognitive factors and suggest a method for dissociating these factors.	\N	\N
24003112	After hearing a tone, the human auditory system becomes more sensitive to similar tones than to other tones. Current auditory models explain this phenomenon by a simple bandpass attention filter. Here, we demonstrate that auditory attention involves multiple pass-bands around octave-related frequencies above and below the cued tone. Intriguingly, this "octave effect" not only occurs for physically presented tones, but even persists for the missing fundamental in complex tones, and for imagined tones. Our results suggest neural interactions combining octave-related frequencies, likely located in nonprimary cortical regions. We speculate that this connectivity scheme evolved from exposure to natural vibrations containing octave-related spectral peaks, e.g., as produced by vocal cords.	\N	\N
24052177	The fundamental perceptual unit in hearing is the 'auditory object'. Similar to visual objects, auditory objects are the computational result of the auditory system's capacity to detect, extract, segregate and group spectrotemporal regularities in the acoustic environment; the multitude of acoustic stimuli around us together form the auditory scene. However, unlike the visual scene, resolving the component objects within the auditory scene crucially depends on their temporal structure. Neural correlates of auditory objects are found throughout the auditory system. However, neural responses do not become correlated with a listener's perceptual reports until the level of the cortex. The roles of different neural structures and the contribution of different cognitive states to the perception of auditory objects are not yet fully understood.	\N	\N
24239869	Perceptual representations of auditory stimuli (i.e., sounds) are derived from the auditory system's ability to segregate and group the spectral, temporal, and spatial features of auditory stimuli-a process called "auditory scene analysis". Psychophysical studies have identified several of the principles and mechanisms that underlie a listener's ability to segregate and group acoustic stimuli. One important psychophysical task that has illuminated many of these principles and mechanisms is the "streaming" task. Despite the wide use of this task to study psychophysical mechanisms of human audition, no studies have explicitly tested the streaming abilities of non-human animals using the standard methodologies employed in human-audition studies. Here, we trained rhesus macaques to participate in the streaming task using methodologies and controls similar to those presented in previous human studies. Overall, we found that the monkeys' behavioral reports were qualitatively consistent with those of human listeners, thus suggesting that this task may be a valuable tool for future neurophysiological studies.	\N	\N
24475030	In our daily lives, auditory stream segregation allows us to differentiate concurrent sound sources and to make sense of the scene we are experiencing. However, a combination of segregation and the concurrent integration of auditory streams is necessary in order to analyze the relationship between streams and thus perceive a coherent auditory scene. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates the relative role and neural underpinnings of these listening strategies in multi-part musical stimuli. We compare a real human performance of a piano duet and a synthetic stimulus of the same duet in a prioritized integrative attention paradigm that required the simultaneous segregation and integration of auditory streams. In so doing, we manipulate the degree to which the attended part of the duet led either structurally (attend melody vs. attend accompaniment) or temporally (asynchronies vs. no asynchronies between parts), and thus the relative contributions of integration and segregation used to make an assessment of the leader-follower relationship. We show that perceptually the relationship between parts is biased towards the conventional structural hierarchy in western music in which the melody generally dominates (leads) the accompaniment. Moreover, the assessment varies as a function of both cognitive load, as shown through difficulty ratings and the interaction of the temporal and the structural relationship factors. Neurally, we see that the temporal relationship between parts, as one important cue for stream segregation, revealed distinct neural activity in the planum temporale. By contrast, integration used when listening to both the temporally separated performance stimulus and the temporally fused synthetic stimulus resulted in activation of the intraparietal sulcus. These results support the hypothesis that the planum temporale and IPS are key structures underlying the mechanisms of segregation and integration of auditory streams, respectively.	\N	\N
24478375	Adaptation to both common and rare sounds has been independently reported in neurophysiological studies using probabilistic stimulus paradigms in small mammals. However, the apparent sensitivity of the mammalian auditory system to the statistics of incoming sound has not yet been generalized to task-related human auditory perception. Here, we show that human listeners selectively adapt to novel sounds within scenes unfolding over minutes. Listeners' performance in an auditory discrimination task remains steady for the most common elements within the scene but, after the first minute, performance improves for distinct and rare (oddball) sound elements, at the expense of rare sounds that are relatively less distinct. Our data provide the first evidence of enhanced coding of oddball sounds in a human auditory discrimination task and suggest the existence of an adaptive mechanism that tracks the long-term statistics of sounds and deploys coding resources accordingly.	\N	\N
24681354	The auditory system is designed to transform acoustic information from low-level sensory representations into perceptual representations. These perceptual representations are the computational result of the auditory system's ability to group and segregate spectral, spatial and temporal regularities in the acoustic environment into stable perceptual units (i.e., sounds or auditory objects). Current evidence suggests that the cortex-specifically, the ventral auditory pathway-is responsible for the computations most closely related to perceptual representations. Here, we discuss how the transformations along the ventral auditory pathway relate to auditory percepts, with special attention paid to the processing of vocalizations and categorization, and explore recent models of how these areas may carry out these computations.	\N	\N
24711409	Human perception, cognition, and action are laced with seemingly arbitrary mappings. In particular, sound has a strong spatial connotation: Sounds are high and low, melodies rise and fall, and pitch systematically biases perceived sound elevation. The origins of such mappings are unknown. Are they the result of physiological constraints, do they reflect natural environmental statistics, or are they truly arbitrary? We recorded natural sounds from the environment, analyzed the elevation-dependent filtering of the outer ear, and measured frequency-dependent biases in human sound localization. We find that auditory scene statistics reveals a clear mapping between frequency and elevation. Perhaps more interestingly, this natural statistical mapping is tightly mirrored in both ear-filtering properties and in perceived sound location. This suggests that both sound localization behavior and ear anatomy are fine-tuned to the statistics of natural auditory scenes, likely providing the basis for the spatial connotation of human hearing.	\N	\N
24788808	This work analyzed the perceptual attributes of natural dynamic audiovisual scenes. We presented thirty participants with 19 natural scenes in a similarity categorization task, followed by a semi-structured interview. The scenes were reproduced with an immersive audiovisual display. Natural scene perception has been studied mainly with unimodal settings, which have identified motion as one of the most salient attributes related to visual scenes, and sound intensity along with pitch trajectories related to auditory scenes. However, controlled laboratory experiments with natural multimodal stimuli are still scarce. Our results show that humans pay attention to similar perceptual attributes in natural scenes, and a two-dimensional perceptual map of the stimulus scenes and perceptual attributes was obtained in this work. The exploratory results show the amount of movement, perceived noisiness, and eventfulness of the scene to be the most important perceptual attributes in naturalistically reproduced real-world urban environments. We found the scene gist properties openness and expansion to remain as important factors in scenes with no salient auditory or visual events. We propose that the study of scene perception should move forward to understand better the processes behind multimodal scene processing in real-world environments. We publish our stimulus scenes as spherical video recordings and sound field recordings in a publicly available database.	\N	\N
24821552	Many studies have shown that attention modulates the cortical representation of an auditory scene, emphasizing an attended source while suppressing competing sources. Yet, individual differences in the strength of this attentional modulation and their relationship with selective attention ability are poorly understood. Here, we ask whether differences in how strongly attention modulates cortical responses reflect differences in normal-hearing listeners' selective auditory attention ability. We asked listeners to attend to one of three competing melodies and identify its pitch contour while we measured cortical electroencephalographic responses. The three melodies were either from widely separated pitch ranges ("easy trials"), or from a narrow, overlapping pitch range ("hard trials"). The melodies started at slightly different times; listeners attended either the leading or lagging melody. Because of the timing of the onsets, the leading melody drew attention exogenously. In contrast, attending the lagging melody required listeners to direct top-down attention volitionally. We quantified how attention amplified auditory N1 response to the attended melody and found large individual differences in the N1 amplification, even though only correctly answered trials were used to quantify the ERP gain. Importantly, listeners with the strongest amplification of N1 response to the lagging melody in the easy trials were the best performers across other types of trials. Our results raise the possibility that individual differences in the strength of top-down gain control reflect inherent differences in the ability to control top-down attention.	\N	\N
24841996	Auditory objects, like their visual counterparts, are perceptually defined constructs, but nevertheless must arise from underlying neural circuitry. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings of the neural responses of human subjects listening to complex auditory scenes, we review studies that demonstrate that auditory objects are indeed neurally represented in auditory cortex. The studies use neural responses obtained from different experiments in which subjects selectively listen to one of two competing auditory streams embedded in a variety of auditory scenes. The auditory streams overlap spatially and often spectrally. In particular, the studies demonstrate that selective attentional gain does not act globally on the entire auditory scene, but rather acts differentially on the separate auditory streams. This stream-based attentional gain is then used as a tool to individually analyze the different neural representations of the competing auditory streams. The neural representation of the attended stream, located in posterior auditory cortex, dominates the neural responses. Critically, when the intensities of the attended and background streams are separately varied over a wide intensity range, the neural representation of the attended speech adapts only to the intensity of that speaker, irrespective of the intensity of the background speaker. This demonstrates object-level intensity gain control in addition to the above object-level selective attentional gain. Overall, these results indicate that concurrently streaming auditory objects, even if spectrally overlapping and not resolvable at the auditory periphery, are individually neurally encoded in auditory cortex, as separate objects.	\N	\N
25433224	Pitch plays a fundamental role in audition, from speech and music perception to auditory scene analysis. Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder that appears to affect primarily pitch and melody perception. Pitch is normally conveyed by the spectro-temporal fine structure of low harmonics, but some pitch information is available in the temporal envelope produced by the interactions of higher harmonics. Using 10 amusic subjects and 10 matched controls, we tested the hypothesis that amusics suffer exclusively from impaired processing of spectro-temporal fine structure. We also tested whether the inability of amusics to process acoustic temporal fine structure extends beyond pitch by measuring sensitivity to interaural time differences, which also rely on temporal fine structure. Further tests were carried out on basic intensity and spectral resolution. As expected, pitch perception based on spectro-temporal fine structure was impaired in amusics; however, no significant deficits were observed in amusics' ability to perceive the pitch conveyed via temporal-envelope cues. Sensitivity to interaural time differences was also not significantly different between the amusic and control groups, ruling out deficits in the peripheral coding of temporal fine structure. Finally, no significant differences in intensity or spectral resolution were found between the amusic and control groups. The results demonstrate a pitch-specific deficit in fine spectro-temporal information processing in amusia that seems unrelated to temporal or spectral coding in the auditory periphery. These results are consistent with the view that there are distinct mechanisms dedicated to processing resolved and unresolved harmonics in the general population, the former being altered in congenital amusia while the latter is spared.	\N	\N
25654748	In noisy settings, listening is aided by correlated dynamic visual cues gleaned from a talker's face-an improvement often attributed to visually reinforced linguistic information. In this study, we aimed to test the effect of audio-visual temporal coherence alone on selective listening, free of linguistic confounds. We presented listeners with competing auditory streams whose amplitude varied independently and a visual stimulus with varying radius, while manipulating the cross-modal temporal relationships. Performance improved when the auditory target's timecourse matched that of the visual stimulus. The fact that the coherence was between task-irrelevant stimulus features suggests that the observed improvement stemmed from the integration of auditory and visual streams into cross-modal objects, enabling listeners to better attend the target. These findings suggest that in everyday conditions, where listeners can often see the source of a sound, temporal cues provided by vision can help listeners to select one sound source from a mixture.	\N	\N
25659464	To probe sensitivity to the time structure of ongoing sound sequences, we measured MEG responses, in human listeners, to the offset of long tone-pip sequences containing various forms of temporal regularity. If listeners learn sequence temporal properties and form expectancies about the arrival time of an upcoming tone, sequence offset should be detectable as soon as an expected tone fails to arrive. Therefore, latencies of offset responses are indicative of the extent to which the temporal pattern has been acquired. In Exp1, sequences were isochronous with tone inter-onset-interval (IOI) set to 75, 125 or 225ms. Exp2 comprised of non-isochronous, temporally regular sequences, comprised of the IOIs above. Exp3 used the same sequences as Exp2 but listeners were required to monitor them for occasional frequency deviants. Analysis of the latency of offset responses revealed that the temporal structure of (even rather simple) regular sequences is not learnt precisely when the sequences are ignored. Pattern coding, supported by a network of temporal, parietal and frontal sources, improved considerably when the signals were made behaviourally pertinent. Thus, contrary to what might be expected in the context of an 'early warning system' framework, learning of temporal structure is not automatic, but affected by the signal's behavioural relevance.	\N	\N
25726262	Auditory development involves changes in the peripheral and central nervous system along the auditory pathways, and these occur naturally, and in response to stimulation. Human development occurs along a trajectory that can last decades, and is studied using behavioral psychophysics, as well as physiologic measurements with neural imaging. The auditory system constructs a perceptual space that takes information from objects and groups, segregates sounds, and provides meaning and access to communication tools such as language. Auditory signals are processed in a series of analysis stages, from peripheral to central. Coding of information has been studied for features of sound, including frequency, intensity, loudness, and location, in quiet and in the presence of maskers. In the latter case, the ability of the auditory system to perform an analysis of the scene becomes highly relevant. While some basic abilities are well developed at birth, there is a clear prolonged maturation of auditory development well into the teenage years. Maturation involves auditory pathways. However, non-auditory changes (attention, memory, cognition) play an important role in auditory development. The ability of the auditory system to adapt in response to novel stimuli is a key feature of development throughout the nervous system, known as neural plasticity.	\N	\N
22240459	Humans and other animals often communicate acoustically in noisy social groups, in which the background noise generated by other individuals can mask signals of interest. When listening to speech in the presence of speech-like noise, humans experience a release from auditory masking when target and masker are spatially separated. We investigated spatial release from masking (SRM) in a free-field call recognition task in Cope's gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis). In this species, reproduction requires that females successfully detect, recognize, and localize a conspecific male in the noisy social environment of a breeding chorus. Using no-choice phonotaxis assays, we measured females' signal recognition thresholds in response to a target signal (an advertisement call) in the presence and absence of chorus-shaped noise. Females experienced about 3 dB of masking release, compared with a co-localized condition, when the masker was displaced 90° in azimuth from the target. The magnitude of masking release was independent of the spectral composition of the target (carriers of 1.3 kHz, 2.6 kHz, or both). Our results indicate that frogs experience a modest degree of spatial unmasking when performing a call recognition task in the free-field, and suggest that variation in signal spectral content has small effects on both source identification and spatial unmasking. We discuss these results in the context of spatial unmasking in vertebrates and call recognition in frogs.	\N	\N
20649227	The lateralization of 250-ms trains of brief noise bursts was measured using an acoustic pointing technique. Stimuli were designed to assess the contribution of the interaural time delay (ITD) of the onset binaural burst relative to that of the ITDs in the ongoing part of the train. Lateralization was measured by listeners' adjustments of the ITD of a pointer stimulus, a 50-ms burst of noise, to match the lateral position of the target train. Results confirmed previous reports of lateralization dominance by the onset burst under conditions in which the train is composed of frozen tokens and the ongoing part contains multiple ambiguous interaural delays. In contrast, lateralization of ongoing trains in which fresh noise tokens were used for each set of two alternating (left-leading/right-leading) binaural pairs followed the ITD of the first pair in each set, regardless of the ITD of the onset burst of the entire stimulus and even when the onset burst was removed by gradual gating. This clear lateralization of a long-duration stimulus with ambiguous interaural delay cues suggests precedence mechanisms that involve not only the interaural cues at the beginning of a sound, but also the pattern of cues within an ongoing sound.	\N	\N
21131368	The thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN) is a shell-shaped gamma amino butyric acid (GABA)ergic nucleus, which is uniquely placed between the thalamus and the cortex, because it receives excitatory afferents from both cortical and thalamic neurons and sends inhibitory projections to all nuclei of the dorsal thalamus. A review of the evidence suggesting that the TRN is implicated in the neurobiology of schizophrenia. TRN-thalamus circuits are implicated in bottom-up as well as top-down processing. TRN projections to nonspecific nuclei of the dorsal thalamus mediate top-down processes, including attentional modulation, which are initiated by cortical afferents to the TRN. TRN-thalamus circuits are also involved in bottom-up activities, including sensory gating and the transfer to the cortex of sleep spindles. Intriguingly, deficits in attention and sensory gating have been consistently found in schizophrenics, including first-break and chronic patients. Furthermore, high-density electroencephalographic studies have revealed a marked reduction in sleep spindles in schizophrenics. On the basis of our current knowledge on the molecular and anatomo-functional properties of the TRN, we suggest that this thalamic GABAergic nucleus may be involved in the neurobiology of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
22087275	How quickly do listeners recognize emotions from a speaker's voice, and does the time course for recognition vary by emotion type? To address these questions, we adapted the auditory gating paradigm to estimate how much vocal information is needed for listeners to categorize five basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, happiness) and neutral utterances produced by male and female speakers of English. Semantically-anomalous pseudo-utterances (e.g., The rivix jolled the silling) conveying each emotion were divided into seven gate intervals according to the number of syllables that listeners heard from sentence onset. Participants (n = 48) judged the emotional meaning of stimuli presented at each gate duration interval, in a successive, blocked presentation format. Analyses looked at how recognition of each emotion evolves as an utterance unfolds and estimated the "identification point" for each emotion. Results showed that anger, sadness, fear, and neutral expressions are recognized more accurately at short gate intervals than happiness, and particularly disgust; however, as speech unfolds, recognition of happiness improves significantly towards the end of the utterance (and fear is recognized more accurately than other emotions). When the gate associated with the emotion identification point of each stimulus was calculated, data indicated that fear (M = 517 ms), sadness (M = 576 ms), and neutral (M = 510 ms) expressions were identified from shorter acoustic events than the other emotions. These data reveal differences in the underlying time course for conscious recognition of basic emotions from vocal expressions, which should be accounted for in studies of emotional speech processing.	\N	\N
22384211	Recent behavioral neuroscience research revealed that elementary reactive behavior can be improved in the case of cross-modal sensory interactions thanks to underlying multisensory integration mechanisms. Can this benefit be generalized to an ongoing coordination of movements under severe physical constraints? We choose a juggling task to examine this question. A central issue well-known in juggling lies in establishing and maintaining a specific temporal coordination among balls, hands, eyes and posture. Here, we tested whether providing additional timing information about the balls and hands motions by using external sound and tactile periodic stimulations, the later presented at the wrists, improved the behavior of jugglers. One specific combination of auditory and tactile metronome led to a decrease of the spatiotemporal variability of the juggler's performance: a simple sound associated to left and right tactile cues presented antiphase to each other, which corresponded to the temporal pattern of hands movement in the juggling task. A contrario, no improvements were obtained in the case of other auditory and tactile combinations. We even found a degraded performance when tactile events were presented alone. The nervous system thus appears able to integrate in efficient way environmental information brought by different sensory modalities, but only if the information specified matches specific features of the coordination pattern. We discuss the possible implications of these results for the understanding of the neuronal integration process implied in audio-tactile interaction in the context of complex voluntary movement, and considering the well-known gating effect of movement on vibrotactile perception.	\N	\N
22896044	Thresholds of school-aged children are elevated relative to those of adults for intensity discrimination and amplitude modulation (AM) detection. It is unclear how these findings are related or what role stimulus gating and dynamic envelope cues play in these results. Two experiments assessed the development of sensitivity to intensity increments in different stimulus contexts. Thresholds for detecting an increment in level were estimated for normal-hearing children (5- to 10-year-olds) and adults. Experiment 1 compared intensity discrimination for gated and continuous presentation of a 1-kHz tone, with a 65-dB-SPL standard level. Experiment 2 compared increment detection and 16-Hz AM detection introduced into a continuous 1-kHz tone, with either 35- or 75-dB-SPL standard levels. Children had higher thresholds than adults overall. All listeners were more sensitive to increments in the continuous than the gated stimulus and performed better at the 75- than at the 35-dB-SPL standard level. Both effects were comparable for children and adults. There was some evidence that children's AM detection was more adultlike than increment detection. These results imply that memory for loudness across gated intervals is not responsible for children's poor performance but that multiple dynamic envelope cues may benefit children more than adults.	\N	\N
23716244	This study investigated monaural envelope correlation perception (Richards 1987) for noise bandwidths ranging from 25 to 1,600 Hz. The high-frequency side of the low band was fixed at 3,000 Hz and the low-frequency side of the high band was fixed at 3,500 Hz. When comodulated, the magnitude spectra of the pair of noise bands were either identical or reflected around the midpoint. Six listeners with normal hearing participated. Listeners showed similar performance for identical and reflected-spectrum conditions, with best performance usually occurring for bandwidths between 200 and 800 Hz. Results were considered in terms of envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of multiple peripheral filters or envelope comparisons of waveforms at the outputs of central filters set to the bandwidths of the noise stimuli. Some aspects of the results were incompatible with the account based on multiple peripheral filters. However, the results of a supplementary condition involving the gating of band subregions indicated that this incompatibility could be accounted for by nonoptimal weighting of peripheral filter outputs.	\N	\N
24298171	While watching movies, the brain integrates the visual information and the musical soundtrack into a coherent percept. Multisensory integration can lead to emotion elicitation on which soundtrack valences may have a modulatory impact. Here, dynamic kissing scenes from romantic comedies were presented to 22 participants (13 females) during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. The kissing scenes were either accompanied by happy music, sad music or no music. Evidence from cross-modal studies motivated a predefined three-region network for multisensory integration of emotion, consisting of fusiform gyrus (FG), amygdala (AMY) and anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). The interactions in this network were investigated using dynamic causal models of effective connectivity. This revealed bilinear modulations by happy and sad music with suppression effects on the connectivity from FG and AMY to aSTG. Non-linear dynamic causal modeling showed a suppressive gating effect of aSTG on fusiform-amygdalar connectivity. In conclusion, fusiform to amygdala coupling strength is modulated via feedback through aSTG as region for multisensory integration of emotional material. This mechanism was emotion-specific and more pronounced for sad music. Therefore, soundtrack valences may modulate emotion elicitation in movies by differentially changing preprocessed visual information to the amygdala.	\N	\N
24736181	Although a number of recent studies have examined functional connectivity at rest, few have assessed differences between connectivity both during rest and across active task paradigms. Therefore, the question of whether cortical connectivity patterns remain stable or change with task engagement continues to be unaddressed. We collected multi-scan fMRI data on healthy controls (N=53) and schizophrenia patients (N=42) during rest and across paradigms arranged hierarchically by sensory load. We measured functional network connectivity among 45 non-artifactual distinct brain networks. Then, we applied a novel analysis to assess cross paradigm connectivity patterns applied to healthy controls and patients with schizophrenia. To detect these patterns, we fit a group by task full factorial ANOVA model to the group average functional network connectivity values. Our approach identified both stable (static effects) and state-based differences (dynamic effects) in brain connectivity providing a better understanding of how individuals' reactions to simple sensory stimuli are conditioned by the context within which they are presented. Our findings suggest that not all group differences observed during rest are detectable in other cognitive states. In addition, the stable differences of heightened connectivity between multiple brain areas with thalamus across tasks underscore the importance of the thalamus as a gateway to sensory input and provide new insight into schizophrenia.	\N	\N
24801767	Despite advances in the treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with atypical antipsychotics (AAPs), there is still need for compounds with improved efficacy/side-effect ratios. Evidence from challenge studies suggests that the assessment of gating functions in humans and rodents with naturally low-gating levels might be a useful model to screen for novel compounds with antipsychotic properties. To further evaluate and extend this translational approach, three AAPs were examined. Compounds without antipsychotic properties served as negative control treatments. In a placebo-controlled, within-subject design, healthy males received either single doses of aripiprazole and risperidone (n=28), amisulpride and lorazepam (n=30), or modafinil and valproate (n=30), and placebo. Prepulse inhibiton (PPI) and P50 suppression were assessed. Clinically associated symptoms were evaluated using the SCL-90-R. Aripiprazole, risperidone, and amisulpride increased P50 suppression in low P50 gaters. Lorazepam, modafinil, and valproate did not influence P50 suppression in low gaters. Furthermore, low P50 gaters scored significantly higher on the SCL-90-R than high P50 gaters. Aripiprazole increased PPI in low PPI gaters, whereas modafinil and lorazepam attenuated PPI in both groups. Risperidone, amisulpride, and valproate did not influence PPI. P50 suppression in low gaters appears to be an antipsychotic-sensitive neurophysiologic marker. This conclusion is supported by the association of low P50 suppression and higher clinically associated scores. Furthermore, PPI might be sensitive for atypical mechanisms of antipsychotic medication. The translational model investigating differential effects of AAPs on gating in healthy subjects with naturally low gating can be beneficial for phase II/III development plans by providing additional information for critical decision making.	\N	\N
25024207	Historic theories of speech perception (Motor Theory and Analysis by Synthesis) invoked listeners' knowledge of speech production to explain speech perception. Neuroimaging data show that adult listeners activate motor brain areas during speech perception. In two experiments using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated motor brain activation, as well as auditory brain activation, during discrimination of native and nonnative syllables in infants at two ages that straddle the developmental transition from language-universal to language-specific speech perception. Adults are also tested in Exp. 1. MEG data revealed that 7-mo-old infants activate auditory (superior temporal) as well as motor brain areas (Broca's area, cerebellum) in response to speech, and equivalently for native and nonnative syllables. However, in 11- and 12-mo-old infants, native speech activates auditory brain areas to a greater degree than nonnative, whereas nonnative speech activates motor brain areas to a greater degree than native speech. This double dissociation in 11- to 12-mo-old infants matches the pattern of results obtained in adult listeners. Our infant data are consistent with Analysis by Synthesis: auditory analysis of speech is coupled with synthesis of the motor plans necessary to produce the speech signal. The findings have implications for: (i) perception-action theories of speech perception, (ii) the impact of "motherese" on early language learning, and (iii) the "social-gating" hypothesis and humans' development of social understanding.	\N	\N
25544613	Perception routinely integrates inputs from different senses. Stimulus temporal proximity critically determines whether or not these inputs are bound together. Despite the temporal window of integration being a widely accepted notion, its neurophysiological substrate remains unclear. Many types of common audio-visual interactions occur within a time window of ∼100 ms. For example, in the sound-induced double-flash illusion, when two beeps are presented within ∼100 ms together with one flash, a second illusory flash is often perceived. Due to their intrinsic rhythmic nature, brain oscillations are one candidate mechanism for gating the temporal window of integration. Interestingly, occipital alpha band oscillations cycle on average every ∼100 ms, with peak frequencies ranging between 8 and 14 Hz (i.e., 120-60 ms cycle). Moreover, presenting a brief tone can phase-reset such oscillations in visual cortex. Based on these observations, we hypothesized that the duration of each alpha cycle might provide the temporal unit to bind audio-visual events. Here, we first recorded EEG while participants performed the sound-induced double-flash illusion task and found positive correlation between individual alpha frequency (IAF) peak and the size of the temporal window of the illusion. Participants then performed the same task while receiving occipital transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), to modulate oscillatory activity either at their IAF or at off-peak alpha frequencies (IAF±2 Hz). Compared to IAF tACS, IAF-2 Hz and IAF+2 Hz tACS, respectively, enlarged and shrunk the temporal window of illusion, suggesting that alpha oscillations might represent the temporal unit of visual processing that cyclically gates perception and the neurophysiological substrate promoting audio-visual interactions.	\N	\N
19933712	Despite robust evidence of hippocampal abnormalities in schizophrenia, it is unclear whether hippocampal dysfunction predates the onset of psychosis. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate hippocampal function in subjects with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). Eighteen subjects meeting criteria for an ARMS and 22 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and premorbid IQ, were scanned while performing a version of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory task. During an encoding phase, subjects read lists of words aloud. Following a delay, they were presented with 24 target words, 24 semantically related lure words, and 24 novel words and required to indicate if each had been presented before. Behaviorally, the ARMS group made more false alarm responses for novel words than controls (P = .04) and had a lower discrimination accuracy for target words (P = .02). During encoding, ARMS subjects showed less activation than healthy controls in the left middle frontal gyrus, the bilateral medial frontal gyri, and the left parahippocampal gyrus. Correct recognition relative to false alarms was associated with differential engagement of the hippocampus bilaterally in healthy controls, but this difference was absent in the ARMS group. The ARMS was associated with altered function in the medial temporal cortex, as well as in the prefrontal regions, during both verbal encoding and recognition. These neurofunctional differences were associated with diminished recognition performance and may reflect the greatly increased risk of psychosis associated with the ARMS.	\N	\N
20146593	Top-down control of visual sensory cortex has long been tied to the orienting of visual spatial attention on a rapid, moment-to-moment basis. Here, we examined whether sensory responses in visual cortex are also modulated by natural and comparatively slower fluctuations in whether or not one is paying attention to the task at hand. Participants performed a simple visual discrimination task at fixation as the ERPs to task-irrelevant probes in the upper visual periphery were recorded. At random intervals, participants were stopped and asked to report on their attentional state at the time of stoppage-either "on-task" or "off-task." ERPs to the probes immediately preceding these subjective reports were then examined as a function of whether attention was in an on-task versus off-task state. We found that sensory-evoked responses to the probes were significantly attenuated during off-task relative to on-task states, as measured by the visual P1 ERP component. In two additional experiments, we replicated this effect while (1) finding that off-task sensory attenuation extends to the auditory domain, as measured by the auditory N1 ERP component, and (2) eliminating state-dependent shifts in general arousal as a possible explanation for the effects. Collectively, our findings suggest that sensory gain control in cortex is yoked to the natural ebb and flow in how much attention we pay to the current task over time.	\N	\N
20213858	Cognitive assessment in individuals with cancer requires both measured performance on neuropsychological tests and self-report of effectiveness in functioning. Few instruments are available to assess the perceived impact of cognitive alterations on daily functioning in individuals treated for cancer. In this study, we investigated the psychometric properties of a theoretically based instrument, and the Attentional Function Index (AFI), designed to measure perceived effectiveness in common activities requiring attention and working memory, particularly the ability to formulate plans, carry out tasks, and function effectively in daily life. Women (N=172), ages 27-86 years, completed the questionnaire before primary treatment for early stage breast cancer. Construct validity was established using exploratory principal component factor analysis with varimax rotation. A 13-item instrument emerged with 3 subscales, namely effective action, attentional lapses, and interpersonal effectiveness, which explained 74.69% of total variance. The internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach's α) were 0.92 for the total instrument, and ranged from 0.80 to 0.92 for the 3 subscales. Further examination of validity indicated that the scores on the AFI (1) showed expected correlations with established measures of ability to concentrate, cognitive failures, states of confusion, and mental fatigue, and (2) could distinguish differences in perceived cognitive functioning between younger and older age groups. AFI scores were not significantly associated with years of education or presence of comorbid conditions. The brief AFI has demonstrated usefulness for assessment of perceived cognitive functioning in populations with life-threatening and chronic illness, such as breast cancer.	\N	\N
20350175	Grapheme-color synesthesia is a heritable trait where graphemes ("2") elicit the concurrent perception of specific colors (red). Researchers have questioned whether synesthetic experiences are meaningful or simply arbitrary associations and whether these associations are perceptual or conceptual. To address these fundamental questions, ERPs were recorded as 12 synesthetes read statements such as "The Coca-Cola logo is white and 2," in which the final grapheme induced a color that was either contextually congruous (red) or incongruous ("...white and 7," for a synesthetes who experienced 7 as green). Grapheme congruity was found to modulate the amplitude of the N1, P2, N300, and N400 components in synesthetes, suggesting that synesthesia impacts perceptual as well as conceptual aspects of processing. To evaluate whether observed ERP effects required the experience of colored graphemes versus knowledge of grapheme-color pairings, we ran three separate groups of controls on a similar task. Controls trained to a synesthete's associations elicited N400 modulation, indicating that knowledge of grapheme-color mappings was sufficient to modulate this component. Controls trained to synesthetic associations and given explicit visualization instructions elicited both N300 and N400 modulations. Lastly, untrained controls who viewed physically colored graphemes ("2" printed in red) elicited N1 and N400 modulations. The N1 grapheme congruity effect began earlier in synesthetes than colored grapheme controls but had similar scalp topography. Data suggest that, in synesthetes, achromatic graphemes engage similar visual processing networks as colored graphemes in nonsynesthetes and are in keeping with models of synesthesia that posit early feed-forward connections between form and color processing areas in extrastriate cortex. The P2 modulation was unique to the synesthetes and may reflect neural activity that underlies the conscious experience of the synesthetic induction.	\N	\N
20459310	Understanding the relation between prestimulus neural activity and subsequent stimulus processing has become an area of active investigation. Computational modeling, as well as in vitro and in vivo single-unit recordings in animal preparations, have explored mechanisms by which background synaptic activity can influence the responsiveness of cortical neurons to afferent input. How these mechanisms manifest in humans is not well understood. Although numerous EEG/MEG studies have considered the role of prestimulus alpha oscillations in the genesis of visual-evoked potentials, no consensus has emerged, and divergent reports continue to appear. The present work addresses this problem in three stages. First, a theoretical model was developed in which the background synaptic activity and the firing rate of a neural ensemble are related through a sigmoidal function. The derivative of this function, referred to as local gain, has an inverted-U shape and is postulated to be proportional to the trial-by-trial response evoked by a transient stimulus. Second, the theoretical model was extended to noninvasive studies of human visual processing, where the model variables are reinterpreted in terms of ongoing EEG oscillations and event-related potentials. Predictions were derived from the model and tested by recording high-density scalp EEG from healthy volunteers performing a trial-by-trial cued spatial visual attention task. Finally, enhanced stimulus processing by attention was linked to an increase in the overall slope of the sigmoidal function. The commonly observed reduction of alpha magnitude with attention was interpreted as signaling a shift of the underlying neural ensemble toward an optimal excitability state that enables the increase in global gain.	\N	\N
20525771	Efficient attention is pivotal for cognitive functioning, and individual differences in attentional functions are likely related to variations in structural properties of the brain. Attention is supported by separate processes, and models of the relationship between attention and brain structure must take this into account. The Attention Network Test (ANT) yields behavioral measures of 3 independent attentional components: executive control (EC), alerting, and orienting. EC relates to resolving cognitive interference, alerting refers to continuous maintenance of a vigilant state, and orienting to selection of and orienting toward sensory information. Evidence from functional neuroimaging studies suggests that the ANT components recruit different cortical networks. However, the structural correlates are not established. Therefore, ANT scores were correlated with cortical thickness across the brain surface in 268 healthy adults spanning 20-84 years of age. Specific correlations were found between cortical thickness and EC and alerting in regions implicated by functional neuroimaging and lesion studies, including anterior cingulate, lateral prefrontal, and right inferior frontal gyri for EC and parietal areas for alerting. The brain-behavior correlations were relatively stable across adulthood, indicating that factors influencing cortical maturation rather than aging-related atrophy specifically were instrumental in shaping the structural foundation for visuospatial attention in adults.	\N	\N
20525773	Contemporary sensory gating definitions are generally tied to the perceptual and attentional phenomenology described by McGhie and Chapman, including abnormalities in the quality of sensory input, heightened awareness of background noises, and poor selective attention reported by individuals with schizophrenia. Despite these explicit phenomenological origins, little is known about the experiential phenomena underlying contemporary operationalizations of the sensory gating construct, such as whether the construct is restricted to experiences associated with the modulation of sensory percepts includes selective attention and distractibility or even whether the construct is accessible via self-report. Because clarification of these issues has important implications for the development and testing of psychological theories and the study of psychopathology, a series of studies was conducted to (a) empirically identify the major dimensions of sensory gating-like perceptual and attentional phenomenology in healthy young adults and (b) develop a psychometrically sound self-report rating scale to capture these dimensions, the Sensory Gating Inventory (SGI). Factor analyses of Likert items measuring a broad range of sensory gating-like subjective experiences revealed 1 primary factor that encompassed anomalies of perceptual modulation (eg, perceptions of heightened stimulus sensitivity and sensory inundation) and 3 other factors measuring disturbances in the processes of focal and radial attention as well as exacerbation of sensory gating-like anomalies by fatigue and stress. Psychometrically, the SGI demonstrated strong reliability and validity. An empirically based conceptual demarcation of the sensory gating construct is offered, and directions for future research are described.	\N	\N
20529417	Anorexia nervosa (AN), at the stage of starvation and emaciation, is characterized by abnormalities in cognitive function, including memory performance. It is unclear whether memory impairment persists or is reversible following weight restoration, and whether memory function differs between AN subtypes. The aim of the present study was to investigate general memory performance in currently ill and fully weight-restored patients of different AN subtypes. Memory performance was assessed using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in a total of 99 participants, including 34 restricting-type AN patients (AN-RESTR), 19 binge-eating/purging-type AN patients (AN-PURGE), 16 weight-restored AN patients (AN-W-R) and 30 healthy controls (CONTROL). Cognitive evaluation included a battery of standardized neuropsychological tasks for validating the findings on memory function. Deficits were found with respect to immediate and delayed story recall in currently ill AN patients irrespective of AN subtype. These deficits persisted in weight-restored AN patients. Currently ill and weight-restored AN patients did not differ significantly from healthy controls with respect to working memory or other measures of neuropsychological functioning. The findings suggest that impaired memory performance is either a stable trait characteristic or a scar effect of chronic starvation that may play a role in the development and/or persistence of the disorder.	\N	\N
20530459	This study evaluated the alerting, orienting, and executive attention abilities of children with ADHD and their typically developing (TD) peers using a modified version of the adult attention network test (ANT-I). A total of 25 children with ADHD, Combined Type (ADHD-C, mean age = 9.20 years), 20 children with ADHD, Predominantly Inattentive Type (ADHD-I, mean age = 9.58 years), and 45 TD children (mean age = 9.41 years) matched on age and intelligence to the ADHD group completed the ANT-I. As hypothesized, children with ADHD (n = 45) displayed significantly weaker alerting and executive attention than TD children (n = 45) but did not differ from TD children in orienting ability. Children with ADHD-C (n = 25) did not differ from children with ADHD-I (n = 20) on any of the three networks. Results supported the growing body of evidence that has found alerting and executive attention deficits in children with ADHD.	\N	\N
20629939	Actigraphic (ACT) recordings are used widely in schoolchildren as a less intrusive and more extended approach to evaluation of sleep problems. However, critical assessment of the validity and reliability of ACT against overnight polysomnography (NPSG) are unavailable. Thus, we explored the degree of concordance between NPSG and ACT in school-aged children to delineate potential ACT boundaries when interpreting pediatric sleep. Non-dominant wrist ACT was recorded simultaneously with NPSG in 149 healthy school-aged children (aged 4.1-8.8 years, 41.7% boys, 80.4% Caucasian) recruited from the community. Analyses were limited to the Actiware (MiniMitter-64) calculated parameters originating from 1-min epoch sampling and medium sensitivity threshold value of 40; i.e. sleep period time (SPT), total sleep time (TST) and wake after sleep onset (WASO). SPT was not significantly different between ACT and NPSG. However, ACT underestimated TST significantly by 32.2±33.4 min and overestimated WASO by 26.3±34.4 min. The decreased precision of ACT was also evident from moderate to small concordance correlation coefficients (0.47 for TST and 0.09 for WASO). ACT in school-aged children provides reliable assessment of sleep quantity, but is relatively inaccurate during determination of sleep quality. Thus, caution is advocated in drawing definitive conclusions from ACT during evaluation of the sleep-disturbed child.	\N	\N
20645311	Impaired understanding of others' sensations and emotions as well as abnormal experience of their own emotions and sensations is frequently reported in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is hypothesized that these abnormalities are based on altered connectivity within "shared" neural networks involved in emotional awareness of self and others. The insula is considered a central brain region in a network underlying these functions, being located at the transition of information about bodily arousal and the physiological state of the body to subjective feelings. The present study investigated the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of the insula in 14 high-functioning participants with ASD (HF-ASD) and 15 typically developing (TD) participants in the age range between 12 and 20 years by means of "resting state" or "nontask" functional magnetic resonance imaging. Essentially, a distinction was made between anterior and posterior regions of the insular cortex. The results show a reduced functional connectivity in the HF-ASD group, compared with the TD group, between anterior as well as posterior insula and specific brain regions involved in emotional and sensory processing. It is suggested that functional abnormalities in a network involved in emotional and interoceptive awareness might be at the basis of altered emotional experiences and impaired social abilities in ASD, and that these abnormalities are partly based on the intrinsic functional connectivity properties of such a network.	\N	\N
20663569	The processing of emotional stimuli is thought to be negatively biased in major depression. This study investigates this issue using musical, vocal and facial affective stimuli. 23 depressed in-patients and 23 matched healthy controls were recruited. Affective information processing was assessed through musical, vocal and facial emotion recognition tasks. Depression, anxiety level and attention capacity were controlled. The depressed participants demonstrated less accurate identification of emotions than the control group in all three sorts of emotion-recognition tasks. The depressed group also gave higher intensity ratings than the controls when scoring negative emotions, and they were more likely to attribute negative emotions to neutral voices and faces. Our in-patient group might differ from the more general population of depressed adults. They were all taking anti-depressant medication, which may have had an influence on their emotional information processing. Major depression is associated with a general negative bias in the processing of emotional stimuli. Emotional processing impairment in depression is not confined to interpersonal stimuli (faces and voices), being also present in the ability to feel music accurately.	\N	\N
20668875	Action perception may involve a mirror-matching system, such that observed actions are mapped onto the observer's own motor representations. The strength of such mirror system activation should depend on an individual's experience with the observed action. The motor interference effect, where an observed action interferes with a concurrently executed incongruent action, is thought to arise from mirror system activation. However, this view was recently challenged. If motor interference arises from mirror system activation, this effect should be sensitive to prior sensorimotor experience with the observed action. To test this prediction, we measured motor interference in two groups of participants observing the same incongruent movements. One group had received brief visuo-motor practice with the observed incongruent action, but not the other group. Action observation induced a larger motor interference in participants who had practiced the observed action. This result thus supports a mirror system account of motor interference.	\N	\N
20704645	We studied a novel non-contact biomotion sensor, which has been developed for identifying sleep/wake patterns in adult humans. The biomotion sensor uses ultra low-power reflected radiofrequency waves to determine the movement of a subject during sleep. An automated classification algorithm has been developed to recognize sleep/wake states on a 30-s epoch basis based on the measured movement signal. The sensor and software were evaluated against gold-standard polysomnography on a database of 113 subjects [94 male, 19 female, age 53±13years, apnoea-hypopnea index (AHI) 22±24] being assessed for sleep-disordered breathing at a hospital-based sleep laboratory. The overall per-subject accuracy was 78%, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.38. Lower accuracy was seen in a high AHI group (AHI >15, 63 subjects) than in a low AHI group (74.8% versus 81.3%); however, most of the change in accuracy can be explained by the lower sleep efficiency of the high AHI group. Averaged across subjects, the overall sleep sensitivity was 87.3% and the wake sensitivity was 50.1%. The automated algorithm slightly overestimated sleep efficiency (bias of +4.8%) and total sleep time (TST; bias of +19min on an average TST of 288min). We conclude that the non-contact biomotion sensor can provide a valid means of measuring sleep-wake patterns in this patient population, and also allows direct visualization of respiratory movement signals.	\N	\N
20709594	We investigated the role of the frontostriatal system in contextual processing, by examining neural correlates of local contextual processing in Parkinson's disease (PD). Local context was defined as the occurrence of a short predictive series of visual stimuli occurring before delivery of a target event. EEG was recorded in eight PD patients and eight controls. Recording blocks consisted of targets preceded by randomized sequences of standards and by sequences including a predictive sequence signaling the occurrence of a subsequent target event. Subjects pressed a button in response to targets. Peak P3b amplitude and latency were evaluated for targets after predictive and non-predictive sequences. Behavioral and electrophysiological measures showed that controls processed predicted and random targets differentially, while PD patients processed these similarly. Reaction times were shorter for predictable than for random targets in controls but not in patients. PD patients failed to generate the expected P3b latency shift between predicted and random targets, which is observed in controls. These findings show that predictive local context effects on target detection are altered in PD patients. The findings suggest a key role for the frontostriatal system in contextual processing.	\N	\N
20723021	The concept of 'repression' dates back to Freud, assuming that undesirable memories can become suppressed and that dreams ease repression by permitting these memories to be reinstated. Here, we followed this idea adopting the 'directed forgetting' approach of experimental psychology. The voluntary suppression of unwanted memories results in impaired later retrieval. Because sleep is known to benefit consolidation of newly learned materials, including cognitive skills, we hypothesized that memory suppression would be enhanced by sleep, and perhaps particularly by rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is associated more often with dream reports. Subjects (n=42) learned a list of word-pairs and, subsequently, the first (cue) words of the pairs were presented again; for half these words subjects had to recall respective second words (response pairs) and for the other half they had to keep respective second words out of mind (suppression pairs). Retrieval of both response and suppression pairs was tested after 8h of sleep or wakefulness (main experiment) or after 3-h periods of early slow wave sleep (SWS)-rich or late REM-rich sleep (supplementary experiment). Response pairs were generally recalled better after sleep than wakefulness (P<0.05). Recall of suppression pairs was, as expected, worse than of response pairs. Contrary to our hypothesis, memory for suppression pairs was not affected differentially by sleep. In the supplementary experiment, compared to SWS-rich sleep, REM-rich sleep even improved recall of suppression pairs (P<0.05). Thus, sleep does not benefit the forgetting of unwanted memories but, on the contrary, REM sleep might even counteract the voluntary suppression of memories making them more accessible for retrieval.	\N	\N
20723987	We examined the contributions of risk factors to the psychological and neuroendocrine status of children admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU), and explored the feasibility of a full-scale study of these risk factors. A prospective, correlational design was used. Risk factors included parental stress, parental anxiety, child anxiety, severity of the child's illness, and invasive procedures administered to the child. Outcomes variables were pediatric posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and salivary cortisol levels. Measures were taken at 3 time points over 3 months. The mothers' state anxiety significantly increased over time, whereas the children's PTSD symptoms decreased. Most children with average or high anxiety demonstrated varying degrees of PTSD symptomatology, whereas children with low anxiety exhibited doubtful or mild symptoms of PTSD. As the severity of PTSD symptoms increased over time, the level of salivary cortisol decreased at two weeks and three months after hospital discharge. Predicted trends in data were found and warrant further investigation, using a similar methodology in a full-scale study with an emphasis on recruiting the most seriously ill children.	\N	\N
20727700	We evaluated the cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) during the first year of life in order to obtain information on the maturation of arousal mechanisms during NREM sleep and to provide normative data for CAP parameters in this age range (5-16months). Eleven healthy children (mean age 7.9±3.3months, seven boys) were studied while they slept in the morning. They underwent a 3-h video-EEG-polysomnographic recording at the Pediatric Sleep Unit of Sant'Andrea Hospital in Rome, Italy. Sleep was scored visually for sleep architecture and CAP analysis using standard criteria. Our results were complemented by CAP data from a previous sample of healthy infants (2-4months), studied when they slept during the morning, in order to correlate CAP parameters with age. The total sample comprised 24 children. The sleep period was approximately 2h, with a first REM latency of about 30min, and a clear distinction between stages N1, N2, and N3. The arousal index was 12±2.1 events/hour of sleep. The total CAP rate was 23.7±7.6%, and it increased progressively with the deepness of sleep; the highest values were observed during stage N3 and the lowest values during stage N1. A1 phases were the most numerous (78.2%), followed by A2 (14%) and A3 (7.7%) phases. The A1 index was higher than the A2 and A3 indices, whereas the mean duration of B was higher than that of A. The correlation showed that the CAP rate, A1, A2, A3 indices, A2, A3 percentages, and the average duration of B increased with age, whereas the A1 percentage decreased. We provide the first data on CAP analysis in children aged 5-16months, studied when they slept during the morning. Our results confirm the trend toward an increase in CAP rate during the first year of life. In addition, we observed a progressive increase in CAP rate with deepness of sleep, and with age, reflecting maturation of slow-wave activity. The decreased percentage of A1 subtypes may reflect the maturation of arousability.	\N	\N
20809377	Three experiments explored attention to eye gaze, which is incompletely understood in typical development and is hypothesized to be disrupted in autism. Experiment 1 (n = 26 typical adults) involved covert orienting to box, arrow, and gaze cues at two probabilities and cue-target times to test whether reorienting for gaze is endogenous, exogenous, or unique; experiment 2 (total n = 80: male and female children and adults) studied age and sex effects on gaze cueing. Gaze cueing appears endogenous and may strengthen in typical development. Experiment 3 tested exogenous, endogenous, and gaze-based orienting in 25 typical and 27 Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children. ASD children made more saccades, slowing their reaction times; however, exogenous and endogenous orienting, including gaze cueing, appear intact in ASD.	\N	\N
20813504	To determine whether increased physiological arousal immediately after trauma or at emergency admission can predict post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in motor vehicle accident (MVA) survivors with physical injuries. We included 119 MVA survivors with physical injuries. In this prospective cohort study, heart rate (HR) and blood pressure (BP) were assessed during ambulance transport (T1) and at hospital admission (T2). One and four months after the accident, we assessed patients for PTSD (Davidson trauma scale, confirmed with the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV axis I disorders). Multivariate logistic regression models assessed the relationship between HR or BP and PTSD. PTSD was diagnosed in 54 (45.4%) patients at 1 month and in 39 (32.8%) at 4 months. In the multivariate analysis, HR at T1 or at T2 predicted PTSD at 1 month (OR=1.156, 95% CI [1.094;1.221] p<0.0001). Only HR at T1 (not at T2) predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.059, 95% CI [1.013; 1.108] p=0.012). Injury severity predicted PTSD at 4 months (OR=1.207, 95% CI [1.085; 1.342] p=0.001). A cut-off of 84 beats per minute yielded a sensitivity of 62.5% and a specificity of 75.0% for PTSD. HR measured at the scene of MVA and severity of injury predicted PTSD 4 months later.	\N	\N
20817320	Recently there has been much interest in social coordination of motor movements, or as it is referred to by some researchers, joint action. This paper reviews the cognitive perspective's common coding/mirror neuron theory of joint action, describes some of its limitations and then presents the behavioral dynamics perspective as an alternative way of understanding social motor coordination. In particular, behavioral dynamics' ability to explain the temporal coordination of interacting individuals is detailed. Two experiments are then described that demonstrate how dynamical processes of synchronization are apparent in the coordination underlying everyday joint actions such as martial art exercises, hand-clapping games, and conversations. The import of this evidence is that emergent dynamic patterns such as synchronization are the behavioral order that any neural substrate supporting joint action (e.g., mirror systems) would have to sustain.	\N	\N
20822301	The attentional blink is the marked deficit in awareness of a 2nd target (T2) when it is presented shortly after the 1st target (T1) in a stream of distractors. When the distractors between T1 and T2 are replaced by even more targets, the attentional blink is reduced or absent, indicating that the attentional blink results from online selection mechanisms that act in response to distracting input rather than being the result of T1-induced cognitive resource depletion. However, Dell'Acqua, Jolicoeur, Luria, and Pluchino (2009) recently contended that an attentional blink is found in the multiple-target case as long as the appropriate trial context and analyses are used, thus reinstating resource-based explanations of the attentional blink and challenging the selection account. Specifically, an attentional blink reemerges when target performance is analyzed contingent on previous target accuracy. We argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that neither the trial context nor the type of analysis poses a serious problem for selection accounts. We show that the attentional blink and previous target contingency effects can be dissociated, with the latter depending more on low-level, short-range competition. We conclude that selection mechanisms involved in filtering for targets still provide a strong and coherent explanation of the attentional blink.	\N	\N
20832868	Bipolar disorder (BD) and adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) usually manifest with shared clinical symptoms, proving quite challenging to thoroughly differentiate one from another. Previous research has characterized these two disorders independently, but no study compared both pathologies from a neuropsychological perspective. The aim of this study was to compare the neuropsychological profile of adult ADHD and BD with each other and against a control group, in order to understand the way in which comprehensive cognitive assessment can contribute to their discrimination as distinct clinical entities as well as their differential diagnosis. All groups were successfully matched for age, sex, years of education, and premorbid IQ. Participants were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery evaluating multiple domains. Compared to controls, BD patients had a poorer performance on immediate verbal memory tasks. Both clinical groups exhibited significantly lower scores than controls on the recognition phase of verbal and non-verbal memory tasks, as well as on a task of executive functioning with high working memory demand. Noticeably, however, ADHD had significantly better performance than BD on the recognition phase of both the Rey list memory task and the Rey Figure. The better performance of ADHD patients over BD may reflect the crucial role of the executive component on their memory deficits and gives empirical support to further differentiate the neuropsychological profile of BD and adult ADHD patients in clinical practice.	\N	\N
20835973	Fundamental to adaptive behaviour is the ability to select environmental objects that best satisfy current needs and preferences. Here we investigated whether temporary changes in food preference influence visual selective attention. To this end, we exploited the fact that when a food is eaten to satiety its motivational value and perceived pleasantness decrease relative to other foods not eaten in the meal, an effect termed sensory-specific satiety. A total of 26 hungry participants were fed until sated with one of two palatable foods. Before and after selective satiation, participants rated the pleasantness of the two foods and then viewed the same as stimuli on a computer screen while attention was assessed by a visual probe task. Results showed that the attentional bias for the food eaten decreased markedly from pre- to postsatiety, along with the subjective pleasantness for that food. By contrast, subjective pleasantness and attentional bias for the food not eaten did not show any such decrease. These findings suggest that the allocation of visual selective attention is flexibly and rapidly adjusted to reflect temporary shift in relative preference for different foods.	\N	\N
20838776	Abuse and neglect are highly prevalent in children and have enduring neurobiological effects. Stressful early life environments perturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which in turn may predispose to psychiatric disorders in adulthood. However, studies of childhood maltreatment and adult HPA function have not yet rigorously investigated the differential effects of maltreatment subtypes, including physical abuse. In this study, we sought to replicate our previous finding that childhood maltreatment was associated with attenuated cortisol responses to stress and determine whether the type of maltreatment was a determinant of the stress response. Salivary cortisol response to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was examined in a non-clinical sample of women (n = 110). Subjects had no acute medical problems and were not seeking psychiatric treatment. Effects of five maltreatment types, as measured by the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, on cortisol response to the TSST were investigated. To further examine the significant (p < 0.005) effect of one maltreatment type, women with childhood physical abuse (PA) (n = 20) were compared to those without past PA (n = 90). Women reporting childhood PA displayed a significantly blunted cortisol response to the TSST compared with subjects without PA, after controlling for estrogen use, age, other forms of maltreatment, and other potential confounds. There were no differences between PA and control groups with regard to physiological arousal during the stress challenge. In a non-clinical sample of women with minimal or no current psychopathology, physical abuse is associated with a blunted cortisol response to a psychosocial stress task.	\N	\N
20859069	The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among gait and mobility under single and dual task conditions in older adults. Community-dwelling older adults (n=41, mean age=75) completed mobility and gait tasks. Mobility was assessed with the Timed-Up-and-Go (TUG). Select gait parameters were examined while individuals walked at their preferred speed across the GAITRite electronic walkway. Two age groups were studied (younger age group=65-75; older age group=76+). Multiple linear regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between gait and mobility under single vs dual conditions. Older adults required more time to complete the TUG when concurrently performing a second cognitive task (10.84 sec vs 15.77 sec). In addition, one or more gait characteristic such as stride length, cadence and stance explained (a) a high percentage of variance in mobility performance under single task conditions (TUG 74%) and (b) a smaller portion of variance in mobility performance under dual task conditions (TUGc 25%). No salient age group differences were observed in TUG performance, but gait characteristics accounted for a larger portion of variance in TUGc performance (46%) for the older age group (mean age=81) than for the younger age group (mean age=69; TUGc 18%).	\N	\N
20883507	The prior entry hypothesis of attention holds that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Whereas this speeding of perceptual processing has been repeatedly demonstrated for spatial attention, it has not been reported within the temporal domain. To fill this gap, we tested whether temporal attention accelerates auditory perceptual processing by employing event-related potentials as on-line indicators of perceptual processing. In a modified oddball paradigm, we presented a single tone in each trial, either a frequent standard tone or an infrequent deviant or target tone. Temporal attention to tones was manipulated via constant foreperiods. We observed that the latency of the N2, an event-related potential reflecting perceptual processing, is shortened by temporal attention. This result provides first evidence for the idea that temporal attention accelerates perceptual processing as suggested by the prior entry hypothesis.	\N	\N
20920531	Obesity and drug addiction, both a result of aberrant motivated behavior, are growing problems in western society. Increased dopamine neurotransmission occurs with both drug-seeking and ingestive behaviors and has been linked to effort related functions. Hypocretin/orexin (Hcrt/ox) neurons have long been known to mediate arousal and feeding. Over the last 5 years, hcrt/ox has been demonstrated to play a novel role in mediating a variety of reward-seeking behaviors and can modulate the activity and output of dopamine neurons. Here, we propose that hcrt/ox action on mesolimbic dopamine circuitry serves to promote effort to obtain highly salient natural or drug rewards.	\N	\N
20934190	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by the presence of disturbances in emotional processing. However, the neural correlates of these alterations, and how they may be affected by therapeutic interventions, remain unclear. The present study addressed these issues in a preliminary investigation using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine neural responses to positive, negative, and neutral pictures in unmedicated MDD patients (N = 22) versus controls (N = 14). After this initial scan, MDD patients were treated with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and scanned again after treatment. Within regions that showed pre-treatment differences between patients and controls, we tested the association between pre-treatment activity and subsequent treatment response as well as activity changes from pre- to post-treatment. This study yielded three main findings. First, prior to treatment and relative to controls, patients exhibited overall reduced activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC), diminished discrimination between emotional and neutral items in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and enhanced responses to negative versus positive stimuli in the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and right dorsolateral PFC. Second, CBT-related symptom improvement in MDD patients was predicted by increased activity at baseline in ventromedial PFC as well as the valence effects in the ATL and dorsolateral PFC. Third, from pre- to post-treatment, MDD patients exhibited overall increases in ventromedial PFC activation, enhanced arousal responses in the amygdala, caudate, and hippocampus, and a reversal of valence effects in the ATL. The study was limited by the relatively small sample that was able to complete both scan sessions, as well as an inability to determine the influence of comorbid disorders within the current sample. Nevertheless, components of the neural networks corresponding to emotion processing disturbances in MDD appear to resolve following treatment and are predictive of treatment response, possibly reflecting improvements in emotion regulation processes in response to CBT.	\N	\N
20969453	We conducted a study of the relationships between Internet self-efficacy, sensation seeking, the need for cognition, and problematic use of the Internet. The study was based on a randomly selected sample of 979 adult Internet users. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis of these subjects' responses on a questionnaire consisting of relevant items indicated that Internet self-efficacy and sensation seeking positively predicted problematic Internet use. Contrastingly, the need for cognition was significantly negatively associated with problematic Internet use.	\N	\N
20977513	There is profound knowledge that sleep restriction increases tonic (event-unrelated) electroencephalographic (EEG) activity. In the present study we focused on time-locked activity by means of phasic (event-related) EEG analysis during a psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) over the course of sleep deprivation. Twenty healthy subjects (10 male; mean age ± SD: 23.45 ± 1.97 years) underwent sleep deprivation for 24 h. Subjects had to rate their sleepiness hourly (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale) and to perform a PVT while EEG was recorded simultaneously. Tonic EEG changes in the δ (1-4 Hz), θ (4-8 Hz) and α (8-12 Hz) frequency range were investigated by power spectral analyses. Single-trial (phase-locking index, PLI) and event-related potential (ERP) analyses (P1, N1) were used to examine event-related changes in EEG activity. Subjective sleepiness, PVT reaction times and tonic EEG activity (delta and theta spectral power) significantly increased over the night. In contrast, event-related EEG parameters decreased throughout sleep deprivation. Specifically, the ERP component P1 diminished in amplitude, and delta and theta PLI estimates decreased progressively over the night. It is suggested that event-related EEG measures (such as the amplitude of the P1 and especially delta/theta phase-locking) serve as a complimentary method to track the deterioration of attention and performance during sleep loss. As these measures actually reflect the impaired response to specific events rather than tonic changes during sleep deprivation they are a promising tool for future sleep research.	\N	\N
21035107	The aim of this work is to determine the influence of multisensory (visual-haptic) integration and the level of interaction (seeing photographs, seeing the actual product, touching it and using it) on the perception of products, including perceived ergonomics. The product selected for the experiment was the hammer, as this will help to establish whether emotional design studies can also apply to 'commercial' products. Subjective opinions of users were evaluated through semantic differential tests. A factor analysis identified six semantic factors or axes (Quality/Robustness, Ergonomics/Appearance, Innovation, Lightness, Dynamic Effects, and Efficacy). Results show that Lightness and Dynamic Effects are quite sensitive to the level of interaction, while Ergonomics/Appearance is partially affected. However, the perceptions of Innovation, Quality/Robustness and Efficacy are not so affected and they could be detected through a lower level of interaction (i.e. seeing photographs). This suggests that commercial products seem sensitive to emotional design studies and that multisensory integration enhances the perception of the factors that are clearly linked with physical interaction between users and tools, i.e. Ergonomics/Appearance, Lightness and Dynamic Effects. Additionally, it should be highlighted that some aspects related with the ergonomics and ease of use of products are also perceived at different stages of interaction.	\N	\N
21035195	Although false memories and confabulation have been linked to both executive dysfunction and greater suggestibility, similar associations with the emergence of delusional thinking remain unexamined. We therefore compared healthy individuals who scored high and low on the Peters Delusional Inventory (PDI: Peters et al., 1999) on measures of set-shifting (the intra-extradimensional set shift task: IED) planning (the Stockings of Cambridge Task: SOC). Additionally, we examined whether high delusion-prone individuals show greater suggestibility on the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS 2: Gudjonsson, 1987). On the IED task, the high group made more pre-extradimensional shift errors than the low PDI group, and this was especially notable for reversal learning. By contrast, no differences emerged on any aspect of the SOC. Finally, and intriguingly, the high PDI group was less likely than the low PDI group to change their responses after receiving suggestive negative feedback. We propose that delusional-style thinking may be underpinned by an orbitofrontal-based reversal learning difficulty affecting the flexibility to adapt responses to changing contingencies and external pressure.	\N	\N
21056046	The brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a member of the neurotrophin family, is involved in nerve growth and survival. Especially, a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the BDNF gene, Val66Met, has gained a lot of attention, because of its effect on activity-dependent BDNF secretion and its link to impaired memory processes. We hypothesize that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism may have modulatory effects on the visual sensory (iconic) memory performance. Two hundred and eleven healthy German students (106 female and 105 male) were included in the data analysis. Since BDNF is also discussed to be involved in the pathogenesis of depression, we additionally tested for possible interactions with depressive mood. The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism significantly influenced iconic-memory performance, with the combined Val/Met-Met/Met genotype group revealing less time stability of information stored in iconic memory than the Val/Val group. Furthermore, this stability was positively correlated with depressive mood exclusively in the Val/Val genotype group. Thus, these results show that the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism has an effect on pre-attentive visual sensory memory processes.	\N	\N
21062120	Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy improved not only apnea-hypopnea during sleep and sleep structure but also sleep-related deglutition, especially respiratory phase patterns associated with deglutition. Sleep-related deglutition and related respiratory phase patterns in patients with obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS) under CPAP therapy were investigated. Deglutition during sleep was examined in 10 patients who had severe OSAHS under CPAP therapy via time-matched recordings of polysomnography and surface electromyography. The mean number of swallows per hour during the total sleep time was 1.6 ± 1.3. The mean period of the longest absence of deglutition was 66.4 ± 19.6 min. Deglutition was related to the sleep stage. The mean number of swallows per hour was 6.8 ± 8.4 during stage 1 sleep, 1.1 ± 0.8 during stage 2 sleep, 0.1 ± 0.4 during stage 3 sleep, and 0 during stage 4 sleep. The deeper the sleep stage, the lower the mean deglutition frequency. The mean number of swallows per hour was 0.8 ± 0.5 during REM sleep. Most deglutition occurred in association with spontaneous electroencephalographic arousal. Swallows followed by inspiration were markedly reduced. Under CPAP therapy, sleep-related deglutition and its respiratory phase pattern had normalized.	\N	\N
21062948	One hundred thirty child sexual abusers were diagnosed using each of following four methods: (a) phallometric testing, (b) strict application of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision [DSM-IV-TR]) criteria, (c) Rapid Risk Assessment of Sex Offender Recidivism (RRASOR) scores, and (d) "expert" diagnoses rendered by a seasoned clinician. Comparative utility and intermethod consistency of these methods are reported, along with recidivism data indicating predictive validity for risk management. Results suggest that inconsistency exists in diagnosing pedophilia, leading to diminished accuracy in risk assessment. Although the RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR methods were significantly correlated with expert ratings, RRASOR and DSM-IV-TR were unrelated to each other. Deviant arousal was not associated with any of the other methods. Only the expert ratings and RRASOR scores were predictive of sexual recidivism. Logistic regression analyses showed that expert diagnosis did not add to prediction of sexual offence recidivism over and above RRASOR alone. Findings are discussed within a context of encouragement of clinical consistency and evidence-based practice regarding treatment and risk management of those who sexually abuse children.	\N	\N
21071267	Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to examine neural responses to face stimuli in a masking paradigm. Images of faces (neutral or fearful) and objects were presented in subthreshold, threshold, and suprathreshold conditions (exposure durations of approximately 20, 30 and 300 ms, respectively), followed by a 1000-ms pattern mask. We recorded ERP responses at Oz, T5, T6, Cz and Pz. The effects of physical stimulus features were examined by inverted stimuli. The occipital N1 amplitude (approximately 160 ms) was significantly smaller in response to faces than objects when presented at a subthreshold duration. In contrast, the occipitotemporal N170 amplitude was significantly greater in the threshold and suprathreshold conditions compared with the subthreshold condition for faces, but not for objects. The P1 amplitude (approximately 120 ms) elicited by upright faces in the subthreshold condition was significantly larger than for inverted faces. P1 and N1 components at Oz were sensitive to subthreshold faces, which suggests the presence of fast face-specific process(es) prior to face-encoding. The N170 reflects the robustness of the face selective response in the occipitotemporal area. Even when presented for a subthreshold duration, faces were processed differently to images of objects at an early stage of visual processing.	\N	\N
21073480	To study defensive mobilization elicited by the exposure to interoceptive arousal sensations, we exposed highly anxiety sensitive students to a symptom provocation task. Symptom reports, autonomic arousal, and the startle eyeblink response were monitored during guided hyperventilation and a recovery period in 26 highly anxiety sensitive persons and 22 controls. Normoventilation was used as a non-provocative comparison condition. Hyperventilation led to autonomic arousal and a marked increase in somatic symptoms. While high and low anxiety sensitive persons did not differ in their defensive activation during hyperventilation, group differences were detected during early recovery. Highly anxiety sensitive students exhibited a potentiation of startle response magnitudes and increased autonomic arousal after hyper- as compared to after normoventilation, indicating defensive mobilization evoked by the prolonged presence of feared somatic sensations.	\N	\N
21077720	Negative priming (NP) refers to the finding that people's responses to probe targets previously presented as prime distractors are usually slower and more error prone than to unrepeated stimuli. In a typical NP experiment, each probe target is accompanied by a distractor. It is an accepted, albeit puzzling, finding that the NP effect depends on the presence of these probe distractors; for, without probe distractors, NP diminishes. This phenomenon causes severe problems for the majority of theoretical accounts of NP. In the present study, we follow a simple argument, namely that without probe distractors, the difficulty of responding to the probe is so low that NP becomes irrelevant. Hence, by increasing perceptual processing difficulty, as well as by increasing conceptual processing difficulty, significant NP effects with constantly absent probe distractors can be reliably observed. In addition, our results also show that NP without probe distractors can be found by exclusively manipulating probe display processing. This finding furthers our understanding of the processes causing NP.	\N	\N
21094573	Learning movement sequences is thought to develop from an initial controlled attentive phase to a more automatic inattentive phase. Furthermore, execution of sequences becomes faster with practice, which may result from changes at a general motor processing level rather than at an effector specific motor processing level. In the current study, we examined whether these changes are already present during preparation. Fixed series of six keypresses, either familiar or unfamiliar, had to be prepared and executed/withheld after a go/nogo signal. Reaction time results confirmed that familiar sequences were executed faster than unfamiliar sequences. Results derived from the electroencephalogram showed a decreased demand on general motor preparation and visual-working memory before familiar sequences as compared to unfamiliar sequences. We propose that with familiar sequences the presetting segments of responses is less demanding than with unfamiliar sequences, as familiar sequences can be regarded as less complex than unfamiliar sequences. Finally, the decreasing demand on visual-working memory before familiar sequences suggests that sequence learning indeed develops from an attentive to an automatic phase.	\N	\N
21106695	To examine resource allocation and sentence processing, this study examined the effects of auditory distraction on grammaticality judgment (GJ) of sentences varied by semantics (reversibility) and short-term memory requirements. Experiment 1: Typical young adult females (N = 60) completed a whole-sentence GJ task in distraction (Quiet, Noise, or Talk). Participants judged grammaticality of Passive sentences varied by sentence (length), grammaticality, and reversibility. Reaction time (RT) data were analyzed using a mixed analysis of variance. Experiment 2: A similar group completed a self-paced reading GJ task using the similar materials. Experiment 1: Participants responded faster to Bad and to Nonreversible sentences, and in the Talk distraction. The slowest RTs were noted for Good-Reversible-Padded sentences in the Quiet condition. Experiment 2: Distraction did not differentially affect RTs for sentence components. Verb RTs were slower for Reversible sentences. Results suggest that narrative distraction affected GJ, but by speeding responses, not slowing them. Sentence variables of memory and reversibility slowed RTs, but narrative distraction resulted in faster processing times regardless of individual sentence variables. More explicit, deliberate tasks (self-paced reading) resulted in less effect from distraction. Results are discussed in terms of recent theories about auditory distraction.	\N	\N
21108940	Previous research has demonstrated that cross-language activation is present even when proficient bilinguals perform a task only in one language. The present study investigated the time-course of cross-language activation during word production in a second language (L2) by using a picture-word interference paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs). Spanish-English bilinguals living in an L2 environment named pictures in their L2 English while ignoring L2 English distractor words that were visually presented with the pictures. Participants named pictures more slowly when distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the English name of the picture or the Spanish name of the picture than when picture and distractor word were unrelated. Interference was also detectable in the mean amplitude of the N2 peak (200-260 ms) and the N3 range (350-400 ms). The results suggest that lexical alternatives from both languages compete for selection in the process of L2 speech planning in a predominantly L2 context.	\N	\N
21112093	There is substantial evidence that cognitive deficits and brain structural abnormalities are present in patients with Bipolar Disorder (BD) and in their first-degree relatives. Previous studies have demonstrated associations between cognition and functional outcome in BD patients but have not examined the role of brain morphological changes. Similarly, the functional impact of either cognition or brain morphology in relatives remains unknown. Therefore we focused on delineating the relationship between psychosocial functioning, cognition and brain structure, in relation to disease expression and genetic risk for BD. Clinical, cognitive and brain structural measures were obtained from 41 euthymic BD patients and 50 of their unaffected first-degree relatives. Psychosocial function was evaluated using the General Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scale. We examined the relationship between level of functioning and general intellectual ability (IQ), memory, attention, executive functioning, symptomatology, illness course and total gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes. Cross-sectional design. Multiple regression analyses revealed that IQ, total white matter volume and a predominantly depressive illness course were independently associated with functional outcome in BD patients, but not in their relatives, and accounted for a substantial proportion (53%) of the variance in patients' GAF scores. There were no significant domain-specific associations between cognition and outcome after consideration of IQ. Our results emphasise the role of IQ and white matter integrity in relation to outcome in BD and carry significant implications for treatment interventions.	\N	\N
21147519	Numerous investigations into schizophrenia have reported impairment in self-other source monitoring, and studies on healthy subjects have suggested that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a critical region underlying self-monitoring abilities. In the current study, we examined the mPFC-related modulation of other brain regions in schizophrenia during self-other monitoring using a psychophysiological interaction approach. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 33 healthy controls performed a self-other source monitoring task while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning. Independent component analysis was used to identify the mPFC region of interest, and the averaged mPFC time course was extracted and entered into a general linear regression model for use with the psychophysiological interaction analysis, with Self vs. Other monitoring being the psychological condition of interest. Results suggested that connectivity between the mPFC and the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) was greater in the Other than the Self condition for the healthy subjects, but this was reversed for the schizophrenia patients, such that mPFC-LSTG connectivity was greater during Self than the Other condition. The modified functional connectivity associated with the performance of recollection of self-source information suggests that schizophrenia patients invoke circuits normally involved in retrieving other-generated information when processing self-generated information, thereby providing a possible biological basis for the self-other confusion characteristic of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
21147857	The presence of distracting stimuli during eating increases the meal size and could thereby contribute to overeating and obesity. However, the effects of within-meal distraction on later food intake are less clear. We sought to test the hypothesis that distraction inhibits memory encoding for a meal, which, in turn, increases later food intake. The current study assessed the effects of playing solitaire (a computerized card-sorting game) during a fixed lunch, which was eaten at a fixed rate, on memory for lunch and food intake in a taste test 30 min later. A between-subjects design was used with 44 participants. Participants in the no-distraction group ate the same lunch in the absence of any distracting stimuli. Distracted individuals were less full after lunch, and they ate significantly more biscuits in the taste test than did nondistracted participants (mean intake: 52.1 compared with 27.1 g; P = 0.017). Furthermore, serial-order memory for the presentation of the 9 lunch items was less accurate in participants who had been distracted during lunch. These findings provide further evidence that distraction during one meal has the capacity to influence subsequent eating. They may also help to explain the well-documented association between sedentary screen-time activities and overweight.	\N	\N
21148667	The aim of this study was to explore if the divergent results regarding attentional functions in patients with mood disorders are due to selective impairments in higher level or more basic and distinctive attentional subcomponents. We compared outpatients with current major depressive disorders (MDD; n = 37) and MDD with comorbid anxiety disorder (MDDA; n = 24) with healthy controls (n = 92) on Stroop and Attentional Network Test (ANT). The current data indicate that significant impairment in attentional functions corresponds to the presence of MDD and MDDA. MDDA displayed significantly lower performance on the Stroop variables, and MDD were significantly impaired in the alerting function in ANT. These results show impairments on different levels of attention in mood disorders. MDDA show impairments on higher level executive attention functions, whereas MDD display deficits at the basic attentional level. These findings suggest that including comorbid anxiety disorder in MDD is important for future research.	\N	\N
21159327	Worry-prone individuals have less residual working memory capacity during worry compared to low-worriers (Hayes, Hirsch, & Mathews, 2008). People typically worry in verbal form, and the present study investigated whether verbal worry depletes working memory capacity more than worry in imagery-based form. High and low-worriers performed a working memory task, random interval generation, whilst thinking about a worry in verbal or imagery form. High (but not low) worriers had less available working memory capacity when worrying in verbal compared to imagery-based form. The findings could not be accounted for by general attentional control, amount of negatively-valenced thought, or appraisals participants made about worry topics. The findings indicate that the verbal nature of worry is implicated in the depletion of working memory resources during worry among high-worriers, and point to the potential value of imagery-based techniques in cognitive-behavioural treatments for problematic worry.	\N	\N
21176782	A recent physiologically based model of human sleep is extended to incorporate the effects of caffeine on sleep-wake timing and fatigue. The model includes the sleep-active neurons of the hypothalamic ventrolateral preoptic area (VLPO), the wake-active monoaminergic brainstem populations (MA), their interactions with cholinergic/orexinergic (ACh/Orx) input to MA, and circadian and homeostatic drives. We model two effects of caffeine on the brain due to competitive antagonism of adenosine (Ad): (i) a reduction in the homeostatic drive and (ii) an increase in cholinergic activity. By comparing the model output to experimental data, constraints are determined on the parameters that describe the action of caffeine on the brain. In accord with experiment, the ranges of these parameters imply significant variability in caffeine sensitivity between individuals, with caffeine's effectiveness in reducing fatigue being highly dependent on an individual's tolerance, and past caffeine and sleep history. Although there are wide individual differences in caffeine sensitivity and thus in parameter values, once the model is calibrated for an individual it can be used to make quantitative predictions for that individual. A number of applications of the model are examined, using exemplar parameter values, including: (i) quantitative estimation of the sleep loss and the delay to sleep onset after taking caffeine for various doses and times; (ii) an analysis of the system's stable states showing that the wake state during sleep deprivation is stabilized after taking caffeine; and (iii) comparing model output successfully to experimental values of subjective fatigue reported in a total sleep deprivation study examining the reduction of fatigue with caffeine. This model provides a framework for quantitatively assessing optimal strategies for using caffeine, on an individual basis, to maintain performance during sleep deprivation.	\N	\N
21213194	This study examined whether the process of temporal preparation for a target stimulus is the same regardless of the task required by the target stimulus. To this end, the same variable-foreperiod design was used in a temporal discrimination task (Experiment 1) and a reaction time task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration increased as a function of foreperiod, whereas in Experiment 2, foreperiod did not influence reaction time. Furthermore, both temporal sensitivity and perceived duration revealed an asymmetric sequential effect of foreperiod, but the pattern of this effect was opposite to the pattern observed in the reaction time task. Together these dissociative patterns of foreperiod effects suggest that the mechanism of temporal preparation depends on the task required by the target stimulus.	\N	\N
21215298	The N2pc component of the event-related potentials is assumed to indicate attentional filtering processes during visual search tasks. In this study, we investigated the effects of physical disparity between a target stimulus and distracter stimuli and discrimination difficulty of the target item, on N2pc component by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) while subjects completed a visual search task. In the visual search task, we presented a round array of stimuli and manipulated the color disparity between the target and distracters and the discriminative difficulty of the target's form. The results showed that higher amplitude of N2pc was elicited in the high color disparity condition compared to the low disparity condition. However, no significant effect was found for the discriminative difficulty. The results suggested that the N2pc component could be modulated by the physical disparity between the target item and the distracters in the searching processes, which most likely reflects allocation of attention to select an object based on the perceptual saliency of that object.	\N	\N
21221825	Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 (Lp-PLA2), a novel marker of vulnerable plaque to prone rupture, is a predictor of both cardiovascular event and cerebrovascular event, and highly sensitive-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) is an acute-phase response protein implicated in a broad range of cardiovascular diseases. We aimed to examine the association between periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMs) with circulating Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with PLMs. Seventy patients with newly diagnosed PLM with polysomnography were enrolled this study. Patients were divided into two groups according to PLM index (normal PLM index, <15; elevated PLM index, ≥15). Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP concentrations were measured in serum samples by turbidimetric and nephelometric methods, respectively. The concentrations of these parameters were compared between two groups and correlation analysis was performed between PLMs and Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels. Lp-PLA2 levels and hs-CRP were significantly increased in elevated PLM index group compared with the control group (206.8 ± 78.1 vs 157.8 ± 56.7, p = 0.003, and 4.2 ± 3.5 vs 2.4 ± 2.1, p = 0.02, respectively). PLM index was positively correlated with Lp-PLA2 levels (r = 0.40, p = 0.001) and hs-CRP (r = 0.24, p = 0.05). In the linear regression model, Lp-PLA2 was an independent predictor of PLM index (R(2) = 0.36, p = 0.005). This study demonstrated an independent linear relation between PLM index and Lp-PLA2. In addition, it was seen increased Lp-PLA2 and hs-CRP levels in patients with elevated PLM index. Based on these results, we can suggest that risk of vascular events may be increased in patients with PLMs and with increased PLM index.	\N	\N
21232884	The iris regulates the intensity of light that stimulates the retina. The pupils dilate also in response to mental activities as sign of attention. We hypothesized that the response of the foetal pupil to vibro-acoustic stimulation (VAS) reflects foetal attention. To determine whether the changes in the foetal pupil produced by vibroacoustic stimulation is a sign of foetal attention. We studied sonographically the pupils and iris of 151 foetuses between 27 and 41 weeks of gestation, using maximum ultrasonic zoom. 160 human foetuses between the 27th and the 41st week of gestation. The diameters of the pupil and iris were compared before and after VAS. At baseline, the pupils were miotic. We observed a response to VAS, manifest as a prominent pupillary dilatation in all foetuses. At all gestational ages, the percent increase in pupillary diameter was ≥57% (mean 87%; range: 57-135%). VAS dilated the foetal pupil. Sonographic assessment of the foetal pupil provided important insights in the development of foetal neurological functions.	\N	\N
21249517	This study examined two potential developmental pathways through which the temperament risk factor of negative emotionality (NE) leads to prospective increases in depressive symptoms through the mediating role of stressors and anxious symptoms in a sample of early to middle adolescents (N = 350, 6th-10th graders). The primary hypothesized model was that baseline NE leads to increased stressors, which results in increases in anxious arousal, which culminates with elevated depressive symptoms. An alternate model hypothesized that baseline NE leads to increased anxious arousal, which results in increases in stressors, and this culminates in elevated depressive symptoms. Youth completed self-report measures of NE, stressors, anxious arousal, and depressive symptoms at four time-points. Path analysis supported the primary model and showed that the mediating influence of stressors and anxious arousal explained 78% of the association between NE and prospective elevations in depressive symptoms. The alternate model was not supported. Neither gender nor age were moderators.	\N	\N
21264619	Traditional "activation" views of masked priming explain the identity priming effect in terms of facilitation due to 'pre-activation' of stored representations. Norris and Kinoshita's (2008) Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming instead explains priming in terms of the evidence that the prime contributes towards the decision required to the target. In support of the Bayesian Reader account, Norris and Kinoshita showed that the absence of priming for nonwords in the lexical decision task and for targets requiring a Different decision in the same-different match task can be explained based on a single principle. Against this, Bowers (2010) argued that the absence of priming should be explained instead by a combination of sublexical priming and "familiarity bias". As evidence, Bowers cited Bodner and Masson's (1997) finding that nonword priming did emerge with targets presented in visually unfamiliar cAsE-AlTeRnAtEd format. We present evidence that this finding was due to the use of an ambiguous letter in case-alternated format; when using unambiguous letters, we consistently failed to find priming of case-alternated nonwords. We suggest that the Bayesian Reader, rather than the familiarity bias hypothesis, explains the absence of priming.	\N	\N
21264645	Studies of electrophysiological indices of performance monitoring, such as the error-related negativity (ERN), posterror positivity (Pe), and N2 components of the event-related potential (ERP), suggest that increased ERN and Pe amplitudes and decreased N2 amplitudes are associated with better cognitive flexibility and cognitive control abilities; however, few studies have directly examined the relationship between cognitive performance and ERP indices of performance monitoring. We examined the neuropsychological profile of 89 healthy individuals who performed a modified flanker task. The neuropsychological domains tested included memory, verbal fluency, and attention/executive functioning. Pearson's correlations and multiple regression analyses showed a significant relationship between measures of attention/executive functioning and ERN amplitude, even when negative affect, reaction time interference, and posterror slowing were controlled. N2 amplitude related only to posterror slowing. The amplitude of the Pe was not significantly related to any cognitive domains. These findings are consistent with recent work indicating that performance monitoring requires attention skills and cognitive flexibility. Implications for the conflict-monitoring and reinforcement-learning theories are discussed.	\N	\N
21264726	This study demonstrates that when people attempt to identify a facial expression of emotion (FEE) by haptically exploring a 3D facemask, they are affected by viewing a simultaneous, task-irrelevant visual FEE portrayed by another person. In comparison to a control condition, where visual noise was presented, the visual FEE facilitated haptic identification when congruent (visual and haptic FEEs same category). When the visual and haptic FEEs were incongruent, haptic identification was impaired, and error responses shifted toward the visually depicted emotion. In contrast, visual emotion labels that matched or mismatched the haptic FEE category produced no such effects. The findings indicate that vision and touch interact in FEE recognition at a level where featural invariants of the emotional category (cf. precise facial geometry or general concepts) are processed, even when the visual and haptic FEEs are not attributable to a common source. Processing mechanisms behind these effects are considered.	\N	\N
21266181	Dynamic stimuli are ubiquitous in natural viewing conditions implying that grouping operations need to operate, not only in space, but also jointly in space and time. Moreover, in natural viewing, attention plays an important role in controlling how resources are allocated. We investigated how attention interacts with spatio-temporal perceptual grouping by using a bistable stimulus, called the Ternus-Pikler display. Ternus-Pikler displays can give rise to two different motion percepts, called Element Motion (EM) and Group Motion (GM), the former dominating at short Inter-Stimulus Intervals (ISIs) and the latter at long ISIs. Our results indicate that GM grouping requires more attentional resources than EM grouping. Different theoretical accounts of perceptual grouping and attention are discussed and evaluated in the light of the current results.	\N	\N
21267599	Nocturnal polyuria, nocturnal detrusor overactivity and high arousal thresholds are central in the pathogenesis of enuresis. An underlying mechanism on the brainstem level is probably common to these mechanisms. Enuretic children have an increased risk for psychosocial comorbidity. The primary evaluation of the enuretic child is usually straightforward, with no radiology or invasive procedures required, and can be carried out by any adequately educated nurse or physician. The first-line treatment, once the few cases with underlying disorders, such as diabetes, kidney disease or urogenital malformations, have been ruled out, is the enuresis alarm, which has a definite curative potential but requires much work and motivation. For families not able to comply with the alarm, desmopressin should be the treatment of choice. In therapy-resistant cases, occult constipation needs to be ruled out, and then anticholinergic treatment-often combined with desmopressin-can be tried. In situations when all other treatments have failed, imipramine treatment is warranted, provided the cardiac risks are taken into account.	\N	\N
21272839	Witt et al. (2008) have recently shown that golfers who putt with more success perceive the hole to be bigger than golfers who putt with less success. In three experiments, we systematically examined whether this phenomenon, labelled action-specific perception, depends on directing visual attention towards the action target. In Experiment 1 we replicated previously reported action-specific effects on perception in golf putting. In Experiments 2 and 3 we directly assessed whether action-specific effects on perception in golf putting are dependent on focusing visual attention on the target. To this end, the participants performed the putting task while visual attention towards the target was either completely withheld (Experiment 2) or divided over the target and other task-relevant objects (Experiment 3). No action-specific effects were found when visual attention towards the action target was occluded or partially diverted from the target. Together, our results provide evidence to suggest that focusing visual attention on the target while performing the action is a prerequisite for the emergence of action-specific perception.	\N	\N
21276839	This study characterized preferential choice in binary trials and investigated intra-session variations in response time (RT). In Experiment 1, participants (N=77) were asked to choose the preferred of two images of body wash; all unique combinations of 19 images were presented. The results showed: (a) marked and consistent individual preferences for specific stimuli; (b) RT decreased monotonically with increasing exposure to each stimulus; (c) RT decreased exponentially as a function of relative preference ranking of the 2 images in a trial; and (d) a regression model efficiently predicted trial RT as a function of exposure and relative preference. Experiment 2 (N=112) explored the effect of amount of exposure on RT, and relative preference as a function of the type of choice task (a previously completed vs. a new choice task). The results showed that: (a) within a single choice task, amount of exposure and relative preference between the stimuli predicted the systematic changes in RT observed in Exp. 1; and (b) when the choice task changed, the effects of previous amount of exposure, and relative stimulus preference did not transfer to the new task.	\N	\N
21282341	Visual salience maps are assumed to mediate target selection decisions in a motor-unspecific manner; accordingly, modulations of salience influence yes/no target detection or left/right localization responses in manual key-press search tasks, as well as ocular or skeletal movements to the target. Although widely accepted, this core assumption is based on little psychophysical evidence. At least four modulations of salience are known to influence the speed of visual search for feature singletons: (i) feature contrast, (ii) cross-trial dimension sequence and (iii) semantic pre-cueing of the target dimension, and (iv) dimensional target redundancy. If salience guides also manual pointing movements, their initiation latencies (and durations) should be affected by the same four manipulations of salience. Four experiments, each examining one of these manipulations, revealed this to be the case. Thus, these effects are seen independently of the motor response required to signal the perceptual decision (e.g., directed manual pointing as well as simple yes/no detection responses). This supports the notion of a motor-unspecific salience map, which guides covert attention as well as overt eye and hand movements.	\N	\N
21285440	Frequency-of-occurrence effects (e.g., effects of word frequency or familiarity) are widely thought to arise through differences in resting levels of activation in localist input-output modules. A different account posits that these effects at least partially reflect the strength of connections between various localist modules. Given that Arabic numerals appear more frequently than their alphabetic counterparts, we contrasted reaction times to stimuli in both formats in a naming/reading-aloud task and a parity-judgment task. The script effect (the difference between reaction times to Arabic and to alphabetic formats) was large in the parity-judgment task but absent in the naming/reading-aloud task. This script-by-task interaction follows naturally from the idea that at least part of the effect of frequency of occurrence of a printed word or digit (and other instances of familiarity) resides in the strength of connections between specialized localist input-output modules and a localist semantic module. This conclusion is likely applicable across a variety of domains.	\N	\N
21286495	To explore the time of day effects of alcohol on sleep, we examined sleep following alcohol administered at four times of day and three homeostatic loads during a 20-hr forced desynchrony (FD) protocol. Twenty-six healthy young adults (21-25 yrs) were studied. Participants were dosed at 4 clock times: 0400 (n = 6; 2 females), 1600 (n = 7; 4 females), 1000 (n = 6; 1 female) or 2200 (n = 7; 2 females). Participants slept 2300 to 0800 for at least 12 nights before the in-lab FD study. Double blind placebo and alcohol (vodka tonic targeting 0.05g% concentration) beverages were each administered three times during FD at different homeostatic loads: low (4.25 or 2.24 hrs awake), medium (8.25 or 6.25 hrs awake), high (12.25 or 10.25 hrs awake) in the 0400 and 1600 or 1000 and 2200 groups, respectively. Sleep was staged and subjected to spectral analysis. Breath Alcohol Concentration (BrAC) confirmed targeted maximal levels. At bedtime, BrAC was 0 in the low and medium homeostatic load conditions; however, at high homeostatic load, BrAC was still measurable. Spectral characteristics of sleep were unaffected with alcohol at any time of day. Few alcohol related changes were seen for sleep stages; however, with alcohol given at 0400 at a high homeostatic load there was an increase in wake. These data lend support to the idea that alcohol may be disruptive to sleep; however, our findings are inconsistent with the idea that a low dose of alcohol is a useful sleep aid when attempting to sleep at an adverse circadian phase.	\N	\N
21286898	In this study, we examined a source-monitoring phenomenon that arises from reactivated related information from the study phase. Three experiments showed that source attributions for target events were influenced not only by the target item itself, but also by studied information about related items. In Experiment 1, source memory for target items that have a high forward association value to a single related study item (e.g., credit) were affected by the source of the associated information (e.g., card), so that memory performance was better when associated items were presented in the same source rather than a different source. A similar effect occurred with bidirectional associates (Exp. 2), as well as with synonymous pairs of words (Exp. 3). We argue that the source information of the reactivated material can be commingled with information about a candidate during a source judgment at retrieval and thereby can affect performance.	\N	\N
21288505	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mental disorder characterized by depressed mood and inability to experience pleasure. Mismatch negativity (MMN) has been established as a correlate of preattentive change detection. In this study, preattentive processing of visual information in MDD patients was investigated using visual MMN (vMMN), and an abnormal vMMN was predicted in depressed patients relative to healthy participants because of dysfunction at the preattentive level. The processes underlying vMMN in MDD patients were also explored, and memory-based comparison preattentive processing was hypothesized to be impaired in MDD patients. Subjects included 14 medication-free patients (41.4 ± 12.6 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD and 14 age-matched healthy volunteers (41.7 ± 17.5 years). vMMN was investigated using event-related potentials. The protocol used both an equiprobable sequence and a traditional oddball sequence, and three kinds of difference waves (i.e., deviant-minus-standard, deviant-minus-control, and control-minus-standard) were investigated. Mean amplitudes and peak latencies were subjected to repeated-measures analysis of variance. Although MDD patients showed no reduction in the oddball-vMMN (deviant-minus-standard), they showed a significantly decreased deviant-minus-control difference waves and a trend for an increased control-minus-standard difference waves compared with healthy participants. These data provide evidence for anomalous preattentive information processing in MDD patients. In particular, the abnormality may be due to an attenuated memory-based comparison process and an enhanced refractory process.	\N	\N
21289533	Atypical sensory-based behaviors are a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). In this article, we review the neural underpinnings of sensory processing in autism by reviewing the literature on neurophysiological responses to auditory, tactile, and visual stimuli in autistic individuals. We review studies of unimodal sensory processing and multisensory integration that use a variety of neuroimaging techniques, including electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and functional MRI. We then explore the impact of covert and overt attention on sensory processing. With additional characterization, neurophysiologic profiles of sensory processing in ASD may serve as valuable biomarkers for diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic interventions for autism and reveal potential strategies and target brain regions for therapeutic interventions.	\N	\N
21293871	Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy 2I (LGMD2I) is a neuromuscular disorder with a heterogeneous phenotype. It is caused by mutations in the Fukutin Related Protein (FKRP) gene, which is ubiquitously expressed in human tissues. FKRP functions in CNS are largely unknown. To investigate possible cognitive impairment in LGMD2I and to describe brain MRI features. Ten LGMD2I patients (four males and six females, mean age 44 years, age range 19-69 years) were assessed with an extensive neuropsychological battery, psychopathological tests and neuromuscular specific quality-of-life questionnaire. Adults were compared with ten matched healthy controls. All patients underwent complete neurological examination, and nine underwent brain MRI scanning. Patients showed a fairly specific cognitive profile with mild impairment in executive functions and visuo-spatial planning without substantial impairment in global and logic IQ. MRI findings were heterogeneous: four patients showed non-specific white matter abnormalities; two patients showed moderate ventriculomegaly; three patients showed mild enlargement of subarachnoid spaces, without a specific pattern. Cerebellar atrophy was marked in one patient. Abnormal glycosylation of α-dystroglycan in LGMD2I may interfere with brain development and cognitive performances involving the frontal and posterior parietal regions, but does not result in specific brain MRI abnormalities.	\N	\N
21296417	Growing evidence indicates that neuromedin U (NmU) neuropeptide system plays an integral role in mediating the stress response through the corticotrophin-releasing factor (CRF) pathways. Stress is often associated with alteration in sleep-wake architecture both in human and laboratory animals. Here, we investigated whether activation of the NmU₂ receptor, a major high affinity receptor for NmU predominantly expressed in the brain, affects sleep behavior in rats. Effects of single (acute) intracebroventricular (icv) infusion of 2.5 nmol of the full agonists porcine NmU8 and rat NmU23 were assessed on sleep-wake architecture in freely moving rats, which were chronically implanted with EEG and EMG electrodes. In addition, repeated once daily administration of NmU8 at 2.5 nmol during 8 consecutive days (sub-chronic) was studied. Acute icv infusion of NmU23 elicited a robust alteration in sleep-wake architecture, namely enhanced wakefulness and suppressed sleep during the first 4h after administration. Acute infusion NmU8 had no effect on spontaneous sleep-wake architecture. However, sub-chronic icv infusion of NmU8 increased the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and intermediate stage (IS), while decreased light sleep. Additionally, NmU8 increased transitions from sleep states towards wakefulness suggesting a disruption in sleep continuity. The present results show that central-activation of NmU₂ receptor markedly reduced sleep duration and disrupted the mechanisms underlying NREM-REM sleep transitions. Given that sleep-wakefulness cycle is strongly influenced by stress and the role of NmU/NmU₂ receptor signaling in stress response, the disruption in sleep pattern associated with peptides species may support at least some signs of stress.	\N	\N
21298569	Affective stimuli are increasingly used in emotion research. Typically, stimuli are selected from databases providing affective norms. The validity of these norms is a critical factor with regard to the applicability of the stimuli for emotion research. We therefore probed the validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German (LANG) by correlating valence and arousal ratings across different sensory modalities. A sample of 120 words was selected from the LANG database, and auditory recordings of these words were obtained from two professional actors. The auditory stimuli were then rated again for valence and arousal. This cross-modal validation approach yielded very high correlations between auditory and visual ratings (>.95). These data confirm the strong validity of the Leipzig Affective Norms for German and encourage their use in emotion research.	\N	\N
21315746	Recent neuropsychological studies have attempted to distinguish between different types of anxiety by contrasting patterns of brain organisation or activation; however, lateralisation for processing emotional stimuli has received relatively little attention. This study examines the relationship between strength of lateralisation for the processing of facial expressions of emotion and three measures of anxiety: state anxiety, trait anxiety and social anxiety. Across all six of the basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) the same patterns of association were found. Participants with high levels of trait anxiety were more strongly lateralised to the right hemisphere for processing facial emotion. In contrast, participants with high levels of self-reported physiological arousal in response to social anxiety were more weakly lateralised to the right hemisphere, or even lateralised to the left hemisphere, for the processing of facial emotion. There were also sex differences in these associations: the relationships were evident for males only. The finding of distinct patterns of lateralisation for trait anxiety and self-reported physiological arousal suggests different neural circuitry for trait and social anxiety.	\N	\N
21319930	The serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) is associated with neural response to negative images in brain regions involved in the experience of emotion. However, the behavioral implications of this sensitivity have been studied far less extensively. The current study used eye-tracking methodology to examine how individuals genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR, including the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs25531, allocated attention during prolonged (30-s) exposure to face stimuli depicting positive and negative emotion. Short 5-HTTLPR allele carriers and carriers of the long allele with guanine at the sixth nucleotide (S/LG) displayed a stronger gaze bias (total fixation time, number of fixations, mean fixation length) for positive than for sad, threat, or neutral stimuli. In contrast, those homozygous for the long 5-HTTLPR allele with adenine at the sixth nucleotide (LA) viewed the emotion stimuli in an unbiased fashion. Time course analyses indicated no initial 5-HTTLPR group differences; however, S/LG 5-HTTLPR allele carriers were more likely than LA 5-HTTLPR homozygotes to direct gaze toward happy than toward sad stimuli over time. This bias toward positive stimuli during the later stages of information processing likely reflects a strategic effort to downregulate heightened reactivity to negative stimuli among 5-HTTLPR S/LG allele carriers.	\N	\N
21325507	During coordinated eye-hand movements, saccade reaction times (SRTs) and reach reaction times (RRTs) are correlated in humans and monkeys. Reaction times (RTs) measure the degree of movement preparation and can correlate with movement speed and accuracy. However, RTs can also reflect effector nonspecific influences, such as motivation and arousal. We use a combination of behavioral psychophysics and computational modeling to identify plausible mechanisms for correlations in SRTs and RRTs. To disambiguate nonspecific mechanisms from mechanisms specific to movement coordination, we introduce a dual-task paradigm in which a reach and a saccade are cued with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). We then develop several variants of integrate-to-threshold models of RT, which postulate that responses are initiated when the neural activity encoding effector-specific movement preparation reaches a threshold. The integrator models formalize hypotheses about RT correlations and make predictions for how each RT should vary with SOA. To test these hypotheses, we trained three monkeys to perform the eye-hand SOA task and analyzed their SRTs and RRTs. In all three subjects, RT correlations decreased with increasing SOA duration. Additionally, mean SRT decreased with decreasing SOA, revealing facilitation of saccades with simultaneous reaches, as predicted by the model. These results are not consistent with the predictions of the models with common modulation or common input but are compatible with the predictions of a model with mutual excitation between two effector-specific integrators. We propose that RT correlations are not simply attributable to motivation and arousal and are a signature of coordination.	\N	\N
21327341	The placebo effect is an important phenomenon whereby real changes occur in response to an otherwise inert intervention. Despite increasing research attention, it remains unclear exactly which processes are amenable to placebo effects. The current study tested whether an instructional manipulation could produce placebo effects on a nonconscious cognitive task, namely implicit learning. Four hundred and sixty-four university students completed a visual search task while smelling an odor or no odor, in alternating blocks. Unknown to them, the task contained a contingency whereby on half the trials the target's location was cued by the pattern of distractors, which was achieved by repeating some configurations of targets and distractors. Prior to the task, participants received positive, negative, or no information about the odor's possible effects on performance. Those given positive information demonstrated faster reaction times on cued trials than other participants. Those given negative information showed slower reaction times on cued trials compared with participants given no information. Further, the cuing effect appeared to be nonconscious, with participants' ability to recognize the repeated configurations equivalent to chance and no evidence that performance on a recognition test was related to the magnitude of the cuing effect. This suggests that instructional manipulations can produce placebo effects on some nonconscious processes.	\N	\N
21327350	Many theories of contingency learning assume (either explicitly or implicitly) that predicting whether an outcome will occur should be easier than making a causal judgment. Previous research suggests that outcome predictions would depart from normative standards less often than causal judgments, which is consistent with the idea that the latter are based on more numerous and complex processes. However, only indirect evidence exists for this view. The experiment presented here specifically addresses this issue by allowing for a fair comparison of causal judgments and outcome predictions, both collected at the same stage with identical rating scales. Cue density, a parameter known to affect judgments, is manipulated in a contingency learning paradigm. The results show that, if anything, the cue-density bias is stronger in outcome predictions than in causal judgments. These results contradict key assumptions of many influential theories of contingency learning.	\N	\N
21327356	A picture-word interference experiment examined the origin of the distractor frequency effect, the effect that pictures are named slower in the context of low-frequency than high-frequency words (Miozzo & Caramazza, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 132, 228-252, 2003). We compared two accounts of the effect: an early, input-related account and a late, response-related account. Participants named high and low-frequency pictures with low and high-frequency distractors in two conditions. In the immediate naming condition, picture and distractor were presented simultaneously. In the delayed naming condition, the distractor was presented 1,000 ms after the picture; pictures had to be named upon distractor presentation. There was a distractor frequency effect in both conditions, but an effect of picture frequency only in the immediate naming condition (showing that in the delayed naming condition, lexical selection had been completed). These results support a late origin of the distractor frequency effect.	\N	\N
21333960	When the interval between a warning signal (WS) and an imperative signal (IS), termed the foreperiod (FP), is variable across trials, reaction time (RT) to the IS typically decreases with increasing FP length. Here we examined the auditory filled-FP effect, which refers to a performance decrement after FPs filled with irrelevant auditory stimulation compared to FPs without additional stimulation. According to one account, irrelevant stimulation distracts individuals from processing time and probability information during the FP (distraction-during-FP hypothesis). This should predominantly affect long-FP trials. Alternatively, the filled-FP effect may arise from a failure to shift attention from FP modality to IS modality (attention-to-modality hypothesis). The first hypothesis focuses on preparatory processing, predicting a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, whereas the second hypothesis focuses on target processing, only predicting a global RT increase irrespective of FP length. Across four experiments, a filled-FP (compared to a blank-FP) condition consistently yielded a selective RT increase on long-FP trials, irrespective of FP-IS modality pairing. This pattern of results contradicts the attention-to-modality hypothesis but corroborates the distraction-during-FP hypothesis. More generally, these data have theoretical implications by supporting a multi-process view of temporal preparation under time uncertainty.	\N	\N
21347239	Few finance theories consider the influence of "skewness" (or large and asymmetric but unlikely outcomes) on financial choice. We investigated the impact of skewed gambles on subjects' neural activity, self-reported affective responses, and subsequent preferences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI). Neurally, skewed gambles elicited more anterior insula activation than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance, and positively skewed gambles also specifically elicited more nucleus accumbens (NAcc) activation than negatively skewed gambles. Affectively, positively skewed gambles elicited more positive arousal and negatively skewed gambles elicited more negative arousal than symmetric gambles equated for expected value and variance. Subjects also preferred positively skewed gambles more, but negatively skewed gambles less than symmetric gambles of equal expected value. Individual differences in both NAcc activity and positive arousal predicted preferences for positively skewed gambles. These findings support an anticipatory affect account in which statistical properties of gambles--including skewness--can influence neural activity, affective responses, and ultimately, choice.	\N	\N
21357280	Obesity has been associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness, but the effect on sleep-related sympathetic modulation is not known. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of fat gain on cardiac autonomic control during wakefulness and sleep in humans. We performed a randomized, controlled study to assess the effects of fat gain on heart rate variability. We recruited 36 healthy volunteers, who were randomized to either a standardized diet to gain ≈4 kg over 8 weeks followed by an 8-week weight loss period (n=20) or to serve as a weight-maintainer control (n=16). An overnight polysomnogram with power spectral analysis of heart rate variability was performed at baseline, after weight gain, and after weight loss to determine the ratio of low-frequency to high-frequency power and to examine the relationship between changes in heart rate variability and changes in insulin, leptin, and adiponectin levels. Mean weight gain was 3.9 kg in the fat gain group versus 0.1 kg in the maintainer group. Low frequency/high frequency increased both during wakefulness and sleep after fat gain and returned to baseline after fat loss in the fat gain group and did not change in the control group. Insulin, leptin, and adiponectin also increased after fat gain and fell after fat loss, but no clear pattern of changes was seen that correlated consistently with changes in heart rate variability. Short-term fat gain in healthy subjects is associated with increased cardiac sympathetic activation during wakefulness and sleep, but the mechanisms remain unclear.	\N	\N
21371485	Patients with lesions in rostral prefrontal cortex (PFC) often experience problems in everyday-life situations requiring multitasking. A key cognitive component that is critical in multitasking situations is prospective memory, defined as the ability to carry out an intended action after a delay period filled with unrelated activity. The few functional imaging studies investigating prospective memory have shown consistent activation in both medial and lateral rostral PFC but also in more posterior prefrontal regions and non-frontal regions. The aim of this study was to determine regions that are necessary for prospective memory performance, using the human lesion approach. We designed an experimental paradigm allowing us to assess time-based (remembering to do something at a particular time) and event-based (remembering to do something in a particular situation) prospective memory, using two types of material, words and pictures. Time estimation tasks and tasks controlling for basic attention, inhibition and multiple instructions processing were also administered. We examined brain-behaviour relationships with a voxelwise lesion method in 45 patients with focal brain lesions and 107 control subjects using this paradigm. The results showed that lesions in the right polar prefrontal region (in Brodmann area 10) were specifically associated with a deficit in time-based prospective memory tasks for both words and pictures. This deficit could not be explained by impairments in basic attention, detection, inhibition or multiple instruction processing, and there was also no deficit in event-based prospective memory conditions. In addition to their prospective memory difficulties, these polar prefrontal patients were significantly impaired in time estimation ability compared to other patients. The same region was found to be involved using both words and pictures, suggesting that right rostral PFC plays a material nonspecific role in prospective memory. This is the first lesion study showing that rostral PFC is crucial for time-based prospective memory. The findings suggest that time-based and event-based prospective memory might be supported at least in part by distinct brain regions. Two particularly plausible explanations for the deficit rest upon a possible role for polar prefrontal structures in supporting in time estimation, and/or in retrieving an intention to act. More broadly, the results are consistent with the view that the deficit of rostral patients in multitasking situations might at least in part be explained by a deficit in prospective memory.	\N	\N
21371916	To report on minor modification of laparoscopic Vecchietti vaginoplasty and to examine the quality of sexual life after the operation. A retrospective study to examine the role of minor modification during laparoscopic Vecchietti operation to prevent injuries and to evaluate the sexual function of patients with neovagina. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Pécs, Faculty of Medicine, a tertiary supply center in Hungary. PATICIPANTS: Twenty-three adolescents or young adults, ages 16 to 26 with vaginal agenesis (Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome) were operated. Twenty-five sexually active patients with matched age served as controls. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation was modified with the use of endovaginal ultrasound transducer to visualize the narrow vesico-rectal space. The quality of sexual life 2-11 years after the operation was measured by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Complications occurring during operations; desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, lubrication, and pain during sexual intercourse. The technical modification of the operation, with endovaginal transducer, improved the method. Serious injuries of the bladder or rectum could be avoided. Anatomic and functional results shown by the total FSFI scores did not differ from that of the control group. Desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction of the operated patients were similar to controls; however, patients with neovagina tended to have less lubrication and more pain during sexual intercourse. Laparoscopic Vecchietti operation modified by the use of endovaginal transducer is a safe procedure to create a neovagina, which guarantees good quality of sexual life with high satisfaction for patients.	\N	\N
21372116	The impact of lesion location on cognitive functioning was assessed in a group of 97 patients with a clinically isolated syndrome. Using the Brief Repeatable Battery, we evidenced that 24% of patients showed at least one abnormal test, 20% at least two and 15% at least three. Verbal learning performances were inversely associated with presence of lesions in Broca's area, in the right frontal lobe and in the splenium while spatial learning performances were inversely correlated to the presence of lesions in the deep white matter. No associations were evidenced between lesion location and performance of tasks exploring attention and executive functions.	\N	\N
21373192	The ability to coordinate with others' head and eye orientation to look in the same direction is considered a key step towards an understanding of others mental states like attention and intention. Here, we investigated the ontogeny and habituation patterns of gaze following into distant space and behind barriers in nine hand-raised wolves. We found that these wolves could use conspecific as well as human gaze cues even in the barrier task, which is thought to be more cognitively advanced than gazing into distant space. Moreover, while gaze following into distant space was already present at the age of 14 weeks and subjects did not habituate to repeated cues, gazing around a barrier developed considerably later and animals quickly habituated, supporting the hypothesis that different cognitive mechanisms may underlie the two gaze following modalities. More importantly, this study demonstrated that following another individuals' gaze around a barrier is not restricted to primates and corvids but is also present in canines, with remarkable between-group similarities in the ontogeny of this behaviour. This sheds new light on the evolutionary origins of and selective pressures on gaze following abilities as well as on the sensitivity of domestic dogs towards human communicative cues.	\N	\N
21382218	High levels of multidimensional perfectionism may be dysfunctional in their own right and can also impact on the maintenance and treatment of Axis I psychiatric disorders. This paper sought to describe the behavioural expressions and imagery associated with perfectionism in a non-clinical sample. Participants (n = 59) completed a newly developed questionnaire to assess behavioural expressions of perfectionism, and an adapted interview to assess perfectionism-related intrusive mental images. The study found that those high in perfectionism took longer to complete tasks, experienced more checking and safety behaviour whilst carrying out tasks, and had greater trouble actually completing tasks compared to those low in perfectionism. In addition, those with higher levels of perfectionism experienced intrusive mental imagery, which was more distressing, harder to dismiss, and had more impact on behaviour than those with lower levels of perfectionism. This research provides an initial exploration of the specific behaviours and intrusive mental imagery associated with perfectionism. The new behavioural measure of perfectionism could prove useful clinically in the assessment of change; however, these findings are preliminary and warrant replication in a clinical sample in order to examine their treatment implications.	\N	\N
21389102	Recent studies have shown that a variety of aftereffects occurs in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. These findings have been taken as strong evidence that remapping of visual information occurs in a hierarchic manner in the human cortex with an increasing magnitude from early to higher levels. Other studies, however, failed to find non-retinotopic aftereffects. These experiments all relied on paradigms involving eye movements. Recently, we have developed a new paradigm, based on the Ternus-Pikler display, which tests retinotopic vs. non-retinotopic processing without the involvement of eye movements. Using this paradigm, we found strong evidence that attention, form, and motion processing can occur in a non-retinotopic frame of reference. Here, we show that motion and tilt aftereffects are largely retinotopic.	\N	\N
21392554	Research has shown that during emotional imagery, valence and arousal each modulate the startle reflex. Here, two imagery-startle experiments required participants to attend to the startle probe as a simple reaction time cue. In experiment 1, four emotional conditions differing in valence and arousal were examined. Experiment 2, to accentuate potential valence effects, included two negative high arousal, a positive high arousal and a negative low arousal condition. Imagery effectively manipulated emotional valence and arousal, as indicated by heart rate and subjective ratings. Compared to baseline, imagery facilitated startle responses. However, valence and arousal failed to significantly affect startle magnitude in both experiments and startle latency in Experiment 1. Results suggest that emotional startle modulation is eclipsed when the probe is significant for task completion and/or cues a motor response. Findings suggest that an active, rather than defensive, response set may interfere with affective startle modulation, warranting further investigation.	\N	\N
21398561	Dependent on criteria used, between 35% and 53% of the participants with cerebral palsy fulfilled the criteria of clinically relevant executive function problems as defined by Conners' (1994) Continuous Performance Test. Executive function problems were noticed mainly in participants with bilateral brain lesions and who had been born preterm. Findings highlight the need to check for attention problems in children with cerebral palsy.	\N	\N
21401233	In two experiments, we examined the effects of emotional valence and arousal on associative binding. Participants studied negative, positive, and neutral word pairs, followed by an associative recognition test. In Experiment 1, with a short-delayed test, accuracy for intact pairs was equivalent across valences, whereas accuracy for rearranged pairs was lower for negative than for positive and neutral pairs. In Experiment 2, we tested participants after a one-week delay and found that accuracy was greater for intact negative than for intact neutral pairs, whereas rearranged pair accuracy was equivalent across valences. These results suggest that, although negative emotional valence impairs associative binding after a short delay, it may improve binding after a longer delay. The results also suggest that valence, as well as arousal, needs to be considered when examining the effects of emotion on associative memory.	\N	\N
21404129	An influential account of how cognitive control deals with conflicting sources of information holds that conflict is monitored by a module that automatically recruits attention to resolve the conflict. This leads to reduced effects of conflict on the subsequent trial, a phenomenon termed conflict adaptation. A prominent question is whether control processes are domain specific--that is, recruited only by the particular type of conflict they resolve. Previous studies that have examined this question used two-choice tasks in which feature repetition effects could be responsible for domain-specific adaptation effects. We report two experiments using four-choice (Experiment 1) and five-choice (Experiment 2) tasks that contain two types of irrelevant sources of potentially conflicting information: stimulus location (Simon conflict) and distractors (flanker conflict). In both experiments, we found within-type conflict adaptation for both types of conflict after eliminating trials on which stimulus features were repeated from one trial to the next. Across-type conflict adaptation, however, was not significant. Thus, conflict adaptation was due to domain-specific recruitment of cognitive control. Our results add converging evidence to the idea that multiple independent control processes are involved in reactive cognitive control, although whether control is always local remains to be determined.	\N	\N
21407245	Inter-individual variability in perception, thought and action is frequently treated as a source of 'noise' in scientific investigations of the neural mechanisms that underlie these processes, and discarded by averaging data from a group of participants. However, recent MRI studies in the human brain show that inter-individual variability in a wide range of basic and higher cognitive functions - including perception, motor control, memory, aspects of consciousness and the ability to introspect - can be predicted from the local structure of grey and white matter as assessed by voxel-based morphometry or diffusion tensor imaging. We propose that inter-individual differences can be used as a source of information to link human behaviour and cognition to brain anatomy.	\N	\N
21420518	We present recent empirical and theoretical advances in conflict and error monitoring in the Simon task. On the basis of the adaptation by binding account for conflict adaptation and the orienting account for post-error slowing, we predict a dissociation between conflict and error monitoring. This prediction is tested and confirmed as conflict adaptation is task-specific while post-error slowing is not.	\N	\N
21426626	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with complex genetic aetiology. The identification of candidate intermediate phenotypes may facilitate the detection of susceptibility genes and neurobiological mechanisms underlying the disorder. Electroencephalography (EEG) is an ideal neuroscientific approach, providing a direct measurement of neural activity that demonstrates reliability, developmental stability and high heritability. This systematic review evaluates the utility of a subset of electrophysiological measures as potential intermediate phenotypes for ADHD: quantitative EEG indices of arousal and intraindividual variability, and functional investigations of attention, inhibition and performance monitoring using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Each measure demonstrates consistent and meaningful associations with ADHD, a degree of genetic overlap with ADHD and potential links to specific genetic variants. Investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to EEG/ERP and shared genetic overlap with ADHD might enhance molecular genetic studies and provide novel insights into aetiology. Such research will aid in the precise characterisation of the clinical deficits seen in ADHD and guide the development of novel intervention and prevention strategies for those at risk.	\N	\N
21429025	Although the treatment of early gastric cancer with endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) has been widely carried out, a standardized method of sedation for ESD has not been established. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of sedation with dexmedetomidine (DEX). We conducted a randomized study involving 90 patients with gastric tumors who were intended to be treated with ESD. The patients were sedated either with DEX (i.v. infusion of 3.0 µg/kg per h over 5 min followed by continuous infusion at 0.4 µg/kg per h [n = 30]), propofol (PF [n = 30]), or midazolam (MDZ [n = 30]). In all groups, 1 mg MDZ was added i.v. as needed. En bloc resection of the gastric tumor was achieved in 88 (98%) patients. None of the DEX-sedated patients showed a significant reduction of the oxygen saturation level. The percentage of patients who showed body movement in the DEX group was significantly lower than those in the PF and MDZ groups, and the mean dose of additional MDZ in the DEX group was significantly smaller than that in the MDZ group. The rate of effective sedation was significantly higher in the DEX group compared with the MDZ or PF group. The mean length of ESD in the DEX group was 65 min, which was significantly shorter than in the other two groups. No DEX-sedated patient developed major surgical complications. Sedation with DEX is effective and safe for patients with gastric tumors who are undergoing ESD.	\N	\N
21429736	We consider the potential role of oscillations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in mediating attention, working memory and memory consolidation. Activity in the theta, beta, and gamma bands is related to communication between PFC and different brain areas. While gamma/beta oscillations mediate bottom-up and top-down interactions between PFC and visual cortices, related to attention, theta rhythms are engaged by hippocampal/PFC interplay. These interactions are dynamic, depending on the nature and relevance of the information currently being processed. The profound modifications of the PFC neuronal network associated with changes in oscillatory coherence are controlled by neuromodulators such as dopamine, which thereby allow or prevent the formation of cell assemblies for information encoding and storage.	\N	\N
21432617	We established a neuropsychological testing profile among Turkish adults presenting with ADHD controlling for general intelligence and comorbid psychiatric conditions. Adults with ADHD frequently present with comorbid conditions (e.g., mood and substance use/abuse disorders) that may have a detrimental impact on neurocognitive function. Hence, we excluded patients with ADHD meeting criteria for comorbid psychiatric syndromes. A comprehensive neuropsychological test battery was administered to adults with ADHD attending a general psychiatry clinic in Istanbul, Turkey, and healthy control participants. Adults with ADHD demonstrated performance deficits on tests of attention, information processing speed, and general and working memory. Patients with ADHD also reported a significantly greater number of symptoms associated with frontal lobe syndromes (i.e., dysexecutive symptoms and disinhibition). Patients with ADHD demonstrated rather striking deficits on tests of verbal and nonverbal memory. Once information was encoded, however, patients with ADHD do not demonstrate significant information loss. Patients with ADHD and healthy controls did not differ on tests of alternation learning, inhibitory control (error rates), and ToM skills. Findings support the contention that dorsal-prefrontal (rather than ventral-prefrontal) dysfunction is associated with adult ADHD. Unexpectedly, groups did not differ on executive control and fluency tasks. Yet patients with ADHD obtained substantially higher scores on a self-report measure of executive dysfunction. This suggests that dysexecutive symptoms among patients with ADHD in the current study do not reflect set-shifting or organizational deficits. Rather, symptoms may reflect attentional and working memory deficits as well as diminished information processing speed.	\N	\N
21435770	The experiments conducted aimed to investigate whether reduced accuracy when counting stimuli presented in rapid temporal sequence in adults with dyslexia could be explained by a sensory processing deficit, a general slowing in processing speed or difficulties shifting attention between stimuli. To achieve these aims, the influence of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), stimulus duration, and sequence length were evaluated in two experiments. In the first that used skilled readers only, significantly more errors were found with presentation of long sequences when the ISI or stimulus durations were short. Experiment 2 used a wider range of ISIs and stimulus durations. Compared to skilled readers, a group with dyslexia had reduced accuracy on two-stimulus sequences when the ISI was short, but not when the ISI was long. Although reduced accuracy was found on all short and long sequences by the group with dyslexia, when performance on two-stimulus sequences was used as an index of sensory processing efficiency and controlled, group differences were found with presentation of stimuli of short duration only. We concluded that continuous, repetitive stimulation to the same visual area can produce a capacity limitation on rapid counting tasks in all readers when the ISIs or stimulus durations are short. While reduced accuracy on rapid sequential counting tasks can be explained by a sensory processing deficit when the stimulus duration is long, slower processing speed in the group with dyslexia explains the greater inaccuracy found as sequence length is increased when the stimulus duration is short.	\N	\N
21437989	Kava (Piper methysticum) elicits dose-dependent psychotropic effects and thus may potentially deleteriously affect cognitive performance. Clinical trials have assessed the effects of kava on cognition, however, to our knowledge no systematic review has been conducted in this area. To systematically review the effects of kava on cognition, providing an analysis of the individual study's methodological quality, results and effect sizes. A systematic review was conducted of publications up to June 15th 2010, using the electronic databases MEDLINE, PsychINFO, CINAHL, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library. The search criteria involved kava and cognition related terms, e.g. memory and attention. Ten human clinical trials met inclusion criteria (acute n = 7, chronic n = 3). One acute study found that kava significantly improved visual attention and working memory processes while another found that kava increased body sway. One chronic study found that kava significantly impaired visual attention during high-cognitive demand. Potential enhanced cognition may be attributed to the ability of kava to inhibit re-uptake of noradrenaline in the pre-frontal cortex, while increased body sway may be due to GABA pathway modulation. The majority of evidence suggests that kava has no replicated significant negative effects on cognition.	\N	\N
21440073	According to the default-mode interference hypothesis, suboptimal performance in tasks requiring selective attention occurs when off-task processing (e.g., mind wandering) supported by default-mode regions interferes with on-task processing (e.g., attention) enabled by task-positive regions. In the present functional MRI study, we therefore investigated whether suboptimal performance in a selective attention task was linked to heightened interactions between a key default-mode region (the posterior cingulate cortex; PCC) and a key task-positive region (the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DLPFC). We also investigated whether heightened interactions between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to enhanced future performance, consistent with prior data suggesting that such interactions index adaptive changes to the cognitive system. In line with both of these predictions, increases of current-trial functional connectivity between the PCC and the left DLPFC were linked to increases of response time in the current trial (i.e., suboptimal performance), but to decreases of response time in the next trial (i.e., enhanced performance). This double dissociation provides novel support for the default-mode interference hypothesis. Moreover, it suggests the possibility that, in at least some cases, default-mode interference indexes processes that optimize future performance.	\N	\N
21441920	Selective attention filters information to limit what is encoded and maintained in working memory. Although the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is central to both selective attention and working memory, the underlying neural processes that link these cognitive abilities remain elusive. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to guide repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation with electroencephalographic recordings in humans, we perturbed PFC function at the inferior frontal junction in participants before they performed a selective-attention, delayed-recognition task. This resulted in diminished top-down modulation of activity in posterior cortex during early encoding stages, which predicted a subsequent decrement in working memory accuracy. Participants with stronger fronto-posterior functional connectivity displayed greater disruptive effects. Our data further suggests that broad alpha-band (7-14 Hz) phase coherence subserved this long-distance top-down modulation. These results suggest that top-down modulation mediated by the prefrontal cortex is a causal link between early attentional processes and subsequent memory performance.	\N	\N
21444327	to determine if there are age-related differences in locomotor targeting (LT) performance and step length (SL) regulatory behaviour under structural interference. forty older (n = 20, mean age = 77.9) and younger (n = 20, mean age = 25.2) participants walked 11.6 m while stepping on a target positioned at the 9.5 m point. Participants completed seven trials under each of three conditions, including the control (C) (no structural interference), low structural interference (L) and high structural interference (H). The structural interference conditions required participants to engage in LT while simultaneously verbally identifying letters that were visually presented on one of two monitors. One monitor was located near the target (low interference), while the other monitor was elevated to require participants to direct their gaze further away from the target to identify a letter (high interference). Outcome measures included LT error, SL, SL variability and the distribution of SL adjustment. structural interference had a detrimental effect on the LT accuracy of the older group (2.75 cm mean increase in absolute error) but not on the younger group (1.05 cm mean increase in absolute error), even though the interference caused the older group alone to adopt a more conservative gait pattern involving shorter SLs. The older participants exhibited shorter mean SL with each increase in structural interference (conditions C vs. L, P = 0.004; conditions L vs. H, P = 0.050), whereas the younger participants' mean SL did not differ across conditions. The manner in which older and younger participants distributed SL adjustment across the steps in advance of the target did not differ. the results confirmed that LT demands more attention from older adults than it does from younger adults, and revealed that a consequence of this age difference is a decline in LT accuracy among older adults. The study implicates age-related impaired visual attention switching as a potential source of impaired walking performance among older adults.	\N	\N
21452076	As a rule, the discriminability of multiple symmetries from random patterns increases with the number of symmetry axes, but this number does not seem to be the only determinant. In particular, multiple symmetries with orthogonal axes seem better discriminable than multiple symmetries with nonorthogonal axes. In six experiments on imperfect two-fold symmetry, we investigated whether this is due to extra structure in the form of so-called correlation rectangles, which arise only in the case of orthogonal axes, or to the relative orientation of the axes as such. The results suggest that correlation rectangles are not perceptually relevant and that the percept of a multiple symmetry results from an orientation-dependent interaction between the constituent single symmetries. The results can be accounted for by a model involving the analysis of symmetry at all orientations, smoothing (averaging over neighboring orientations), and extraction of peaks.	\N	\N
21452088	Stressful life events can result into declined memory performance at later age. One hypothesis suggests that stress affects the hippocampus, a brain area important for memory functioning. This study explored a potential relationship between the number of negative stressful life events and hippocampus-dependent declarative but not hippocampus-independent procedural memory performance in a community sample of 255 children, aged 6-12 years. The findings revealed that negative stressful life events were negatively related to verbal declarative memory, but not to nonverbal declarative and procedural memory. The memory impairments could not be accounted for by attention and sleep disturbances, and parenting characteristics as perceived by the child did not influence the vulnerability for the stress-related memory impairments. These findings provide further insight into the deleterious effects of negative stressful life events on learning in school-aged children.	\N	\N
21455862	Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is a chronic disease characterized by recurrent episodes of partial or complete upper airway collapse and obstruction during sleep, associated with intermittent oxygen desaturation, sleep fragmentation, and symptoms of disruptive snoring and daytime sleepiness. Increasing focus is being placed on the relationship between OSAS and all-cause and cardiovascular disease-related mortality, but it still largely unclear whether this association is causative or simply speculative and epidemiological. Basically, reliable clinical evidence supports the hypothesis that OSAS might be associated with essential and resistant hypertension, as well as with an incremental risk of developing stroke, cardiac rhythm perturbations (e.g., atrial fibrillation, bradyarrhythmias, supraventricular and ventricular arrhythmias), coronary artery disease, acute myocardial infarction, and heart failure. Although it is still unclear whether OSAS might represent an independent risk factor for several acute or chronic conditions, or rather might trigger cardiovascular disease in the presence of traditional cardiovascular risk factors (e.g., obesity, diabetes, and dyslipidemia), there is a plausible biological background underlying this association, in that most of the mechanisms implicated in the pathogenesis of OSAS (i.e., hypoxia, hypercapnia, negative intrathoracic pressure, micro-arousal, sympathetic hyperactivity, metabolic and hormonal changes, oxidative stress, phlogosis, endothelial dysfunction, hypercoagulability, and genetic predisposition) might also be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disorders. In this article we discuss the different aspects of the relationship between OSAS and pathogenically different conditions such as systemic hypertension, coronary artery disease, stroke, metabolic abnormalities, arrhythmias, and heart failure, and we also discuss the kaleidoscope of phenomena implicated in the pathogenesis of this challenging disease.	\N	\N
21457759	When multiple objects are present in a visual scene, salient and behaviorally relevant objects are attentionally selected and receive enhanced processing at the expense of less salient or less relevant objects. Here we examined three lateralized components of the event-related potential (ERP) - the N2pc, Ptc, and SPCN - as indices of target and distractor processing in a visual search paradigm. Participants responded to the orientation of a target while ignoring an attentionally salient distractor and ERPs elicited by the target and the distractor were obtained. Results indicate that both the target and the distractor elicit an N2pc component which may index the initial attentional selection of both objects. In contrast, only the distractor elicited a significant Ptc, which may reflect the subsequent suppression of distracting or irrelevant information. Thus, the Ptc component appears to be similar to another ERP component - the Pd - which is also thought to reflect distractor suppression. Furthermore, only the target elicited an SPCN component which likely reflects the representation of the target in visual short term memory.	\N	\N
21458476	We investigated the organization of eye-movement classes in a natural and dynamical setup. To mimic the goals and objectives of the natural world in a controlled environment, we studied eye-movements while participants played Breakout, an old Atari game which remains surprisingly entertaining, often addictive, in spite of its graphic and structural simplicity. Our results show that eye-movement dynamics can be explained in terms of simple principles of moments of prediction and urgency of action. We observed a consistent anticipatory behavior (gaze was directed ahead of ball trajectory) except during the moment in which the ball bounced either in the walls, or in the paddle. At these moments, we observed a refractory period during which there are no blinks and saccades. Saccade delay caused the gaze to fall behind the ball. This pattern is consistent with a model by which participants postpone saccades at the bounces while predicting the ball trajectory and subsequently make a catch-up saccade directed to a position which anticipates ball trajectory. During bounces, trajectories were smooth and curved interpolating the V-shape function of the ball with minimal acceleration. These results pave the path to understand the taxonomy of eye-movements on natural configurations in which stimuli and goals switch dynamically in time.	\N	\N
21459622	People can maintain accurate representations of visual changes without necessarily being aware of them. Here, we investigate whether a similar phenomenon (implicit change detection) also exists in touch. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants detected the presence of a change between two consecutively-presented tactile displays. Tactile change blindness was observed, with participants failing to report the presence of tactile change. Critically, however, when participants had to make a forced choice response regarding the number of stimuli presented in the two displays, their performance was significantly better than chance (i.e., implicit change detection was observed). Experiment 3 demonstrated that tactile change detection does not necessarily involve a shift of spatial attention toward the location of change, regardless of whether the change is explicitly detected. We conclude that tactile change detection likely results from comparing representations of the two displays, rather than by directing spatial attention to the location of the change.	\N	\N
21466088	An internal clock model has often been used to explain disruptions in timing production that occur when temporal and nontemporal tasks are performed simultaneously. In this study, participants' ability to walk 8 m in 8 sec. while executing various secondary concurrent nontemporal tasks was assessed for 16 children enrolled in sports at school. Children participated in six trials under five randomized task conditions involving different coordinative and cognitive workloads. The duration of timing production increased as the attention requirements or cognitive demands placed upon the completion of the task increased. However, participants also showed learning of timing over the six trials. Significant differences were found between the timing task and the concurrent nontemporal tasks depending on the difficulty and cognitive load of the secondary tasks. Results are discussed using attention models of time estimation and production.	\N	\N
21470571	The purpose of this study was to investigate sex differences in cognitive control as measured by the stimulus-locked N2 component of the event-related potential (ERP). High-density ERPs were obtained from 114 healthy individuals (60 females, 54 males) who completed a modified Eriksen Flanker Task. Behavioral measures (i.e., error rates, reaction times) and N2 amplitudes were analyzed. On the flanker task, females responded significantly slower and committed more errors than males. For N2 amplitude, there was a significant main effect of congruency, with increased amplitude to incongruent trials. Importantly, sexes differed as a function of congruency, with males showing significantly larger incongruent N2 amplitudes than females. Sex differences in N2 amplitude remained in a subgroup of participants that did not differ for behavioral, demographic, and affective variables. No sex differences were shown for electrophysiological or behavioral indices of conflict adaptation. Results indicate sex differences in brain activation associated with conflict monitoring. Findings may be explained by two contradictory possibilities: (1) females more effectively monitor conflict as indicated by less neural activation than males for similar behavioral performance in a matched subsample, or, (2) females less effectively monitor conflict than males.	\N	\N
21474638	There is a lack of studies related to virtual reality (VR)-augmented balance training on postural control in people with Parkinson disease (PD). The purposes of this study were: (1) to examine the effects of VR-augmented balance training on the sensory integration of postural control under varying attentional demands and (2) to compare the results with those of a conventional balance training (CB) group and an untrained control group. A longitudinal, randomized controlled trial was used. The intervention was conducted in the clinic, and the assessment was performed in a research laboratory. Forty-two people with PD (Hoehn and Yahr stages II-III) were recruited. The VR and CB groups received a 6-week balance training program. The sensory organization tests (SOTs) of computerized posturography with single- and dual-task conditions were conducted prior to training, after training, and at follow-up. Equilibrium scores, sensory ratios, and verbal reaction times (VRTs) were recorded. There were no significant differences in equilibrium scores or VRTs between the VR and CB groups. However, the equilibrium scores in SOT-6 (ie, unreliable vision and somatosensation) of the VR group increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The equilibrium scores in SOT-5 (ie, unreliable somatosensation with eyes closed) of the CB group also increased significantly more than that of the control group after training. The functional significance of the improvements in equilibrium scores in the SOTs was not known, and the sample size was small. Both VR and CB training improved sensory integration for postural control in people with PD, especially when they were deprived of sensory redundancy. However, the attentional demand for postural control was not changed after either VR or CB training.	\N	\N
21476025	This study examined the relationship between the developmental trajectories of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology in a longitudinal sample of children ages 9 to 14. Participants and measures were derived from the Multimodal Treatment Study for ADHD including 534MTA participants and 254 normal controls. Despite improvement over time, MTA participants continued to receive higher ratings of ADHD symptomatology and exhibit greater difficulties across the majority of neuropsychological outcomes. No relations were found between improvements in neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology over time. Findings provide support for the persistence of neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology. Findings did not support the hypothesized relation between improvements in frontally-mediated neuropsychological functioning and ADHD symptomatology possibly due to the brief 1-year lag and limited assessment battery. Findings are discussed in relation to neuropsychological development including recommendations for future research.	\N	\N
21480683	The immediate emotional and situational antecedents of ad-libitum smoking are still not well understood. We reanalyzed data from ecological momentary assessment using novel point process analyses to assess how craving, mood, and social setting influence smoking rate, as well as to assess the moderating effects of gender and nicotine dependence. Smokers (N = 304) recorded craving, mood, and social setting using electronic diaries when smoking and at random nonsmoking times over 16 days of smoking. Point process analysis, which makes use of the known random sampling scheme for momentary variables, examined main effects of setting and interactions with gender and dependence. Increased craving was associated with higher rates of smoking, particularly among women. Negative affect was not associated with smoking rate, even in interaction with arousal, but restlessness was associated with substantially higher smoking rates. Women's smoking tended to be less affected by negative affect. Nicotine dependence had little moderating effect on situational influences. Smoking rates were higher when smokers were alone or with others who were smoking, and smoking restrictions reduced smoking rates. However, the presence of others who are smoking undermined the effects of restrictions. The more sensitive point process analyses confirmed earlier findings, including the surprising conclusion that negative affect by itself was not related to smoking rates. Contrary to hypothesis, men's and not women's smoking was influenced by negative affect. Both smoking restrictions and the presence of others who are not smoking suppress smoking, but the presence of others who are not smoking undermines the effects of restrictions. Point process analyses of ecological momentary assessment data can bring out even small influences on smoking rate.	\N	\N
21487761	Low-grade gliomas are slow-growing tumors invading eloquent areas and white matter pathways. For many decades these tumors were considered inoperable because of their high tropism for eloquent areas. However, the young age of the patients and the inescapable anaplastic transformation have recently suggested more aggressive treatments. We analyzed the neurological and neuro-oncological outcome of 12 patients who underwent surgery fully awake for the resection of LGG, harboring eloquent areas. 10 right- and 2 left-handed patients underwent pre-operative assessment: Karnofsky Performance Status, Edinburgh Handedness Inventory Score; neuropsychological and neurophysiological evaluations, according to the tumor location. During surgery we performed: sensory-motor-evoked potentials, continuous electro-corticography and bipolar/monopolar cortico-subcortical mapping during neuropsychological tests. The resection rate was calculated with neuro-imaging elaboration software. No permanent post-operative deficits were reported; 2 patients improved after surgery. No impairment of cognitive functions was reported. The KPS improved in 8 patients and was steady in the others. The mean resection rate was 78.3%. The resection allowed the control of pre-operative seizures without increasing the drug intake. Awake surgery allowed a good resection rate despite the eloquent location of the tumors, without post-operative deficit. The neuropsychological outcome was unchanged after surgery. The resection seems to improve seizure control. All the patients came back to normal life and work. In conclusion, awake surgery is reliable and feasible in removal of LGG, even if invading the main eloquent areas and networks. All the patients experienced a normal life after surgery, without permanent deficits.	\N	\N
21489866	Studies indicate that the change from closed to open eyes in a resting condition results in an increase in skin conductance level (SCL) and a global decrease in EEG alpha activity, both indicative of increased arousal. Other studies show that ingestion of caffeine also produces SCL increase and alpha reduction. This study investigated the additivity of the effects of these two independent arousing variables. EEG activity and SCL were recorded from 22 university students during both eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions, under the action of both caffeine and placebo, in a counterbalanced randomised double-blind study. SCL increased significantly from eyes-closed to eyes-open conditions, and from placebo to caffeine, with no interaction. Global reductions in EEG alpha amplitude were apparent with opening of the eyes and caffeine ingestion; again, there was no interaction. Caffeine had a larger effect than opening the eyes on SCL, but their relative effect sizes were reversed in alpha. The two dependent measures showed the predicted negative correlation in both eyes-closed placebo and eyes-open caffeine conditions, with the latter substantially reduced relative to the former. Caffeine and opening the eyes have additive effects on two measures of arousal, increasing SCL and reducing global EEG alpha. However, the independent variable effects are not equivalent, suggesting that one or both measures reflect additional non-arousal processes. As caffeine is widely used by both children and adults, knowledge of the additivity of arousal effects of caffeine and opening the eyes is important in controlling participant state in EEG studies. The current results confirm the use of mean global alpha amplitude as a measure of resting-state arousal, but also point to non-arousal effects of visual input.	\N	\N
21493707	Object-based attention facilitates the processing of features that form the object. Two hypotheses are conceivable for how object-based attention is deployed to an object's features: first, the object is attended by selecting its features; alternatively, a configuration of features as such is attended by selecting the object representation they form. Only for the latter alternative, the perception of a feature configuration as entity ("objecthood") is a necessary condition for object-based attention. Disentangling the two alternatives requires the comparison of identical feature configurations that induce the perception of an object in one condition ("bound") and do not do so in another condition ("unbound"). We used an ambiguous stimulus, whose percept spontaneously switches between bound and unbound, while the stimulus itself remains unchanged. We tested discrimination on the boundary of the diamond as well as detection of probes inside and outside the diamond. We found discrimination performance to be increased if features were perceptually bound into an object. Furthermore, detection performance was higher within and lower outside the bound object as compared to the unbound configuration. Consequently, the facilitation of processing by object-based attention requires objecthood, that is, a unified internal representation of an "object"-not a mere collection of features.	\N	\N
21497444	Psychological stress prompts activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis resulting in increased release of cortisol. Long-term HPA aberrations have been observed for stress-related affective disorders but research into acute effects of cortisol on affect-regulation has only recently begun. Previous studies reported that exogenous cortisol acutely attenuated automatic attentional processing of task-irrelevant threatening information. This has been taken to suggest that cortisol may have acute anxiolytic properties, possibly through facilitating inhibition of threatening information. However, the role of cortisol in attentional inhibition of non-threatening arousing stimuli remained unclear. Therefore acute effects of 40 mg cortisol on performance of a masked and unmasked emotional Stroop task (EST) were assessed. Results for only the unmasked task demonstrated EST interference (interpreted as increased automatic attention) for erotic stimuli which was abolished by cortisol administration. This implies that effects of cortisol may not be restricted to attenuation of specifically anxiogenic information processing, as previously suggested.	\N	\N
21500047	In order to truly empathise with another, we need to recognise and understand how they feel. Perception-action models of empathy predict that attending to another's emotion will spontaneously activate the observer's own conceptual knowledge for the state, but it is unclear how this activation is related to facial mimicry, trait empathy, or attention to emotion more generally. In the current study, participants did spontaneously encode background facial expressions at a conceptual level even though they were irrelevant to the task (the Emostroop effect; Preston & Stansfield, 2008), but this encoding was not associated with mimicry of the faces, trait empathy, the ability to resolve competing semantic representations (Colour-naming Stroop task), or the tendency to be distracted by emotional information more generally (Intrusive Cognitions task). Our results suggest that trait empathy increases attention to emotional information, but conceptual encoding occurs across individuals as a natural consequence of attended perception.	\N	\N
21500317	Recordings of event-related potentials (ERPs) were combined with structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the timing and localization of stimulus selection processes during visual-spatial attention to pattern-reversing gratings. Pattern reversals were presented in random order to the left and right visual fields at a rapid rate, while subjects attended to the reversals in one field at a time. On separate runs, stimuli were presented in the upper and lower visual quadrants. The earliest ERP component (C1, peaking at around 80 ms), which inverted in polarity for upper versus lower field stimuli and was localized in or near visual area V1, was not modulated by attention. In the latency range 80-250 ms, multiple components were elicited that were increased in amplitude by attention and were colocalized with fMRI activations in specific visual cortical areas. The principal anatomical sources of these attention-sensitive components were localized by fMRI-seeded dipole modeling as follows: P1 (ca. 100 ms-source in motion-sensitive area MT+), C2 (ca. 130 ms-same source as C1), N1a (ca. 145 ms-source in horizontal intraparietal sulcus), N1b (ca. 165 ms-source in fusiform gyrus, area V4/V8), N1c (ca. 180 ms-source in posterior intraparietal sulcus, area V3A), and P2 (ca. 220 ms-multiple sources, including parieto-occipital sulcus, area V6). These results support the hypothesis that spatial attention acts to amplify both feed-forward and feedback signals in multiple visual areas of both the dorsal and ventral streams of processing.	\N	\N
21500944	Previous work suggested the association between intentionality and the reported time of action was exclusive, with intentionality as the primary facilitator to the mental time compression between the reported time of action and its effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). In three experiments, we examined whether mental time compression could also be observed in an unintended action. Participants performed an externally cued key press task that elicited one of two possible tones. The reported time of action shifted closer to the tone when the tone was used to indicate the winner of a race (Exp.2) compared to when the tone was meaningless and did not indicate winning (Exp.1). This suggests that reported time of an unintended action could shift toward the effect in some contexts. Furthermore, the results from Exp.2 and Exp.3 (tones were substituted with verbal feedback) showed that a presumed winning action was judged to occur earlier whereas a presumed losing action was judged to be later. These findings therefore support the view that the reported time of action is reconstructed from known temporal information rather than determined by intentionality.	\N	\N
21504670	The principal goal of this study was to verify whether it was possible to obtain both aversive and appetitive electrodermal classical conditioning, using pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS), and unconditioned stimuli (US). Additionally, we tried to verify whether, as a consequence of such conditioning, diminution of the unconditioned response (UR) was observed. With this aim, IAPS («International Affective Picture System») pictures were selected as stimuli. A picture showing a burnt face was used as the aversive US (USav), and a picture showing a scene with erotic content was used as the appetitive US (USap). As the aversive CS (CSav), and appetitive CS (CSap), two images with intermediate values of valence and arousal showing male faces were selected. In the experimental group, 10 CSav/USav and 10 CSap/USap trials were presented. In the control group 10 CSav, CSap, USav, and USap trials were presented in pseudorandom order. Skin conductance response (SCR) elicited by both the CSs and the USs was scored. Results showed aversive conditioning, but neither appetitive conditioning nor UR diminution. Problems to obtain conditioning using pictures as stimuli and possible options to overcome them in future research are discussed.	\N	\N
21507423	We investigated the associations of appraisal and coping styles with emotion regulation in a community sample of preadolescents (N=196, 9-12 years of age), with appraisal, coping styles, and emotion regulation measured at a single time point. In a previous study, we identified five frustration and four anxiety emotion regulation profiles based on children's physiological, behavioral, and self-reported reactions to emotion-eliciting tasks. In this study, preadolescents' self-reported appraisal and coping styles were associated with those emotion regulation profiles. Overall, findings revealed that children who were more effective at regulating their emotions during the emotion-eliciting tasks had higher levels of positive appraisal and active coping when dealing with their own problems. Conversely, children who regulated their emotions less effectively had higher levels of threat appraisal and avoidant coping.	\N	\N
21518064	This was a realistic military-type exercise assessing unexpected, abrupt early-morning awakening effects on immediate 'executive function' and the ability to comprehend and deal with a sudden emergency under a changing situation. Twenty (average age 21years) healthy, highly motivated junior officer reservists were assigned randomly to two equal, independent groups, unforewarned as to what would happen. The experimental group was woken abruptly at 03:00h (<3h sleep) and confronted immediately with a 'paper exercise' of an enemy attack, requiring a feasible plan of engagement with minimal loss of resources, to be completed within 15min. A control group slept until 07:30h; they were then presented with the identical emergency 1h later. Participants worked individually, under time pressure, receiving written information, map and other details, all containing relevant, irrelevant and misleading information. Halfway through, they were given (unexpectedly) a critical update necessitating a change of tactics. Performance was scored blind by instructors, under five categories. Eight of the experimental group versus three controls failed overall, with significant group differences on three specific categories relying on flexible decision-making: 'identification of available cover', 'use of available assets' and 'extraction of relevant from irrelevant information'. Other, logical and highly trained skills were unimpaired. Ours was a 'worst case scenario', combining short sleep, circadian 'trough' and sleep inertia, all of which differentiated the two groups, unlike typical laboratory studies. Nevertheless, it was relevant to real-life situations involving highly motivated, trained individuals making critical innovative decisions in the early morning versus the normal waking day.	\N	\N
21518701	Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists, such as leuprorelin, are recommended in the patients with pedophilia at highest risk of offending. However, the cerebral mechanisms of the effects of these testosterone-decreasing drugs are poorly known. This study aimed to identify changes caused by leuprorelin in a pedophilic patient's brain responses to pictures representing children. Clinical, endocrine, and fMRI investigations were done of a man with pedophilia before leuprorelin therapy and 5 months into leuprorelin therapy. Patient was compared with an age-matched healthy control also assessed 5 months apart. Before therapy, pictures of boys elicited activation in the left calcarine fissure, left insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and left cerebellar vermis. Five months into therapy, all the above-mentioned activations had disappeared. No such activations and, consequently, no such decreases occurred in the healthy control. The results of this pilot study suggest that leuprorelin decreased activity in regions known to mediate the perceptual, motivational, and affective responses to visual sexual stimuli.	\N	\N
21526441	The aim of the present study is to investigate visual orientation in hospitalized boys with severe early onset conduct disorder and borderline intellectual functioning. It is tested whether boys with the dual diagnosis have a stronger action-oriented response style to visual-cued go signals than the norm. To this end, boys with the dual diagnosis were compared with a peer control group on Posner's (1980) visual-spatial detection test. Here, on each trial, a visual cue points either in the direction of the location of a subsequent go signal (valid cue), or points in the opposite direction away from the location of the subsequent go signal (invalid cue). Findings indicated superior orientation (a strong action-oriented response style) of children with the dual diagnosis in valid-cued trials as well as in invalid-cued trials in both the left and the right visual hemifield. Findings were controlled for attention scores on the Child Behavior Checklist -Teacher Form and IQ scores.	\N	\N
21534030	Eight participants with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) were trained to recall names of countries using the spaced-retrieval memory intervention. Six training sessions were administered on alternate days over a 2-week period. Half of the participants studied a target country alone and the other half studied a target country along with eight distractor countries. Training stimuli appeared in text-only format in half of the sessions and text with a color photograph of the country in the other sessions. On each trial, participants selected the target at increasingly longer retention intervals, contingent upon successful recall. Results indicated that the mean proportion of correct trials and longest duration achieved increased across training sessions, confirming the success of the spaced-retrieval intervention. Pictorial illustrations enhanced explicit memory for target country names. Implications of these data for current views on memory remediation in cognitively impaired older adults are discussed.	\N	\N
21534031	In two experiments recognition of actions of a robbery presented in a video was examined in older and younger adults. In both experiments older adults had more false alarms and showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. In addition, when participants were asked in Experiment 1 to indicate Remember/Know/Guess judgments for actions they considered true, older adults accepted more false actions with Remember judgments. And when participants were asked in Experiment 2 to attribute the source (i.e., perpetrator), the older adults were less able to attribute actions that occurred during the robbery to their correct sources. Furthermore, we found a robust positive correlation between source attribution ability and recognition accuracy. Thus, source-memory deficits may contribute to older adults' false memories in real-life eyewitness situations.	\N	\N
21534706	We investigated how people interpret conditionals and how stable their interpretation is over a long series of trials. Participants were shown the colored patterns on each side of a 6-sided die and were asked how sure they were that a conditional holds of the side landing upward when the die is randomly thrown. Participants were presented with 71 trials consisting of all combinations of binary dimensions of shape (e.g., circles and squares) and color (e.g., blue and red) painted onto the sides of each die. In 2 experiments (N₁ = 66, N₂ = 65), the conditional event was the dominant interpretation, followed by conjunction, and material conditional responses were negligible. In both experiments, the percentage of participants giving a conditional event response increased from around 40% at the beginning of the task to nearly 80% at the end, with most participants shifting from a conjunction interpretation. The shift was moderated by the order of shape and color in each conditional's antecedent and consequent: Participants were more likely to shift if the antecedent referred to a color. In Experiment 2 we collected response times: Conditional event interpretations took longer to process than conjunction interpretations (mean difference = 500 ms). We discuss implications of our results for mental models theory and probabilistic theories of reasoning.	\N	\N
21534986	Schizophrenia (SZ) patients showed increased volitional saccade latencies, suggesting deficient volitional initiation of action. Yet increased volitional saccade latencies may also result from deficits in attention shifts. To dissociate attention shifting and saccade initiation, we asked 25 SZ patients and 25 healthy subjects to make saccades toward newly appearing (onset) targets and toward the loci of disappearing (offset) targets. Similar onsets and offsets were also used as attention cues in a Posner-type manual task. As expected, onsets and offsets had similar effects on attention. In contrast, saccade latencies were considerably longer with offset compared to onset targets, reflecting additional time for volitional saccade initiation. Unexpectedly, SZ patients had normal saccade latencies. Presumably, the expected deficit was compensated by decreased fixation-related neural activity, which was induced by the disappearance of fixation stimuli.	\N	\N
21545293	Wearable medical devices have enabled unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs and emerging biofeedback services in a pervasive manner. This article describes a wearable respiratory biofeedback system based on a generalized body sensor network (BSN) platform. The compact BSN platform was tailored for the strong requirements of overall system optimizations. A waist-worn biofeedback device was designed using the BSN. Extensive bench tests have shown that the generalized BSN worked as intended. In-situ experiments with 22 subjects indicated that the biofeedback device was discreet, easy to wear, and capable of offering wearable respiratory trainings. Pilot studies on wearable training patterns and resultant heart rate variability suggested that paced respirations at abdominal level and with identical inhaling/exhaling ratio were more appropriate for decreasing sympathetic arousal and increasing parasympathetic activities.	\N	\N
21545978	Despite the importance of determining the effects of interletter spacing on visual-word recognition, this issue has often been neglected in the literature. The goal of the present study is to shed some light on this topic. The rationale is that a thin increase in interletter spacing, as in casino, may reduce lateral interference among internal letters without destroying a word's integrity and/or allow a more precise encoding of a word's letter positions. Here we examined whether identification times for word stimuli in a lexical decision task were faster when the target word had a slightly wider than default interletter spacing value relative to the default settings (e.g., casino vs. casino). In Experiment 1, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word-frequency, whereas in Experiment 2, we examined whether interletter spacing interacted with word length. Results showed that responses to words using a thin increase in interletter spacing were faster than the responses to words using the default settings-regardless of word-frequency and word length. Thus, interletter spacing plays an important role at modulating the identification of visually presented words.	\N	\N
21547070	We aimed to investigate whether novel stimulus relations would emerge from stimulus correlations when those relations explicitly conflicted with reinforced relations. In a symbolic matching-to-sample task using kanji characters as stimuli, we arranged class-specific incorrect comparison stimuli in each of three classes. After presenting either Ax or Cx stimuli as samples, choices of Bx were reinforced and choices of Gx or Hx were not. Tests for symmetry, and combined symmetry and transitivity, showed the emergence of three 3-member (AxBxCx) stimulus classes in 5 of 5 human participants. Subsequent tests for all possible emergent relations between Ax, Bx, Cx and the class-specific incorrect comparisons Gx and Hx showed that these relations emerged for 4 of 5 the participants after extended overtraining of the baseline relations. These emergent relations must have been based on stimulus-stimulus correlations, and were not properties of the trained discriminated operants, because they required control by relations explicitly extinguished during training. This result supports theoretical accounts of emergent relations that emphasize stimulus correlation over operant contingencies.	\N	\N
21547759	According to the Proust phenomenon, olfactory memory triggers are more evocative than other-modality triggers resulting in more emotional and detailed memories. An experimental paradigm was used to investigate this in aversive memories, similar to those experienced by patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. Seventy healthy participants watched an aversive film, while simultaneously being exposed to olfactory, auditory and visual triggers, which were matched on intensity, valence, arousal and salience. During a second session one week later, participants were randomly exposed to one of the three triggers, and asked to think back about the film and to rate the resulting memory. Results revealed that odour-evoked memories of aversive events were more detailed, unpleasant and arousing than memories evoked by auditory, but not visual, triggers.	\N	\N
21547763	Although laughter plays an essential part in emotional vocal communication, little is known about the acoustical correlates that encode different emotional dimensions. In this study we examined the acoustical structure of laughter sounds differing along four emotional dimensions: arousal, dominance, sender's valence, and receiver-directed valence. Correlation of 43 acoustic parameters with individual emotional dimensions revealed that each emotional dimension was associated with a number of vocal cues. Common patterns of cues were found with emotional expression in speech, supporting the hypothesis of a common underlying mechanism for the vocal expression of emotions.	\N	\N
21555734	Previous studies have estimated that wake-up strokes comprise 8%to 28% of all ischemic strokes, but these studies were either small or not population-based. We sought to establish the proportion and event rate of wake-up strokes in a large population-based study and to compare patients who awoke with stroke symptoms with those who were awake at time of onset. First-time and recurrent ischemic strokes among residents of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky region (population 1.3 million) in 2005 were identified using International Classification of Diseases-9 codes 430-436 and verified via study physician review. Ischemic strokes in patients aged 18 years and older presenting to an emergency department were included. Baseline characteristics were ascertained, along with discharge modified Rankin Scale scores and 90-day mortality. We identified 1,854 ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department, of which 273 (14.3%) were wake-up strokes. There were no differences between wake-up strokes and all other strokes with regard to clinical features or outcomes except for minor differences in age and baseline retrospective NIH Stroke Scale score. The adjusted wake-up stroke event rate was 26.0/100,000. Of the wake-up strokes, at least 98 (35.9%) would have been eligible for thrombolysis if arrival time were not a factor. Within our population, approximately 14% of ischemic strokes presenting to an emergency department were wake-up strokes. Wake-up strokes cannot be distinguished from other strokes by clinical features or outcome. We estimate that approximately 58,000 patients with wake-up strokes presented to an emergency department in the United States in 2005.	\N	\N
21555787	The Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT) is commonly used to evaluate an individual's switching attention and processing speed. However, its test-retest reliability and practice effect are not well known in patients with stroke, limiting its utility in both clinical and research settings. The present study examined the two aforementioned psychometric properties of the oral-format SDMT on a group of 30 outpatients with stroke. The oral-format SDMT demonstrated excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.89) and a small practice effect (Cohen's d = 0.26) within a 1-week interval. A practice effect-corrected reliable change index [-5.29, 10.89] was also provided to help clinicians and researchers interpret their clients' test results. Patients' characteristics and the test-retest interval should be considered before applying the findings of the present study to clinical settings.	\N	\N
21564270	Theories of embodied cognition hold that the conceptual system uses perceptual simulations for the purposes of representation. A strong prediction is that perceptual phenomena should emerge in conceptual processing, and, in support, previous research has shown that switching modalities from one trial to the next incurs a processing cost during conceptual tasks. However, to date, such research has been limited by its reliance on the retrieval of familiar concepts. We therefore examined concept creation by asking participants to interpret modality-specific compound phrases (i.e., conceptual combinations). Results show that modality switching costs emerge during the creation of new conceptual entities: People are slower to simulate a novel concept (e.g., auditory jingling onion) when their attention has already been engaged by a different modality in simulating a familiar concept (e.g., visual shiny penny). Furthermore, these costs cannot be accounted for by linguistic factors alone. Rather, our findings support the embodied view that concept creation, as well as retrieval, requires situated perceptual simulation.	\N	\N
21568633	The specific role of different parietal regions to episodic retrieval is a topic of intense debate. According to the Attention to Memory (AtoM) model, dorsal parietal cortex (DPC) mediates top-down attention processes guided by retrieval goals, whereas ventral parietal cortex (VPC) mediates bottom-up attention processes captured by the retrieval output or the retrieval cue. This model also hypothesizes that the attentional functions of DPC and VPC are similar for memory and perception. To investigate this last hypothesis, we scanned participants with event-related fMRI whereas they performed memory and perception tasks, each comprising an orienting phase (top-down attention) and a detection phase (bottom-up attention). The study yielded two main findings. First, consistent with the AtoM model, orienting-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in DPC, whereas detection-related activity for memory and perception overlapped in VPC. The DPC overlap was greater in the left intraparietal sulcus, and the VPC overlap in the left TPJ. Around overlapping areas, there were differences in the spatial distribution of memory and perception activations, which were consistent with trends reported in the literature. Second, both DPC and VPC showed stronger connectivity with medial-temporal lobe during the memory task and with visual cortex during the perception task. These findings suggest that, during memory tasks, some parietal regions mediate similar attentional control processes to those involved in perception tasks (orienting in DPC vs. detection in VPC), although on different types of information (mnemonic vs. sensory).	\N	\N
21570431	Research has shown that standard chewing gum can affect aspects of both attention and memory. The present study examined the effects of Think Gum®, a caffeinated-herbal chewing gum, on both concentration and memory using a series of paper-based and online testing. Compared to standard chewing gum and a no-gum control, chewing caffeinated-herbal gum during testing improved aspects of memory, but did not affect concentration. The findings suggest that caffeinated-herbal chewing gum is an effective memory aid.	\N	\N
21593013	Evidence suggests that gait is influenced by higher order cognitive and cortical control mechanisms. However, less is known about the functional correlates of cortical control of gait. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, the current study was designed to evaluate whether increased activations in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were detected in walking while talking (WWT) compared with normal pace walking (NW) in 11 young and 11 old participants. Specifically, the following two hypotheses were evaluated: (a) Activation in the PFC would be increased in WWT compared with NW. (b) The increase in activation in the PFC during WWT as compared with NW would be greater in young than in old participants. Separate linear mixed effects models with age as the two-level between-subject factor, walking condition (NW vs WWT) as the two-level repeated within-subject factor, and HbO2 levels in each of the 16 functional near-infrared spectroscopy channels as the dependent measure revealed significant task effects in 14 channels, indicating a robust bilateral increased activation in the PFC in WWT compared with NW. Furthermore, the group-by-task interaction was significant in 11 channels with young participants showing greater WWT-related increase in HbO2 levels compared with the old participants. This study provided the first evidence that oxygenation levels are increased in the PFC during WWT compared with NW in young and old individuals. This effect was modified by age suggesting that older adults may under-utilize the PFC in attention-demanding locomotion tasks.	\N	\N
21607816	The present study investigated working memory consolidation in focused and distributed attention tasks by examining the time course of the consolidation process (Experiment 1) and its dependence on capacity-limited central resources (Experiment 2) in both tasks. In a match-to-sample design using masks at various intervals to vary consolidation rates, the participants performed either an identification task (focused attention) or a mean estimation task (distributed attention) with (Experiment 1) or without (Experiment 2) prior knowledge of what task they were to perform. We found that consolidation in the distributed attention task was more efficient and was about twice as fast as in the focused attention task. In addition, both tasks suffered interference when they had to be performed together, indicating that both types of attention rely on a common set of control processes. These findings can be attributed to differences in the resolution of object representations and in the scope of attention associated with focused and distributed attention.	\N	\N
21611188	Visual search tasks have been used to understand how, where and when attention influences visual processing. Current theories suggest the involvement of a high-level "saliency map" that selects a candidate location to focus attentional resources. For a parallel (or "pop-out") task, the first chosen location is systematically the target, but for a serial (or "difficult") task, the system may cycle on a few distractors before finally focusing on the target. This implies that attentional effects upon early visual areas, involving feedback from higher areas, should be visible at longer latencies during serial search. A previous study from Juan & Walsh (2003) had used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to support this conclusion; however, only a few post-stimulus delays were compared, and no control TMS location was used. Here we applied TMS double-pulses (sub-threshold) to induce a transient inhibition of area V1 at every post-stimulus delay between 100 ms and 500 ms (50 ms steps). The search array was presented either at the location affected by the TMS pulses (previously identified by applying several pulses at supra-threshold intensity to induce phosphene perception), or in the opposite hemifield, which served as a retinotopically-defined control location. Two search tasks were used: a parallel (+ among Ls) and a serial one (T among Ls). TMS specifically impaired the serial, but not the parallel search. We highlight an involvement of V1 in serial search 300 ms after the onset; conversely, V1 did not contribute to parallel search at delays beyond 100 ms. This study supports the idea that serial search differs from parallel search by the presence of additional cycles of a select-and-focus iterative loop between V1 and higher-level areas.	\N	\N
21614702	The present study explored the nature of attention control problems associated with ruminative traits. Experiment 1 aimed to establish the validity of a modified mental counting task that assesses individuals' ability to switch attention between internal mental representations. Reaction time and brain activity (event related potential; ERP) measures were examined, and results showed that the task was sensitive to internal attention switching effects. Experiment 2 assessed how the relationship between ruminative tendencies and switching performance differs when participants attend to neutral versus affective materials under different mood states. Although reaction-time analysis suggested that both mood condition and stimulus affectivity were not significant in altering this association, ERP analysis suggested otherwise. A significant task type×trait rumination × mood condition effect was found for switch-related ERP responses, whereby high ruminators were found to deploy more neuronal resources when switching affective materials in sad mood state.	\N	\N
21616989	The purpose of this study was to determine if sound-field amplification (SFA) devices affected student performance in 3 different types of classrooms. The classroom performance of 147 children (77 males, 70 females, ages 8;2 [years;months] ± 5 months) was measured at the beginning and end of the second semester of their third year in 1 of 4 primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Each school contained 2 participating classrooms, 1 with and 1 without an SFA device. The SFA devices contributed to small but significant improvements in student listening (p < .01) and auditory analysis (p < .05) skills, but only in the school where the participating classrooms were in a brick building (vs. a demountable building) with neighboring classrooms separated by solid walls (vs. open spaces). The classrooms in this school showed the lowest background noise measures (47-50 dB 1 hr, A weighted) and the second lowest reverberation times (0.87-0.91 s) overall, although these values still exceeded the maximums recommended by American National Standards Institute S12.60-2002 (2002). These results suggest that any potential benefits of SFA devices are more likely to be realized in classrooms with better acoustics.	\N	\N
21621179	To test whether cueing by color can affect orienting without first computing the location of the cued color, the impact of reorienting on the validity effect was examined. In Experiment 1 subjects were asked to detect a black dot target presented at random on either of two colored forms. The forms started being presented 750 ms before the onset of a central cue (either an arrow or a colored square). In some proportion of the trials the colors switched locations 150 ms after cue onset, simultaneously with target onset. The color switch was not found to retard responses following a color cue more than following a location cue. Furthermore, it did not reduce the validity effect of the color cue: Though the validity effect of the location cue was quite larger than the validity effect of the color cue, both effects were additive with the presence/absence of a color switch. In Experiment 2, subjects were rather asked to detect a change in shape of one of the colored forms. In this case, color switch was found to affect performance even less following a color cue. The fact that across experiments, color switch did not retard neither responding nor orienting selectively in the color cue condition, indicates that when attention is set to a certain color, reorienting to a new object following color switch does not require re-computing the address of the cued color. That finding is argued to embarrass a strong space-based view of visual attention.	\N	\N
21621549	Sleep plays a role in the consolidation of declarative memories. Although this influence has attracted much attention at the level of behavioural performance, few reports have searched for neural correlates. Here, we studied the impact of sleep upon memory for the context in which stimuli were learned at both behavioural and neural levels. Participants retrieved the association between a presented foreground object and its encoding context following a 12-h retention interval including either wake only or wake plus a night of sleep. Since sleep has been shown to selectively enhance some forms of emotional memory, we examined both neutral and emotionally valenced contexts. Behaviourally, less forgetting was observed across retention intervals containing sleep than retention intervals containing only wakefulness, and this benefit was accompanied by stronger responses in hippocampus and superior parietal cortex. This sleep-related reduction in forgetting did not differ between neutral and negative contexts, but there was a clear interaction between sleep and context valence at the functional level, with left amygdala, right parahippocampus, and other components of the episodic memory system all responding more strongly during correct memory for emotional contexts post-sleep. Connectivity between right parahippocampus and bilateral amygdala/periamygdala was also enhanced during correct post-sleep attribution of emotional contexts. Because there was no interaction between sleep and valence in terms of context memory performance these functional results may be associated with memory for details about the emotional encoding context rather than for the link between that context and the foreground object. Overall, our data show that while context memory decays less across sleep than across an equivalent period of wake, the sleep-related protection of such associations is not influenced by context emotionality in the same way as direct recollection of emotional information.	\N	\N
21632030	The three experiments reported here test whether object-modulated attentional spreading can be obtained when the target location is 100% certain. Experiment 1 uses the reaction time (RT)-based flanker task similar to Shomstein and Yantis (2002), and replicates the null result of the object-modulated attentional spreading. RT and accuracy (ACC) have been shown to reflect different processes: postperceptual decision vs. perceptual process (Santee & Egeth, 1982). Experiment 2 adopts the data-limited ACC-based measure and reports that attention could spread within the attended object. To avoid ceiling effects, Experiment 3 adjusts the presentation time based on the trials where the target and flankers were compatible and on the same objects, and provides the convergent evidence supporting the object-modulated attentional spreading. These results suggest that because the RT-based measure is less sensitive in reflecting the quality of perceptual representations, it is not sufficiently a strong evidence to distinguish between sensory enhancement and scanning prioritization accounts.	\N	\N
21639611	We continue the process of investigating the probabilistic paired associate paradigm in an effort to understand the memory access control processes involved and to determine whether the memory structure produced is in transition between episodic and semantic memory. In this paradigm two targets are probabilistically paired with a cue across a large number of short lists. Participants can recall the target paired with the cue in the most recent list (list specific test), produce the first of the two targets that have been paired with that cue to come to mind (generalised test), and produce a free association response (semantic test). Switching between a generalised test and a list specific test did not produce a switching cost indicating a general similarity in the control processes involved. In addition, there was evidence for a dissociation between two different strength manipulations (amount of study time and number of cue-target pairings) such that number of pairings influenced the list specific, generalised and the semantic test but amount of study time only influenced the list specific and generalised test.	\N	\N
21639619	Being able to wait is an essential part of self-regulation. In the present study, the authors examined the developmental course of changes in the latency to and duration of target-waiting behaviors by following 65 boys and 55 girls from rural and semirural economically strained homes from ages 18 months to 48 months. Age-related changes in latency to and duration of children's anger expressions and attention focus (e.g., self-initiated distraction) during an 8-min wait for a gift were found. On average, at 18 and 24 months of age, children were quick to react angrily and slower to shift attention away from the desired object than they were at later ages. Over time, children were quicker to distract themselves. By 36 months, distractions occurred before children expressed anger, and anger expressions were briefer. At 48 months, children typically made a quick bid to their mothers about having to wait before distracting themselves; on average, they did not appear angry until the latter half of the wait. Unexpectedly, children bid to their mothers as much at age 48 months as they had at 18 months; however, bids became less angry as children got older. Developmental changes in distraction and bidding predicted age-related changes in the latency to anger. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurocognitive control of attention around age 30 months, the limitations of children's self-regulatory efforts at age 48 months, and the importance of fostering children's ability to forestall, as well as modulate, anger.	\N	\N
21641942	A variety of event-related potential (ERP) based studies have shown differences in neuronal processes underlying attention, inhibition and error processing in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to controls. However, so far there are no studies that have compared children with ADHD and typically developing (TD) children regarding effects in ERP components associated with the attention network test (ANT). The ANT allows to differentiate between three particular aspects of attention: alerting, orienting, conflict. Twenty-five children with ADHD and 19 TD children (comparable with respect to age, sex, and IQ) performed the ANT while ERPs were recorded. Based on DSM-IV, the group of children with ADHD was divided in an inattentive (ADHDin, n=10) and a combined (ADHDcom, n=15) subgroup. On the performance level, the ADHD group showed a significantly higher variability of reaction times. Concerning ERP measures, smaller cue-P3 amplitudes were found in the ADHD group indicating that children with ADHD allocate less attentional resources for cue processing. In addition, the target-P3 in ADHD showed smaller amplitudes. Subgroup analysis revealed reduced cue-P3 amplitudes in both subgroups and reduced target-P3 amplitudes in ADHDin compared to TD children. Except for a higher alerting score in ADHD after correction for cue-P3 group differences, performance data revealed no group differences specific for the three attention networks. No group differences related to the attention networks were observed at the ERP level. Our results suggest that deviant attentional processing in children with ADHD is only partly related to ANT-specific effects. Findings are compatible with the model of a suboptimal energetic state regulation in ADHD. Furthermore, our results suggest that deviant cue processing in ADHD and related differences in task modulations should be accounted for in data analysis.	\N	\N
21643485	This case describes the clinical course of a cannabis-dependent individual entering a 12-week abstinence-based research program. The case illustrates the effects of chronic, heavy cannabis use on executive functions at three time points: 1) 24 hours of abstinence; 2) 4 weeks of abstinence; and 3) 12 weeks of abstinence. It is followed by discussions by two clinical psychologists and a psychiatrist. The findings described here have important clinical implications, as executive functions have a vital role in treatment participation and in sustaining recovery. It should be of particular interest to clinicians who work with people with cannabis use disorders.	\N	\N
21646824	While neuropsychological impairment in bipolar disorder is well documented, the effect size of this impairment is rarely compared directly to that in other clinically familiar cognitive disorders. This study compares neuropsychological functioning of euthymic bipolar patients to those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as well as healthy controls. Following evaluation during regular follow-up in a mood disorders clinic, 58 euthymic adult bipolar subjects were administered a validated and fully computerized cognitive assessment (Mindstreams; NeuroTrax Corp., N.Y., USA). Study data were compared to existing data for MCI and cognitively healthy individuals tested with the same assessment. Final analyses were based on 51 bipolar patients, 162 MCI patients and 495 healthy comparison subjects. Significant (p < 0.001) group effects were found for every parameter. Post hoc analysis revealed that the bipolar and MCI groups showed statistically equivalent functioning in memory, executive function, verbal function, and information processing speed. In the domains of visual-spatial processing, attention, and motor skills, the MCI group outperformed the bipolar group. In every domain, the healthy control group outperformed both the bipolar and the MCI groups. The cognitive function of euthymic bipolar patients and those diagnosed with MCI was found to be similar in most but not all domains. Both groups performed significantly less well than the comparison group of healthy subjects. It may be helpful for clinicians to conceptualize the overall level of cognitive impairment in bipolar patients as similar to that in MCI.	\N	\N
21649633	To test the main and interactive effects of activities derived from the Need-Driven Dementia-Compromised Behavior model for responding to behavioral symptoms in nursing home residents. Randomized double-blind clinical trial. Nine community-based nursing homes. One hundred twenty-eight cognitively impaired residents randomly assigned to activities adjusted to functional level (FL) (n=32), personality style of interest (PSI) (n=33), functional level and personality style of interest (FL+PSI) (n=31), or active control (AC) (n=32). Three weeks of activities provided twice daily. Agitation, passivity, engagement, affect, and mood assessed from video recordings and real-time observations during baseline, intervention, random times outside of intervention, and 1 week after intervention. All treatments improved outcomes during intervention except mood, which worsened under AC. During intervention the PSI group demonstrated greater engagement, alertness, and attention than the other groups; the FL+PSI group demonstrated greater pleasure. During random times, engagement returned to baseline levels except in the FL group in which it decreased. There was also less agitation and passivity in groups with a component adjusted to PSI. One week after the intervention, mood, anxiety, and passivity improved over baseline; significantly less pleasure was displayed after withdrawal of treatment. The hypothesis that activities adjusted to FL+PSI would improve behavioral outcomes to a greater extent than partially adjusted or nonadjusted activities was partially supported. PSI is a critical component of individualized activity prescription.	\N	\N
21652032	It has been proposed that the most fundamental units of attentional selection are "objects" that are grouped according to Gestalt factors such as similarity or connectedness. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have shown that object-based attention is associated with modulations of the visual-evoked N1 component, which reflects an early cortical mechanism that is shared with spatial attention. However, these studies only examined the case of perceptually continuous objects. The present study examined the case of separate objects that are grouped according to feature similarity (color, shape) by indexing lateralized potentials at posterior sites in a sustained-attention task that involved bilateral stimulus arrays. A behavioral object effect was found only for task-relevant shape similarity. Electrophysiological results indicated that attention was guided to the task-irrelevant side of the visual field due to achromatic-color similarity in N1 (155-205 ms post-stimulus) and early N2 (210-260 ms) and due to shape similarity in early N2 and late N2 (280-400 ms) latency ranges. These results are discussed in terms of selection mechanisms and object/group representations.	\N	\N
21652777	In three experiments, we tested whether people can protect their ongoing goal pursuits from antagonistic priming effects by using if-then plans (i.e., implementation intentions). In Experiment 1, concept priming did not influence lexical decision time for a critical stimulus when participants had formed if-then plans to make fast responses to that stimulus. In Experiment 2, participants who were primed with a prosocial goal allowed a confederate who asked for help to interrupt their work on a focal task for a longer time if they had merely formed goal intentions to perform well than if they had also formed implementation intentions for concentrating on the task. In Experiment 3, priming the goal of being fast increased driving speed and errors for participants who had formed mere goal intentions to drive only as fast as safety allowed or who had formed no goal intentions, whereas the driving of participants who had formed such goal intentions as well as implementation intentions showed no such priming effects. Our findings indicate that implementation intentions are an effective self-regulatory tool for shielding actions from disruptive concept- or goal-priming effects.	\N	\N
21660498	Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with sensory hypersensitivity. A recent study reported visual acuity (VA) in ASD in the region reported for birds of prey. The validity of the results was subsequently doubted. This study examined VA in 34 individuals with ASD, 16 with schizophrenia (SCH), and 26 typically developing (TYP). Participants with ASD did not show higher VA than those with SCH and TYP. There were no substantial correlations of VA with clinical severity in ASD or SCH. This study could not confirm the eagle-eyed acuity hypothesis of ASD, or find evidence for a connection of VA and clinical phenotypes. Research needs to further address the origins and circumstances associated with altered sensory or perceptual processing in ASD.	\N	\N
21664936	The processing of successive targets requires that attention be engaged and disengaged. Whereas attentional engagement can be studied by means of the N2pc component of the event-related potential (ERP), no ERP component has been linked to attentional disengagement. Here, we report the finding of such a component using an RSVP paradigm with multiple, successive targets and with a spatial-cuing paradigm. In both experiments, disengagement of attention was necessary to attend to subsequent targets. A distinct waveform following the N2pc, which we call the P4pc (Positivity 400 ms post-target posterior contralateral), was found. The P4pc was found when a lateralized cue indicated that attention would be needed for the processing of a target at either the same or a different location as the cue, but not when only the cue was to be responded to, indicating that the need to disengage attention is a prerequisite for the P4pc to occur. We expect the P4pc to provide a valuable addition to the set of electrophysiological measures used to study the dynamics and mechanisms of visual attention and visual search.	\N	\N
21664952	Visual perception is influenced at early processing stages by geometric spatiotemporal context regularities (consistent with the "vision-as-inference" view) and by attention, yet little is known about the interaction between these two influences on visual processing. Here, we investigate the temporal dynamics of the interaction between attention and spatiotemporal context regularity in target detection using event-related potentials (ERP). Spatial attention was withdrawn from the context by a secondary task in Experiment 1, and the role of task-relevance was explored in Experiment 2 by including a passive viewing condition. The ERP correlates of spatiotemporal regularity reported in an earlier study were replicated in single task (Experiment 1) and active viewing (Experiment 2): P1 and N1 peak-latency was shorter when the target was preceded by a context. Latency first differentiated between the two context conditions at N1, where latency was shortest for targets preceded by a context with both spatial and temporal regularities (compared with temporal regularity only). In dual task and passive viewing, this N1 latency-shift was abolished. Comparisons of "low-attention" (dual task or passive viewing) with "high-attention" conditions (single task or active viewing) revealed that attention only shortened N1 peak-latency when the target was preceded by stimulus sequences with spatial and temporal regularity. P1 latency was unaffected by manipulation of top-down attention factors. Attentional factors are likely to modulate influences of spatiotemporal context through re-afferent projections at later stages of visual processing in regions of extrastriate cortex associated with the generators of the N1 waveform.	\N	\N
21665985	Principles of saccadic eye movement control in the real world have been derived by the study of self-paced well-known tasks such as sandwich or tea making. Little is known whether these principles generalize to high-speed sensorimotor tasks and how they are affected by learning and automatization. In the present study, right-handers practiced the speed-stacking task in 14 consecutive daily training sessions, while their eye movements were recorded. Speed stacking is a high-speed sensorimotor task that requires grasping, moving, rotating, and placing of objects. The following main results emerged. Throughout practice, the eyes led the hands, displayed by a positive eye-hand time span. Moreover, visual information was gathered for the subsequent manual sub-action, displayed by a positive eye-hand unit span. With automatization, the eye-hand time span became shorter, yet it increased when corrected by the decreasing trial duration. In addition, fixations were mainly allocated to the goal positions of the right hand or objects in the right hand. The number of fixations decreased while the fixation rate remained constant. Importantly, all participants fixated on the same task-relevant locations in a similar scan path across training days, revealing a long-term memory-based mode of attention control after automatization of a high-speed sensorimotor task.	\N	\N
21668095	Affective priming studies have shown that participants are faster to pronounce affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively congruent prime words than affectively polarized target words that are preceded by affectively incongruent prime words. We examined whether affective priming of naming responses depends on the valence proportion (i.e., the proportion of stimuli that are affectively polarized). In one group of participants, experimental trials were embedded in a context of filler trials that consisted of affectively polarized stimulus materials (i.e., high valence proportion condition). In a second group, the same set of experimental trials was embedded in a context of filler trials consisting of neutral stimuli (i.e., low valence proportion condition). Results showed that affective priming of naming responses was significantly stronger in the high valence proportion condition than in the low valence proportion condition. We conclude that (a) subtle aspects of the procedure can influence affective priming of naming responses, (b) finding affective priming of naming responses does not allow for the conclusion that affective stimulus processing is unconditional, and (c) affective stimulus processing depends on selective attention for affective stimulus information.	\N	\N
21668098	In laboratory experiments, infants are sensitive to patterns of visual features that co-occur (e.g., Fiser & Aslin, 2002). Once infants learn the statistical regularities, however, what do they do with that knowledge? Moreover, which patterns do infants learn in the cluttered world outside of the laboratory? Across 4 experiments, we show that 9-month-olds use this sensitivity to make inferences about object properties. In Experiment 1, 9-month-old infants expected co-occurring visual features to remain fused (i.e., infants looked longer when co-occurring features split apart than when they stayed together). Forming such expectations can help identify integral object parts for object individuation, recognition, and categorization. In Experiment 2, we increased the task difficulty by presenting the test stimuli simultaneously with a different spatial layout from the familiarization trials to provide a more ecologically valid condition. Infants did not make similar inferences in this more distracting test condition. However, Experiment 3 showed that a social cue did allow inferences in this more difficult test condition, and Experiment 4 showed that social cues helped infants choose patterns among distractor patterns during learning as well as during test. These findings suggest that infants can use feature co-occurrence to learn about objects and that social cues shape such foundational learning in distraction-filled environments.	\N	\N
21676591	We present results from continuous intracranial electroencephalographic (iEEG) monitoring in 6 dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy, a disorder similar to the human condition in its clinical presentation, epidemiology, electrophysiology and response to therapy. Recordings were obtained using a novel implantable device wirelessly linked to an external, portable real-time processing unit. We demonstrate previously uncharacterized intracranial seizure onset patterns in these animals that are strikingly similar in appearance to human partial onset epilepsy. We propose: (1) canine epilepsy as an appropriate model for testing human antiepileptic devices and new approaches to epilepsy surgery, and (2) this new technology as a versatile platform for evaluating seizures and response to therapy in the natural, ambulatory setting.	\N	\N
21677255	This study examined the influence of thyroid markers (TSH and FT4) on cognition in a sample of rural-dwelling women. Data were analyzed from 81 women who were enrolled in an ongoing study of rural health, Project FRONTIER. Cognition was assessed with the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS). TSH levels were significantly related to the RBANS Attention Index, and FT4 levels were significantly related to the RBANS Language Index. The current study found that TSH and FT4 were differentially related to neurocognitive domains, with TSH being related only to measures of attention and FT4 to measures of language.	\N	\N
21679910	The fate of irrelevant and overtly presented stimuli that was temporally aligned with an attended target in a separate task was explored. Seitz and Watanabe (2003) demonstrated that if an irrelevant motion stimulus was implicit (i.e., subthreshold), a later facilitation for the same motion direction was observed if the previously presented implicit motion (of the same direction) was temporally aligned with the presence of an attended target. Later research, however, demonstrated that if the motion stimulus aligned with the attended target was explicit (i.e., suprathreshold), a later inhibition was observed (Tsushima, Seitz, & Watanabe, 2008). The current study expands on this by using more salient stimuli (words and pictures) in an inattentional blindness paradigm, and suggests that when attention is depleted, recognition for target-aligned task-irrelevant items is impaired in a subsequent recognition task. Participants were required to respond to either immediate picture, or word, repetitions in a stream of simultaneously presented line drawings and written words, and later given a surprise recognition test that measured recognition for the words or the pictures. When analyzing word recognition performance after attention had been directed to the pictures, words that had appeared simultaneously with a picture repetition in the repetition detection task were recognized at levels significantly below chance. The same inhibition was mirrored when testing for picture recognition after having attended to the words in the repetition detection task. These data suggest an inhibitory mechanism that is exhibited in later recognition tests for salient information that was previously unattended and had been simultaneously being presented with an attended target in a different task.	\N	\N
21684179	Research has shown repeatedly that attention influences implicit learning effects. In a similar vein, interoceptive awareness might be involved in unaware fear conditioning: The fact that the CS is repeatedly presented in the context of aversive bodily experiences might facilitate the development of conditioned responding. We investigated the role of interoceptive attention in a subliminal conditioning paradigm. Conditioning was embedded in a spatial cueing task with subliminally presented cues that were followed by a masking stimulus. Response times to the targets that were either validly or invalidly predicted by the cues served as index of conditioning. Interoceptive attention was manipulated between-subjects. Half the participants completed a heartbeat detection task before conditioning. This task tunes attention to one's own bodily signals. We found that conditioned responding was facilitated in this latter group of participants. These results are in line with the hypothesis that a rise interoceptive attention enhances unaware conditioned responding.	\N	\N
21684618	The primary purpose of the present study was to examine kinematic characteristics and force control during a golf-putting task under a pressure condition. The secondary purpose was to provide an exploratory investigation of the relationship between changes in behavior (kinematics and force control) and performance on the one hand, and psychological (attention and affect) and physiological (arousal level) changes on the other hand. Twenty male novices performed 150 acquisition trials, followed by 10 test trials during a pressure condition induced by performance-contingent distracters: a cash reward or punishment. A three-dimensional motion analysis revealed that, during the pressure test, angular displacements of rotational movements at the horizontal plane and movement time of the arms and club during the backswing and downswing phases all decreased, while acceleration of the elbows during the downswing phase increased. Mean performance indices in all participants' were unchanged in spite of the kinematic changes under the pressure condition. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the decrement in performance, as well as increased variability of movement time and speed, were more likely to increase when participants shifted their attention to movements. Furthermore, changes in heart rate and negative affect were related to both the increase in movement acceleration and a decrease in grip force. These findings suggest that performance and behavioral changes during golf-putting under pressure can be associated with attentional changes, along with the influences of physiological-emotional responses.	\N	\N
21688874	There is a wealth of evidence showing enhanced attention toward drug-related information (i.e., attentional bias) in substance abusers. However, little is known about attentional bias in deregulated behaviors without substance use such as abnormal gambling. This study examined whether problem gamblers (PrG, as assessed through self-reported gambling-related craving and gambling dependence severity) exhibit attentional bias for gambling-related cues. Forty PrG and 35 control participants performed a change detection task using the flicker paradigm, in which two images differing in only one aspect are repeatedly flashed on the screen until the participant is able to report the changing item. In our study, the changing item was either neutral or related to gambling. Eye movements were recorded, which made it possible to measure both initial orienting of attention as well as its maintenance on gambling information. Direct (eye-movements) and indirect (change in detection latency) measures of attention in individuals with problematic gambling behaviors suggested the occurrence of both engagement and of maintenance attentional biases toward gambling-related visual cues. Compared to nonproblematic gamblers, PrG exhibited (a) faster reaction times to gambling-cues as compared to neutral cues, (b) higher percentage of initial saccades directed toward gambling pictures, and (c) an increased fixation duration and fixation count on gambling pictures. In the PrG group, measures of gambling-related attentional bias were not associated with craving for gambling and gambling dependence severity. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.	\N	\N
21691865	This study examined the hypothesis of an atypical interaction between attention and language in ASD. A dual-task experiment with three conditions was designed, in which sentences were presented that contained errors requiring attentional focus either at (a) low level, or (b) high level, or (c) both levels of language. Speed and accuracy for error detection were measured from 16 high-functioning adults with ASD, and 16 matched controls. For controls, there was an attentional cost of dual level processing for low level performance but not for high level performance. For participants with ASD, there was an attentional cost both for low level and for high level performance. These results suggest a compensatory strategic use of attention during language processing in ASD.	\N	\N
21697709	To examine the relationship between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in Parkinson disease (PD) and controls. The reliable self-assessment of one's own cognitive skills and deficits is an important but difficult task, especially in a chronic neurological condition like PD. Theories point out that brain structures involved in a realistic self-appraisal might be affected in PD. No study directly examined the association between self-assessed attentional skills and objective neuropsychological measures of attention in PD. We applied a case control design with 54 participants in the PD group and 54 healthy controls. PD patients and controls completed questionnaires on depression and self-assessed attention and were examined with computerized tests of attention. PD patients differed from controls in subjective and objective assessment of attention. Depression and self-assessed attention share a significant amount of variance, but are unrelated to objective measures of attention in both groups. In PD patients, there are no associations between functional outcome and objective and subjective measures of attention. Conscious reports in PD patients and controls are based on different processes rather than actual attentional performance. These processes are not differentially affected in PD. Nevertheless, patients' self-assessments are not an accurate indicator of their level of objective attentional functioning. Without a definite validity criterion, it cannot be decided whether the objective or subjective assessment of attention is more valid. Therefore, a multidimensional approach integrating different sources of information is most adequate in the assessment of attentional capacities and their meaning for everyday life in PD patients.	\N	\N
21698055	The mechanisms of the increased cardiac and vascular events in patients with OSA are not well understood. Arousal which is an important component of OSA was associated with increased sympathetic activation and electrocardiographic changes which prone to arrhythmias. We planned to examine the association among arousal, circulating Lp-PLA2 and total antioxidant capacity in male patients with OSA. Fifty male patients with newly diagnosed OSA were enrolled the study. A full-night polysomnography was performed and arousal index was obtained. Lp-PLA2 concentrations were measured in serum samples with the PLAC Test. Total antioxidant capacity in patients was determined with Antioxidant Assay Kit. Arousal was positively correlated with LP-PLA2 levels (r=0.43, p=0.002) and was negatively correlated with total antioxidant capacity (r= -0.29, p=0.04). Elevated LP-PLA2 levels and decreased total antioxidant activities were found in the highest arousal quartile compared with the lowest and 2nd quartiles (p=0.02, p=0.05, respectively). LP-PLA2 was an independently predictor of arousal index in regression model (β=0.357, p=0.002) This study demonstrated a moderate linear relationship between arousal and LP-PLA2 levels. Also, total antioxidant capacities were decreased in the higher arousal index. Based on the study result, the patients with higher arousal index may be prone to vascular events.	\N	\N
21707217	Previous research has proposed that tests enhance retention more than do restudy opportunities because they promote the effectiveness of mediating information--that is, a word or concept that links a cue to a target (Pyc & Rawson, 2010). Although testing has been shown to promote retention of mediating information that participants were asked to generate, it is unknown what type of mediators are spontaneously activated during testing and how these contribute to later retention. In the current study, participants learned cue-target pairs through testing (e.g., Mother: _____) or restudying (e.g., Mother: Child) and were later tested on these items in addition to a never-before-presented item that was strongly associated with the cue (e.g., Father)--that is, the semantic mediator. Compared with participants who learned the items through restudying, those who learned the items through testing exhibited higher false alarm rates to semantic mediators on a final recognition test (Experiment 1) and were also more likely to recall the correct target from the semantic mediator on a final cued recall test (Experiment 2). These results support the mediator effectiveness hypothesis and demonstrate that semantically related information may be 1 type of natural mediator that is activated during testing.	\N	\N
21715631	Gamma-band (25-90 Hz) peaks in local field potential (LFP) power spectra are present throughout the cerebral cortex and have been related to perception, attention, memory, and disorders (e.g., schizophrenia and autism). It has been theorized that gamma oscillations provide a "clock" for precise temporal encoding and "binding" of signals about stimulus features across brain regions. For gamma to function as a clock, it must be autocoherent: phase and frequency conserved over a period of time. We computed phase and frequency trajectories of gamma-band bursts, using time-frequency analysis of LFPs recorded in macaque primary visual cortex (V1) during visual stimulation. The data were compared with simulations of random networks and clock signals in noise. Gamma-band bursts in LFP data were statistically indistinguishable from those found in filtered broadband noise. Therefore, V1 LFP data did not contain clock-like gamma-band signals. We consider possible functions for stochastic gamma-band activity, such as a synchronizing pulse signal.	\N	\N
21722739	Both the size and location of injury in the brain influences the type and severity of cognitive or sensorimotor dysfunction. However, even with advances in MR imaging and analysis, the correspondence between lesion location and clinical deficit remains poorly understood. Here, structural and diffusion images from 14 healthy subjects are used to create spatially unbiased white matter connectivity importance maps that quantify the amount of disruption to the overall brain network that would be incurred if that region were compromised. Some regions in the white matter that were identified as highly important by such maps have been implicated in strategic infarct dementia and linked to various attention tasks in previous studies. Validation of the maps is performed by investigating the correlations of the importance maps' predicted cognitive deficits in a group of 15 traumatic brain injury patients with their cognitive test scores measuring attention and memory. While no correlation was found between amount of white matter injury and cognitive test scores, significant correlations (r>0.68, p<0.006) were found when including location information contained in the importance maps. These tools could be used by physicians to improve surgical planning, diagnosis, and assessment of disease severity in a variety of pathologies like multiple sclerosis, trauma, and stroke.	\N	\N
21726855	Cognitive-behavioural models of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) suggest that mirrors can act as a trigger for individuals with BDD, resulting in a specific mode of cognitive processing, characterised by an increase in self-focussed attention and associated distress. The aim of the current study was to investigate these factors experimentally by exposing participants with BDD (n=25) and without BDD (n=25) to a mirror in a controlled setting. An additional aim was to ascertain the role of duration of mirror gazing in the maintenance of distress and self-consciousness by manipulating the length of gazing (short check vs. long gazing). Findings demonstrated that contrary to what was predicted, not only participants with BDD, but also those without BDD experienced an increase in distress and self-focused attention upon exposure to the mirror. In addition, people without BDD, unlike those with BDD, experienced more distress when looking in the mirror for a long period of time as opposed to a short period of time. This lends some support to the idea that, for people with BDD, gazing in a mirror, regardless of duration, might act as an immediate trigger for an abnormal mode of processing and associated distress, and that this association has developed from past excessive mirror gazing. Further theoretical implications of these findings, as well as subsidiary research questions relating to additional cognitive factors are discussed.	\N	\N
21728402	Previous research has shown that the picture superiority effect (PSE) is seen in tests of associative recognition for random pairs of line drawings compared to pairs of concrete words (Hockley, 2008). In the present study we demonstrated that the PSE for associative recognition is still observed when subjects have correctly identified the individual items of each pair as old (Experiment 1), and that this effect is not due to rehearsal borrowing (Experiment 2). The PSE for associative recognition also is shown to be present but attenuated for mixed picture-word pairs (Experiment 3), and similar in magnitude for pairs of simple black and white line drawings and coloured photographs of detailed objects (Experiment 4). The results are consistent with the view that the semantic meaning of nameable pictures is activated faster than that of words thereby affording subjects more time to generate and elaborate meaningful associations between items depicted in picture form.	\N	\N
21729104	Phobic fear is accompanied by intense bodily responses modulated by the amygdala. An amygdala moderated psychophysiological measure related to arousal is electrodermal activity. We evaluated the contributions of electrodermal activity to amygdala-parahippocampal regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during phobic memory encoding in subjects with spider or snake phobia. Recognition memory was increased for phobia-related slides and covaried with rCBF in the amygdala and the parahippocampal gyrus. The covariation between parahippocampal rCBF and recognition was related to electrodermal activity suggesting that parahippocampal memory processes were associated with sympathetic activity. Electrodermal activity further mediated the amygdala effect on parahippocampal activity. Memory encoding during phobic fear therefore seems contingent on amygdala's influence on arousal and parahippocampal activity.	\N	\N
21742561	We examined whether anxiodepressive patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy could be differentiated from those with depression but without epilepsy on tasks that investigate attentional bias toward and explicit judgment of emotional stimuli. Eight depressive patients, eight anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy, and eight controls participated in the present study. Anxiodepressive with epilepsy and depressive patients had comparable depression scores and the same cognitive profile. Two distinct emotional tasks were used: the decision lexical task and the number comparison task. Three emotional connotations were presented: neutral, positive, and negative. The pattern of results showed an attentional bias toward negative words and pictures in depressive patients and only toward negative words in anxiodepressive patients with epilepsy. Moreover, depressive patients explicitly judged negative stimuli with lower intensity and anxiodepressive patients judged neutral stimuli with higher intensity. The present study specifies the emotional functioning in depression with or without left temporal lobe epilepsy.	\N	\N
21744949	During the first half of the 2nd year of life, infants struggle to use phonemic distinctions in label-object association tasks. Prior experiments have demonstrated that exposure to the phonemes in distinct lexical forms (e.g., /d/ and /t/ in daddy and tiger, respectively) facilitates infants' use of phonemic contrasts but also that they struggle to generalize the use of phonemic contrasts to novel syllabic contexts (Thiessen, 2007; Thiessen & Yee, 2010). Further, in prior research, infants have been provided only with experience in lexical forms that refer to novel objects, while many lexical forms in the natural environment do not have easily identified visual referents. The experiments in this article show that even lexical forms without referents can facilitate use of phonemic contrasts. Additionally, the results indicate that when lexical forms provide infants with enough variability (for example, a consonant followed by multiple different vowels), infants are able to generalize to novel contexts.	\N	\N
21749372	In two birth cohort studies with genetic, sensitive parenting, and attachment data of more than 1,000 infants in total, we tested main and interaction effects of candidate genes involved in the dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin systems (DRD4, DRD2, COMT, 5-HTT, OXTR) on attachment security and disorganization. Parenting was assessed using observational rating scales for parental sensitivity (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974), and infant attachment was assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure. We found no consistent additive genetic associations for attachment security and attachment disorganization. However, specific tests revealed evidence for a codominant risk model for COMT Val158Met, consistent across both samples. Children with the Val/Met genotype showed higher disorganization scores (combined effect size d = .22, CI = .10-.34, p < .001). Gene-by-environment interaction effects were not replicable across the two samples. This unexpected finding might be explained by a broader range of plasticity in heterozygotes, which may increase susceptibility to environmental influences or to dysregulation of emotional arousal. This study is unique in combining the two largest attachment cohorts with molecular genetic and observed rearing environment data to date.	\N	\N
21751991	In the typical visual search experiment, participants search for targets that are present on half of the trials and absent on the other half. However, many real-world tasks involve targets that are present only occasionally. Given this, it is important to know how people deal with the problem of finding targets they have little experience with. One possibility is that they develop an awareness of the degree to which they have effectively completed a search through complex target-absent scenes. To test this hypothesis, we had participants complete two relatively long search tasks in which only a minority of trials included targets. Stimuli were cluttered real-world scenes, and targets were defined by category. We examined participants' ability to terminate search on the target-absent scenes based on an accurate assessment of scene difficulty. Scene difficulty was estimated by computing the mean correct-trial response time (RT) for each of the target-absent scenes across all participants. These group RTs were then correlated with each participants' individual correct-trial RTs for the same stimuli to assess the degree to which a given participant's search-termination times were correlated with those of the group. These correlations successfully predicted participants' target-detection success in both experiments. These experiments suggest that an integral part of visual search is the need to calibrate search behaviour to scenes of varying levels of complexity even when no targets are present.	\N	\N
21757505	We asked how visual similarity relationships affect search guidance to categorically defined targets (no visual preview). Experiment 1 used a web-based task to collect visual similarity rankings between two target categories, teddy bears and butterflies, and random-category objects, from which we created search displays in Experiment 2 having either high-similarity distractors, low-similarity distractors, or "mixed" displays with high-, medium-, and low-similarity distractors. Analysis of target-absent trials revealed faster manual responses and fewer fixated distractors on low-similarity displays compared to high-similarity displays. On mixed displays, first fixations were more frequent on high-similarity distractors (bear = 49%; butterfly = 58%) than on low-similarity distractors (bear = 9%; butterfly = 12%). Experiment 3 used the same high/low/mixed conditions, but now these conditions were created using similarity estimates from a computer vision model that ranked objects in terms of color, texture, and shape similarity. The same patterns were found, suggesting that categorical search can indeed be guided by purely visual similarity. Experiment 4 compared cases where the model and human rankings differed and when they agreed. We found that similarity effects were best predicted by cases where the two sets of rankings agreed, suggesting that both human visual similarity rankings and the computer vision model captured features important for guiding search to categorical targets.	\N	\N
21767062	The ability to detect a change, to accurately assess the magnitude of the change, and to react to that change in a commensurate fashion are of critical importance in many decision domains. Thus, it is important to understand the factors that systematically affect people's reactions to change. In this article we document a novel effect: decision makers' reactions to a change (e.g., a visual change, a technology change) were systematically affected by the type of categorizations they encountered in an unrelated prior task (e.g., the response categories associated with a survey question). We found that prior exposure to narrow, as opposed to broad, categorizations improved decision makers' ability to detect change and led to stronger reactions to a given change. These differential reactions occurred because the prior categorizations, even though unrelated, altered the extent to which the subsequently presented change was perceived as either a relatively large change or a relatively small one.	\N	\N
21787078	It has been suggested that downward pointing triangles convey negative valence, perhaps because they mimic an underlying primitive feature present in negative facial expressions (Larson, Aronoff, and Stearns, 2007). Here, we test this proposition using a flanker interference paradigm in which participants indicated the valence of a central face target, presented between two adjacent distracters. Experiment 1 showed that, compared with face flankers, downward pointing triangles had little influence on responses to face targets. However, in Experiment 2, when attentional competition was increased between target and flankers, downward pointing triangles slowed responses to positively valenced face targets, and speeded them to negatively valenced targets, consistent with valence-based flanker compatibility effects. These findings provide converging evidence that simple geometric shapes may convey emotional valence.	\N	\N
21787101	Face processing has several distinctive hallmarks that researchers have attributed either to face-specific mechanisms or to extensive experience distinguishing faces. Here, we examined the face-processing hallmark of selective attention failure--as indexed by the congruency effect in the composite paradigm--in a domain of extreme expertise: chess. Among 27 experts, we found that the congruency effect was equally strong with chessboards and faces. Further, comparing these experts with recreational players and novices, we observed a trade-off: Chess expertise was positively related to the congruency effect with chess yet negatively related to the congruency effect with faces. These and other findings reveal a case of expertise-dependent, facelike processing of objects of expertise and suggest that face and expert-chess recognition share common processes.	\N	\N
21791293	An interocular conflict arises when different images are presented to each eye at the same spatial location. The visual system resolves this conflict through binocular rivalry: observers consciously perceive spontaneous alternations between the two images. Visual attention is generally important for resolving competition between neural representations. However, given the seemingly spontaneous and automatic nature of binocular rivalry, the role of attention in resolving interocular competition remains unclear. Here we test whether visual attention is necessary to produce rivalry. Using an EEG frequency-tagging method to track cortical representations of the conflicting images, we show that when attention was diverted away, rivalry stopped. The EEG data further suggested that the neural representations of the dichoptic images combined without attention. Thus, attention is necessary for dichoptic images to be engaged in sustained rivalry and may be generally required for resolving conflicting, potentially ambiguous input and giving a single interpretation access to consciousness.	\N	\N
21804667	Pulse transit time (PPT) has been introduced as a useful screening tool to diagnose sleep disordered breathing (SDB). Since the prevalence of SDB increases with age, the question is whether PTT could be used to diagnose SDB in the elderly. We assess the effectiveness of PTT for SDB screening in a large healthy elderly population. Community-based sample in home and research clinical settings. N/A. Seven hundred eighty volunteers, free of cardiac and neurologic disease, aged 68.6 ± 1.0 years, underwent ambulatory polygraphy to measure the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The presence of SDB was defined as an AHI of 15 or greater. The PTT was continuously monitored during the nocturnal study, and the overall autonomic arousal index (AAI) was calculated. SDB was diagnosed in 447 (57.3%) subjects. In these subjects, the Bland-Altman plot for AAI revealed an underestimation with a bias of -8.04 ± 16.55 events per hour (mean ± 95% confidence interval). Receiver operating characteristic curves constructed for an AHI of 15 or greater defined an area under the curve of 0.67 and a cutoff point to AAI 32.3 events per hour, giving a sensitivity of 70.5% and a specificity of 54.7%. For prediction of an AHI of at least 30, the area under the curve was equal to 0.74 for a cutoff point of 56.3 events per hour, giving a better specificity (94.7%) but a lower sensitivity (32.2%). In a healthy older population, the AAI showed moderate sensitivity for predicting SDB. This data does not allow us to use PTT as a screening tool for the diagnosis of SDB in the elderly. NCT 00759304 and NCT 00766584.	\N	\N
21811130	The primary aim of the present study was to test diazepam (DZ) effect, a benzodiazepine (BDZ) usually prescribed to reduce anxiety and to induce sleep, on EEG activity while performing a visual sustained attention task. The EEG activity was recorded in a double-blind placebo experiment, and prestimulus spectral power and inter- and intrahemispheric temporal coupling were assessed during visual sustained attention task performance. A single DZ dose (5 mg) was enough to increase reaction times during visual sustained attention task responses. DZ decreased prestimulus EEG power in the 1- to 6-, 8- to 12-, and 19- to 35-Hz bands and disrupted right intrahemispheric temporal coupling in the α-frequency range (8-12 Hz). The combined reduction in power and temporal coupling suggests both local and interregional DZ-induced disruption of neuronal synchronicity especially in the right hemisphere in agreement with the prominent attention-related networks in this hemisphere. These data support the notion that the influence of DZ on behavior goes beyond sedative effects and can potentially compromise higher cognitive functions with negative consequences to daily life situations.	\N	\N
21812567	The human cognitive system is highly efficient in extracting information from our visual environment. This efficiency is based on acquired knowledge that guides our attention toward relevant events and promotes the recognition of individual objects as they appear in visual scenes. The experience-based representation of such knowledge contains not only information about the individual objects but also about relations between them, such as the typical context in which individual objects co-occur. The present EEG study aimed at exploring the availability of such relational knowledge in the time course of visual scene processing, using oscillatory evoked gamma-band responses as a neural correlate for a currently activated cortical stimulus representation. Participants decided whether two simultaneously presented objects were conceptually coherent (e.g., mouse-cheese) or not (e.g., crown-mushroom). We obtained increased evoked gamma-band responses for coherent scenes compared with incoherent scenes beginning as early as 70 msec after stimulus onset within a distributed cortical network, including the right temporal, the right frontal, and the bilateral occipital cortex. This finding provides empirical evidence for the functional importance of evoked oscillatory activity in high-level vision beyond the visual cortex and, thus, gives new insights into the functional relevance of neuronal interactions. It also indicates the very early availability of experience-based knowledge that might be regarded as a fundamental mechanism for the rapid extraction of the gist of a scene.	\N	\N
21812705	The repetition-lag training procedure developed by Jennings and Jacoby (2003 , Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 14, 417) has been shown to improve older adults' performance in the recognition memory task used for training, and to improve performance in a variety of other memory and executive function tasks ( Jennings, Webster, Kleykamp, & Dagenbach, 2005 , Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition, 12, 278). The present study examined the effects of concurrent interference tasks during the study or test phases of training to localize the source of gains. Overall, the results suggest that training is resilient and resistant to interference, but also that the processes used during the test phases of training are more important to the gains seen in the primary task and in the transfer tasks than those used in the study phases.	\N	\N
21819388	Circadian rhythms in mammals are regulated by a system of endogenous circadian oscillators (clock cells) in the brain and in most peripheral organs and tissues. One group of clock cells in the hypothalamic SCN (suprachiasmatic nuclei) functions as a pacemaker for co-ordinating the timing of oscillators elsewhere in the brain and body. This master clock can be reset and entrained by daily LD (light-dark) cycles and thereby also serves to interface internal with external time, ensuring an appropriate alignment of behavioural and physiological rhythms with the solar day. Two features of the mammalian circadian system provide flexibility in circadian programming to exploit temporal regularities of social stimuli or food availability. One feature is the sensitivity of the SCN pacemaker to behavioural arousal stimulated during the usual sleep period, which can reset its phase and modulate its response to LD stimuli. Neural pathways from the brainstem and thalamus mediate these effects by releasing neurochemicals that inhibit retinal inputs to the SCN clock or that alter clock-gene expression in SCN clock cells. A second feature is the sensitivity of circadian oscillators outside of the SCN to stimuli associated with food intake, which enables animals to uncouple rhythms of behaviour and physiology from LD cycles and align these with predictable daily mealtimes. The location of oscillators necessary for food-entrained behavioural rhythms is not yet certain. Persistence of these rhythms in mice with clock-gene mutations that disable the SCN pacemaker suggests diversity in the molecular basis of light- and food-entrainable clocks.	\N	\N
21823798	In older adults, difficulties processing complex auditory scenes, such as speech comprehension in noisy environments, might be due to a specific impairment of temporal processing at early, automatic processing stages involving auditory sensory memory (ASM). Even though age effects on auditory temporal processing have been well-documented, there is a paucity of research on how ASM processing of more complex tone-patterns is altered by age. In the current study, age effects on ASM processing of temporal and frequency aspects of two-tone patterns were investigated using a passive listening protocol. The P1 component, the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a component of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to tone frequency and temporal pattern deviants were recorded in younger and older adults as a measure of auditory event detection, ASM processing, and attention switching, respectively. MMN was elicited with smaller amplitude to both frequency and temporal deviants in older adults. Furthermore, P3a was elicited only in the younger adults. In conclusion, the smaller MMN amplitude indicates that automatic processing of both frequency and temporal aspects of two-tone patterns is impaired in older adults. The failure to initiate an attention switch, suggested by the absence of P3a, indicates that impaired ASM processing of patterns may lead to less distractibility in older adults. Our results suggest age-related changes in ASM processing of patterns that cannot be explained by an inhibitory deficit.	\N	\N
21828324	Sleep-disordered breathing (characterized by recurrent arousals from sleep and intermittent hypoxemia) is common among older adults. Cross-sectional studies have linked sleep-disordered breathing to poor cognition; however, it remains unclear whether sleep-disordered breathing precedes cognitive impairment in older adults. To determine the prospective relationship between sleep-disordered breathing and cognitive impairment and to investigate potential mechanisms of this association. Prospective sleep and cognition study of 298 women without dementia (mean [SD] age: 82.3 [3.2] years) who had overnight polysomnography measured between January 2002 and April 2004 in a substudy of the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures. Sleep-disordered breathing was defined as an apnea-hypopnea index of 15 or more events per hour of sleep. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the independent association of sleep-disordered breathing with risk of mild cognitive impairment or dementia, adjusting for age, race, body mass index, education level, smoking status, presence of diabetes, presence of hypertension, medication use (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, or nonbenzodiazepine anxiolytics), and baseline cognitive scores. Measures of hypoxia, sleep fragmentation, and sleep duration were investigated as underlying mechanisms for this relationship. Adjudicated cognitive status (normal, dementia, or mild cognitive impairment) based on data collected between November 2006 and September 2008. Compared with the 193 women without sleep-disordered breathing, the 105 women (35.2%) with sleep-disordered breathing were more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or dementia (31.1% [n = 60] vs 44.8% [n = 47]; adjusted odds ratio [AOR], 1.85; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.11-3.08). Elevated oxygen desaturation index (≥15 events/hour) and high percentage of sleep time (>7%) in apnea or hypopnea (both measures of disordered breathing) were associated with risk of developing mild cognitive impairment or dementia (AOR, 1.71 [95% CI, 1.04-2.83] and AOR, 2.04 [95% CI, 1.10-3.78], respectively). Measures of sleep fragmentation (arousal index and wake after sleep onset) or sleep duration (total sleep time) were not associated with risk of cognitive impairment. Among older women, those with sleep-disordered breathing compared with those without sleep-disordered breathing had an increased risk of developing cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
21839179	Top-down attention enhances neural processing, but its effect on metabolic activity in primary visual cortex (V1) is unclear. Combined blood flow and oxygenation measurements provide the best tool for investigating modulations of oxidative metabolism. We measured the human V1 response to a peripheral low contrast stimulus using fMRI and found a larger fractional modulation of blood flow with attention compared to the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response, thus indicating a much larger modulation of oxygen metabolism than was previously thought. These findings point to different aspects of neural activity driving flow and metabolic changes to different degrees. We propose that V1 flow is driven strongly but not exclusively by the initial sensory-driven neural activity, which dominates the response in the unattended condition, while V1 oxygen metabolism is driven strongly by the overall neural activity, which is modulated by top-down signals related to attention.	\N	\N
21839675	This study sought to better characterize the contributions of deficits in attention allocation and distracter inhibition to the poor performance on attention tasks often seen in children with ADHD. Electrophysiological (Nd, P3b) and behavioral measures (speed and accuracy) were examined during an auditory selective attention task in children with ADHD, children with typical development (TD), and adults. Thirty children (15 ADHD; 13 females) between the ages of 7 and 13 and 16 adults (8 females) participated. Nd waveforms were elicited from adults and children with TD, but not from children with ADHD. Further, those with ADHD exhibited significantly smaller auditory responses at 100 ms (Ta). P3bs were elicited in all three groups by targets but not by unattended deviants. Performance was significantly poorer in children with ADHD than TD and RTs were more variable. Children with ADHD evidenced poorer attention allocation, as measured by Nd and hits, but were not more distracted by unattended deviants, as measured by P3b and false alarms, than children with TD. Findings for Nd, P3b, and Ta considered together suggest that deficits in auditory selective attention in children with ADHD may be attributable to reduced information early in the processing stream.	\N	\N
21853782	Attention plays an important role in the design of human-machine interfaces. However, current knowledge about attention is largely based on data obtained when using devices of moderate display size. With advancement in display technology comes the need for understanding attention behavior over a wider range of viewing sizes. The effect of display size on test participants' visual search performance was studied. The participants (N = 12) performed two types of visual search tasks, that is, parallel and serial search, under three display-size conditions (16 degrees, 32 degrees, and 60 degrees). Serial, but not parallel, search was affected by display size. In the serial task, mean reaction time for detecting a target increased with the display size.	\N	\N
21854681	Individual differences in emotional processing are likely to contribute to vulnerability and resilience to emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. Genetic variation is known to contribute to these differences but they remain incompletely understood. The serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and α2B-adrenergic autoreceptor (ADRA2B) insertion/deletion polymorphisms impact on two separate but interacting monaminergic signalling mechanisms that have been implicated in both emotional processing and emotional disorders. Recent studies suggest that the 5-HTTLPR s allele is associated with a negative attentional bias and an increased risk of emotional disorders. However, such complex behavioural traits are likely to exhibit polygenicity, including epistasis. This study examined the contribution of the 5-HTTLPR and ADRA2B insertion/deletion polymorphisms to attentional biases for aversive information in 94 healthy male volunteers and found evidence of a significant epistatic effect (p<0.001). Specifically, in the presence of the 5-HTTLPR s allele, the attentional bias for aversive information was attenuated by possession of the ADRA2B deletion variant whereas in the absence of the s allele, the bias was enhanced. These data identify a cognitive mechanism linking genotype-dependent serotonergic and noradrenergic signalling that is likely to have implications for the development of cognitive markers for depression/anxiety as well as therapeutic drug effects and personalized approaches to treatment.	\N	\N
21861678	Recent neuroimaging evidence indicates that visual consciousness of objects is reflected by the activation in the lateral occipital cortex as well as in the frontal and parietal cortex. However, most previous studies used behavioral paradigms in which attention raised or enhanced visual consciousness (visibility or recognition performance). This co-occurrence made it difficult to reveal whether an observed cortical activation is related to visual consciousness or attention. The present fMRI study investigated the dissociability of neural activations underlying these two cognitive phenomena. Toward this aim, we used a visual backward masking paradigm in which directing attention could either enhance or reduce the object visibility. The participants' task was to report the level of subjective visibility for a briefly presented target object. The target was presented in the center with four flankers, which was followed by the same number of masks. Behavioral results showed that attention to the flankers enhanced the target visibility, whereas attention to the masks attenuated it. The fMRI results showed that the occipito-temporal sulcus increased activation in the attend flankers condition compared with the attend masks condition, and occipito-temporal sulcus activation levels positively correlated with the target visibility in both attentional conditions. On the other hand, the inferior frontal gyrus and the intraparietal sulcus increased activation in both the attend flankers and attend masks compared with an attend neither condition, and these activation levels were independent of target visibility. Taken together, present results showed a clear dissociation in neural activities between conscious visibility and attention.	\N	\N
21870308	Anxiety sensitivity refers to the extent of beliefs that anxiety symptoms or arousal can have harmful consequences. There is growing evidence for anxiety sensitivity as a risk factor for anxiety disorders. Anxiety sensitivity is elevated in panic disorder as well as other anxiety disorders. It is thought to contribute to the maintenance and severity of anxiety symptoms. Studies have shown that anxiety sensitivity more specifically predicts the future occurrence of panic attacks. The Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), which measures the construct of anxiety sensitivity, has three subscales, namely, the ASI-Physical subscale, ASI-Social subscale and ASI-Mental Incapacitation Concerns subscale. The dimension reflecting "fear of physical sensations" of anxiety sensitivity is the most predictive one of panic attacks and panic disorder. Research on the ASI has demonstrated that persons diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder all had ASI scores higher than normal controls. Depression was speculated to hold a positive correlation to high anxiety sensitivity scores. The relationships between anxiety sensitivity, alcohol and substance use disorders are still unknown. There is evidence that anxiety sensitivity is related with "drinking used as a way of coping". Since anxiety sensitivity is a cognitive construct, it should be taken into consideration when evaluating patients with anxiety and psychotherapeutic formulations.	\N	\N
21871503	In the current study, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task combined with event related potentials (ERP) was used to investigate attention biases toward body-related words in a nonclinical sample of body dissatisfied females. Consistent with the hypotheses, the amplitudes of N100, N170 and P3 are sensitive to different body-related words in the RSVP paradigm only among body weight dissatisfied women (WD group), while control group did not show this difference. The early anterior N100 and bi-lateral parietal and occipital N170 amplitudes elicited by fatness-related words were larger than those elicited by thinness-related and neutral words among WD group, a finding which is consistent with the presence of a 'negativity bias'. Also, WD group women showed significantly different amplitudes in response to three categories of stimuli with thin words eliciting the largest P3 amplitudes, followed by fat words and the least neutral words. The current findings indicated that attention biases toward body weight related words were evident during both sensory and cognitive stages of information processing. Findings are also consistent with hypotheses of cognitive-behavioral accounts of body weight dissatisfaction which propose, in part, that individual differences on cognitive tasks reveal underlying psychopathology; attentional biases reflect disordered body schema, not disordered eating, and can therefore be seen in non-clinical samples.	\N	\N
21872853	Brain regions simultaneously activated during any cognitive process are functionally connected, forming large-scale networks. These functional networks can be examined during active conditions [i.e., task-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)] and also in passive states (resting-fMRI), where the default mode network (DMN) is the most widely investigated system. The role of the DMN remains unclear, although it is known to be responsible for the shift between resting and focused attention processing. There is also some evidence for its malleability in relation to previous experience. Here we investigated brain connectivity patterns in 16 healthy young subjects by using an n-back task with increasing levels of memory load within the fMRI context. Prior to this working memory (WM) task, participants were trained outside fMRI with a shortened test version. Immediately after, they underwent a resting-state fMRI acquisition followed by the full fMRI n-back test. We observed that the degree of intrinsic correlation within DMN and WM networks was maximal during the most demanding n-back condition (3-back). Furthermore, individuals showing a stronger negative correlation between the two networks under both conditions exhibited better behavioural performance. Interestingly, and despite the fact that we considered eight different resting-state fMRI networks previously identified in humans, only the connectivity within the posteromedial parts of the DMN (precuneus) prior to the fMRI n-back task predicted WM execution. Our results using a data-driven probabilistic approach for fMRI analysis provide the first evidence of a direct relationship between behavioural performance and the degree of negative correlation between the DMN and WM networks. They further suggest that in the context of expectancy for an imminent cognitive challenge, higher resting-state activity in the posteromedial parietal cortex may be related to increased attentional preparatory resources.	\N	\N
21875215	Dissociable prototype learning systems have been demonstrated behaviorally and with neuroimaging in younger adults as well as with patient populations. In A/not-A (AN) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or are not in category A. Research suggests that AN learning is mediated by a perceptual learning system. In A/B (AB) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A and B during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or category B. In contrast to AN, research suggests that AB learning is mediated by a declarative memory system. The current study examined the effects of normal aging on AN and AB prototype learning. We observed an age-related deficit in AB learning, but an age-related advantage in AN learning. Computational modeling supports one possible interpretation based on narrower selective attentional focus in older adults in the AB task and broader selective attention in the AN task. Neuropsychological testing in older participants suggested that executive functioning and attentional control were associated with better performance in both tasks. However, nonverbal memory was associated with better AN performance, while visual attention was associated with worse AB performance. The results support an interactive memory systems approach and suggest that age-related declines in one memory system can lead to deficits in some tasks, but to enhanced performance in others.	\N	\N
21875701	Though the humans are more susceptible to unpleasant stimuli of higher intensity, how the valence intensity of unpleasant stimuli impacts subsequent cognitive processing, and whether this impact increases with the unpleasantness, require clarification. For this purpose, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for highly negative (HN), mildly negative (MN) and neutral cueing pictures, and subsequently for the non-emotional target picture while subjects were required to discriminate the location of the target. Cue-induced ERPs showed more negative deflections for the HN than for the neutral pictures in the 450-650 ms time interval. The emotion effect for the MN cueing stimuli, however, was non-significant in this interval. In contrast, target-induced P3 amplitudes were significantly more negative following MN versus neutral cueing pictures, while the P3 amplitudes were not significantly different between HN and neutral conditions, irrespective of cueing validity. Thus, despite weak immediate impact, MN stimuli influenced subsequent target processing more heavily than HN stimuli. This suggests that the impact of unpleasant events on cognition doesn't necessarily increase with the unpleasantness. Mild unpleasant stimulus, which is weak in immediate emotion arousal, should not be neglected due to the likelihood of producing a sustained impact.	\N	\N
21879613	This study investigated the effects of stimulus modality, standard duration, sex, and laterality in duration discrimination by musicians and nonmusicians. Seventeen musicians (M age = 24.1 yr.) and 22 nonmusicians (M age = 26.8 yr.) participated. Auditory (1,000 Hz) and tactile (250 Hz) sinusoidal suprathreshold stimuli with varying durations were used. The standard durations tested were 0.5 and 3.0 sec. Participants discriminated comparison stimuli which had durations slightly longer and shorter than the standard durations. Difference limens were found by the method of limits and converted to Weber fractions based on the standard durations. Musicians had lower, i.e., better, Weber fractions than nonmusicians in the auditory modality, but there was no significant difference between musicians and nonmusicians in the tactile modality. Auditory discrimination was better than tactile discrimination. Discrimination improved when the standard duration was increased both for musicians and nonmusicians. These results support previous findings of superior auditory processing by musicians. Significant differences between discrimination in the millisecond and second ranges may be due to a deviation from Weber's law and the discontinuity of timing in different duration ranges reported in the literature.	\N	\N
21883941	Recent nationally representative studies documenting event-level sexual behavior have included samples that are predominantly heterosexual, resulting in limited information on the sexual repertoire of gay and bisexually identified men. This study sought to document the sexual behaviors that gay and bisexually identified men report during their most recent male-partnered sexual event and to describe the situational characteristics and participants' evaluation of these events. Via an internet-based survey, data were collected from 24,787 gay and bisexually identified men (ages 18-87 years) from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. Measures included items related to sociodemographics, recent sexual behavior history, situational characteristics, orgasm, and ratings of arousal and pleasure. Participants' mean age was 39.2 years; ethnicities included white (84.6%), Latino (6.4%), and African American (3.6%); and most men (79.9%) identified as homosexual. The most commonly reported behavior was kissing a partner on the mouth (74.5%), followed by oral sex (72.7%), and partnered masturbation (68.4%). Anal intercourse occurred among less than half of participants (37.2%) and was most common among men ages 18-24 (42.7%). Sex was most likely to occur in the participant's home (46.8%), with less frequently reported locations including hotels (7.4%) and public spaces (3.1%). The number of behaviors engaged in during last sexual event varied with most (63.2%) including 5-9 different sexual behaviors. These data provide one of the first examinations of sexual behaviors during the most recent male-partnered sexual event among gay and bisexually identified men in the United States. Findings from this study suggest that gay and bisexually identified men have a diverse sexual repertoire and that partnered sexual behaviors are not limited solely to acts of penile insertion.	\N	\N
21887382	Successful integration of various simultaneously perceived perceptual signals is crucial for social behavior. Recent findings indicate that this multisensory integration (MSI) can be modulated by attention. Theories of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) suggest that MSI is affected in this population while it remains unclear to what extent this is related to impairments in attentional capacity. In the present study Event-related potentials (ERPs) following emotionally congruent and incongruent face-voice pairs were measured in 23 high-functioning, adult ASD individuals and 24 age- and IQ-matched controls. MSI was studied while the attention of the participants was manipulated. ERPs were measured at typical auditory and visual processing peaks, namely, P2 and N170. While controls showed MSI during divided attention and easy selective attention tasks, individuals with ASD showed MSI during easy selective attention tasks only. It was concluded that individuals with ASD are able to process multisensory emotional stimuli, but this is differently modulated by attention mechanisms in these participants, especially those associated with divided attention. This atypical interaction between attention and MSI is also relevant to treatment strategies, with training of multisensory attentional control possibly being more beneficial than conventional sensory integration therapy.	\N	\N
21899000	In this paper, we reviewed the brain imaging studies of male sexual function in recent years from three aspects: the brain mechanism of normal sexual function, the brain mechanism of sexual dysfunction, and the mechanism of drug therapy for sexual dysfunction. Studies show that the development stages of male sexual activities, such as the excitement phase, plateau phase and orgasm phase, are controlled by different neural networks. The mesodiencephalic transition zone may play an important role in the start up of male ejaculation. There are significant differences between sexual dysfunction males and normal males in activation patterns of the brain in sexual arousal. The medial orbitofrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus in the abnormal activation pattern are correlated with sexual dysfunction males in sexual arousal. Serum testosterone and morphine are commonly used drugs for male sexual dysfunction, whose mechanisms are to alter the activating levels of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, insula, claustrum and inferior temporal gyrus.	\N	\N
21903462	Studies on brain computer interfaces (BCIs) have been mainly concerned with algorithm improvement for better signal classification. Fewer studies, however, have addressed to date the role of cognitive mechanisms underlying the elicitation of brain-signals in BCIs. We tested the effect of visuospatial attention orienting on a P300-guided BCI, by comparing the effectiveness of three visual interfaces, which elicited different modalities of visuospatial attention orienting (exogenous vs. endogenous). Twelve healthy participants performed 20 sessions, using the abovementioned P300-guided BCI interfaces to control a cursor. Brain waves were recorded on each trial and were subsequently classified on-line using an ad hoc algorithm. Each time the P300 was correctly classified, the cursor moved towards the target position. The "endogenous" interface was associated with significantly higher performance than the other two interfaces during the testing sessions, but not in the follow-up sessions. Endogenous visuospatial attention orienting can be effectively implemented to increase the performance of P300-guided BCIs. The study of visuospatial attention underlying participants' performance is essential for implementing efficient visual BCIs.	\N	\N
21903593	Visual search for feature singletons is slowed when a task-irrelevant, but more salient distracter singleton is concurrently presented. While there is a consensus that this distracter interference effect can be influenced by internal system settings, it remains controversial at what stage of processing this influence starts to affect visual coding. Advocates of the "stimulus-driven" view maintain that the initial sweep of visual processing is entirely driven by physical stimulus attributes and that top-down settings can bias visual processing only after selection of the most salient item. By contrast, opponents argue that top-down expectancies can alter the initial selection priority, so that focal attention is "not automatically" shifted to the location exhibiting the highest feature contrast. To precisely trace the allocation of focal attention, we analyzed the Posterior-Contralateral-Negativity (PCN) in a task in which the likelihood (expectancy) with which a distracter occurred was systematically varied. Our results show that both high (vs. low) distracter expectancy and experiencing a distracter on the previous trial speed up the timing of the target-elicited PCN. Importantly, there was no distracter-elicited PCN, indicating that participants did not shift attention to the distracter before selecting the target. This pattern unambiguously demonstrates that preattentive vision is top-down modifiable.	\N	\N
21905997	Neuroimaging studies have found that alcohol dependent patients display dopaminergic dysfunction in the ventral striatum, which is associated with alcohol craving. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) was introduced as a promising new treatment option for depression, and among other neurobiological mechanisms, it is able to stimulate the striatal dopaminergic system. The aim of our study was to investigate the effect of high frequency rTMS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to sham stimulation on craving and mood in alcohol dependent women. Furthermore, the impact on an attentional blink (AB) paradigm to pictures with neutral, emotional and alcohol-related contents was proofed. Nineteen female detoxified patients were randomized either to a high frequency rTMS (20 Hz) over the left DLPFC (n = 10) or a sham stimulations (n = 9) at 10 days. Alcohol craving was determined with the Obsessive Compulsive Drinking Scale, depressive symptoms were registered by means of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale and Beck' Depression Inventory. For the AB paradigm an age-matched control group was investigated. There were no significantly differences between both groups regarding alcohol craving or mood. In the AB paradigm, real stimulated patients detected alcohol related T2 targets incorrectly in comparison to the sham stimulated and control subjects. Although there were no differences in clinical parameters such as craving or mood after real high frequency rTMS compared to sham stimulation, we found an interesting difference between the real and the sham stimulated group and controls in the AB paradigm indicating an increase of the AB effect to alcohol-related pictures after real stimulation. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and correlate them to clinical and neurophysiological data.	\N	\N
21910776	Central nervous system (CNS) histamine is low in individuals with narcolepsy, a disease characterized by severe fragmentation of both sleep and wake. We have developed a primate model, the squirrel monkey, with which we can examine the role of the CNS in the wake-consolidation process, as these primates are day-active, have consolidated wake and sleep and have cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that is readily accessible. Using this model and three distinct protocols, we report herein on the role of CNS histamine in the wake consolidation process. CSF histamine has a robust daily rhythm, with a mean of 24.9 ± 3.29 pg mL(-1) , amplitude of 31.7 ± 6.46 pg mL(-1) and a peak at 17:49 ± 70.3 min (lights on 07:00-19:00 hours). These levels are not significantly affected by increases (up to 161 ± 40.4% of baseline) or decreases (up to 17.2 ± 2.50% of baseline) in locomotion. In direct contrast to the effects of sleep deprivation in non-wake-consolidating mammals, in whom CSF histamine increases, pharmacologically induced sleep (γ-hydroxybutyrate) and wake (modafinil) have no direct effects on CSF histamine concentrations. These data indicate that the time-course of histamine in CSF in the wake-consolidated squirrel monkey is robust against variation in activity and sleep and wake-promoting pharmacological compounds, and may indicate that histamine physiology plays a role in wake-consolidation such as is present in the squirrel monkey and humans.	\N	\N
21923791	Visuo-spatial representations of the alphabet (so-called 'alphabet forms') may be as common as other types of sequence-space synaesthesia, but little is known about them or the way they relate to implicit spatial associations in the general population. In the first study, we describe the characteristics of a large sample of alphabet forms visualized by synaesthetes. They most often run from left to right and have salient features (e.g., bends, breaks) at particular points in the sequence that correspond to chunks in the 'Alphabet Song' and at the alphabet mid-point. The Alphabet Song chunking suggests that the visuo-spatial characteristics are derived, at least in part, from those of the verbal sequence learned earlier in life. However, these synaesthetes are no faster at locating points in the sequence (e.g., what comes before/after letter X?) than controls. They tend to be more spatially consistent (measured by eye tracking) and letters can act as attentional cues to left/right space in synaesthetes with alphabet forms (measured by saccades), but not in non-synaesthetes. This attentional cueing suggests dissociation between numbers (which reliably act as attentional cues in synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes) and letters (which act as attentional cues in synaesthetes only).	\N	\N
21931715	Successful completion of many everyday tasks depends on interactions between voluntary attention, which acts to maintain current goals, and reflexive attention, which enables responding to unexpected events by interrupting the current focus of attention. Past studies, which have mostly examined each attentional mechanism in isolation, indicate that volitional and reflexive orienting depend on two functionally specialized cortical networks in the human brain. Here we investigated how the interplay between these two cortical networks affects sensory processing and the resulting overt behavior. By combining measurements of human performance and electrocortical recordings with a novel analytical technique for estimating spatiotemporal activity in the human cortex, we found that the subregions that comprise the reflexive ventrolateral attention network dissociate both spatially and temporally as a function of the nature of the sensory information and current task demands. Moreover, we found that together with the magnitude of the early sensory gain, the spatiotemporal neural dynamics accounted for the high amount of the variance in the behavioral data. Collectively these data support the conclusion that the ventrolateral attention network is recruited flexibly to support complex behaviors.	\N	\N
21948954	The influence of personality on the neural correlates of emotional processing is still not well characterized. We investigated the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and emotional perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of 23 young, healthy women. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal varied with the participants' ratings of arousal and valence, and whether levels of extraversion and neuroticism were related to these modulations. In particular, we wished to test Eysenck's biological theory of personality, which links high extraversion to lower levels of reticulothalamic-cortical arousal, and neuroticism to increased reactivity of the limbic system and stronger reactions to emotional arousal. Individuals high in neuroticism demonstrated reduced sustained activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and attenuated valence processing in the right temporal lobe while viewing emotional images, but an increased BOLD response to emotional arousal in the right medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). These results support Eysenck's theory, as well as our hypothesis that high levels of neuroticism are associated with attenuated reward processing. Extraversion was inversely related to arousal processing in the right cerebellum, but positively associated with arousal processing in the right insula, indicating that the relationship between extraversion and arousal is not as simple as that proposed by Eysenck.	\N	\N
21957705	The influence of internal (movement focus) and external (outcome focus) attentional-focusing instructions on muscular endurance were investigated using three exercise protocols with experienced exercisers. Twenty-three participants completed a maximal repetition, assisted bench-press test on a Smith's machine. An external focus of attention resulted in significant (p < .05) improvements in performance compared to the internal focus of attention, but not the control condition. Seventeen participants completed repetitions to failure at 75% 1-RM on free bench press and squat exercises. In both tasks, externally focused instructions resulted in significantly greater repetitions to failure than control and internal focus conditions (p < .05). These results support previous research showing beneficial effects of externally focused instructions on movement efficiency.	\N	\N
21963321	Age-related cognitive impairments have been attributed to deficits in inhibitory processes that mediate both motor restraint and sensory filtering. However, behavioral studies have failed to show an association between tasks that measure these distinct types of inhibition. In the present study, we hypothesized neural markers reflecting each type of inhibition may reveal a relationship across inhibitory domains in older adults. Electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioral measures were used to explore whether there was an across-participant correlation between sensory suppression and motor inhibition. Sixteen healthy older adult participants (65-80 years) engaged in two separate experimental paradigms: a selective attention, delayed-recognition task and a stop-signal task. Findings revealed no significant relationship existed between neural markers of sensory suppression (P1 amplitude; N170 latency) and markers of motor inhibition (N2 and P3 amplitude and latency) in older adults. These distinct inhibitory domains are differentially impacted in normal aging, as evidenced by previous behavioral work and the current neural findings. Thus a generalized inhibitory deficit may not be a common impairment in cognitive aging. Given that some theories of cognitive aging suggest age-related failure of inhibitory mechanisms may span different modalities, the present findings contribute to an alternative view where age-related declines within each inhibitory modality are unrelated.	\N	\N
21963529	The last decade underwent a revival of interest in the perception of time and duration. The present short essay does not compete with the many other recent reviews and books on this topic. Instead, it is meant to emphasize the notion that humans (and most likely other animals) have at their disposal more than one time measuring device and to propose that they use these devices jointly to appraise the passage of time. One possible consequence of this conjecture is that the same physical duration can be judged differently depending on the reference 'clock' used in any such judgment. As this view has not yet been tested empirically, several experimental manipulations susceptible to directly test it are suggested. Before, are summarized a number of its latent precursors, namely the relativity of perceived duration, current trends in modeling time perception and its neural and pharmacological substrate, the experimental literature supporting the existence of multiple 'clocks' and a selected number of experimental manipulations known to induce time perception illusions which together with many others are putatively accountable in terms of alternative clock readings.	\N	\N
21965547	Cortisol concentration in both serum and saliva sharply increases and reaches a peak within the first hour after waking in the morning. This phenomenon is known as the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and is used as an index of hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. We examined whether ovarian steroid concentrations increased after awakening as with the CAR in the HPA axis. To do this, cortisol, estradiol-17β (E(2)), and progesterone (P(4)) concentrations were determined in saliva samples collected immediately upon awakening and 30 and 60 min after awakening in women with regular menstrual cycles and postmenopausal women. We found that both E(2) and P(4) concentrations increased during the post-awakening period in women with regular menstrual cycles, but these phenomena were not seen in any postmenopausal women. The area under the E(2) and P(4) curve from the time interval immediately after awakening to 60 min after awakening (i.e. E(2)auc and P(4)auc) in women with regular menstrual cycles were greater than those in the postmenopausal women. E(2) and P(4) secretory activity during the post-awakening period was influenced by the phase of the menstrual cycle. E(2)auc in the peri-ovulatory phase and P(4)auc in the early to mid-luteal phase were greater than in the menstrual phase. Meanwhile, cortisol secretory activity during the post-awakening period was not influenced by menstrual status or the phase of menstrual cycle. These findings indicate that, as with the CAR in the HPA axis function, ovarian steroidogenic activity increased after awakening and is closely associated with menstrual status and phase of menstrual cycle.	\N	\N
21965551	Both visual attention and visual short-term memory (VSTM) have been shown to have capacity limits of 4 ± 1 objects, driving the hypothesis that they share a visual processing buffer. However, these capacity limitations also show strong individual differences, making the degree to which these capacities are related unclear. Moreover, other research has suggested a distinction between attention and VSTM buffers. To explore the degree to which capacity limitations reflect the use of a shared visual processing buffer, we compared individual subject's capacities on attentional and VSTM tasks completed in the same testing session. We used a multiple object tracking (MOT) and a VSTM change detection task, with varying levels of distractors, to measure capacity. Significant correlations in capacity were not observed between the MOT and VSTM tasks when distractor filtering demands differed between the tasks. Instead, significant correlations were seen when the tasks shared spatial filtering demands. Moreover, these filtering demands impacted capacity similarly in both attention and VSTM tasks. These observations fail to support the view that visual attention and VSTM capacity limits result from a shared buffer but instead highlight the role of the resource demands of underlying processes in limiting capacity.	\N	\N
21969076	Stimulus over-selectivity occurs when one aspect of the environment controls behavior at the expense of other equally salient aspects. Participants were trained on a match-to-sample (MTS) discrimination task. Levels of over-selectivity in a group of children (4-18 years) with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) were compared with a mental-aged matched typically-developing group. There was more over-selectivity in the ASD group. When retention intervals were added between the sample and comparisons in the MTS task, both groups showed an increased level of over-selectivity, with the ASD group showing a more pronounced effect.	\N	\N
21981900	Previous studies demonstrate that attentional selection can be object-based, in which the object is defined in terms of Gestalt principles or lexical organizations. Here we investigate how attentional selection functions when the two types of objects are manipulated jointly. Experiment 1 replicated Li and Logan (2008) by showing that attentional shift between two Chinese characters is more efficient when they form a compound word than when they form a nonword. Experiment 2A presented characters either alone or within rectangles (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, 1994) and the characters in a rectangle formed either a word or a nonword. Experiment 2B differed from Experiment 2A in that the two characters forming a word were in different rectangles. Experiment 3A presented the two characters of a word either within a rectangle or in different rectangles. Experiment 3B used the same design as Experiment 3A but presented stimuli of different types in random orders, rather than in blocks as in Experiments 2A, 2B and 3A. In blocked presentation, detection responses to the target color on a character were faster when this character and the cue character formed a word than when they did not, and the size of this lexical-based object effect did not vary according to whether the two characters were presented alone or within or between rectangles. In random presentation, however, the lexical-based object effect was diminished when the two characters of a word were presented in different rectangles. Overall, these findings suggest that the processes that constrain attention deployment over conjoined objects can be strategically adjusted.	\N	\N
21982581	Even when focused on an effortful task we retain the ability to detect salient environmental information, and even irrelevant visual stimuli can be automatically detected. However, to which extent unattended information affects attentional control is not fully understood. Here we provide evidences of how the brain spontaneously organizes its cognitive resources by shifting attention between a selective-attending and a stimulus-driven modality within a single task. Using a spatial cueing paradigm we investigated the effect of cue-target asynchronies as a function of their probabilities of occurrence (i.e., relative frequency). Results show that this accessory information modulates attentional shifts. A valid spatial cue improved participants' performance as compared to an invalid one only in trials in which target onset was highly predictable because of its more robust occurrence. Conversely, cuing proved ineffective when spatial cue and target were associated according to a less frequent asynchrony. These patterns of response depended on asynchronies' probability and not on their duration. Our findings clearly demonstrate that through a fine decision-making, performed trial-by-trial, the brain utilizes implicit information to decide whether or not voluntarily shifting spatial attention. As if according to a cost-planning strategy, the cognitive effort of shifting attention depending on the cue is performed only when the expected advantages are higher. In a trade-off competition for cognitive resources, voluntary/automatic attending may thus be a more complex process than expected.	\N	\N
21986189	Changes in blood glucose are hypothesized to influence cognitive performance and these changes can be affected by certain nutrients. This double-blind 4-period cross-over study evaluated the effects of a slow-release modified sucrose (isomaltulose) in combination with a high concentration of lactose on cognitive performance of 5-6 year old children. Thirty children received a standard growing upmilk (Std GUM), reformulated growing up milk (Reform GUM), standard growing up milk with lactose-isomaltulose (Iso GUM), and a standard glucose drink (Glucose). The CDR System, a computerised cognitive assessment system, was used to assess various measures of attention and memory of the children at baseline (T=0), 60 (T=1), 120 (T=2), and 180 (T=3) minutes following the intake of test products. Overall, there was a decline in performance over the morning on almost every cognitive task. Children showed better attention following consumption of Iso GUM compared to Std GUM but attention was not significantly different than Reform GUM and glucose. Also, Iso GUM conferred a beneficial effect over both Reform GUM and glucose on sensitivity index of numeric working memory with no difference observed between Iso GUM and Std GUM. Surprisingly, glucose group showed lowest decline in the sensitivity index of spatial working memory and highest speed in picture recognition, although the latter was significantly better than Reform GUM only. For speed of spatial working memory, Reform GUM had the lowest decline but was significantly different only with Std GUM. There was, however, no significant difference among conditions for continuity of attention, speed of numeric working memory and picture recognition sensitivity. Despite the small sample size, the findings are intriguing as carbohydrate composition seems to influence some aspects of cognitive performance such as attention and memory. However, further studies are needed to confirm these findings.	\N	\N
21988891	Doing two things at once is difficult. When two tasks have to be performed within a short interval, the second is sharply delayed, an effect called the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP). Similarly, when two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to detect the second target (Attentional Blink or AB). Although AB and PRP are typically studied in very different paradigms, a recent detailed neuromimetic model suggests that both might arise from the same serial stage during which stimuli gain access to consciousness and, as a result, can be arbitrarily routed to any other appropriate processor. Here, in agreement with this model, we demonstrate that AB and PRP can be obtained on alternate trials of the same cross-modal paradigm and result from limitations in the same brain mechanisms. We asked participants to respond as fast as possible to an auditory target T1 and then to a visual target T2 embedded in a series of distractors, while brain activity was recorded with magneto-encephalography (MEG). For identical stimuli, we observed a mixture of blinked trials, where T2 was entirely missed, and PRP trials, where T2 processing was delayed. MEG recordings showed that PRP and blinked trials underwent identical sensory processing in visual occipito-temporal cortices, even including the non-conscious separation of targets from distractors. However, late activations in frontal cortex (>350 ms), strongly influenced by the speed of task-1 execution, were delayed in PRP trials and absent in blinked trials. Our findings suggest that PRP and AB arise from similar cortical stages, can occur with the same exact stimuli, and are merely distinguished by trial-by-trial fluctuations in task processing.	\N	\N
21992968	The review of literature in sociology and distributed artificial intelligence reveals that the occurrence of conflict is a remarkable precursor to the disruption of multi-agent systems. The study of this concept could be applied to human factors concerns, as man-system conflict appears to provoke perseveration behavior and to degrade attentional abilities with a trend to excessive focus. Once entangled in such conflicts, the human operator will do anything to succeed in his current goal even if it jeopardizes the mission. In order to confirm these findings, an experimental setup, composed of a real unmanned ground vehicle, a ground station is developed. A scenario involving an authority conflict between the participants and the robot is proposed. Analysis of the effects of the conflict on the participants' cognition and arousal is assessed through heart-rate measurement (reflecting stress level) and eye-tracking techniques (index of attentional focus). Our results clearly show that the occurrence of the conflict leads to perseveration behavior and can induce higher heart rate as well as excessive attentional focus. These results are discussed in terms of task commitment issues and increased arousal. Moreover, our results suggest that individual differences may predict susceptibility to perseveration behavior.	\N	\N
22001768	Attentional scanning was studied in anxious and non-anxious participants, using a modified change detection paradigm. Participants detected changes in pairs of emotional scenes separated by two task irrelevant slides, which contained an emotionally valenced scene (the 'distractor scene') and a visual mask. In agreement with attentional control theory, change detection latencies were slower overall for anxious participants. Change detection in anxious, but not non-anxious, participants was influenced by the emotional valence and exposure duration of distractor scenes. When negative distractor scenes were presented at subliminal exposure durations, anxious participants detected changes more rapidly than when supraliminal negative scenes or subliminal positive scenes were presented. We propose that for anxious participants, subliminal presentation of emotionally negative distractor scenes stimulated attention into a dynamic state in the absence of attentional engagement. Presentation of the same scenes at longer exposure times was accompanied by conscious awareness, attentional engagement, and slower change detection.	\N	\N
22004198	The differential effects of task and response conflict in priming paradigms where associations are strengthened between a stimulus, a task, and a response have been demonstrated in recent years with neuroimaging methods. However, such effects are not easily disentangled with only measurements of behavior, such as reaction times (RTs). Here, we report the application of ex-Gaussian distribution analysis on task-switching RT data and show that conflict related to stimulus-response associations retrieved after a switch of tasks is reflected in the Gaussian component. By contrast, conflict related to the retrieval of stimulus-task associations is reflected in the exponential component. Our data confirm that the retrieval of stimulus-task and -response associations affects behavior differently. Ex-Gaussian distribution analysis is a useful tool for pulling apart these different levels of associative priming that are not distinguishable in analyses of RT means.	\N	\N
22004518	Eye tracking has indicated that older and young adults process distracters similarly when reading single sentences. The present study extended this approach by presenting short paragraphs, sentence by sentence. Eye tracking measures included reading times per word, and the duration of the first fixation and total fixations to the distracters and target words. Comprehension was tested following each paragraph, and recognition of distracters and target words was assessed. The results indicated that young adults were able to learn to ignore the distracters as they read through the paragraphs, whereas older adults were less successful at learning to ignore the distracters.	\N	\N
22006524	This article provides a demonstration of an analytical technique that can be used to investigate the causes of perceptual phenomena. The technique is based on the concept of the ideal observer, an optimal signal classifier that makes decisions that maximize the probability of a correct response. To demonstrate the technique, an analysis was conducted to investigate the role of the auditory periphery in the production of temporal masking effects. The ideal observer classified output from four models of the periphery. Since the ideal observer is the best of all possible observers, if it demonstrates masking effects, then all other observers must as well. If it does not demonstrate masking effects, then nothing about the periphery requires masking to occur, and therefore masking would occur somewhere else. The ideal observer exhibited several forward masking effects but did not exhibit backward masking, implying that the periphery has a causal role in forward but not backward masking. A general discussion of the strengths of the technique and supplementary equations are also included.	\N	\N
22006528	In visual search tasks, the relative proportions of target-present and -absent trials have important effects on behavior. Miss error rates rise as target prevalence decreases (Wolfe, Horowitz, & Kenner, Nature 435, 439-440, 2005). At the same time, search termination times on target-absent trials become shorter (Wolfe & Van Wert, Current Biology 20, 121-124, 2010). These effects must depend on some implicit or explicit knowledge of the current prevalence. What is the nature of that knowledge? In Experiment 1, we conducted visual search tasks at three levels of prevalence (6%, 50%, and 94%) and analyzed performance as a function of "local prevalence," the prevalence over the last n trials. The results replicated the usual effects of overall prevalence but revealed only weak or absent effects of local prevalence. In Experiment 2, the overall prevalence in a block of trials was 20%, 50%, or 80%. However, a 100%-valid cue informed observers of the prevalence on the next trial. These explicit cues had a modest effect on target-absent RTs, but explicit expectation could not explain the full prevalence effect. We conclude that observers predict prevalence on the basis of an assessment of a relatively long prior history. Each trial contributes a small amount to that assessment, and this can be modulated but not overruled by explicit instruction.	\N	\N
22007628	Stroke patients are at a higher risk of falling than the community-dwelling elderly, and many falls are due to contact with an obstacle. This study compared the effects of the simultaneous addition of a cognitive task during obstacle crossing between stroke patients and community-dwelling older adults (control subjects). Participants comprised 20 stroke patients who could walk with or without supervision and 20 control subjects matched for age and height with the stroke patients. Participants were asked to cross a 4-cm-high obstacle while walking at a self-selected speed. The number of failures and the spatial and temporal parameters were compared between a single-task condition (i.e., crossing task only) and a dual-task condition (i.e., verbal fluency task: listing vegetables or animals). Under the dual-task condition, six stroke patients (30%) and three community-dwelling elderly individuals (15%) failed to complete the motor task. Task failure was only due to heel-obstacle contact after toe clearance. In both groups, obstacle-heel distance after clearance was reduced, and the time from heel contact to toe clearance and stride time were significantly increased under dual-task condition versus single-task condition. In addition, group-task interaction for the time from heel contact to toe clearance of the obstacle was significant; this increase in time was significantly greater under dual-task condition in stroke patients than in control subjects. Obstacle crossing in stroke patients involved an increase in crossing performance time and a risk of heel-obstacle contact after crossing. These tendencies appeared stronger under the dual-task condition.	\N	\N
22021081	Previous studies have indicated that increasing working memory (WM) load can affect the attentional selection of signals originating from one object/location. Here we assessed whether WM load affects also the selection of multiple objects/locations (divided attention). Participants monitored either two object-categories (vs. one category; object-based divided attention) or two locations (vs. one location; space-based divided attention) while maintaining in WM either a variable number of objects (object-based WM load) or locations (space-based WM load). Behavioural results showed that WM load affected attentional performance irrespective of divided or focused attention. However, fMRI results showed that the activity associated with object-based divided attention increased linearly with increasing object-based WM load in the left and right intraparietal sulcus (IPS); while, in the same areas, activity associated with space-based divided attention was not affected by any type of WM load. These findings support the hypothesis that WM contributes to the maintenance of resource-demanding attentional sets in a domain-specific manner. Moreover, the dissociable impact of WM load on performance and brain activity suggests that increased IPS activation reflects a recruitment of additional, domain-specific processing resources that enable dual-task performance under conditions of high WM load and high attentional demand.	\N	\N
22022989	Child maltreatment is associated with heightened risk for depression; however, not all individuals who experience maltreatment develop depression. Previous research indicates that maltreatment contributes to an attention bias for emotional cues, and that depressed individuals show attention bias for sad cues. The present study examined attention patterns for sad, depression-relevant cues in children with and without experience of maltreatment. We also explored whether individual differences in physiological reactivity and emotion regulation in response to a sad emotional state predict heightened attention to sad cues associated with depression. Children who experienced high levels of maltreatment showed an increase in attention bias for sad faces throughout the course of the study, such that they showed biased attention for sad faces following the initiation of a sad emotional state. Maltreated children who had high levels of trait rumination showed an attention bias toward sad faces across all time points. These data suggest that maltreated children show heightened attention for depression-relevant cues in certain contexts (e.g. after experience of a sad emotional state). Additionally, maltreated children who tend to engage in rumination show a relatively stable pattern of heightened attention for depression-relevant cues. These patterns may identify which maltreated children are most likely to exhibit biased attention for sad cues and be at heightened risk for depression.	\N	\N
22024021	Persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) is a rare condition in women that causes a lot of suffering. The pathophysiology is not well understood and an approach promising effective treatment has not been established so far. This study aims to make colleagues aware of two treatment options, which proved to be successful in one case each and which might be worth further investigation. Subjective distress from unwanted sexual arousal, unwanted orgasms, and pain in the genital area. Treatment of two women--36 and 41 years old--suffering from PGAD with duloxetine and pregabalin, respectively. In both women, the treatment proved to be very successful over a long period of time. One of them experienced full remission (duloxetine) and the other one experienced substantial improvement (pregabalin), over a period now lasting for more than a year. Pregabalin and duloxetine, in particular, should be further investigated as possible medication for the treatment of PGAD.	\N	\N
22033363	The human 'pain network' includes cortical areas that are activated during the response to painful stimuli (termed category 1) or during psychological processes that modulate pain, for example, distraction (termed category 2). These categories include parts of the parasylvian (PS), medial frontal (MF), and paracentral cortex (S1&M1). Here we test the hypothesis that causal interactions both within and between category 1 and category 2 modules occur during attention to a painful stimulus. Event-related causality (ERC) was calculated from local field potentials recorded directly from these cortical areas during the response to a painful cutaneous laser stimulus in patients being monitored for epilepsy. The number of electrodes involved in pairs with significant ERC in category 1 was greater for pre-stimulus vs post-stimulus and for attention vs distraction. This is consistent with our prior evidence that the category 1 'pain network' changes rapidly with time intervals and tasks. In contrast, the interaction between categories was often unchanged or stable across intervals and tasks, particularly in MF. The proportion of contacts involved in interactions with PS was greater during distraction vs attention while activation was less, which suggests that distraction involves an inhibitory process in PS. Functional interactions between categories were overwhelmingly in the direction from category 2>1, particularly for contacts in MF which often had a driver role. These results demonstrate that MF is densely interconnected throughout the 'pain network' so that stimulation of MF might be used to disrupt the 'pain network' as a therapy for pain.	\N	\N
22035945	It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participants responded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.	\N	\N
22039917	Three experiments explored online recognition in a nonspeech domain, using a novel experimental paradigm. Adults learned to associate abstract shapes with particular melodies, and at test they identified a played melody's associated shape. To implicitly measure recognition, visual fixations to the associated shape versus a distractor shape were measured as the melody played. Degree of similarity between associated melodies was varied to assess what types of pitch information adults use in recognition. Fixation and error data suggest that adults naturally recognize music, like language, incrementally, computing matches to representations before melody offset, despite the fact that music, unlike language, provides no pressure to execute recognition rapidly. Further, adults use both absolute and relative pitch information in recognition. The implicit nature of the dependent measure should permit use with a range of populations to evaluate postulated developmental and evolutionary changes in pitch encoding.	\N	\N
22041529	The objective of this study was to clarify the relationship between feeling upon awakening (FA) and time spent using information technology (IT) devices by children in kindergartens, elementary schools, and junior high schools in Shimane, Japan. In October 2008, a self-report survey was distributed to 2075 children in kindergartens (n = 261), elementary schools (n = 1162), and junior high schools (n = 652) in Shimane, Japan. The questionnaire gathered data on sex, school year, feeling upon awakening, and time spent using IT devices after school (television, videos on television, video games, personal computers, and cellular phones). After adjusting for sex and school year, data were analyzed by multivariate logistic regression analysis to calculate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). A total of 2030 children completed this survey (response rate, 97.8%). Negative FA was associated with watching television more than 2 hours/day (OR = 1.51, 95% CI = 1.23-1.85), playing video games more than 30 minutes/day (1.50, 1.20-1.87), and using personal computers more than 30 minutes/day (1.35, 1.04-1.75). Time spent using IT devices affected the FA of children in kindergarten through junior high school. We propose the development of guidelines regarding the appropriate amount of time this population should spend using IT devices.	\N	\N
22043127	Women report increasing sleep difficulties during menopause, but polysomnographic measures do not detect sleep disturbances. We examined whether two spectral analysis sleep measures, delta and beta power, were related to menopausal status. The Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Sleep Study compared cross-sectionally spectral sleep measures in women in different stages of menopause. Sleep EEG was recorded in the participants' homes with ambulatory recorders. A multi-ethnic cohort of premenopausal and early perimenopausal (n = 189), late perimenopausal (n = 73), and postmenopausal (n = 59) women. EEG power in the delta and beta frequency bands was calculated for all night NREM and all night REM sleep. Physical, medical, psychological, and socioeconomic data were collected from questionnaires and diaries. Beta EEG power in NREM and REM sleep in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women exceeded that in pre- and early perimenopausal women. Neither all night delta power nor the trend in delta power across the night differed by menopausal status. In a multivariate model that controlled for the physical, demographic, behavioral, psychological, and health-related changes that accompany menopause, beta power in both NREM and REM sleep EEG was significantly related to menopausal status. The frequency of hot flashes explained part but not all of the relation of beta power to menopausal status. Elevated beta EEG power in late perimenopausal and postmenopausal women provides an objective measure of disturbed sleep quality in these women. Elevated beta EEG activity suggests that arousal level during sleep is higher in these women.	\N	\N
22048563	The regulation of sleep and wakefulness is well modeled with two underlying processes: a circadian and a homeostatic one. So far, the parameters and mechanisms of additional sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions have been largely overlooked. The present overview focuses on one of these conditions: the effect of skin temperature on the onset and maintenance of sleep, and alertness. Skin temperature is quite well suited to provide the brain with information on sleep-permissive and wake-promoting conditions because it changes with most if not all of them. Skin temperature changes with environmental heat and cold, but also with posture, environmental light, danger, nutritional status, pain, and stress. Its effect on the brain may thus moderate the efficacy by which the clock and homeostat manage to initiate or maintain sleep or wakefulness. The review provides a brief overview of the neuroanatomical pathways and physiological mechanisms by which skin temperature can affect the regulation of sleep and vigilance. In addition, current pitfalls and possibilities of practical applications for sleep enhancement are discussed, including the recent finding of impaired thermal comfort perception in insomniacs.	\N	\N
22048613	Typical measures of the useful field of view (UFOV) involve many components of attention. The objective of the current research was to examine the attentional operations that might underlie declines in the UFOV. We used 2 basic attention tasks to characterize the profile of visual attention in UFOV-impaired and -unimpaired observers. Our results suggested that declines in the UFOV result from a deficit in attentional disengagement, not a decrease in attentional breadth or scope. The results suggested that UFOV decline in normal aging can be associated with a specific attentional operation, namely attentional disengagement. These results suggest that the underlying cause of UFOV decline may not be a restriction in the breadth or scope of attention. Because the UFOV is a reliable predictor of driving safety, our results point to attentional components that are critical for the visual behavior of older adults.	\N	\N
22048839	Treatments of female sexual dysfunction have been largely unsuccessful because they do not address the psychological factors that underlie female sexuality. Negative self-evaluative processes interfere with the ability to attend and register physiological changes (interoceptive awareness). This study explores the effect of mindfulness meditation training on interoceptive awareness and the three categories of known barriers to healthy sexual functioning: attention, self-judgment, and clinical symptoms. Forty-four college students (30 women) participated in either a 12-week course containing a "meditation laboratory" or an active control course with similar content or laboratory format. Interoceptive awareness was measured by reaction time in rating physiological response to sexual stimuli. Psychological barriers were assessed with self-reported measures of mindfulness and psychological well-being. Women who participated in the meditation training became significantly faster at registering their physiological responses (interoceptive awareness) to sexual stimuli compared with active controls (F(1,28) = 5.45, p = .03, η(p)(2) = 0.15). Female meditators also improved their scores on attention (t = 4.42, df = 11, p = .001), self-judgment, (t = 3.1, df = 11, p = .01), and symptoms of anxiety (t = -3.17, df = 11, p = .009) and depression (t = -2.13, df = 11, p < .05). Improvements in interoceptive awareness were correlated with improvements in the psychological barriers to healthy sexual functioning (r = -0.44 for attention, r = -0.42 for self-judgment, and r = 0.49 for anxiety; all p < .05). Mindfulness-based improvements in interoceptive awareness highlight the potential of mindfulness training as a treatment of female sexual dysfunction.	\N	\N
22051208	Individuals who are methamphetamine dependent exhibit higher rates of cognitive dysfunction than healthy people who do not use methamphetamine, and this dysfunction may have a negative effect on the success of behavioral treatments for the disorder. Therefore, a medication that improves cognition, such as modafinil (Provigil), may serve as a useful adjunct to behavioral treatments for methamphetamine dependence. Although cognitive-enhancing effects of modafinil have been reported in several populations, little is known about the effects of modafinil in methamphetamine-dependent individuals. We thus sought to evaluate the effects of modafinil on the cognitive performance of methamphetamine-dependent and healthy individuals. Seventeen healthy subjects and 24 methamphetamine- dependent subjects participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study. Effects of modafinil (200 mg, single oral dose) were assessed on participants' performance on tests of inhibitory control, working memory, and processing speed/attention. Across subjects, modafinil improved performance on a test of sustained attention, with no significant improvement on any other cognitive tests. However, within the methamphetamine-dependent group only, participants with a high baseline frequency of methamphetamine use demonstrated a greater effect of modafinil on tests of inhibitory control and processing speed than those participants with low baseline use of methamphetamine. Although modafinil produced limited effects across all participants, methamphetamine-dependent participants with a high baseline use of methamphetamine demonstrated significant cognitive improvement on modafinil relative to those with low baseline methamphetamine use. These results add to the findings from a clinical trial that suggested that modafinil may be particularly useful in methamphetamine-dependent subjects who use the drug frequently.	\N	\N
22059332	Contingent negative variation (CNV) topography, hemispheric asymmetry and time-course were investigated in healthy subjects and non-medicated paranoid schizophrenic patients in two antisaccade paradigms with the short (800-1000 ms) and long (1200-1400 ms) durations of the fixation period. EEG and electrooculogram (EOG) were recorded. Saccade characteristics and mean amplitudes of slow cortical potentials time-locked to peripheral target were analyzed in 23 healthy volunteers and 19 schizophrenic patients. Compared to healthy control subjects, schizophrenic patients had significantly slower antisaccades and committed significantly more erroneous saccades in the both antisaccade tasks. The prolongation of the fixation period resulted in noticeable decrease of error percent in patients group. The analysis of CNV time-course has revealed two distinct stages in both groups. The early CNV stage was represented by a negative wave with the maximal amplitude over midline fronto-central area, and the late stage was characterized by increased CNV amplitude at the midline and left parietal electrode sites. In healthy subjects the simultaneous activation of frontal and parietal areas was observed in the paradigm with the shorter fixation interval; the increase of the fixation period produced consecutive activation of these areas. Schizophrenic patients' CNV amplitude was generally smaller than that of healthy subjects. The most pronounced between-group differences of the negative shift amplitude were revealed at frontal electrode sites during the early CNV stage in both modifications of the antisaccade task. The deficit of frontal activation revealed in patients at the early stage of antisaccade preparatory set in both antisaccadic paradigms may be related to pathogenesis of paranoid schizophrenia.	\N	\N
22060144	In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching processes take place in successive phases as postulated by multiple-components models of task switching (e.g., Mayr & Kliegl, 2003; Ruthruff, Remington, & Johnston, 2001). At an earlier phase, task-set reconfiguration (Rogers & Monsell, 1995) or cue-encoding (Schneider & Logan, 2005) takes place, at a later phase, the response is selected in accord with constraints set in the first phase. Inertia effects (Allport, Styles, & Hsieh, 1994; Allport & Wylie, 2000) were shown to affect this later stage. Additionally, findings support the notion that response caution contributes to both global as well as to local switching costs when task switches are predictable.	\N	\N
22069145	Hypothesis-testing performance on Wason's (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 12:129-140, 1960) 2-4-6 task is typically poor, with only around 20% of participants announcing the to-be-discovered "ascending numbers" rule on their first attempt. Enhanced solution rates can, however, readily be observed with dual-goal (DG) task variants requiring the discovery of two complementary rules, one labeled "DAX" (the standard "ascending numbers" rule) and the other labeled "MED" ("any other number triples"). Two DG experiments are reported in which we manipulated the usefulness of a presented MED exemplar, where usefulness denotes cues that can establish a helpful "contrast class" that can stand in opposition to the presented 2-4-6 DAX exemplar. The usefulness of MED exemplars had a striking facilitatory effect on DAX rule discovery, which supports the importance of contrast-class information in hypothesis testing. A third experiment ruled out the possibility that the useful MED triple seeded the correct rule from the outset and obviated any need for hypothesis testing. We propose that an extension of Oaksford and Chater's (European Journal of Cognitive Psychology 6:149-169, 1994) iterative counterfactual model can neatly capture the mechanisms by which DG facilitation arises.	\N	\N
22080448	The flash-drag (FDE) effect refers to the phenomenon in which the position of a stationary flashed object in one location appears shifted in the direction of nearby motion. Over the past decade, it has been debated how bottom-up and top-down processes contribute to this illusion. In this study, we demonstrate that randomly phase-shifting gratings can produce the FDE. In the random motion sequence we used, the FDE inducer (a sinusoidal grating) jumped to a random phase every 125 ms and stood still until the next jump. Because this random sequence could not be tracked attentively, it was impossible for the observer to discern the jump direction at the time of the flash. By sorting the data based on the flash's onset time relative to each jump time in the random motion sequence, we found that a large FDE with a broad temporal tuning occurred around 50 to 150 ms before the jump and that this effect was not correlated with any other jumps in the past or future. These results suggest that as few as two frames of unpredictable apparent motion can preattentively cause the FDE with a broad temporal tuning.	\N	\N
22086650	The effects of bilingual proficiency on recognition memory were examined in an experiment with Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants learned lists of words in English and Spanish under shallow- and deep-encoding conditions. Overall, hit rates were higher, discrimination greater, and response times shorter in the nondominant language, consistent with effects previously observed for lower frequency words. Levels-of-processing effects in hit rates, discrimination, and response time were stronger in the dominant language. Specifically, with shallow encoding, the advantage for the nondominant language was larger than with deep encoding. The results support the idea that memory performance in the nondominant language is impacted by both the greater demand for cognitive resources and the lower familiarity of the words.	\N	\N
22088577	Depression and anxiety disorders (ADs) are highly co-morbid, but the reason for this co-morbidity is unclear. One possibility is that they predispose one another. An informative way to examine interactions between disorders without the confounds present in patient populations is to manipulate the psychological processes thought to underlie the pathological states in healthy individuals. In this study we therefore asked whether a model of the sad mood in depression can enhance psychophysiological responses (startle) to a model of the anxiety in ADs. We predicted that sad mood would increase anxious anxiety-potentiated startle responses. In a between-subjects design, participants (n=36) completed either a sad mood induction procedure (MIP; n=18) or a neutral MIP (n=18). Startle responses were assessed during short-duration predictable electric shock conditions (fear-potentiated startle) or long-duration unpredictable threat of shock conditions (anxiety-potentiated startle). Induced sadness enhanced anxiety- but not fear-potentiated startle. This study provides support for the hypothesis that sadness can increase anxious responding measured by the affective startle response. This, taken together with prior evidence that ADs can contribute to depression, provides initial experimental support for the proposition that ADs and depression are frequently co-morbid because they may be mutually reinforcing.	\N	\N
22090187	In three experiments, we tested whether sequentially coding two visual stimuli can create a spatial misperception of a visual moving stimulus. In Experiment 1, we showed that a spatial misperception, the flash-lag effect, is accompanied by a similar temporal misperception of first perceiving the flash and only then a change of the moving stimulus, when in fact the two events were exactly simultaneous. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated that when the spatial misperception of a flash-lag effect is absent, the temporal misperception is also absent. In Experiment 3, we extended these findings and showed that if the stimulus conditions require coding first a flash and subsequently a nearby moving stimulus, a spatial flash-lag effect is found, with the position of the moving stimulus being misperceived as shifted in the direction of its motion, whereas this spatial misperception is reversed so that the moving stimulus is misperceived as shifted in a direction opposite to its motion when the conditions require coding first the moving stimulus and then the flash. Together, the results demonstrate that sequential coding of two stimuli can lead to a spatial misperception whose direction can be predicted from the order of coding the moving object versus the flash. We propose an attentional sequential-coding explanation for the flash-lag effect and discuss its explanatory power with respect to related illusions (e.g., the Fröhlich effect) and other explanations.	\N	\N
22090272	Prenatal deficit of androgens or androgen action results in atypical genitalia in individuals with XY disorders of sex development (XY,DSD). XY,DSD include mainly disorders of gonadal development and testosterone synthesis and action. Previously, most XY,DSD individuals were assigned to the female sex. Constructive genital surgery allowing heterosexual intercourse, gonadectomy, and hormone therapy for feminization were often performed. However, outcome studies are scarce. Our objective was evaluation of satisfaction with genital surgery and sexual life in adults with XY,DSD. We evaluated 57 individuals with XY,DSD from the German multicenter clinical evaluation study with a condition-specific questionnaire. The individuals were divided into subgroups reflecting the absence/presence of partial androgen effect or genital constructive surgery. Dissatisfaction with function of the surgical result (47.1%) and clitoral arousal (47.4%) was high in XY,DSD partially androgenized females after feminization surgery. Dissatisfaction with overall sex life (37.5%) and sexual anxieties (44.2%) were substantial in all XY,DSD individuals. Problems with desire (70.6%), arousal (52.9%), and dyspareunia (56.3%) were significant in XY,DSD complete females. 46,XY partially androgenized females reported significantly more often partners of female (9.1%) or both sexes (18.2%) and dyspareunia (56.5%) compared with controls. Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome stated significant problems with desire (81.8%), arousal (63.6%), and dyspareunia (70%). Care should be improved in XY,DSD patients. Constructive genital surgery should be minimized and performed mainly in adolescence or adulthood with the patients' consent. Individuals with DSD and their families should be informed with sensibility about the condition. Multidisciplinary care with psychological and nonprofessional support (parents, peers, and patients' support groups) is mandatory from child to adulthood.	\N	\N
22091581	Much has been learned about the age-related cognitive declines associated with the attentional processes that utilize perceptual features during visual search. However, questions remain regarding the ability of older adults to use scene information to guide search processes, perhaps as a compensatory mechanism for declines in perceptual processes. The authors had younger and older adults search pseudorealistic scenes for targets with strong or no spatial associations. Both younger and older adults exhibited reaction time benefits when searching for a target that was associated with a specific scene region. Eye movement analyses revealed that all observers dedicated most of their time to scanning target-consistent display regions and that guidance to these regions was often evident on the initial saccade of a trial. Both the benefits and costs related to contextual information were larger for older adults, suggesting that this information was relied on heavily to guide search processes towards the target.	\N	\N
22093142	To assess whether an intensive multifactorial treatment can reduce cognitive decrements and cognitive decline in screen-detected type 2 diabetes. The multinational ADDITION-study, a cluster-randomized parallel group trial in patients with screen-detected type 2 diabetes, compared the effectiveness of intensive multifactorial treatment (IT; lifestyle advice and strict regulation of metabolic parameters) with routine care (RC) on cardiovascular outcome. In The Netherlands randomization was stratified according to practice organization. Allocation was concealed from patients. The present study assessed the effect of IT on cognition through two neuropsychological assessments (NPA) on two occasions. The assessments took place three and six years after the start of the intervention. Non-diabetic controls served as reference group. The first NPA was performed in 183 patients (IT: 97; RC: 86) and 69 controls. The second NPA was performed in 135 patients (IT: 71; RC: 64) and 55 controls. Primary outcome was a composite score, including the domains memory, information-processing speed and attention and executive function. Comparisons between the treatment groups were performed with multi-level analyses. The first NPA showed no differences between the treatment groups (mean difference composite z-score: 0.00; 95%-CI -0.16 to 0.16; IT vs RC). Over the next three years cognitive decline in the diabetic groups was within the range of the reference group and did not differ between the treatment arms (difference decline between diabetic groups -0.12; -0.24 to 0.01; IT vs RC). Six years of IT in screen-detected type 2 diabetes had no benefit on cognitive functioning over RC.	\N	\N
22095256	We used a probe-dot procedure to examine the roles of excitatory attentional guidance and distractor suppression in search for movement-form conjunctions. Participants in Experiment 1 completed a conjunction (moving X amongst moving Os and static Xs) and two single-feature (moving X amongst moving Os, and static X amongst static Os) conditions. "Active" participants searched for the target, whereas "passive" participants viewed the displays without responding. Subsequently, both groups located (left or right) a probe dot appearing in either an occupied or an unoccupied location. In the conjunction condition, the active group located probes presented on static distractors more slowly than probes presented on moving distractors, reversing the direction of the difference found within the passive group. This disadvantage for probes on static items was much stronger in conjunction than in single-feature search. The same pattern of results was replicated in Experiment 2, which used a go/no-go procedure. Experiment 3 extended the go/no-go procedure to the case of search for a static target and revealed increased probe localisation times as a consequence of active search, primarily for probes on moving distractor items. The results demonstrated attentional guidance by inhibition of distractors in conjunction search.	\N	\N
22098127	The sustained attention to response task comprises withholding key presses to one in nine of 225 target stimuli; it proved to be a sensitive measure of vigilance in a small group of narcoleptics. We studied sustained attention to response task results in 96 patients from a tertiary narcolepsy referral centre. Diagnoses according to ICSD-2 criteria were narcolepsy with (n=42) and without cataplexy (n=5), idiopathic hypersomnia without long sleep time (n=37), and obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (n=12). The sustained attention to response task was administered prior to each of five multiple sleep latency test sessions. Analysis concerned error rates, mean reaction time, reaction time variability and post-error slowing, as well as the correlation of sustained attention to response task results with mean latency of the multiple sleep latency test and possible time of day influences. Median sustained attention to response task error scores ranged from 8.4 to 11.1, and mean reaction times from 332 to 366ms. Sustained attention to response task error score and mean reaction time did not differ significantly between patient groups. Sustained attention to response task error score did not correlate with multiple sleep latency test sleep latency. Reaction time was more variable as the error score was higher. Sustained attention to response task error score was highest for the first session. We conclude that a high sustained attention to response task error rate reflects vigilance impairment in excessive daytime sleepiness irrespective of its cause. The sustained attention to response task and the multiple sleep latency test reflect different aspects of sleep/wakefulness and are complementary.	\N	\N
22098265	The concept of the "mnemonic scotoma," a spatially circumscribed region of working memory impairment produced by unilateral lesions of the PFC, is central to the view that PFC is critical for the short-term retention of information. Presented here, however, are previously unpublished data that offer an alternative, nonmnemonic interpretation of this pattern of deficit. In their study, Wajima and Sawaguchi [Wajima, K., & Sawaguchi, T. The role of GABAergic inhibiton in suppressing perseverative responses in the monkey prefrontal cortex. Neuroscience Research, 50(Suppl. 1), P3-P317, 2004] applied the GABA(A) antagonist bicuculline methiodide unilaterally to the PFC of two monkeys while they performed an oculomotor delayed-response task. Consistent with previous studies, errors for the initial memory-guided saccade were markedly higher when the cued location fell into the region of the visual field affected by the infusion. These erroneous saccades tended to select an alternative target location (out of a possible 16) that had not been cued on that trial. By extending the analysis window, however, it was observed that the second, "corrective" saccade often acquired the location that had been cued on that trial. Further analysis of the erroneous initial saccades indicated that they tended to be directed to a location that had been relevant on the previous trial. Thus, the deficit was not one of "forgetting" the cued location. Rather, it was one of selecting between currently and previously relevant locations. These findings suggest a need for a reconsideration of the concept of the mnemonic scotoma, which in turn invites a reconsideration of functional interpretations of sustained neuronal activity in PFC.	\N	\N
22099868	Neurophysiological studies to evaluate spatial attention in children with primary headache are lacking. Tactile spatial attention modulates the N140 somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) amplitude. The aims of the study are: (1) to investigate the effect of spatial attention on the N140 amplitude in children with migraine and tension-type headache (TTH) and in healthy children, and (2) to correlate the neurophysiological results with a neuropsychological test for spatial attention. We studied 16 patients with migraine without aura (MoA), 12 TTH children and 10 healthy subjects. "Deux Barrage" test for spatial attention was administered. SEPs were recorded in a neutral condition (NC) and in a spatial attention condition (SAC). No significant differences in neuropsychological measures were found between MoA, TTH and healthy subjects. The N140 amplitude increase during SAC, as compared to NC, was significantly higher in patients than in healthy controls. Migraineurs showed a positive correlation between the N140 amplitude increase during SAC and their neuropsychological performance. Although spatial attention performances in children with headache are as good as in controls, the N140 amplitude increase during SAC in headache patients suggests that the psychophysiological mechanisms subtending spatial attention are different from those in healthy children.	\N	\N
22100147	Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is typically associated with long-term memory dysfunction. The frontal lobes support high-level cognition comprising executive skills and working memory that is vital for daily life functioning. Deficits in these functions have been increasingly reported in TLE. Evidence from both the neuropsychological and neuroimaging literature suggests both executive function and working memory are compromised in the presence of TLE. In relation to executive impairment, particular focus has been paid to set shifting as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task. Other discrete executive functions such as decision-making and theory of mind also appear vulnerable but have received little attention. With regard to working memory, the medial temporal lobe structures appear have a more critical role, but with emerging evidence of hippocampal dependent and independent processes. The relative role of underlying pathology and seizure spread is likely to have considerable bearing upon the cognitive phenotype and trajectory in TLE. The identification of the nature of frontal lobe dysfunction in TLE thus has important clinical implications for prognosis and surgical management. Longitudinal neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies assessing frontal lobe function in TLE patients pre- and postoperatively will improve our understanding further.	\N	\N
22100380	Self harm is a serious public health problem worldwide. Implicit attitude measures offer a novel method of exploring associations with self harm (SH). Here we used implicit measures in order to (i) examine implicit evaluative and arousal associations with SH (ii) compare the discriminatory power of implicit and explicit attitude measures in a non-clinical sample at high risk of SH. Two experiments using Go No-Go Association (GNAT) tasks designed to tap implicit attitudes toward SH in an undergraduate sample. In Study One logistic regression analysis demonstrated that explicit, rather than implicit measures successfully discriminated between SH cases and controls which contrasts with previous research. Faster reaction times were observed for negative implicit associations (SH and 'I dislike') compared to positive implicit associations (SH and 'I like') for both SH cases and controls. The SH group were faster to respond to arousal implicit associations compared to implicit sedation associations. Study Two extended this finding to demonstrate associations between evaluative/arousal GNATs and self-reported functions of SH. Internal motivations for self harmful behaviour were significantly related to an implicit sedation association with SH, whereas interpersonal motivations were associated with an implicit arousal association with SH. These findings are consonant with existing functional accounts of SH. Longitudinal data is necessary to identify whether the attitudes assessed could predict future SH. The findings provide novel experimental support for the hypothesised role of automatic/affect regulation and social/interpersonal functions of SH. Implications for intervention are discussed.	\N	\N
22104981	This study examined the effect of armodafinil on late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and overall functioning of patients with shift work disorder. Patients with clinically diagnosed shift work disorder received armodafinil or placebo on nights worked for 6 weeks. Patients included in the study experienced late-in-shift sleepiness between 4 AM and 8 AM (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale ≥6) and were functionally impaired (Global Assessment of Functioning <70). Efficacy was determined by improvements in clinical condition (Clinical Global Impression-Change), late-in-the-shift Karolinska Sleepiness Scale score, and overall Global Assessment of Functioning score. Tolerability was assessed. Patients receiving armodafinil showed significant improvements in late-in-shift clinical condition, wakefulness, and global functioning, compared to placebo at final visit. Armodafinil was generally well tolerated. Armodafinil improved clinical condition and wakefulness late in the night shift of patients with shift work disorder. Overall patient functioning was also improved.	\N	\N
22114879	Contemporary research indicates that brain development occurs during childhood and into early adulthood, particularly in certain regions. A critical question is whether premature or atypical hormone exposures impact brain development (e.g., structure) or function (e.g., neuropsychological functioning). The current study enrolled 40 girls (aged 6-8 years) diagnosed with premature adrenarche (PA) and a comparison group of 36 girls with on-time maturation. It was hypothesized that girls with PA would demonstrate lower IQ and performance on several neuropsychological tasks. The potential for a sexually dimorphic neuropsychological profile in PA was also explored. No significant univariate or multivariate group differences emerged for any neuropsychological instrument. However, effect size confidence intervals contained medium-sized group differences at the subscale level. On-time girls performed better on verbal, working memory, and visuospatial tasks. Girls with PA showed improved attention, but not a sexually dimorphic profile. These results, though preliminary, suggest that premature maturation may influence neuropsychological functioning.	\N	\N
22114988	The present study describes the development and validation of an instrument designed to examine athletes' selective attention returning to competition following a musculoskeletal injury--the attention questionnaire of rehabilitated athletes returning to competition (AQ-RARC). Using a sample of 186 rehabilitated athletes, exploratory factor analysis revealed a 10-item model that examines functional attention and distraction attention. Confirmatory factor analysis further supported the factorial validity of the AQ-RARC with another sample of 184 rehabilitated athletes. The two subscales have good internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The concurrent and discriminant validity of the new instrument were confirmed by examining correlations between the AQ-RARC with other constructs. It is concluded that the AQ-RARC is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used for clinical and research purposes.	\N	\N
22115281	To explore the idea of a perceptual distortion of space in spatial neglect, neglect patients, age-matched healthy controls and right hemisphere control patients judged the vanishing point of horizontally and vertically-moving stimuli. Hemifield of presentation and movement direction of the stimulus presentation was manipulated. The results suggest that neglect patients show a stronger response bias in the direction of the moving stimuli ("representational momentum") than healthy and right hemisphere controls. Furthermore, neglect patients, but not the control groups, showed a direction-specific response whereby the presence of neglect was associated with a larger representational momentum for leftward-moving stimuli. The one left-hemisphere patient with right-sided neglect showed the opposite effect. Thus, neglect patients showed a relative overextension into their neglected side of space. While these findings are in line with the idea of an extension in the representation of contralesional space, other explanations such as deficient spatial remapping, impairments in smooth pursuit and distortions in memorized visuo-motor movements are considered.	\N	\N
22121850	Previous research has shown that social drinkers continue to show attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli even after consuming a moderate dose of alcohol. In contrast, little is known about how alcohol acutely affects attentional bias in groups at risk to develop alcohol-related problems, such as adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Such individuals may show increased attentional bias following alcohol relative to nonclinical controls. The present study tested this hypothesis by examining acute alcohol effects on attentional bias in 20 social drinkers with ADHD and 20 social drinkers with no history of ADHD. Participants performed a visual-probe task after receiving the following doses of alcohol: 0.64 g/kg, 0.32 g/kg, and 0.0 g/kg (placebo). Those in the ADHD group showed increased attentional bias under active alcohol doses, whereas attentional bias was similar across doses in the control group. Attentional bias predicted ad libitum alcohol consumption during a taste-rating session. This relation was observed only in the ADHD group. These findings indicate that an acute alcohol dose increases attentional bias in adults with ADHD. Further, attentional bias appears to be a predictor of ad libitum consumption in this group.	\N	\N
22131446	Has evolution optimized visual selective attention to make the best possible use of all information available? If so, then Bayesian optimal performance in a localization task is achieved by optimally weighting the visual evidence with one's prior spatial expectations. In 2 psychophysical experiments, participants conducted covert target localization where both visual cues and prior expectations were available. The amount of information conveyed by the visual evidence was held constant, while the degree of belief was manipulated via peripheral cuing (Experiment 1) and spatial probabilities (Experiment 2). A number of findings result: (1) People appear to optimally combine slightly biased prior beliefs with sensory evidence. (2) These biases are directly comparable to those descriptively accounted for by the Prospect Theory. (3) Probabilistic information about a target's upcoming location is integrated identically, irrespective of whether endogenous or exogenous cuing is used. (4) In localization tasks, spatial attention can be understood and quantitatively modeled as a set of prior expectations over space that modulate incoming noisy sensory evidence.	\N	\N
22133872	A randomized control trial comparing two social communication treatments for children with autism spectrum disorder examined the effect of treatment on object interest. Thirty-two children, 18-60 months, were randomly assigned to the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) or Responsive Education and Prelinguistic Milieu Teaching (RPMT) condition. Assessment of object interest was conducted in an unstructured play session with different toys, activities, adult, and location than experienced in treatment. Results indicated children in the RPMT condition showed greater increases in object interest as compared to children in the PECS condition. Because child characteristics such as interest in objects may influence response to interventions using object play as contexts for treatment, it is important to improve our understanding of whether intervention can affect object interest.	\N	\N
22139023	A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screenshots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screenshot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently, they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 and 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.	\N	\N
22141746	It has been shown that, when observing an action, infants can rely on either outcome selection information (i.e., actions that express a choice between potential outcomes) or means selection information (i.e., actions that are causally efficient toward the outcome) in their goal attribution. However, no research has investigated the relationship between these two types of information when they are present simultaneously. In an experiment that addressed this question directly, we found that when outcome selection information could disambiguate the goal of the action (e.g., the action is directed toward one of two potential targets), but means selection information could not (i.e., the action is not efficiently adjusted to the situational constraints), 7- and 9-month-old infants did not attribute a goal to an observed action. This finding suggests that means selection information takes primacy over outcome selection information. The early presence of this bias sheds light on the nature of the notion of goal in action understanding.	\N	\N
22142207	Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness judgments about objects, and categorical judgments about pairs of words. In contrast, negative picture presentation did not slow down judgments in subsequent perceptual processing (e.g., color judgments about words, size judgments about objects). The subjective arousal level of negative pictures did not modulate the interference effects on semantic or perceptual processing. These findings indicate that encountering negative emotional events interferes with semantic processing of subsequent stimuli more strongly than perceptual processing, and that not all types of subsequent cognitive processing are impaired by negative events.	\N	\N
22145814	We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate functional activity in the brain of adolescents with spina bifida when performing selective attention and response inhibition tasks. We then compared the results to that of age-matched controls. Our results showed that adolescents with spina bifida had decreased frontal and superior parietal activation and more apparently low involvement of left brain hemisphere during these tasks. Our results indicated activation deficits and possibly abnormal functional organization in adolescents with spina bifida and associated pathologies such as hydrocephalus.	\N	\N
22150963	The present study addresses the suitability of electrodermal lability as an indicator of individual vulnerability to the effects of total sleep deprivation. During two complete circadian cycles, the effects of 48h of total sleep deprivation on physiological measures (electrodermal activity and body temperature), subjective sleepiness (measured by visual analogue scale and tiredness symptom scale) and task performance (reaction time and errors in a go/no go task) were investigated. Analyses of variance with repeated measures revealed substantial decreases of the number of skin conductance responses, body temperature, and increases for subjective sleepiness, reaction time and error rates. For all changes, strong circadian oscillations could be observed as well. The electrodermal more labile subgroup reported higher subjective sleepiness compared with electrodermal more stable participants, but showed no differences in the time courses of body temperature and task performance. Therefore, electrodermal lability seems to be a specific indicator for the changes in subjective sleepiness due to total sleep deprivation and circadian oscillations, but not a suitable indicator for vulnerability to the effects of sleep deprivation per se.	\N	\N
22152279	In healthy individuals and those with insomnia, poor sleep quality is associated with decrements in performance on tests of cognition, especially executive function. Sleep disturbances and cognitive deficits are both prevalent in Parkinson's disease (PD). Sleep problems occur in over 75% of patients, with sleep fragmentation and decreased sleep efficiency being the most common sleep complaints, but their relation to cognition is unknown. We examined the association between sleep quality and cognition in PD. In 35 non-demented individuals with PD and 18 normal control adults (NC), sleep was measured using 24-hr wrist actigraphy over 7 days. Cognitive domains tested included attention and executive function, memory and psychomotor function. In both groups, poor sleep was associated with worse performance on tests of attention/executive function but not memory or psychomotor function. In the PD group, attention/executive function was predicted by sleep efficiency, whereas memory and psychomotor function were not predicted by sleep quality. Psychomotor and memory function were predicted by motor symptom severity. This study is the first to demonstrate that sleep quality in PD is significantly correlated with cognition and that it differentially impacts attention and executive function, thereby furthering our understanding of the link between sleep and cognition.	\N	\N
22154736	The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD (n=32), traumatized individuals without PTSD (n=30), and non-traumatized controls (n=30). The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories.	\N	\N
22160371	The adaptive threat-detection advantage takes the form of a preferential orienting of attention to threatening scenes. In this study, we compared attention to social scenes in 15 high-functioning individuals with autism (ASD) and matched typically developing (TD) individuals. Eye-tracking was recorded while participants were presented with pairs of scenes, either emotional positive-neutral, emotional negative-neutral or neutral-neutral scenes. Early allocation of attention, the first image fixated in each pair, differed between groups: contrary to TD individuals who showed the typical threat-detection advantage towards negative images, the ASD group failed to show a bias toward threat-related scenes. Later processing of stimuli, indicated by the total fixation to the images during the 3-s presentation, was found unaffected in the ASD group. These results support the hypothesis of an early atypical allocation of attention towards natural social scenes in ASD, that is compensated in later stages of visual processing.	\N	\N
22171909	Insulin resistance (IR) and disorders of glucose metabolism (DGM) are risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. There are different reasons for development of DGM in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) and this association is controversial. We investigated the frequency of DGM and IR in patients with OSAS and determining factors for these disorders. One hundred and twelve untreated patients with OSAS and 19 non-apnoeic snoring subjects upon polysomnography were included in this study. Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) was performed in all subjects who had fasting blood glucose < 125 mg/dl. IR method was analysed using homeostasis assessment model (HOMA-IR). Diabetes mellitus (DM), impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) and impaired fasting glucose (IFG) were defined according to values of OGTT. DGM was defined as having one of the diagnoses of DM, IGT or IFG. Subjective sleepiness of all subjects was assessed with Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) was described as ESS score ≥ 10. Fasting glucose and the rate of DGM in patients with OSAS were higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects. DGM were shown in % 15.7 of non-apnoeic snoring subjects, 29.6% of mild sleep apnoea, 50% of moderate sleep apnoea and 61.8% of severe sleep apnoea. The rate of DGM in patients with moderate and severe OSAS was higher than in non-apnoeic snoring subjects and in patients with severe OSAS higher than in patients with mild OSAS. DGM are associated with body mass index (BMI), severity of OSAS, arousal index and EDS. In addition, IR is associated with apnoea hypopnoea index, BMI, arousal index and ESS score. Obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome is associated with high frequency of DGM. In addition, the progression of disease from simple snoring and mild OSAS to severe OSAS increases the rate of DGM. Thus, DGM especially in patients with severe OSAS should be examined in regular periods.	\N	\N
22182346	Little is known about the neurobiological foundations of psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior studies have shown that PTSD is associated with altered processing of threatening and aversive stimuli. It remains unclear whether this functional abnormality can be changed by psychotherapy. This is the first randomized controlled treatment trial that examines whether narrative exposure therapy (NET) causes changes in affective stimulus processing in patients with chronic PTSD. 34 refugees with PTSD were randomly assigned to a NET group or to a waitlist control (WLC) group. At pre-test and at four-months follow-up, the diagnostics included the assessment of clinical variables and measurements of neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity (steady-state visual evoked fields, ssVEF) resulting from exposure to aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures. PTSD as well as depressive symptom severity scores declined in the NET group, whereas symptoms persisted in the WLC group. Only in the NET group, parietal and occipital activity towards threatening pictures increased significantly after therapy. Our results indicate that NET causes an increase of activity associated with cortical top-down regulation of attention towards aversive pictures. The increase of attention allocation to potential threat cues might allow treated patients to re-appraise the actual danger of the current situation and, thereby, reducing PTSD symptoms. REGISTRATION OF THE CLINICAL TRIAL: Number: NCT00563888Name: "Change of Neural Network Indicators Through Narrative Treatment of PTSD in Torture Victims" ULR: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00563888.	\N	\N
22185491	The topic of spatial attention is of great relevance for researchers in various fields, including neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, as well as for clinical practice. Deficits of spatial attentional arising from parietal brain damage remain largely confined to the left visual field. The mechanisms underlying this hemispheric asymmetry are still elusive. We mimicked the neuropsychological syndrome of contralesional extinction by temporarily inducing a spatial attentional bias in healthy volunteers with TMS. We investigated whether directing covert spatial attention could enhance or, more importantly, counteract the resulting behavioral deficits. Although both the left and right parietal TMS induced contralateral extinction, only left hemifield extinction following right parietal TMS was severely aggravated by a competing stimulus in the ipsilesional (right) hemifield. We put forward the hypothesis that an asymmetry with respect to the ability of detaching attention from a distractor is contributing to the right hemispheric lateralization with regard to extinction. On a broader level, we suggest that "virtual patients" might be used for evaluating neuropsychological treatment in an early stage of development, reducing the burden on actual patients.	\N	\N
22197881	Temporal orienting enhances early (N1) and late (P3) stages of auditory processing. However, the functional significance of these effects has not been settled yet. The present study tested a motor inhibition account on the temporal orienting P3 effect to non-target stimuli. A temporal cuing paradigm was used, where the level of motor preparation (high vs. low) was varied: If motor preparation is higher, more inhibition is necessary to withhold a response when a non-target is presented at the attended time point. Consequently, if the enhanced P3 to temporally attended non-targets reflected increased motor inhibition, higher motor preparation should further enhance the P3. Overall, temporal orienting enhanced both the N1 and the P3, thus replicating earlier findings. Moreover, the temporal orienting P3 effect was larger when motor preparation was higher. Inconsistent with the motor-inhibition account, however, the P3 to temporally attended non-targets did not differ as a function of motor preparation.	\N	\N
22201462	Human actions are guided either by endogenous action plans or by external stimuli in the environment. These two types of action control seem to be mediated by neurophysiologically and functionally distinct systems that interfere if an endogenously planned action suddenly has to be performed in response to an exogenous stimulus. In this case, the endogenous representation has to be deactivated first to give way to the exogenous system. Here we show that interference of endogenous and exogenous action control is not limited to motor-related aspects but also affects the perception of action-related stimuli. Participants associated two actions with contingent sensory effects in learning blocks. In subsequent test blocks, preparing one of these actions specifically impaired responding to the associated effect in an exogenous speeded detection task, yielding a blindness-like effect for arbitrary, learned action effects. In accordance with the theory of event coding, this finding suggests that action planning influences perception even in the absence of any physical similarities between action and to-be-perceived stimuli.	\N	\N
22201464	The attention literature distinguishes two general mechanisms by which attention can benefit performance: gain (or resource) models and orienting (or switching) models. In gain models, processing efficiency is a function of a spatial distribution of capacity or resources; in orienting models, an attentional spotlight must be aligned with the stimulus location, and processing efficiency is a function of when this occurs. Although they involve different processing mechanisms, these models are difficult to distinguish empirically. We compared performance with abrupt-onset and no-onset Gabor patch stimuli in a cued detection task in which we obtained distributions of reaction time (RT) and accuracy as a function of stimulus contrast. In comparison to abrupt-onset stimuli, RTs to miscued no-onset stimuli were increased and accuracy was reduced. Modeling the data with the integrated system model of Philip L. Smith and Roger Ratcliff (2009) provided evidence for reallocation of processing resources during the course of a trial, consistent with an orienting account. Our results support a view of attention in which processing efficiency depends on a dynamic spatiotemporal distribution of resources that has both gain and orienting properties.	\N	\N
22205494	Attention plays a crucial role in the Stroop task, which requires attending to less automatically processed task-relevant attributes of stimuli and the suppression of involuntary processing of task-irrelevant attributes. The experiment assessed the allocation of attention by monitoring eye movements throughout congruent and incongruent trials. Participants viewed two stimulus arrays that differed regarding the amount of items and their numerical value and judged by manual response which of the arrays contained more items, while disregarding their value. Different viewing patterns were observed between congruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with higher value) and incongruent (e.g., larger array of numbers with lower value) trials. The direction of first saccades was guided by task-relevant information but in the incongruent condition directed more frequently towards task-irrelevant information. The data further suggest that the difference in the deployment of attention between conditions changes throughout a trial, likely reflecting the impact and resolution of the conflict. For instance, stimulus arrays in line with the correct response were attended for longer and fixations were longer for incongruent trials, with the second fixation and considering all fixations. By the time of the correct response, this latter difference between conditions was absent. Possible mechanisms underlying eye movement patterns are discussed.	\N	\N
22207631	Previous findings suggest that women are more likely than men to take on the submissive role during sexual activities (e.g., waiting for their partner to initiate and orchestrate sexual activities), often to the detriment of their sexual satisfaction. Extending previous research on gender role motivation, the authors recruited 181 heterosexual couples to examine scripted sexual behavior, motivation for such behavior, and relationship outcomes (sexual satisfaction, perceptions of closeness, and relationship satisfaction) for both women and their partners. Using the actor-partner interdependence model, path analyses revealed that women's submissive behavior had negative links to personal sexual satisfaction and their partner's sexual satisfaction but only when their submission was inconsistent with their sexual preferences. Moreover, the authors show there are negative downstream consequences of diminished sexual satisfaction on perceptions of closeness and overall relationship satisfaction for both partners in the relationship.	\N	\N
22209816	Visual search, a vital task for humans and animals, has also become a common and important tool for studying many topics central to active vision and cognition ranging from spatial vision, attention, and oculomotor control to memory, decision making, and rewards. While visual search often seems effortless to humans, trying to recreate human visual search abilities in machines has represented an incredible challenge for computer scientists and engineers. What are the brain computations that ensure successful search? This review article draws on efforts from various subfields and discusses the mechanisms and strategies the brain uses to optimize visual search: the psychophysical evidence, their neural correlates, and if unknown, possible loci of the neural computations. Mechanisms and strategies include use of knowledge about the target, distractor, background statistical properties, location probabilities, contextual cues, scene context, rewards, target prevalence, and also the role of saliency, center-surround organization of search templates, and eye movement plans. I provide overviews of classic and contemporary theories of covert attention and eye movements during search explaining their differences and similarities. To allow the reader to anchor some of the laboratory findings to real-world tasks, the article includes interviews with three expert searchers: a radiologist, a fisherman, and a satellite image analyst.	\N	\N
22215929	To evaluate reliability of single objective tests in assessing sleepiness. Subjects who completed polysomnography underwent a 4-nap multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) the following day. Prior to each nap opportunity on MSLT, subjects performed the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) and divided attention driving task (DADT). Results of single versus multiple test administrations were compared using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and adjusted for test administration order effects to explore time of day effects. Measures were explored as continuous and binary (i.e., impaired or not impaired). Community-based sample evaluated at a tertiary, university-based sleep center. 372 adult commercial vehicle operators oversampled for increased obstructive sleep apnea risk. N/A. AS CONTINUOUS MEASURES, ICC WERE AS FOLLOWS: MSLT 0.45, PVT median response time 0.69, PVT number of lapses 0.51, 10-min DADT tracking error 0.87, 20-min DADT tracking error 0.90. Based on binary outcomes, ICC were: MSLT 0.63, PVT number of lapses 0.85, 10-min DADT 0.95, 20-min DADT 0.96. Statistically significant time of day effects were seen in both the MSLT and PVT but not the DADT. Correlation between ESS and different objective tests was strongest for MSLT, range [-0.270 to -0.195] and persisted across all time points. Single DADT and PVT administrations are reliable measures of sleepiness. A single MSLT administration can reasonably discriminate individuals with MSL < 8 minutes. These results support the use of a single administration of some objective tests of sleepiness when performed under controlled conditions in routine clinical care.	\N	\N
22216305	Some authors have speculated that the cognitive component (P3) of the Event-Related Potential (ERP) can function as a psychophysiological measure of sexual interest. The aim of this study was to determine if the P3 ERP component in a workload task can be used as a specific and objective measure of sexual motivation by comparing the neurophysiologic response to stimuli of motivational relevance with different levels of valence and arousal. A total of 30 healthy volunteers watched different films clips with erotic, horror, social-positive and social-negative content, while answering an auditory oddball paradigm. Erotic film clips resulted in larger interference when compared to both the social-positive and auditory alone conditions. Horror film clips resulted in the highest levels of interference with smaller P3 amplitudes than erotic and also than social-positive, social-negative and auditory alone condition. No gender differences were found. Both horror and erotic film clips significantly decreased heart rate (HR) when compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. The erotic film clips significantly increased the skin conductance level (SCL) compared to the social-negative films. The horror film clips significantly increased the SCL compared to both social-positive and social-negative films. Both the highly arousing erotic and non-erotic (horror) movies produced the largest decrease in the P3 amplitude, a decrease in the HR and an increase in the SCL. These data support the notion that this workload task is very sensitive to the attentional resources allocated to the film clip, although they do not act as a specific index of sexual interest. Therefore, the use of this methodology seems to be of questionable utility as a specific measure of sexual interest or as an objective measure of the severity of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder.	\N	\N
22226937	Cell phone use among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction, reduced situation awareness and increases in unsafe behavior. Performing a dual-task, such as talking or texting with a cell phone while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. At baseline, thirty-three participants visually located a target 8m ahead; then vision was occluded and they were instructed to walk to the remembered target. One week later participants were assigned to either walk, walk while talking on a cell phone, or walk while texting on a cell phone toward the target with vision occluded. Duration and final location of the heel were noted. Linear distance traveled, lateral angular deviation from the start line, and gait velocity were derived. Changes from baseline to testing were analyzed with paired t-tests. Participants engaged in cell phone use presented with significant reductions in gait velocity (texting: 33% reduction, p=0.01; talking: 16% reduction, p=0.02). Moreover, participants who were texting while walking demonstrated a 61% increase in lateral deviation (p=0.04) and 13% increase in linear distance traveled (p=0.03). These results suggest that the dual-task of walking while using a cell phone impacts executive function and working memory and influences gait to such a degree that it may compromise safety. Importantly, comparison of the two cell phone conditions demonstrates texting creates a significantly greater interference effect on walking than talking on a cell phone.	\N	\N
22238632	Human morning and evening chronotypes differ in their preferred timing for sleep and wakefulness, as well as in optimal daytime periods to cope with cognitive challenges. Recent evidence suggests that these preferences are not a simple by-product of socio-professional timing constraints, but can be driven by inter-individual differences in the expression of circadian and homeostatic sleep-wake promoting signals. Chronotypes thus constitute a unique tool to access the interplay between those processes under normally entrained day-night conditions, and to investigate how they impinge onto higher cognitive control processes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we assessed the influence of chronotype and time-of-day on conflict processing-related cerebral activity throughout a normal waking day. Sixteen morning and 15 evening types were recorded at two individually adapted time points (1.5 versus 10.5 hours spent awake) while performing the Stroop paradigm. Results show that interference-related hemodynamic responses are maintained or even increased in evening types from the subjective morning to the subjective evening in a set of brain areas playing a pivotal role in successful inhibitory functioning, whereas they decreased in morning types under the same conditions. Furthermore, during the evening hours, activity in a posterior hypothalamic region putatively involved in sleep-wake regulation correlated in a chronotype-specific manner with slow wave activity at the beginning of the night, an index of accumulated homeostatic sleep pressure. These results shed light into the cerebral mechanisms underlying inter-individual differences of higher-order cognitive state maintenance under normally entrained day-night conditions.	\N	\N
22238852	An analysis of psychological well-being (self-esteem and subjective vitality) of 639 Spanish university students was performed, while accounting for the amount of leisure-time physical activity. The Spanish versions of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Subjective Vitality Scale were employed. Participants were divided into four groups (Low, Moderate, High, and Very high) depending on estimation of energy expenditure in leisure-time physical activity. Men and women having higher physical activity rated higher mean subjective vitality; however, differences in self-esteem were observed only in men, specifically between Very high and the other physical activity groups.	\N	\N
22238854	Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.	\N	\N
22239962	In a modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, when the cue and the target are at the same spatial location, processing of the target is faster when the cue and the target have different shapes compared to same (shape effect). Recent physiological findings suggest distinct population level encoding of shape in ventral versus dorsal cortical visual streams in monkeys. In human observers, we tested whether the effect of shape on reflexive spatial attention could be attributed to ventral and/or dorsal stream encoding of shape. In the modified reflexive spatial attention paradigm, we varied the shapes of the cue and target. Based on data from monkey physiology (Lehky & Sereno, 2007), we selected four pairs of cue and target shapes. In some pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded (similar encoding distance) by a population of cells in the lateral intraparietal cortex, a dorsal stream area, but more dissimilarly encoded (having a greater encoding distance) by a population of cells in the anterior inferotemporal cortex (AIT), a ventral stream area. In other pairs, cue and target were similarly encoded in AIT and had greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding. We found that pairs of cue and target with greater dissimilarity in LIP encoding produced larger and more consistent shape effects up to a cue to target onset asynchrony (CTOA) of 450 ms. The shape effects for cue and target pairs with greater dissimilarity in AIT encoding were smaller and inconsistent, suggesting that shape effects in reflexive spatial attention are largely driven by the dorsal stream.	\N	\N
22245090	In this paper, a rule-based automatic sleep staging method was proposed. Twelve features including temporal and spectrum analyses of the EEG, EOG, and EMG signals were utilized. Normalization was applied to each feature to eliminating individual differences. A hierarchical decision tree with fourteen rules was constructed for sleep stage classification. Finally, a smoothing process considering the temporal contextual information was applied for the continuity. The overall agreement and kappa coefficient of the proposed method applied to the all night polysomnography (PSG) of seventeen healthy subjects compared with the manual scorings by R&K rules can reach 86.68% and 0.79, respectively. This method can integrate with portable PSG system for sleep evaluation at-home in the near future.	\N	\N
22250914	There is converging evidence that the feeling of conscious recollection is usually accompanied by the bound retrieval of context features of the encoding episode (e.g., Meiser, Sattler, & Weiβer, 2008). Recently, however, important limiting conditions have been identified for the binding between context features in memory. For example, focusing on the semantics of the stimuli during encoding eliminates binding between perceptual context features (Meiser & Sattler, 2007). In the present research, we investigated the interplay of the focus of attention during encoding and stimulus characteristics in context-context binding. In particular, it has been suggested that context features differ in the degree to which they can be regarded as intrinsic or extrinsic to the items and that intrinsic features might be given more attentional processing during encoding than extrinsic features (e.g., Ecker, Zimmer, & Groh-Bordin, 2007a). In two experiments, we manipulated the "intrinsicality" of context features to investigate whether context-context binding might be limited to features that are in the focus of processing. Multinomial modeling analyses revealed that while context-context binding was eliminated for incidentally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 1), it was preserved for intentionally processed extrinsic context features (Experiment 2).	\N	\N
22251291	Previous research has established that infants are unable to perceive causality until 6¼ months of age. The current experiments examined whether infants' ability to engage in causal action could facilitate causal perception prior to this age. In Experiment 1, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to engage in causal action experience via Velcro sticky mittens or not engage in causal action because they wore non-sticky mittens. Both groups were then tested in the visual habituation paradigm to assess their causal perception. Infants who engaged in causal action - but not those without this causal action experience - perceived the habituation events as causal. Experiment 2 used a similar design to establish that 4½-month-olds are unable to generalize their own causal action to causality observed in dissimilar objects. These data are the first to demonstrate that infants under 6 months of age can perceive causality, and have implications for the mechanisms underlying the development of causal perception.	\N	\N
22251308	Examine age group effects and sex differences by applying a comprehensive computerized battery of identical behavioral measures linked to brain systems in youths that were already genotyped. Such information is needed to incorporate behavioral data as neuropsychological "biomarkers" in large-scale genomic studies. We developed and applied a brief computerized neurocognitive battery that provides measures of performance accuracy and response time for executive-control, episodic memory, complex cognition, social cognition, and sensorimotor speed domains. We tested a population-based sample of 3,500 genotyped youths ages 8-21 years. Substantial improvement with age occurred for both accuracy and speed, but the rates varied by domain. The most pronounced improvement was noted in executive control functions, specifically attention, and in motor speed, with some effect sizes exceeding 1.8 standard deviation units. The least pronounced age group effect was in memory, where only face memory showed a large effect size on improved accuracy. Sex differences had much smaller effect sizes but were evident, with females outperforming males on attention, word and face memory, reasoning speed, and all social cognition tests and males outperforming females in spatial processing and sensorimotor and motor speed. These sex differences in most domains were seen already at the youngest age groups, and age group × sex interactions indicated divergence at the oldest groups with females becoming faster but less accurate than males. The results indicate that cognitive performance improves substantially in this age span, with large effect sizes that differ by domain. The more pronounced improvement for executive and reasoning domains than for memory suggests that memory capacities have reached their apex before age 8. Performance was sexually modulated and most sex differences were apparent by early adolescence.	\N	\N
22256888	This study examined the test-retest reliability of executive function tasks in preschool children. Measures of working memory, response inhibition, attentional flexibility, and planning were administered to thirty three preschool children between the ages of 36 and 72 months (M = 54.75 months) on two testing occasions approximately three weeks apart (M interval = 21.64 days). Working memory tasks showed higher test-retest reliability than measures of response inhibition. There were significant practice effects on three measures of complex working memory. Implications of these findings for the assessment of executive function in preschool children are discussed.	\N	\N
22259184	In two experiments, we examined the ability of task-irrelevant changes in luminance to capture attention in an irrelevant singleton search. By using uniform increment and decrement arrays, we were able to create changes of the same absolute magnitude, but resulting in a singleton with either higher or lower contrast magnitude, relative to other elements in the search array. A condition where a singleton changed contrast polarity without a concomitant change in the overall contrast magnitude was also included. It was found that only luminance changes resulting in a singleton having increased contrast (or saliency) were effective in capturing attention. In addition, no attentional capture was observed when the irrelevant singleton was characterized by the equivalent amount of static luminance differences, suggesting a unique attentional prioritization of luminance changes that increase singleton saliency.	\N	\N
22264198	The discovery of mirror neurons-neurons that code specific actions both when executed and observed-in area F5 of the macaque provides a potential neural mechanism underlying action understanding. To date, neuroimaging evidence for similar coding of specific actions across the visual and motor modalities in human ventral premotor cortex (PMv)-the putative homologue of macaque F5-is limited to the case of actions observed from a first-person perspective. However, it is the third-person perspective that figures centrally in our understanding of the actions and intentions of others. To address this gap in the literature, we scanned participants with fMRI while they viewed two actions from either a first- or third-person perspective during some trials and executed the same actions during other trials. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found action-specific cross-modal visual-motor representations in PMv for the first-person but not for the third-person perspective. Additional analyses showed no evidence for spatial or attentional differences across the two perspective conditions. In contrast, more posterior areas in the parietal and occipitotemporal cortex did show cross-modal coding regardless of perspective. These findings point to a stronger role for these latter regions, relative to PMv, in supporting the understanding of others' actions with reference to one's own actions.	\N	\N
22265727	We investigated response activation and suppression processes in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait (FOG). Fourteen freezers, 14 nonfreezers, and 14 matched healthy controls performed the attention network task (ANT) and the Stroop task. The former task has more stimulus-response overlap and is expected to elicit stronger irrelevant response activation, requiring more inhibition. Congruency effects were used as a general measure of conflict resolution. Supplementary reaction time (RT) distribution analyses were utilized to calculate conditional accuracy functions (CAFs) and delta plots to measure response activation and suppression processes. In agreement with previous research, freezers showed a general conflict resolution deficit compared with nonfreezers and healthy controls. Moreover, CAFs pointed to a strong initial incorrect response activation in FOG. As expected, conflict resolution impairment was only apparent in the ANT, and not in the Stroop task. These results suggest an imbalance between automatic and controlled processes in FOG, leading to a breakdown in both motor and cognitive response control.	\N	\N
22266073	Cognitive theories of anxiety postulate that negative processing biases play a causal role in the pathogenesis of a disorder, while a normalisation of bias drives recovery. To test these assumptions it is essential to investigate whether biases seen in anxiety are treatment-sensitive, or whether they instead represent enduring vulnerability factors. Twenty-nine spider fearfuls were tested before and after brief cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), with half of them additionally being tested before a waiting period to control for retest effects. Using three cognitive bias tasks, we measured implicit threat evaluation (Extrinsic Affective Simon Task), avoidance tendency (Approach-Avoidance Task), and working memory for threat. CBT significantly enhanced negative implicit evaluation and avoidance. This indicates that these cognitive biases are no stable risk factors and provides further evidence for their potential key role in the development and remission of anxiety.	\N	\N
22266110	A current controversy exists about the relationship between spatial attention and conscious perception. While some authors propose that these phenomena are intimately related (Bartolomeo, 2008; Chun & Marois, 2002; O'Regan & Noë, 2001; Posner, 1994), others report dissociations between them (Kentridge et al., 1999; Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007; Wyart & Tallon-Baudry, 2008). However, spatial attention is not a unitary mechanism, and it is possible that not all forms of attention dissociate from conscious perception. In the present study we used a paradigm in which endogenous and exogenous forms of attention are orthogonally manipulated in order to investigate their relation with conscious perception within the same design. By analyzing two different cue-related components, our results demonstrated that while endogenous attention was electrophysiologically dissociated from conscious perception, exogenous attention was not, consistent with the hypothesis that exogenous attention is an important antecedent of our conscious experience. Our results support previous claims of dissociations between some forms of spatial attention and conscious perception, but also highlight the importance of exogenous orienting on the selection of information for conscious access.	\N	\N
22266172	We present a history of the concepts and developments that have led us to focus on the resting state as an object of study. We then discuss resting state research performed in our laboratory since 2005 with an emphasis on papers of particular interest.	\N	\N
22267203	In vivo translational imaging techniques, such as positron emission tomography and single-photon emission-computed tomography, are the only ways to adequately determine that a drug engages its target. Unfortunately, there are far more experimental mechanisms being tested in the clinic than there are radioligands, impeding the use of this risk-mitigating approach in modern drug discovery and development. Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) offers an approach for developing new biomarkers with the potential to determine central activity and dose selection in animals and humans. Using phMRI, we characterized the effects of xanomeline on ketamine-induced activation on blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal. In the present studies, xanomeline alone dose-dependently increased the BOLD signal across several regions of interest, including association and motor and sensory cortical regions. It is noteworthy that xanomeline dose-dependently attenuated ketamine-induced brain activation patterns, effects that were antagonized by atropine. In conclusion, the muscarinic 1/4-preferring receptor agonist xanomeline suppressed the effects of the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel blocker ketamine in a number of brain regions, including the association cortex, motor cortex, and primary sensory cortices. The region-specific brain activation observed in this ketamine challenge phMRI study may provide a method of confirming central activity and dose selection for novel antipsychotic drugs in early clinical trials for schizophrenia, if the data obtained in animals can be recapitulated in humans.	\N	\N
22268914	Research with the maintenance-rehearsal paradigm, in which word pairs are rehearsed as distractor material during a series of digit recall trials, has previously indicated that low frequency and new word pairs capture attention to a greater degree than high frequency and old word pairs. This impacts delayed recognition of the pairs and interferes with immediate digit recall. The effect on immediate digit recall may provide the missing converging evidence for the role of attention in memory. In the current study, 3 experiments were conducted to further investigate the role of attention capture and novelty in storage and forgetting. In addition to the previously established effects, the novelty of switching rehearsal between 2 pairs was found to impair both digit recall and memory for the first pair. The attentional effects we obtained were dependent upon participant expectation, and forgetting appears to be due to interference with consolidation rather than decay or traditional associative interference. Finally, the attentional effects we observed in associative recognition were primarily reflected in a lowering of the false alarm rate with increases in the strength of the parent pairs. Although dual-process models can accommodate this finding on the assumption that recollection is invoked at test alongside familiarity, we showed that the level of recall in this paradigm is so small that recollection can be ruled out. Accordingly, our results are challenging for the existing models of associative recognition to accommodate.	\N	\N
22269546	Worldwide, both brake lamps and tail lamps on motor vehicles are required to be red. Previous studies have not examined the effect of this confound in a complex, high-traffic scenario in a driving simulator or on visuomotor behavior. In the first experiment, drivers detected brake lamps on nine lead vehicles and lane changes on two rear vehicles in a 15 min simulated night time highway drive. A second experiment was used to examine the findings in the context of pre-attentive visual processing research. A third experiment analyzed visuomotor behavior and subjective workload during a vigilance task to further evaluate this hypothesis. For all studies, tail lamp color was manipulated, resulting in two conditions: the currently mandated red tail lamps and red brake lamps vs. yellow tail lamps and red brake lamps. Compared to current rear lighting, employing yellow tail lamps with red brake lamps reduced RT, error, subjective workload, improved performance in detecting lane changes and also changed visuomotor behavior. It is suggested that the mechanism allowing better performance is pre-attentive, parallel visual processing.	\N	\N
22276405	This experiment was designed to investigate whether and how decreasing the amount of attentional focus invested in postural control could affect bipedal postural control. Twelve participants were asked to stand upright as immobile as possible on a force platform in one control condition and one cognitive condition. In the latter condition, they performed a short-term digit-span memory task. Decreased center-of-gravity displacements and decreased center-of-foot-pressure displacements minus center-of-gravity displacements were observed in the cognitive condition relative to the control condition. These results suggest that shifting the attentional focus away from postural control by executing a concurrent attention-demanding task could increase postural performance and postural efficiency.	\N	\N
22277309	A growing body of literature investigating the neural correlates of emotion word processing has emerged in recent years. Written words have been shown to represent a suitable means to study emotion processing and most importantly to address the distinct and interactive contributions of the two dimensions of emotion: valence and arousal. The aim of the present review is to integrate findings from electrophysiological (ERP) and hemodynamic neuroimaging (fMRI) studies in order to provide a better understanding of emotion word processing. It provides an up-to-date review of recent ERP studies since the review by Kissler et al. (2006) as well as the first review of hemodynamic brain imaging studies in the field. A discussion of theoretical and methodological issues is also presented, along with suggestions for future research.	\N	\N
22278094	The intranasal application of oxytocin (OT) has been shown to influence behavioral and neural correlates of social processing. These effects are probably mediated by genetic variations within the OT system. One potential candidate could be the CD38 gene, which codes for a transmembrane protein engaged in OT secretion processes. A common variation in this gene (rs3796863) was recently found to be associated with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Using an imaging genetics approach, we studied differential effects of an intranasal OT application on neural processing of social stimuli in 55 healthy young men depending on their CD38 gene variant in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Genotype had a significant influence on both behavioral and neuronal measures of social processing. Homozygotic risk allele carriers showed slower reaction times (RT) and higher activation of left fusiform gyrus during visual processing of social stimuli. Under OT activation differences between genotypes were more evident (though not statistically significantly increased) and RT were accelerated in homozygotic risk allele carriers. According to our data, rs3796863 mainly influences fusiform gyrus activation, an area which has been widely discussed in ASD research. OT seems to modulate this effect by enhancing activation differences between allele groups, which suggests an interaction between genetic makeup and OT availability on fusiform gyrus activation. These results support recent approaches to apply OT as a pharmacological treatment of ASD symptoms.	\N	\N
22290697	ADHD has been linked to various constructs, yet there is a lack of focus on how its symptom clusters differentially associate with personality, which this study addresses. The current study examines the relationship between impulsive and inattentive ADHD traits and personality, indexed by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III), in a sample of undergraduates. Impulsivity was associated with NEO-PI-R and MCMI-III traits characterized by emotional distress, interpersonal problems, and disruptive behavior, whereas inattention was associated only with focus-oriented constructs. ADHD-related inattention is a relatively modest predictor of personality traits, as compared with hyperactivity-impulsivity. These findings have implications regarding the distinctiveness and etiology of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.; DSM-IV-TR) ADHD types.	\N	\N
22291031	Head movement imposes the additional burdens on the visual system of maintaining visual acuity and determining the origin of retinal image motion (i.e., self-motion vs. object-motion). Although maintaining visual acuity during self-motion is effected by minimizing retinal slip via the brainstem vestibular-ocular reflex, higher order visuovestibular mechanisms also contribute. Disambiguating self-motion versus object-motion also invokes higher order mechanisms, and a cortical visuovestibular reciprocal antagonism is propounded. Hence, one prediction is of a vestibular modulation of visual cortical excitability and indirect measures have variously suggested none, focal or global effects of activation or suppression in human visual cortex. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation-induced phosphenes to probe cortical excitability, we observed decreased V5/MT excitability versus increased early visual cortex (EVC) excitability, during vestibular activation. In order to exclude nonspecific effects (e.g., arousal) on cortical excitability, response specificity was assessed using information theory, specifically response entropy. Vestibular activation significantly modulated phosphene response entropy for V5/MT but not EVC, implying a specific vestibular effect on V5/MT responses. This is the first demonstration that vestibular activation modulates human visual cortex excitability. Furthermore, using information theory, not previously used in phosphene response analysis, we could distinguish between a specific vestibular modulation of V5/MT excitability from a nonspecific effect at EVC.	\N	\N
22292831	Auditory discrimination, memory, and attention-related functions were investigated in healthy 2-3-year-olds by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) to changes in five auditory features and two types of novel sounds using the fast multifeature paradigm (MFP). ERP profiles consisting of the mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and prominent late discriminative negativities (LDN) were obtained, for the first time, from this age group in a considerably shorter time compared to the traditional paradigms. Statistically significant responses from individual children were obtained mainly for the novel sounds. Thus, the MFP shows promise as a time-efficient paradigm for investigating central auditory functions in toddlers.	\N	\N
22292917	The ability to make accurate judgments and execute effective skilled movements under severe temporal constraints are fundamental to elite performance in a number of domains including sport, military combat, law enforcement, and medicine. In two experiments, we examine the effect of stimulus strength on response time and accuracy in a temporally constrained, real-world, decision-making task. Specifically, we examine the effect of low stimulus intensity (black) and high stimulus intensity (sequin) uniform designs, worn by teammates, to determine the effect of stimulus strength on the ability of soccer players to make rapid and accurate responses. In both field- and laboratory-based scenarios, professional soccer players viewed developing patterns of play and were required to make a penetrative pass to an attacking player. Significant differences in response accuracy between uniform designs were reported in laboratory- and field-based experiments. Response accuracy was significantly higher in the sequin compared with the black uniform condition. Response times only differed between uniform designs in the laboratory-based experiment. These findings extend the literature into a real-world environment and have significant implications for the design of clothing wear in a number of domains.	\N	\N
22293586	Hypothalamic orexin neurons are known to regulate sleep/wake stability, feeding behavior, emotions, autonomic nerve activity, and whole-body energy metabolism. In addition, emerging evidence indicates that orexin contributes to central regulation of glucose homeostasis. Intriguingly, central administration of orexin is reported to cause blood glucose-elevating effect or blood glucose-lowering effect in rodents, depending on the experimental conditions. Here we reviewed the recent reports regarding the mode and mechanism of actions of orexin on these two opposing effects, and discuss the functional significance for the maintenance of glucose homeostasis. The fact that orexin exhibits biphasic effects on autonomic nerve activity and lipolysis suggests that orexin dually regulates the glucose appearance. In fact, orexin neurons are activated not only depending on the demand for glucose but also according to a circadian rhythm in the suprachiasmatic nucleus. The excited orexin neurons appear to alter the sympathetic or parasympathetic outflow to the periphery, and modulate the glucose production and utilization. Furthermore, deficiency of orexin action, particularly reduction of orexin 2 receptor-signaling, disrupts the mechanism for protection against insulin resistance associated with aging or induced by chronic high fat feeding in mice. Taken together, hypothalamic orexin system may manage multiple tasks to coordinate the interconnection among the arousal, feeding, circadian, and glucose homeostasis pathways.	\N	\N
22294809	The Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) is a widely used assay of behavioral alertness sensitive to the effects of sleep loss and circadian misalignment. The standard 10-minute duration of the PVT is often considered impractical for operational or clinical environments. Therefore, we developed and validated an adaptive-duration version of the PVT (PVT-A) that stops sampling once it has gathered enough information to correctly classify PVT performance. Repeated-measures experiments involving 10-minute PVT assessments every 2 hours across both acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) and 5 days of chronic partial sleep deprivation (PSD). Controlled laboratory environment. Seventy-four healthy subjects (34 women), aged 22 to 45 years. A TSD experiment involving 33 hours awake (n = 31 subjects), and a PSD experiment involving 5 nights of 4 hours time in bed (n = 43 subjects). The PVT-A algorithm was trained with 527 TSD test bouts and validated with 880 PSD test bouts. Based on our primary outcome measure "number of lapses (response times ≥ 500 ms) plus false starts (premature responses or response times < 100 ms)," 10-minute PVT performance was classified into high (≤ 5 lapses and false starts), medium (> 5 and ≤ 16 lapses and false starts), or low (> 16 lapses and false starts). The decision threshold for PVT-A termination was set so that at least 95% of training data-set tests were classified correctly and no test was classified incorrectly across 2 performance categories (i.e., high as low or low as high), resulting in an average test duration of 6.0 minutes (SD 2.4 min). In the validation data set, 95.7% of test bouts were correctly classified, and there were no incorrect classifications across 2 categories. Agreement corrected for chance was excellent (κ = 0.92). Across the 3 performance categories, sensitivity averaged 93.7% (range 87.2%-100%), and specificity averaged 96.8% (range 91.6%-99.9%). Test duration averaged 6.4 minutes (SD 1.7 min), with a minimum of 27 seconds. We developed and validated a highly accurate, sensitive, and specific adaptive-duration version of the 10-minute PVT. Test duration of the adaptive PVT averaged less than 6.5 minutes, with 60 tests (4.3%) terminating after less than 2 minutes, increasing the practicability of the test in operational and clinical settings. The adaptive-duration strategy may be superior to a simple reduction of PVT duration in which the fixed test duration may be too short to identify subjects with moderate impairment (showing deficits only later during the test) but unnecessarily long for those who are either fully alert or severely impaired.	\N	\N
22306518	Spatial attention and eye-movements are tightly coupled, but the precise nature of this coupling is controversial. The influential but controversial Premotor theory of attention makes four specific predictions about the relationship between motor preparation and spatial attention. Firstly, spatial attention and motor preparation use the same neural substrates. Secondly, spatial attention is functionally equivalent to planning goal directed actions such as eye-movements (i.e. planning an action is both necessary and sufficient for a shift of spatial attention). Thirdly, planning a goal directed action with any effector system is sufficient to trigger a shift of spatial attention. Fourthly, the eye-movement system has a privileged role in orienting visual spatial attention. This article reviews empirical studies that have tested these predictions. Contrary to predictions one and two there is evidence of anatomical and functional dissociations between endogenous spatial attention and motor preparation. However, there is compelling evidence that exogenous attention is reliant on activation of the oculomotor system. With respect to the third prediction, there is correlational evidence that spatial attention is directed to the endpoint of goal-directed actions but no direct evidence that this attention shift is dependent on motor preparation. The few studies to have directly tested the fourth prediction have produced conflicting results, so the extent to which the oculomotor system has a privileged role in spatial attention remains unclear. Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the view that spatial attention is functionally equivalent to motor preparation so the Premotor theory should be rejected, although a limited version of the Premotor theory in which only exogenous attention is dependent on motor preparation may still be tenable. A plausible alternative account is that activity in the motor system contributes to biased competition between different sensory representations with the winner of the competition becoming the attended item.	\N	\N
22307939	Inhibition of return (IOR) is thought to reflect inhibition of previously attended but irrelevant stimuli. Deficient IOR would increase the likelihood of revisiting previously searched locations or objects, thus leading to unproductive perseverations. Therefore, using a novel IOR task, we investigated whether high scoring checkers attentional biases to threat would result in dysfunctional inhibitory functioning compared to low checkers. In two tasks, we compared 53 subclinical high and 49 low checkers regarding IOR effects for stimuli that were concordant with the concerns of high but not of low checkers (electrical kitchen appliances: e.g., toaster, kettle). The difference between the two tasks was the cueing procedure. In one task, an appliance was switched "ON" and "OFF" as an unpredictive cue, drawing attention to the functionality of the stimulus. In this task, IOR was specifically attenuated in high checkers. In the other task, however, the cue was more abstract in form of a yellow outline that appeared around one of two appliances. Although the appliance was either "ON" or "OFF," this did not seem to matter and high checkers revealed a typical IOR pattern similar to low checkers. We conclude that IOR mechanisms might not be generally deficient in high checkers; rather only when attention is drawn to the threatening aspects of ecologically valid stimuli, then disengagement of attention is deficient in high checkers. We make suggestions on how our task-specific findings may inform cognitive interventions that target attentional control in the treatment of checking/obsessive-compulsive disorder.	\N	\N
22309824	Maternal stress during pregnancy has been repeatedly associated with problematic child development. According to the fetal programming hypothesis adverse experiences during pregnancy increase maternal cortisol, which is then assumed to exert a negative effect on fetal development. Recent studies in non-pregnant women report significant associations between positive emotionality and low cortisol levels. We tested in a sample of 60 pregnant women whether both negative and positive life events independently predicted third-trimester baseline awakening cortisol levels. While the effect of negative life events proved unrelated positive life events significantly predicted lower cortisol levels. These findings suggest that positive experiences are of relevance regarding maternal morning cortisol levels in pregnancy reflecting a resource with potentially beneficial effects for the mother and the developing fetus. It might be promising for psychological intervention programs to focus on increasing positive experiences of the expecting mother rather than exclusively trying to reduce maternal stress during pregnancy.	\N	\N
22311202	Emotion-eliciting films are commonly used to evoke subjective emotional responses in experimental settings. The main aim of the present study was to investigate whether a set of film clips with discrete emotions were capable to elicit measurable objective physiological responses. The convergence between subjective and objective measures was evaluated. Finally, the effect of gender on emotional responses was investigated. A sample of 123 subjects participated in the study. Individuals were asked to view a set of emotional film clips capable to induce seven emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, amusement, tenderness and neutral state. Skin conductance level (SCL), heart rate (HR) and subjective emotional responses were measured for each film clip. In comparison with neutral films, SCL was significantly increased after viewing fear films, and HR was also significantly incremented for anger and fear films. Physiological variations were associated with arousal measures indicating a convergence between subjective and objective reactions. Women appeared to display significantly greater SCL and HR responses for films inducing sadness. The findings suggest that physiological activation would be more easily induced by emotion-eliciting films that tap into emotions with higher subjective arousal such as anger and fear.	\N	\N
22313064	There has been no research performed concerning the effects of the use of laptops and smartphones in the operating theatre on anaesthetist performance, yet these devices are now in frequent use. This article explores the implications of this phenomenon. The cognitive and environmental factors that support or detract from vigilance and multi-tasking are explored and core anaesthetic literature on the nature of anaesthetic work and operating theatre distractions is reviewed. Experienced anaesthetists are skilled at multi-tasking while maintaining situational awareness, but there are limits. Noise, interruptions and emotional arousal are detrimental to the cognitive performance of anaesthetists. While limited reading during periods of low task load may not reduce vigilance, computer use introduces text-based activities that are more interactive and potentially more distracting. All anaesthetists need to be mindful of the limits to the human attention span which requires observation and limiting distractions. Trainees have less experience and less 'attentional' safety margin, so should avoid adding additional distractions such as discretionary use of laptops or smartphones to their operating theatre work. We provide recommendations for future research on the specific advantages and disadvantages of pervasive computing in the operative theatre.	\N	\N
22317652	This paper presents an analysis of cognitive-ergonomic aspects of e-learning courses, offered by an organism from Brazilian Public Administration. The Cognitive Ergonomic studies conductive and cognitive aspects concerning to the relation between human, physics elements and social elements of the work space. From that usability aspects were evaluated by these points: i) visualization; ii) text comprehension lecture; iii) memory; iv) interface; v) instructional design; and vi) attention and learning. That survey is characterized as having been applied using the following techniques: (1) bibliographic survey, (2) field survey and (3) analysis of the documents. It was chosen the semi-structured questionnaire as the main method of data collection. About the interacting with artifacts, the interface of the courses is classified as direct engagement, because it allows the user to get the feeling that acts directly on the objects. Although the courses are well-structured they have flaws that will be discussed below. Even with these problems, the courses have a good degree of usability.	\N	\N
22318206	Several studies have demonstrated that one exercise session (ES) on a cycloergometer or ergometric treadmill causes a reduction in blood pressure (BP). However, there are few similar studies on walking, which is the exercise modality most available to the elderly. We investigated the immediate and 24-h effects of walking on BP in independent, community-living elderly individuals. Volunteers participated in a single ES and resting control session (CS). Before and after each session, BP was measured by auscultatory and oscillometric methods. After each session, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring was conducted. An accelerometer was installed 48 h before the sessions and left in place for 5 days. The mean volunteer age was 67.7±3.5 years; 11 were hypertensive patients under treatment, and 12 were normotensive. In the total sample, there were immediate 14mm Hg and 12 mm Hg reductions in systolic BP (SBP) after the ES according to the auscultatory and oscillometric methods, respectively. Diastolic BP (DBP) was reduced by 4 mm Hg after the ES according to both methods. SBP during wakefulness and sleep and DBP during wakefulness were lower after the ES than after the CS (P<0.01), when wakefulness and sleep were determined individually (variable-time pattern) using data from the activity monitors and provided by the volunteers. The variable-time pattern was more effective in detecting reductions in BP than the fixed-time pattern.	\N	\N
22332788	Many cognitive neuroscience studies show that the ability to attend to and identify global or local information is lateralised between the two hemispheres in the human brain; the left hemisphere is biased towards the local level, whereas the right hemisphere is biased towards the global level. Results of two studies show attention-focused people with a right ear preference (biased towards the left hemisphere) are better at local tasks, whereas people with a left ear preference (biased towards the right hemisphere) are better at more global tasks. In a third study we determined if right hemisphere-biased followers who attend to global stimuli are likely to have a stronger relationship between attention and globally based supervisor ratings of performance. Results provide evidence in support of this hypothesis. Our research supports our model and suggests that the interaction between attention and lateral preference is an important and novel predictor of work-related outcomes.	\N	\N
22348638	This commentary highlights some recent trends in sex research that have particular relevance for research on condom use, including studies investigating the meaning of sexual arousal, desire and pleasure; a focus on couple-level investigations; and the relevance of individual differences and personality characteristics to sexual risk-taking. Although historically, sexuality-related issues have received little systematic attention in the field of public health, researchers are now paying more attention to the role of pleasure and sexual arousal in condom use. It is argued that a better integration of findings from the area of sex research into the HIV and sexually transmissible infection (STI) field is needed to develop and improve programs to reduce the risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy.	\N	\N
22354708	The main purpose of this eye tracking study was to map the correlates of gaze performance in a brief test of spontaneous gaze and point-gesture following in young children with autistic disorder (AD), Pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), or typical development (TD). Gaze measures included the children's spontaneous tendency to look at the correct (attended) toy, and the latency of their correct responses. In addition to group differences (AD vs. TD), we found that in AD, accuracy of performance was specifically related to adaptive communication skills. The study also indicated that the latency of correct gaze shifts is related to verbal intelligence. These results have direct implications for our understanding of (responsive) joint attention impairments in AD.	\N	\N
22360143	The effects of acoustic confusion (phonological similarity), word length, and concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression) are cited as support for Working Memory's phonological loop component (e.g., Baddeley, 2000 , Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 7, 544). Research has focused on younger adults, with no studies examining whether concurrent articulation reduces the word length and acoustic confusion effects among older adults. In the current study, younger and older adults were given lists of similar and dissimilar letters (Experiment 1) or long and short words (Experiment 2) for immediate serial reconstruction of order. Items were presented visually or auditorily, with or without concurrent articulation. As expected, younger and older adults demonstrated effects of acoustic confusion, word length, and concurrent articulation. Further, concurrent articulation reduced the effects of acoustic confusion and word length equally for younger and older adults. This suggests that age-related differences occur in overall performance, but do not reflect an age-related deficiency in the functioning of the phonological loop component of working memory.	\N	\N
22363538	Primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis (PMNE) is a common disorder in school-aged children. Previous studies have suggested that a developmental delay might play a role in the pathology of children with PMNE. However, microstructural abnormalities in the brains of these children have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, we evaluated structural changes in the brains of children with PMNE using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Two groups consisting of 26 children with PMNE and 26 healthy controls were scanned using magnetic resonance DTI. The diffusion parameters of fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were subjected to whole-brain, voxel-wise group comparisons using statistical parametric mapping (SPM). When compared to healthy subjects, children with PMNE showed both a decrease in FA and an increase in MD in the thalamus. MD also increased in the frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula; these areas are all involved in controlling micturition. The significant changes seen in the thalamus could affect both urine storage and arousal from sleep. The microstructure abnormalities were observed in the thalamus, the medial frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate cortex and the insula, which are involved in micturition control network. This indicates developmental delay in these areas may be the cause of PMNE.	\N	\N
22372566	This study examined the effect of the processing demands of to-be-remembered (TBR) words on item-method directed forgetting. Experiment 1 found that a standard memory group remembered fewer to-be-forgotten (TBF) words than a naming group, in which participants simply named the TBR words during the study phase, even though both groups were equally instructed to forget the TBF words. Experiment 2 manipulated the number of TBR words in the study list, keeping the number of TBF words constant, and found that TBF word forgetting was more difficult in the few TBR words condition than the more TBR words condition. The same pattern was found in the result of Experiment 3 when a cued recall test, instead of a free recall test, was used. In all the experiments, participants were asked to recall the TBF words before the TBR words. These findings are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis that it is easier to forget when there are fewer cognitive resources available during encoding.	\N	\N
22380663	The tendency to express emotions non-verbally is positively related to perception of emotions in oneself. This study examined its relationship to perception of emotions in others. In 40 healthy adults, EEG theta synchronization was used to indicate emotion processing following presentation of happy, angry, and neutral faces. Both positive and negative expressiveness were associated with higher emotional sensitivity, as shown by cortical responses to facial expressions during the early, unconscious processing stage. At the late, conscious processing stage, positive expressiveness was associated with higher sensitivity to happy faces but lower sensitivity to angry faces. Thus, positive expressiveness predisposes people to allocate fewer attentional resources for conscious perception of angry faces. In contrast, negative expressiveness was consistently associated with higher sensitivity. The effects of positive expressiveness occurred in cortical areas that deal with emotions, but the effects of negative expressiveness occurred in areas engaged in self-referential processes in the context of social relationships.	\N	\N
22390290	Voluntary shifts of attention are often motivated in experimental contexts by using well-known symbols that accurately predict the direction of targets. The authors report 3 experiments, which showed that the presentation of predictive spatial information does not provide sufficient incentive to elicit voluntary shifts of attention. For instance, when allowed to spontaneously choose between using a 100%-valid spatial word cue versus searching without the aid of the cue, observers consistently searched for a unique target without the aid of the cue. Another experiment showed that observers' choice to use spatial word cues could be biased by providing dedicated time to process the cue before the target display appeared (i.e., nonzero, cue-target SOAs). Although this dedicated processing time has routinely been included in spatial cuing experiments, its incentive-inducing role has never been acknowledged. Implications for theories of both voluntary and involuntary control are discussed.	\N	\N
22390708	Although biased attention to emotional stimuli is considered a vulnerability factor for anxiety and dysphoria, research has infrequently related such attentional biases to dimensional models of vulnerability for anxiety and mood disorders. In two studies (Study 1, n = 64; Study 2, n = 168), we evaluate the differential associations of general negative affectivity, anxiety, and dysphoria with biases in selective attention among nonclinical participants selected to vary in both anxiety and dysphoria. Across both studies, preferential processing of angry faces at a 300-ms exposure duration was associated with a general tendency to experience a range of negative affect, rather than being specific to symptoms of either anxiety or dysphoria. In the second study, we found evidence of a suppressor relationship between anxiety and dysphoria in the prediction of delayed attentional biases (1,000 ms) for sad faces. In particular, dysphoria was specifically associated with biased attention toward sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for anxiety; by contrast, anxiety was specifically associated with attentional avoidance of sad cues, but only after statistically accounting for dysphoria. These results suggest that the specificity of relationships between components of negative affectivity and attention to emotional stimuli varies as a function of the time course at which attentional biases are assessed, highlighting the importance of evaluating both anxiety and dysphoria in research on attentional processing of emotional stimuli.	\N	\N
22390710	This study tested whether a performance stressor characterized by social-evaluative threat (SET) elicits more rumination than a stressor without this explicit evaluative component and whether this difference persists minutes, hours, and days later. The mediating role of shame-related cognition and emotion (SRCE) was also examined. During a laboratory visit, 144 undergraduates (50% female) were randomly assigned to complete a speech stressor in a social-evaluative threat condition (SET; n = 86), in which an audience was present, or a nonexplicit social-evaluative threat condition (ne-SET; n = 58), in which they were alone in a room. Participants completed measures of stressor-related rumination 10 and 40 min posttask, later that night, and upon returning to the laboratory 3-5 days later. SRCE and other emotions experienced during the stressor (fear, anger, and sadness) were assessed immediately posttask. As hypothesized, the SET speech stressor elicited more rumination than the ne-SET speech stressor, and these differences persisted for 3-5 days. SRCE-but not other specific negative emotions or general emotional arousal-mediated the effect of stressor context on rumination. Stressors characterized by SET may be likely candidates for eliciting and maintaining ruminative thought immediately and also days later, potentially by eliciting shame-related emotions and cognitions.	\N	\N
22396120	The ability to estimate the time remaining until collision occurs with an approaching object (time-to-collision, TTC) is crucial for any mobile animal. In the present study, we report three experiments examining whether higher level cognitive factors, represented by affective value of approaching objects, could affect judgments of TTC. A theory of TTC estimates based purely on the optical variable tau does not predict an influence of the affective value of an approaching object. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared TTC estimates of threatening and neutral pictures that approached our participants on a screen and disappeared from view before a collision would have occurred. Images were taken from the International Affective Picture System. Threatening pictures-in particular, the picture of a frontal attack-were judged to collide earlier than neutral pictures. In Experiment 3, the approaching stimuli were faces with different emotional expressions. TTC tended to be underestimated for angry faces. We discuss these results, considering the roles of affective and cognitive mechanisms modulating TTC estimation and general time perception.	\N	\N
22408336	Sexual activity is an important part of the human being's life but this instinct could be influenced by some factors such as diseases, drug using, aging, and menopause. But information about that is limited. The aim of this study is to determine the status of sexual activity among married menopausal women in Amol, Iran. This descriptive analytical study was conducted to describe the sexual activity and sexual dysfunction of women after menopause. Data were collected from health centers in Amol from 280 married women using a questionnaire (self-completed or by interview). Mean age of subjects were 55.9 ± 6.02 years. 23.4% of subjects reported that their sexual intercourse had been low. 70% of subjects reported a decrease in their sexual activities after menopause. Sexual dysfunctions includes sexual desire disorder 80% arousal dysfunction 80%, orgasmic dysfunction 25%, dyspareunia 55.6%, and lack of sexual satisfaction 43.2%. Findings revealed high percentage of sexual desire disorder and sexual arousal disorder in menopausal women. Therefore, we should have emphasis on counseling and education about sexual activities during the menopause period.	\N	\N
22415562	The overall aim of this study was to examine the relationship between subjective memory complaints and objective cognitive performance in perimenopausal women. The specific aims were to determine (1) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to objective performance on memory tests, (2) if subjective complaints of memory problems relate to other domains of cognitive function, and (3) if subjective memory complaints relate to other noncognitive factors, such as depression, anxiety, and sleep quality. Seventy-five perimenopausal women completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, which included measures of attention, working memory, verbal memory, verbal fluency, visuospatial skill, and fine motor dexterity; completed self-report inventories of their perceived memory and menopausal symptoms; and provided serum levels of estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone. Memory complaints were not associated with verbal learning or verbal memory but were associated with working memory and complex attention/vigilance. Memory complaints were also associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, somatic complaints, and sleep disturbance. Regression analyses revealed that memory complaints were best predicted by depressive symptoms, somatic complaints, and working memory performance. Memory complaints in the menopausal transition may reflect true difficulties with attentionally mediated cognitive processes. Memory complaints may also be associated with other menopausal-related symptoms.	\N	\N
22417186	Inattention is among the most commonly referred problems for school-aged youth. Research suggests distinct mechanisms may contribute to attention problems in youth with anxiety disorders versus youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study compared children (8-17 years) with anxiety disorders (n = 24) and children (8-16 years) with ADHD (n = 23) on neurocognitive tests of both general and emotion-based attention processes. As hypothesized, children with ADHD demonstrated poorer selective and sustained attention, whereas youth with anxiety disorders demonstrated greater attentional bias toward threatening faces on a visual probe task. Findings suggest the neuropsychological differentiation of attention problems in anxious and ADHD children, despite potentially similar phenotypes.	\N	\N
22423353	While attention bias modification (ABM) is a promising novel treatment for anxiety disorders, clinical trial data remain restricted to adults. The authors examined whether ABM induces greater reductions in pediatric anxiety symptoms and symptom severity than multiple control training interventions. From a target sample of 186 treatment-seeking children at a hospital-based child anxiety clinic, 40 patients with an ongoing anxiety disorder who met all inclusion criteria were enrolled in the study. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: ABM designed to shift attention away from threat; placebo attention training using stimuli identical to those in the ABM condition; and placebo attention training using only neutral stimuli. All participants completed four weekly 480-trial sessions (1,920 total trials). Before and after the attention training sessions, children's clinical status was determined via semistructured interviews and questionnaires. Reduction in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity was compared across the three groups. Change in the number of anxiety symptoms and their severity differed across the three conditions. This reflected significant reductions in the number of anxiety symptoms and symptom severity in the ABM condition but not in the placebo attention training or placebo-neutral condition. ABM, compared with two control conditions, reduces pediatric anxiety symptoms and severity. Further study of efficacy and underlying mechanisms is warranted.	\N	\N
22424288	People with eating disorders (EDs) have difficulties with social functioning. One explanatory mechanism is a problem with over-sensitivity to rejection and/or low sensitivity to social reward. The aim of this study is to investigate attentional bias to facial stimuli in people with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs and healthy controls (HCs) and to test whether these attentional biases are linked to adverse early experiences. Forty-six participants with a current diagnosis of EDs (29 with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 17 with bulimia nervosa (BN)), 22 participants recovered from an eating disorder (13 with past AN and nine with past BN) and 50 HCs completed a dot-probe task with faces expressing rejection and acceptance. Participants reported on parental style and adverse early experiences. People with a lifetime diagnosis of EDs show an attentional bias to rejecting faces and a difficulty disengaging attention from these stimuli. Also, they had a sustained attentional avoidance of accepting faces. HCs demonstrated the opposite attentional pattern. The attentional bias to rejection was correlated with adverse childhood experiences. People with an EDs show vigilance to rejection and avoidance of social reward. This may contribute to the causation or maintenance of the illness.	\N	\N
22425345	Most types of neuromuscular diseases are known to be associated with a high risk of sleep-disordered breathing. We performed a prospective study in a well individualized group of muscular disorders, congenital muscular dystrophies (CMD), to characterize the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing and thereby to determine the potential usefulness of sleep studies in such patients. Twenty CMD children (12 F, 8 M, aged 4-17 years) were included. Using overnight polysomnography, we determined the following parameters: sleep stages, sleep latency, sleep efficiency index, wake time duration, total sleep time (TST), apnea/hypopnea index (AHI), arterial blood oxygen saturation, and nocturnal paroxysmal EEG activity. As compared to healthy controls, we detected in our study group frequent awakenings, a decreased TST (mean 448 ± 44.4 min) and a decreased REM duration (mean 11.5 ± 3.5% of TST). Significant increase in wake time duration (28-90 min) and decrease in REM duration were observed in 12 patients. An apnea/hypopnea syndrome was detected in 13 patients (65%) with central apneas in 8, obstructive apneas in 2 and 3 mixed apneas in 3 patients. AHI was >10 in 3 cases, <10> 5 in 4 cases and were concomitant with blood oxygen de-saturation in four cases. NPA were detected in 10 patients ranging from 10 to 40% of TST. Our results confirm the high incidence of sleep disordered breathing in children with CMD, and thereby, the usefulness of overnight polysomnography recordings in such patients.	\N	\N
22438275	Characterization of large-scale brain networks using blood-oxygenation-level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging is typically based on the assumption of network stationarity across the duration of scan. Recent studies in humans have questioned this assumption by showing that within-network functional connectivity fluctuates on the order of seconds to minutes. Time-varying profiles of resting-state networks (RSNs) may relate to spontaneously shifting, electrophysiological network states and are thus mechanistically of particular importance. However, because these studies acquired data from awake subjects, the fluctuating connectivity could reflect various forms of conscious brain processing such as passive mind wandering, active monitoring, memory formation, or changes in attention and arousal during image acquisition. Here, we characterize RSN dynamics of anesthetized macaques that control for these accounts, and compare them to awake human subjects. We find that functional connectivity among nodes comprising the "oculomotor (OCM) network" strongly fluctuated over time during awake as well as anaesthetized states. For time dependent analysis with short windows (<60 s), periods of positive functional correlations alternated with prominent anticorrelations that were missed when assessed with longer time windows. Similarly, the analysis identified network nodes that transiently link to the OCM network and did not emerge in average RSN analysis. Furthermore, time-dependent analysis reliably revealed transient states of large-scale synchronization that spanned all seeds. The results illustrate that resting-state functional connectivity is not static and that RSNs can exhibit nonstationary, spontaneous relationships irrespective of conscious, cognitive processing. The findings imply that mechanistically important network information can be missed when using average functional connectivity as the single network measure.	\N	\N
22448903	The bizarreness effect and the orthographic distinctiveness effect (OD effect) are typical cases of secondary-distinctiveness-based effects. This study tested the simple attentional account or processing time hypothesis as a possible explanation of the bizarreness effect and the OD effect. In the bizarreness effect literature, this hypothesis gained support by some studies but was also discredited by other research. In light of these conflicting results, Experiment 1 was devised to test the processing time hypothesis in the bizarreness effect by using black-and-white concrete images and manipulating the time allotted for processing the stimuli (500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Concerning the OD effect, no research has directly investigated the impact of processing time by examining the effect under varying amounts of study time. Experiment 2 was thus devised to investigate this same hypothesis in the OD effect and time allotted for processing the stimuli was manipulated (250 ms, 500 ms, 1000 ms, 3000 ms). Results did not support the processing time hypothesis since the magnitude of the bizarreness effect and of the OD effect was not modulated by the amount of time allotted for processing the stimuli. We refer to alternative explanations to account for these two secondary-distinctiveness-based effects.	\N	\N
22449132	The automatic processing of the place-value of digits in a multi-digit number was investigated in 4 experiments. Experiment 1 and two control experiments employed a numerical comparison task in which the place-value of a non-zero digit was varied in a string composed of zeros. Experiment 2 employed a physical comparison task in which strings of digits varied in their physical sizes. In both types of tasks, the place-value of the non-zero digit in the string was irrelevant to the task performed. Interference of the place-value information was found in both tasks. When the non-zero digit occupied a lower place-value, it was recognized slower as a larger digit or as written in a larger font size. We concluded that place-value in a multi-digit number is processed automatically. These results support the notion of a decomposed representation of multi-digit numbers in memory.	\N	\N
22449135	In the 1st reported experiment, we demonstrate that auditory memory is robust over extended retention intervals (RIs) when listeners compare the timbre of complex tones, even when active or verbal rehearsal is difficult or impossible. Thus, our tones have an abstract timbre that resists verbal labeling, they differ across trials so that no "standard" comparison stimulus is built up, and the spectral change to be discriminated is very slight and therefore does not shift stimuli across verbal categories. Nonetheless, performance in this nonverbal immediate memory task was better at short (1-, 2-, or 4-s) than long (8-, 16-, or 32-s) RIs, an outcome predicted by temporal distinctiveness theory whereby at long RIs, tones are closer in time to tones on previous trials. We reject this account in the 2nd experiment, where we demonstrate that the ratio of RI to intertrial interval makes absolutely no difference to performance. We suggest that steady forgetting is consistent with a psychoacoustically derived conception of an auditory memory (the timbre memory model) that embodies time-based forgetting in the absence of feature-specific interference.	\N	\N
22450570	In the present study we examined, first, whether voluntary and involuntary attention manifest differently in people who differ in impulsivity (measured with the Barratt Impulsivity Scale). For Experiment 1, we used the spatial cueing task with informative and noninformative spatial cues to probe voluntary and involuntary attention, respectively. We found that participants with high impulsivity scores exhibited larger involuntary attention effects, whereas participants with low impulsivity scores exhibited larger voluntary attention effects. For Experiment 2, we used the correlated-flanker task to determine whether the differences between groups in Experiment 1 were due to high-impulsive participants being less sensitive to the display contingencies or to high-impulsive participants having a greater spread of spatial attention. Surprisingly, high-impulsive participants showed a greater sensitivity to contingencies in the environment (correlated-flanker effect). Our results illustrate one situation in which involuntary attention associated with high impulsivity can play a useful role.	\N	\N
22455840	In order to execute a correct eye movement to a target in a search display, a saccade program toward the target element must be activated, while saccade programs toward distracting elements must be inhibited. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the role of the frontal eye fields (FEFs) in oculomotor competition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging-guided single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was administered over either the left FEF, the right FEF, or the vertex (control site) at 3 time intervals after target presentation, while subjects performed an oculomotor capture task. When TMS was applied over the FEF contralateral to the visual field where a target was presented, there was less interference of an ipsilateral distractor compared with FEF stimulation ipsilateral to the target's visual field or TMS over vertex. Furthermore, TMS over the FEFs decreased latencies of saccades to the contralateral visual field, irrespective of whether the saccade was directed to the target or to the distractor. These findings show that single-pulse TMS over the FEFs enhances the selection of a target in the contralateral visual field and decreases saccade latencies to the contralateral visual field.	\N	\N
22456823	Amygdala dysfunction has been reported to exist in youths and adults with psychopathic traits. However, there has been disagreement as to whether this dysfunction reflects a primary emotional deficit or is secondary to atypical attentional control. The authors examined the validity of the contrasting predictions. Participants were 15 children and adolescents (ages 10–17 years) with both disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits and 17 healthy comparison youths. Functional MRI was used to assess the response of the amygdala and regions implicated in top-down attentional control (the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices) to emotional expression under conditions of high and low attentional load. Relative to youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits, healthy comparison subjects showed a significantly greater increase in the typical amygdala response to fearful expressions under low relative to high attentional load conditions. There was also a selective inverse relationship between the response to fearful expressions under low attentional load and the callous-unemotional component (but not the narcissism or impulsivity component) of psychopathic traits. In contrast, the two groups did not differ in the significant recruitment of the dorsomedial and lateral frontal cortices as a function of attentional load. Youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits showed reduced amygdala responses to fearful expressions under low attentional load but no indications of increased recruitment of regions implicated in top-down attentional control. These findings suggest that the emotional deficit observed in youths with disruptive behavior disorders and psychopathic traits is primary and not secondary to increased top-down attention to nonemotional stimulus features.	\N	\N
22458959	This study investigated the effects of two very commonly used countermeasures against driver sleepiness, opening the window and listening to music, on subjective and physiological sleepiness measures during real road driving. In total, 24 individuals participated in the study. Sixteen participants received intermittent 10-min intervals of: (i) open window (2 cm opened); and (ii) listening to music, during both day and night driving on an open motorway. Both subjective sleepiness and physiological sleepiness (blink duration) was estimated to be significantly reduced when subjects listened to music, but the effect was only minor compared with the pronounced effects of night driving and driving duration. Open window had no attenuating effect on either sleepiness measure. No significant long-term effects beyond the actual countermeasure application intervals occurred, as shown by comparison to the control group (n = 8). Thus, despite their popularity, opening the window and listening to music cannot be recommended as sole countermeasures against driver sleepiness.	\N	\N
22459732	The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of different strategies for regulating emotions associated with smoking on subjective, cognitive, and behavioral correlates of smoking. Emotion regulation was manipulated by instructing participants to reappraise (n = 32), accept (n = 31), or suppress (n = 31) their emotions associated with smoking. The dependent measures included subjective reports of craving, negative affect, and attentional biases, as measured by a modified dot-probe task, and persistence during a task to measure distress tolerance. Individuals who were encouraged to reappraise the consequences of smoking showed diminished craving, lower negative affect, had reduced attentional biases for smoking-related cues, and exhibited greater task persistence than those who were instructed to accept and suppress their urge to smoke. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more effective than acceptance or suppression strategies for targeting smoking-related problems.	\N	\N
22465299	Mechanisms of attention are required to prioritise goal-relevant sensory events under conditions of stimulus competition. According to the perceptual load model of attention, the extent to which task-irrelevant inputs are processed is determined by the relative demands of discriminating the target: the more perceptually demanding the target task, the less unattended stimuli will be processed. Although much evidence supports the perceptual load model for competing stimuli within a single sensory modality, the effects of perceptual load in one modality on distractor processing in another is less clear. Here we used steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs) to measure neural responses to irrelevant visual checkerboard stimuli while participants performed either a visual or auditory task that varied in perceptual load. Consistent with perceptual load theory, increasing visual task load suppressed SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. In contrast, increasing auditory task load enhanced SSEPs to the ignored visual checkerboards. This enhanced neural response to irrelevant visual stimuli under auditory load suggests that exhausting capacity within one modality selectively compromises inhibitory processes required for filtering stimuli in another.	\N	\N
22468726	The current study focuses on the relationship between alerting and executive attention. Previous studies reported an increased flanker congruency effect following alerting cues. In the first two experiments, we found that the alertness-congruency interaction did not exist for all executive tasks (it appeared for a flanker task but not for a Stroop task). In Experiments 3 and 4, we show that alerting increases the congruency effect in a response selection task only when the relevant and irrelevant information is spatially separated. We suggest that alerting modulates the allocation of attention by prioritizing processing of spatial information presented in the visual field. This process can be adaptive under many circumstances, but it comes at a cost. Alerting could possibly compromise our performance when required to filter out irrelevant spatial information.	\N	\N
22476609	Biased processing of drug-associated stimuli is believed to be a crucial feature of addiction. Particularly, an attentional bias seems to contribute to the disorder's maintenance. Recent studies suggest differential effects for stimuli associated with the beginning (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli) or the terminal stage of the smoking ritual (END-smoking-stimuli), with the former but not the later evoking high cue-reactivity. The current study investigated the neuronal network underlying an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli and END-smoking-stimuli in smokers and tested the hypothesis that the attentional bias is greater for BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Sixteen non-deprived smokers and 16 non-smoking controls participated in an fMRI study. Drug pictures (BEGIN-smoking-stimuli, END-smoking-stimuli) and control pictures were overlaid with geometrical figures and presented for 300 ms. Subjects had to identify picture content (identification-task) or figure orientation (distraction-task). The distraction-task was intended to demonstrate attentional bias. Behavioral data revealed an attentional bias to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli but not to END-smoking-stimuli in both groups. However, only smokers showed mesocorticolimbic deactivations in the distraction-task with BEGIN-smoking-stimuli. Importantly, these deactivations were significantly stronger for BEGIN- than for END-smoking-stimuli and correlated with the attentional bias score. Several explanations may account for missing group differences in behavioral data. Brain data suggest smokers using regulatory strategies in response to BEGIN-smoking-stimuli to prevent the elicitation of motivational responses interfering with distraction-task performance. These strategies could be reflected in the observed deactivations and might lead to a performance level in smokers that is similar to that of non-smokers.	\N	\N
22477056	Previous studies investigating transfer of perceptual learning between luminance-defined (LD) motion and texture-contrast-defined (CD) motion tasks have found little or no transfer from LD to CD motion tasks but nearly perfect transfer from CD to LD motion tasks. Here, we introduce a paradigm that yields a clean double dissociation: LD training yields no transfer to the CD task, but more interestingly, CD training yields no transfer to the LD task. Participants were trained in two variants of a global motion task. In one (LD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that differed from the background in mean luminance. In the other (CD) variant, motion was defined by tokens that had mean luminance equal to the background but differed from the background in texture contrast. The task was to judge whether the signal tokens were moving to the right or to the left. Task difficulty was varied by manipulating the proportion of tokens that moved coherently across the four frames of the stimulus display. Performance in each of the LD and CD variants of the task was measured as training proceeded. In each task, training produced substantial improvement in performance in the trained task; however, in neither case did this improvement show any significant transfer to the nontrained task.	\N	\N
22480345	Although circadian and sleep research has made extraordinary progress in the recent years, one remaining challenge is the objective quantification of sleepiness in individuals suffering from sleep deprivation, sleep restriction, and excessive somnolence. The major goal of the present study was to apply principal component analysis to the wake electroencephalographic (EEG) spectrum in order to establish an objective measure of sleepiness. The present analysis was led by the hypothesis that in sleep-deprived individuals, the time course of self-rated sleepiness correlates with the time course score on the 2nd principal component of the EEG spectrum. The resting EEG of 15 young subjects was recorded at 2-h intervals for 32-50 h. Principal component analysis was performed on the sets of 16 single-Hz log-transformed EEG powers (1-16 Hz frequency range). The time course of self-perceived sleepiness correlated strongly with the time course of the 2nd principal component score, irrespective of derivation (frontal or occipital) and of analyzed section of the 7-min EEG record (2-min section with eyes open or any of the five 1-min sections with eyes closed). This result indicates the possibility of deriving an objective index of physiological sleepiness by applying principal component analysis to the wake EEG spectrum.	\N	\N
22484996	The purpose of this paper is to review the literature examining subjective and physiological arousal associated with an individual's preferred modes of gambling. Arousal is hypothesised to play a central role in the onset and maintenance of problem gambling. Most studies have failed to differentiate relevant patterns of arousal elicited by stimuli associated with preferred versus non-preferred modes of gambling on the assumption that similar processes motivate all gamblers. At the conceptual level, sub-typing theories of problem gambling propose differences in the motivation to gamble, and the associated role arousal plays in maintaining behaviours. A review of the existing literature reveals preliminary findings that indicate that gamblers respond differentially to preferred compared to non-preferred gambling stimuli, and that gamblers may display greater reactivity in arousal to gambling cues compared to non-gamblers. Understanding differences in such patterns of arousal can be used to inform clinical interventions by effectively targeting the nature and role of arousal associated with preferred modes of gambling, and determining the extent to which non-preferred modes act as secondary reinforces triggering by gambling urges.	\N	\N
22487940	Motor overflow is extraneous movement in a limb not involved in a motor action. Typically, overflow is observed in people with neurological impairments and in healthy children and adults during strenuous and attention-demanding tasks. In the current study, we found that young infants produce vast amounts of motor overflow, corroborating claims of symmetry being the default state of the motor system. While manipulating an object with one hand, all 27 of the typically developing 4.5- to 7.5-month-old infants who we observed displayed overflow movements of the free hand (on 4/5 of unimanual actions). Mirror-image movements of the hands occurred on 1/8 of unimanual actions, and the hands and legs moved in synchrony on 1/3 of unimanual acts. Motor overflow was less frequent when infants were in a sitting posture and when infants watched their acting hand, suggesting that upright posture and visual examination may help to alleviate overflow and break obligatory symmetry in healthy infants.	\N	\N
22502818	The present study highlights the utility of context-specific learning for different probe types in accounting for the commonly observed dependence of negative priming on probe selection. Using a Stroop priming procedure, Experiments 1a and 1b offered a demonstration that Stroop priming effects can differ qualitatively for selection and no-selection probes when probe selection is manipulated between subjects, but not when it is manipulated randomly from trial to trial within subject (see also Moore, 1994). In Experiments 2 and 3, selection and no-selection probes served as two contexts that varied randomly from trial to trial, but for which proportion repeated was manipulated separately. A context-specific proportion repeated effect was observed in Experiment 2, characterized by modest quantitative shifts in the repetition effects as a function of the context-specific proportion repeated manipulation. However, with a longer intertrial interval in Experiment 3, a context-specific proportion repeated manipulation that focused on the no-selection probes changed the repetition effect qualitatively, from negative priming when the proportion repeated was .25 to positive priming when the proportion repeated was .75. The results are discussed with reference to the role of rapid, context-specific learning processes in the integration of prior experiences with current perception and action.	\N	\N
22504294	Recent findings suggest that, relative to negative feedback, positive feedback counteracts conflict processing and subsequent attentional adaptation. Here we hypothesize that this interaction may direct adjustments in perception and action via the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). We recorded EEG while participants performed an arrow flanker task with monetary gain or loss as arbitrary reward feedback between trials. As predicted, we found a reduction in conflict-driven adaptation for trials in which conflict was followed by monetary gain (vs. monetary loss), a behavioral effect accompanied by a modulation in early visual processing related to the processing of the distracters. Moreover, time-frequency analyses showed that ongoing fronto-central theta oscillations induced by previous conflict sustained longer after loss than after gain, an interaction presumably reflecting ACC modulation. These data provide a first important step toward understanding the neural mechanism underlying the affective regulation of conflict-driven behavior.	\N	\N
22507824	Previous studies have documented the positive effects of mindfulness meditation on executive control. What has been lacking, however, is an understanding of the mechanism underlying this effect. Some theorists have described mindfulness as embodying two facets-present moment awareness and emotional acceptance. Here, we examine how the effect of meditation practice on executive control manifests in the brain, suggesting that emotional acceptance and performance monitoring play important roles. We investigated the effect of meditation practice on executive control and measured the neural correlates of performance monitoring, specifically, the error-related negativity (ERN), a neurophysiological response that occurs within 100 ms of error commission. Meditators and controls completed a Stroop task, during which we recorded ERN amplitudes with electroencephalography. Meditators showed greater executive control (i.e. fewer errors), a higher ERN and more emotional acceptance than controls. Finally, mediation pathway models further revealed that meditation practice relates to greater executive control and that this effect can be accounted for by heightened emotional acceptance, and to a lesser extent, increased brain-based performance monitoring.	\N	\N
22508639	In this article, we illustrate how cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be adapted for the treatment of PTSD among traumatized refugees and ethnic minority populations, providing examples from our treatment, culturally adapted CBT, or CA-CBT. CA-CBT has a unique approach to exposure (typical exposure is poorly tolerated in these groups), emphasizes the treatment of somatic sensations (a particularly salient part of the presentation of PTSD in these groups), and addresses comorbid anxiety disorders and anger. To accomplish these treatment goals, CA-CBT emphasizes emotion exposure and emotion regulation techniques such as meditation and aims to promote emotional and psychological flexibility. We describe 12 key aspects of adapting CA-CBT that make it a culturally sensitive treatment of traumatized refugee and ethnic minority populations. We discuss three models that guide our treatment and that can be used to design culturally sensitive treatments: (a) the panic attack-PTSD model to illustrate the many processes that generate PTSD in these populations, highlighting the role of arousal and somatic symptoms; (b) the arousal triad to demonstrate how somatic symptoms are produced and the importance of targeting comorbid anxiety conditions and psychopathological processes; and (c) the multisystem network (MSN) model of emotional state to reveal how some of our therapeutic techniques (e.g., body-focused techniques: bodily stretching paired with self-statements) bring about psychological flexibility and improvement.	\N	\N
22510246	Despite the interest for the brain correlates of male sexual arousal, few studies investigated neural mechanisms underlying psychogenic erectile dysfunction (ED). Although these studies showed several brain regions active in ED patients during visual erotic stimulation, the dynamics of inhibition of sexual response is still unclear. This study investigated the dynamics of brain regions involved in the psychogenic ED. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous penile tumescence (PT) were used to study brain activity evoked in 17 outpatients with psychogenic ED and 19 healthy controls during visual erotic stimulation. Patterns of brain activation related to different phases of sexual response in the two groups were compared. Simultaneous recording of blood oxygen level-dependent fMRI responses and PT during visual erotic stimulation. During visual erotic stimuli, a larger activation was observed for the patient group in the left superior parietal lobe, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate cortex, whereas the control group showed larger activation in the right middle insula and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus. Moreover, the left superior parietal lobe showed a larger activation in patients than controls especially during the later stage of sexual response. Our results suggest that, among regions more active in patient group, the left superior parietal lobe plays a crucial role in inhibition of sexual response. Previous studies showed that left superior parietal lobe is involved in monitoring of internal body representation. The larger activation of this region in patients during later stages of sexual response suggests a high monitoring of the internal body representation, possibly affecting the behavioral response. These findings provide insight on brain mechanisms involved in psychogenic ED.	\N	\N
22524263	Memory-guided decision making is dynamic and context-dependent, even though many studies describe an enhancement of the P3 for recognized items in memory tasks ("old-new effect"). This study utilized a delay-dependent working memory task during which decision making could be optimized by focusing attention on detected changes instead of recognized similarities. Mean P3 amplitude and delta activity were analyzed from participants who classified probe stimuli as identical or modified. The P3 amplitudes were larger for modified than for identical probes, even when the probe occurred 4,000 ms after the primary stimulus. Enhanced single-trial amplitude, trial-by-trial consistency, and frontoparietal phase coherence of delta activity contributed to the larger P3 for the modified probe. Thus, context-dependent attentional resource allocation supporting memory-guided decisions might explain the enhancement of the P3 for specific probe types.	\N	\N
22524337	This paper outlines the principal behavioral methods used to study music processing in infancy. The advantages of conditioning procedures are offset by high attrition rates and restrictions on the stimuli that can be used. The head-turn preference procedure is more user-friendly but poses greater interpretive challenges. In view of the multidimensional nature of infant attention, no single response measure, whether behavioral, physiological, or neural, can provide unambiguous information about music processing in infancy. Greater use of ecologically valid stimuli is likely to generate increased cooperation from infants and greater generality of the findings.	\N	\N
22526718	Response priming refers to the finding that a prime stimulus preceding a target stimulus influences the response to the following target stimulus. Typically, responses are faster and more accurate if the prime calls for the same response as the target (i.e., compatible trials), as compared with the situation where primes and targets trigger different responses (i.e., incompatible trials). However, the effect depends on presentational and temporal parameters such as the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of prime and target, or prime duration. Until now, the special role of moving stimuli was largely ignored. In the present research, experiments were conducted using clearly visible moving dots as primes and static arrows as targets. Essentially, with short SOAs up to 200 ms, participants responded faster to compatible targets. In contrast, with SOAs above 200 ms, participants responded faster to incompatible targets. The results were compared with response priming with static primes. Here, a different pattern of results emerged, with faster responses to compatible than incompatible targets at a long SOA of 300 ms. Overall, the experiments provide evidence for the existence of an inhibitory mechanism in action control when (distracting) motion stimuli are present. Results could be explained with slight changes to different accounts of negative response priming effects, as well as theories of attention.	\N	\N
22528785	In a category-learning experiment, we assessed whether participants were able to selectively attend to different components of a compound stimulus in two distinct contexts. The participants were presented with stimulus compounds for which they had to learn categorical labels. Each compound comprised one feature from each of two dimensions, and on different trials the compound was presented in two contexts, X and Y. In Context X, Dimension A was relevant to the solution of the categorization task and Dimension B was irrelevant, whereas in Context Y, Dimension A was irrelevant and Dimension B was relevant. The results of transfer tests to novel stimuli suggested that people learned to attend selectively to Dimension A in Context X and Dimension B in Context Y. These findings contribute to the growing body of evidence that people can learn to selectively attend to particular dimensions of stimuli dependent on the context in which the stimuli are presented. Furthermore, the findings demonstrate that context-dependent changes in attention transfer to other categorization tasks involving novel stimuli.	\N	\N
22532384	We have previously reported evidence that repetitions of letters, colors, sizes, and common motion paths are more rapidly detected when they are presented unilaterally (i.e., both in the same visual field) versus bilaterally (one element in each visual field; Butcher and Cavanagh (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics 70:714-724, 2008). Here, we report evidence that this unilateral field advantage (UFA) for repetition detection does not depend on prior experience with the elements that comprise the repetition. In Experiment 1, native English, Persian, and Japanese speakers were tested on a repetition detection task involving characters from Western, Arabic, and Japanese character sets. The character sets were tested in blocks, in each of which subjects were presented with four characters for 16 ms and asked to report whether any two of the characters were identical. The subjects were faster detecting repetitions that were presented unilaterally rather than bilaterally, and there was no interaction with stimulus familiarity. A second experiment replicated this finding with native English speakers only, using a longer stimulus duration (150 ms). We had previously proposed that the UFA arises because the low-level processes that group physically identical items operate more efficiently within than across hemifields. Our data now indicate that this grouping process is insensitive to item familiarity, supporting the claim that the process is low-level.	\N	\N
22537695	Deficits in cognitive functioning are associated with many safety concerns, including difficulties performing activities of daily living, medication errors, motor vehicle accidents, impaired awareness of deficits, decision-making capacity, falls, and travel away from home. Preventing adverse safety outcomes is particularly relevant in rehabilitation patients. Integration of information and recommendations stemming from allied disciplines, such as rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and neuropsychology, is the most effective way to limit poor outcomes. Education and prevention counseling by health care professionals is an important approach in limiting adverse safety outcomes in patients with cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
22545929	Recognition memory for unfamiliar faces is facilitated when contextual cues (e.g., head pose, background environment, hair and clothing) are consistent between study and test. By contrast, inconsistencies in external features, especially hair, promote errors in unfamiliar face-matching tasks. For the construction of facial composites, as carried out by witnesses and victims of crime, the role of external features (hair, ears, and neck) is less clear, although research does suggest their involvement. Here, over three experiments, we investigate the impact of external features for recovering facial memories using a modern, recognition-based composite system, EvoFIT. Participant-constructors inspected an unfamiliar target face and, one day later, repeatedly selected items from arrays of whole faces, with "breeding," to "evolve" a composite with EvoFIT; further participants (evaluators) named the resulting composites. In Experiment 1, the important internal-features (eyes, brows, nose, and mouth) were constructed more identifiably when the visual presence of external features was decreased by Gaussian blur during construction: higher blur yielded more identifiable internal-features. In Experiment 2, increasing the visible extent of external features (to match the target's) in the presented face-arrays also improved internal-features quality, although less so than when external features were masked throughout construction. Experiment 3 demonstrated that masking external-features promoted substantially more identifiable images than using the previous method of blurring external-features. Overall, the research indicates that external features are a distractive rather than a beneficial cue for face construction; the results also provide a much better method to construct composites, one that should dramatically increase identification of offenders.	\N	\N
22560111	Consciousness alterations can be experienced during unstructured, monotonous stimuli. These effects have not been linked to particular cognitive operations; individual differences in response to such stimulation remain poorly understood. We examined the role of hypnotizability and dissociative tendencies in mind-wandering (MW) during a sensory homogenization procedure (ganzfeld). We expected that the influence of ganzfeld on MW would be more pronounced among highly hypnotizable individuals (highs), particularly those high in dissociative tendencies. High and low hypnotizables, also stratified by dissociation, completed the sustained attention to response task during ganzfeld and control conditions. High dissociative highs made more commission errors during ganzfeld, suggesting increased MW, whereas the other groups displayed the opposite pattern. Increases in commission errors from the control condition to ganzfeld were associated with more alterations in consciousness and negative affect, but only among highs. Sensory homogenization had opposite effects on MW depending on the interaction of hypnotizability and dissociation.	\N	\N
22563629	Sounds deviating from an otherwise repeated stream of task-irrelevant auditory stimuli (deviant sounds among standard sounds) are known to capture attention and impact negatively on ongoing behavioral performance (behavioral oddball distraction). Traditional views consider such distraction as the ineluctable consequence of the deviant sounds' low probability of occurrence relative to that of the standard. Contrary to this contention, recent evidence demonstrates that distraction by deviant sounds is not obligatory and occurs only when sounds (standards and deviants), though to be ignored, act as useful warning cues by providing information as to whether and when a target stimulus is to be presented (Parmentier, Elsley, & Ljungberg, 2010). The present study aimed to extend this finding by disentangling the roles of event information (target's probability of occurrence) and temporal information (target's time of occurrence). Comparing performance in a cross-modal oddball task where standard and deviant sounds provided temporal information, event information, both, or none, we found that distraction by deviant sounds emerged when sounds conveyed event information. These results suggest that unexpected changes in a stream of sounds yield behavioral distraction to the extent that standards and deviants carry relevant goal-directed information, specifically, the likelihood of occurrence of an upcoming target.	\N	\N
22563872	The search for predictors of schizophrenia has accelerated with a growing focus on early intervention and prevention of psychotic illness. Studying nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia enables identification of markers of vulnerability for the illness independent of confounds associated with psychosis. The goal of these studies was to develop new auditory continuous performance tests (ACPTs) and evaluate their effects in individuals with schizophrenia and their relatives. We carried out two studies of auditory vigilance with tasks involving working memory (WM) and interference control with increasing levels of cognitive load to discern the information-processing vulnerabilities in a sample of schizophrenia patients, and two samples of nonpsychotic relatives of individuals with schizophrenia and controls. Study 1 assessed adults (mean age = 41), and Study 2 assessed teenagers and young adults age 13-25 (M = 19). Patients with schizophrenia were impaired on all five versions of the ACPTs, whereas relatives were impaired only on WM tasks, particularly the two interference tasks that maximize cognitive load. Across all groups, the interference tasks were more difficult to perform than the other tasks. Schizophrenia patients performed worse than relatives, who performed worse than controls. For patients, the effect sizes were large (Cohen's d = 1.5), whereas for relatives they were moderate (d = ~0.40-0.50). There was no age by group interaction in the relatives-control comparison except for participants <31 years of age. Novel WM tasks that manipulate cognitive load and interference control index an important component of the vulnerability to schizophrenia.	\N	\N
22564396	A previous study reported a method for measuring the spectral transmittance of individual human eyelids. A prototype light mask using narrow-band "green" light (λmax = 527 nm) was used to deliver light through closed eyelids in two within-subjects studies. The first study investigated whether an individual-specific light dose could suppress melatonin by 40% through the closed eyelid without disrupting sleep. The light doses were delivered at three times during the night: 1) beginning (while subjects were awake), 2) middle (during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep), and 3) end (during non-REM sleep). The second study investigated whether two individual-specific light doses expected to suppress melatonin by 30% and 60% and delivered through subjects' closed eyelids before the time of their predicted minimum core body temperature would phase delay the timing of their dim light melatonin onset (DLMO). Compared to a dark control night, light delivered through eyelids suppressed melatonin by 36% (p = 0.01) after 60-minute light exposure at the beginning, 45% (p = 0.01) at the middle, and 56% (p < 0.0001) at the end of the night. In the second study, compared to a dark control night, melatonin was suppressed by 25% (p = 0.03) and by 45% (p = 0.009) and circadian phase, as measured by DLMO, was delayed by 17 minutes (p = 0.03) and 71 minutes (ns) after 60-minute exposures to light levels 1 and 2, respectively. These studies demonstrate that individual-specific doses of light delivered through closed eyelids can suppress melatonin and phase shift DLMO and may be used to treat circadian sleep disorders.	\N	\N
22571890	The present study tested predictions derived from the Risk as Feelings hypothesis about the effects of prior patients' negative treatment outcomes on physicians' subsequent treatment decisions. Two experiments at The University of Chicago, U.S.A., utilized a computer simulation of an abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) patient with enhanced realism to present participants with one of three experimental conditions: AAA rupture causing a watchful waiting death (WWD), perioperative death (PD), or a successful operation (SO), as well as the statistical treatment guidelines for AAA. Experiment 1 tested effects of these simulated outcomes on (n = 76) laboratory participants' (university student sample) self-reported emotions, and their ratings of valence and arousal of the AAA rupture simulation and other emotion-inducing picture stimuli. Experiment 2 tested two hypotheses: 1) that experiencing a patient WWD in the practice trial's experimental condition would lead physicians to choose surgery earlier, and 2) experiencing a patient PD would lead physicians to choose surgery later with the next patient. Experiment 2 presented (n = 132) physicians (surgeons and geriatricians) with the same experimental manipulation and a second simulated AAA patient. Physicians then chose to either go to surgery or continue watchful waiting. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the WWD experimental condition significantly increased anxiety, and was rated similarly to other negative and arousing pictures. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that, after controlling for demographics, baseline anxiety, intolerance for uncertainty, risk attitudes, and the influence of simulation characteristics, the WWD experimental condition significantly expedited decisions to choose surgery for the next patient. The results support the Risk as Feelings hypothesis on physicians' treatment decisions in a realistic AAA patient computer simulation. Bad outcomes affected emotions and decisions, even with statistical AAA rupture risk guidance present. These results suggest that bad patient outcomes cause physicians to experience anxiety and regret that influences their subsequent treatment decision-making for the next patient.	\N	\N
22574846	In a recent paper published in the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, we assessed the differences between sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized male adolescent sexual abusers ( Burton, Duty, & Leibowitz, 2011 ). We found that the sexually victimized group had more severe developmental antecedents (e.g., trauma and early exposure to pornography) and behavioral difficulties (sexual aggression, arousal, pornography use, and nonsexual offenses). The present study compares sexually victimized and nonsexually victimized adolescent sexual abusers with a group of nonsexually victimized delinquent youth. Findings included that delinquent youth had fewer behavioral and developmental problems than the comparison groups. In addition, sexually victimized sexual abusers had the highest mean scores on trauma and personality measures. Implications for research and treatment are offered.	\N	\N
22579705	Patients with multimodal semantic impairment following stroke (referred to here as 'semantic aphasia' or SA) fail to show the standard effects of frequency in comprehension tasks. Instead, they show absent or even reverse frequency effects: i.e., better understanding of less common words. In addition, SA is associated with poor regulatory control of semantic processing and executive deficits. We used a synonym judgement task to investigate the possibility that the normal processing advantage for high frequency (HF) words fails to emerge in these patients because HF items place greater demands on executive control. In the first part of this study, SA patients showed better performance on more imageable as opposed to abstract items, but minimal or reverse frequency effects in the same task, and these negative effects of word frequency on comprehension were related to the degree of executive impairment. Ratings from healthy subjects indicated that it was easier to establish potential semantic associations between probe and distracter words for HF trials, suggesting that reverse frequency effects might reflect a failure to suppress spurious associations between HF probes and distracters. In a subsequent experiment, the aphasic patients' performance improved when HF probes and targets were presented alongside low frequency distracters, supporting this hypothesis. An additional study with healthy participants used dual task methodology to examine the impact of divided attention on synonym judgement. Although frequently encountered words were processed more efficiently overall, the secondary task selectively disrupted performance for high but not low frequency trials. Taken together, these results show that positive effects of frequency are counteracted in SA by increases in semantic control requirements for HF words.	\N	\N
22579968	Processing in one sensory modality may modulate processing in another. Here we investigate how simply viewing the hand can influence the sense of touch. Previous studies showed that non-informative vision of the hand enhances tactile acuity, relative to viewing an object at the same location. However, it remains unclear whether this Visual Enhancement of Touch (VET) involves a phasic enhancement of tactile processing circuits triggered by the visual event of seeing the hand, or more prolonged, tonic neuroplastic changes, such as recruitment of additional cortical areas for tactile processing. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) evoked by electrical stimulation of the right middle finger, both before and shortly after viewing either the right hand, or a neutral object presented via a mirror. Crucially, and unlike prior studies, our visual exposures were unpredictable and brief, in addition to being non-informative about touch. Viewing the hand, as opposed to viewing an object, enhanced tactile spatial discrimination measured using grating orientation judgements, and also the P50 SEP component, which has been linked to early somatosensory cortical processing. This was a trial-specific, phasic effect, occurring within a few seconds of each visual onset, rather than an accumulating, tonic effect. Thus, somatosensory cortical modulation can be triggered even by a brief, non-informative glimpse of one's hand. Such rapid multisensory modulation reveals novel aspects of the specialised brain systems for functionally representing the body.	\N	\N
22580017	Covert spatial attention can increase contrast sensitivity either by changes in contrast gain or by changes in response gain, depending on the size of the attention field and the size of the stimulus (Herrmann et al., 2010), as predicted by the normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). For feature-based attention, unlike spatial attention, the model predicts only changes in response gain, regardless of whether the featural extent of the attention field is small or large. To test this prediction, we measured the contrast dependence of feature-based attention. Observers performed an orientation-discrimination task on a spatial array of grating patches. The spatial locations of the gratings were varied randomly so that observers could not attend to specific locations. Feature-based attention was manipulated with a 75% valid and 25% invalid pre-cue, and the featural extent of the attention field was manipulated by introducing uncertainty about the upcoming grating orientation. Performance accuracy was better for valid than for invalid pre-cues, consistent with a change in response gain, when the featural extent of the attention field was small (low uncertainty) or when it was large (high uncertainty) relative to the featural extent of the stimulus. These results for feature-based attention clearly differ from results of analogous experiments with spatial attention, yet both support key predictions of the normalization model of attention.	\N	\N
22582689	Many sports require fine spatiotemporal resolution for optimal performance. Previous studies have compared anticipatory skills and the decision-making process in athletes; however, there is little information on visual skills of elite athletes, particularly hockey players. To assess visual skills of Olympic hockey players and analyze differences by playing position, and to analyze improvement of visual skills after training, 21 Olympic field hockey players were pre- and post-tested on 11 visual tasks following a 10-wk. visual training program consisting of computer-based visual exercises. There were no mean differences at pre-test between players of different positions, suggesting that performance on these visual skills was independent of playing position. However, after training, an improvement was seen in all players (when scores were averaged across all 11 visual tasks) with goalkeepers improving significantly more than any other position. This suggests the possibility of improving visual skills even in an elite population.	\N	\N
22583090	QuikScan (QS) is an innovative design that aims to improve accessibility, comprehensibility, and subsequent recall of expository text by means of frequent within-document summaries that are formatted as numbered list items. The numbers in the QS summaries correspond to numbers placed in the body of the document where the summarized ideas are discussed in full. To examine the influence of QS summaries on participants' perceptions of text quality (i.e., comprehensibility, structure, and interest) and recall, an experimental - control group design compared the effects of a QS text with a structured abstract (SA) text. Forty psychology students participated voluntarily or received course credits. Students first read a control (SA) or experimental (QS) text on flashbulb memory (FBM). Next, their perceptions of text quality were measured through a questionnaire. Recall was assessed with an open answer test with items for facts, comprehension and higher order information. Perceptions of text quality did not vary across conditions. But QS did lead to significantly and substantially (d= 1.57) higher overall recall scores. Participants with the QS text performed significantly better on all item types than participants with the SA text. Studying a QS text led to a substantial improvement in recall compared to an SA text. Further research is needed to examine how readers study QS texts and whether a text model hypothesis or a repetition effect hypothesis accounts for the effectiveness. The first hypothesis posits that the QS summaries support the reader in constructing a text schema. The second attributes the effects of these summaries to their repetition of text topics.	\N	\N
22612165	One approach to understanding working memory (WM) holds that individual differences in WM capacity arise from the amount of information a person can store in WM over short periods of time. This view is especially prevalent in WM research conducted with the visual arrays task. Within this tradition, many researchers have concluded that the average person can maintain approximately 4 items in WM. The present study challenges this interpretation by demonstrating that performance on the visual arrays task is subject to time-related factors that are associated with retrieval from long-term memory. Experiment 1 demonstrates that memory for an array does not decay as a product of absolute time, which is consistent with both maintenance- and retrieval-based explanations of visual arrays performance. Experiment 2 introduced a manipulation of temporal discriminability by varying the relative spacing of trials in time. We found that memory for a target array was significantly influenced by its temporal compression with, or isolation from, a preceding trial. Subsequent experiments extend these effects to sub-capacity set sizes and demonstrate that changes in the size of k are meaningful to prediction of performance on other measures of WM capacity as well as general fluid intelligence. We conclude that performance on the visual arrays task does not reflect a multi-item storage system but instead measures a person's ability to accurately retrieve information in the face of proactive interference.	\N	\N
22612769	Performing two cognitive tasks at the same time can degrade performance for either domain-general reasons (e.g., both tasks require attention) or domain-specific reasons (e.g., both tasks require visual working memory). We tested predictions of these two accounts of interference on the task of driving while using language, a naturally occurring dual task. Using language and driving a vehicle use different perceptual and motor skills. As a consequence, a domain-general explanation for interference in this dual task appears most plausible. However, recent evidence from the language processing literature suggests that when people use language with motor content (e.g., language about actions) or visual content (e.g., language about visible objects and events), they engage their motor and perceptual systems in ways specifically reflecting the actions and percepts that the language is about. This raises the possibility that language might interfere with driving for domain-specific reasons when the language has visual or motor content. To test this, we had participants drive a simulated vehicle while simultaneously answering true-false statements that had motor, visual, or abstract content. A domain-general explanation for interference would predict greater distraction in each of these three conditions compared with control, while a domain-specific explanation would predict greater interference in the motor and visual conditions. Both of these predictions were borne out but on different measures of distraction, suggesting that language-driven distraction during driving and dual tasks involving language in general may be the result not only of domain-general causes but also specific interference caused by linguistic content.	\N	\N
22620487	We previously described dynamic, noncontrast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the female genitalia as a reproducible, nonintrusive, objective means of quantifying sexual arousal response in women without sexual difficulties. These studies showed an increase in clitoral engorgement ranging from 50 to 300% in healthy women during sexual arousal. This study sought to evaluate the genital arousal response in women with female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD) after administration of sildenafil and placebo. We performed a multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study to assess the clitoral engorgement response using dynamic MRI in women with FSAD after administering sildenafil and placebo followed by audiovisual sexual stimulation (AVSS). Nineteen premenopausal women with FSAD underwent two MRI sessions. Subjects were randomized to receive either (i) sildenafil 100 mg during the first session followed by placebo during the second session, or (ii) placebo followed by sildenafil. During each session, baseline MR images were obtained while subjects viewed a neutral video. Subjects then ingested sildenafil or placebo. After 30 minutes, a series of MRIs were obtained at 3-minute intervals for 10 time points while subjects viewed AVSS. A positive sexual arousal response was achieved if clitoral volume increased ≥50% from baseline. Thirteen of 19 (68%) subjects achieved a ≥50% increase in clitoral engorgement from baseline when administered sildenafil or placebo 30 minutes after dose administration. At 60 minutes after administration, 17/19 (89%) subjects receiving sildenafil and 16/19 (84%) subjects receiving placebo had responded (P value 0.3173). Sildenafil did not augment the genital response in women with FSAD. Secondarily, a majority of women in this study did not have impaired clitoral engorgement as measured by MRI, suggesting that FSAD is not predominantly a disorder of genital engorgement.	\N	\N
22621354	Long-haul airline pilots often experience elevated levels of fatigue due to extended work hours and circadian misalignment of sleep and wake periods. During long-haul trips, pilots are typically given 1-3 d off between flights (i.e., layover) to recover from, and prepare for, duty. Anecdotally, some pilots prefer long layovers because it maximizes the time available for recovery and preparation, but others prefer short layovers because it minimizes both the length of the trip, and the degree to which the body clock changes from "home time" to the layover time zone. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of layover length on the sleep, subjective fatigue levels, and capacity to sustain attention of long-haul pilots. Participants were 19 male pilots (10 Captains, 9 First Officers) working for an international airline. Data were collected during an 11- or 12-d international trip. The trips involved (i) 4 d at home prior to the trip; (ii) an eastward flight of 13.5 h across seven time zones; (iii) a layover of either 39 h (i.e., short, n = 9) or 62 h (i.e., long, n = 10); (iv) a return westward flight of 14.3 h across seven time zones; and (v) 4 d off at home after the trip. Sleep was recorded using a self-report sleep diary and wrist activity monitor; subjective fatigue level was measured using the Samn-Perelli Fatigue Checklist; and sustained attention was assessed using the psychomotor vigilance task for a personal digital assistant (PalmPVT). Mixed-model regression analyses were used to determine the effects of layover length (short, long) on the amount of sleep that pilots obtained during the trip, and on the pilots' subjective fatigue levels and capacity to sustain attention. There was no main effect of layover length on ground-based sleep or in-flight sleep, but pilots who had a short layover at the midpoint of their trip had higher subjective fatigue levels and poorer sustained attention than pilots who had a long layover. The results of this study indicate that a short layover during a long-haul trip does not substantially disrupt pilots' sleep, but it may result in elevated levels of fatigue during and after the trip. If short layovers are used, pilots should have a minimum of 4 d off to recover prior to their next long-haul trip.	\N	\N
22624007	The aim of this study was to investigate, using eye-tracking technique, the influence of bottom-up and top-down processes on visual behavior while subjects, naïve to art criticism, were presented with representational paintings. Forty-two subjects viewed color and black and white paintings (Color) categorized as dynamic or static (Dynamism) (bottom-up processes). Half of the images represented natural environments and half human subjects (Content); all stimuli were displayed under aesthetic and movement judgment conditions (Task) (top-down processes). Results on gazing behavior showed that content-related top-down processes prevailed over low-level visually-driven bottom-up processes when a human subject is represented in the painting. On the contrary, bottom-up processes, mediated by low-level visual features, particularly affected gazing behavior when looking at nature-content images. We discuss our results proposing a reconsideration of the definition of content-related top-down processes in accordance with the concept of embodied simulation in art perception.	\N	\N
22628142	To explore treatment response to Osmotic Release Oral System(®) (OROS) methylphenidate in children with ADHD with and without comorbid learning disability (LD). Data were analyzed from two 6-week, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover studies evaluating individually determined doses of OROS methylphenidate versus placebo in 135 children (ages 9 to 12 years) with ADHD with or without an LD in reading, math, or both. The sample was demographically diverse, with 31% females and more than 40% minority, predominantly African American and Hispanic. On two laboratory school days, participants received either OROS methylphenidate or placebo and were given a battery of cognitive and behavioral tests. Treatment with OROS methylphenidate led to improvement in ADHD Rating Scale scores for participants with or without comorbid LD. Both groups performed better during treatment with OROS methylphenidate than placebo on measures of cognitive skills (i.e., Test of Variables of Attention, Finger Windows Backwards), academically related tasks (i.e., Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, Test of Handwriting Skills-Revised, Permanent Product Math Test), and observed classroom behavior (i.e., Swanson, Kotkin, Alger, M-Flynn, and Pelham Scale). In children with ADHD with or without comorbid LD, behavior and performance improved during treatment with OROS methylphenidate.	\N	\N
22637710	Previous studies have shown independent attentional selection of targets in the left and right visual hemifields during attentional tracking (Alvarez & Cavanagh, 2005) but not during a visual search (Luck, Hillyard, Mangun, & Gazzaniga, 1989). Here we tested whether multifocal spatial attention is the critical process that operates independently in the two hemifields. It is explicitly required in tracking (attend to a subset of object locations, suppress the others) but not in the standard visual search task (where all items are potential targets). We used a modified visual search task in which observers searched for a target within a subset of display items, where the subset was selected based on location (Experiments 1 and 3A) or based on a salient feature difference (Experiments 2 and 3B). The results show hemifield independence in this subset visual search task with location-based selection but not with feature-based selection; this effect cannot be explained by general difficulty (Experiment 4). Combined, these findings suggest that hemifield independence is a signature of multifocal spatial attention and highlight the need for cognitive and neural theories of attention to account for anatomical constraints on selection mechanisms.	\N	\N
22648655	Perhaps the most common method of depicting data, in both scientific communication and popular media, is the bar graph. Bar graphs often depict measures of central tendency, but they do so asymmetrically: A mean, for example, is depicted not by a point, but by the edge of a bar that originates from a single axis. Here we show that this graphical asymmetry gives rise to a corresponding cognitive asymmetry. When viewers are shown a bar depicting a mean value and are then asked to judge the likelihood of a particular data point being part of its underlying distribution, viewers judge points that fall within the bar as being more likely than points equidistant from the mean, but outside the bar--as if the bar somehow "contained" the relevant data. This "within-the-bar bias" occurred (a) for graphs with and without error bars, (b) for bars that originated from both lower and upper axes, (c) for test points with equally extreme numeric labels, (d) both from memory (when the bar was no longer visible) and in online perception (while the bar was visible during the judgment), (e) both within and between subjects, and (f) in populations including college students, adults from the broader community, and online samples. We posit that this bias may arise due to principles of object perception, and we show how it has downstream implications for decision making.	\N	\N
22652346	People with schizophrenia have neuro-cognitive deficits that are associated with poor functional outcome, yet their awareness of their cognitive deficiencies is variable. As new treatments for cognition are developed, it will be important that patients are receptive to the need for more therapy. Since insight into symptoms has been associated with treatment compliance, it may be of value to provide psycho-education to improve understanding about cognition in schizophrenia. We report a randomized controlled trial that enrolled 80 subjects in either a brief psycho-education intervention about cognition, or a control condition. Subjects in the two conditions did not differ at baseline in insight or receptiveness to treatment, or on demographic, cognitive, or psychiatric variables. Current cognitive impairment of subjects was evidenced by the indice of working memory, attention and executive functioning abilities, (X=77.45 intervention group; 82.50 control condition), that was significantly below both the normative mean and estimated average premorbid IQs (X=101.3 intervention group; X=104.57 control condition). Multivariate repeated measures ANOVAs indicated that subjects who received the psycho-education did not improve insight into their cognitive deficits or willingness to engage in treatment for cognitive dysfunction. While the failure to find a significant impact of this intervention on awareness of cognitive deficit and receptiveness to cognitive treatment raises questions about the malleability of insight into neuro-cognitive deficits, the intervention was briefer than most reported psycho-education programs and multi-session formats may prove to be more effective.	\N	\N
22659025	Experts sometimes show higher working memory performance than novices but contrary to this finding, evidence for a positive effect of item-specific training is rare. This study provides evidence for item-specific training gains. We presented Chinese characters and artificial patterns (spotted figures) in a change detection task before and after training (varying set size from 1 to 3). A part of the Chinese characters were trained; others and the spotted figures were not trained. Memory capacity was between one and two items. For set size two, memory performance for trained characters was higher than for untrained characters and they were processed faster. Within superior intraparietal sulcus and middle occipital cortex (part of the putative posterior working memory network), the neural activity asymptotically increased with set size. Untrained items reached the activation maximum already at set size two. For this set size, the activity was significantly reduced for trained items so that a further increase from two to three items was observed. We interpret this difference as a correlate of a gain in neural efficiency. The size of this difference correlated with the training gain in memory. We assume that training causes a more efficient neural representation of trained items supported by long-term memory and this allows holding more items in working memory.	\N	\N
22676077	Recent conceptualisations of anxiety posit that equivocal findings related to the time-course of disengaging from threat-relevant stimuli may be attributable to individual differences in associative and rule-based processing. The current study was designed to test the hypothesis that strength of spider-fear associations would indirectly predict reported spider fear via impaired disengagement. One hundred and thirty-one undergraduate volunteer participants completed the Go/No-go Association Task, a visual search task, and self-report spider fear questionnaires. Stronger spider-fear associations were associated with reduced disengagement accuracy, whereas higher levels of reported spider fear were related to faster engagement with and disengagement from spiders. Bootstrapping multiple mediation analyses demonstrated that stronger-spider fear associations evidenced an indirect relationship with reported spider fear via reduced disengagement accuracy, highlighting the importance of fine-grained analyses of different aspects of cognitive bias. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive models of anxiety.	\N	\N
22683449	During covert shifts of tactile spatial attention both somatotopic and external reference frames are employed to encode hand location. When participants cross their hands these frames of references produce conflicting spatial codes which disrupt tactile attentional selectivity. Because attentional shifts are triggered not only in Attention tasks but also during covert movement preparation, the present study aimed at investigating the reference frame employed during such 'motor shifts of attention'. Event related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a Motor task where a visual cue (S1) indicated the relevant hand for a manual movement prior to a tactile Go/Nogo stimulus (S2). For comparison, we ran a tactile Attention task where the same cue (S1) now indicated the relevant hand for a tactile discrimination (S2). Both tasks were performed under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions. In both Attention and Motor tasks similar lateralized components were observed following S1 presentation. Anterior and posterior ERP components indicative of covert attention shifts were exclusively guided by an external reference frame, while a later central negativity operated according to a somatotopic reference frame in both tasks. In the Motor task, this negativity reflected selective activation of the motor cortex in preparation for movement execution. In the Attention task, this component might reflect activity in the somatosensory cortex in preparation for the subsequent tactile discrimination. The presence of multiple and conflicting spatial codes resulted in disruption of tactile attentional selection in the Attention task where attentional modulations of tactile processing were delayed and attenuated with crossed hands as indicated by the analysis of ERPs elicited by S2. In contrast, attentional modulations of S2 processing in the Motor task were largely unaffected by the hand posture manipulation, suggesting that motor attention employs primarily one spatial coordinate system.	\N	\N
22683945	This study investigated whether trauma-related stimuli are preferentially processed at the expense of ongoing processing of neutral stimuli. Participants in the experimental group viewed negative pictures (Trauma) as an analogue trauma induction. Participants in the control group viewed visually similar neutral pictures (Neutral Match). In a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task participants identified two target pictures. The first target (T1) was a neutral picture, whereas the second target (T2) was a familiar negative or neutral picture or a new neutral or negative picture. In line with hypotheses, only participants in the experimental group showed preferential processing of Trauma pictures. In the experimental group, negative T2 impaired the identification of (neutral) T1 if the T2 immediately followed the T1 in the RSVP stream. The results are consistent with a processing priority of trauma-related information, apparently at the expense of the ongoing processing of neutral information.	\N	\N
22684039	Arousal from sleep is a major defense mechanism in infants against hypoxia and/or hypercapnia. Arousal failure may be an important contributor to SIDS. Areas of the brainstem that have been found to be abnormal in a majority of SIDS infants are involved in the arousal process. Arousal is sleep state dependent, being depressed during AS in most mammals, but depressed during QS in human infants. Repeated exposure to hypoxia causes a progressive blunting of arousal that may involve medullary raphe GABAergic mechanisms. Whereas CB chemoreceptors contribute heavily to arousal in response to hypoxia, serotonergic central chemoreceptors have been implicated in the arousal response to CO(2). Pulmonary or chest wall mechanoreceptors also contribute to arousal in proportion to the ventilatory response and decreases in their input may contribute to depressed arousal during AS. Little is known about specific arousal pathways beyond the NTS. Whether CB chemoreceptor stimulation directly stimulates arousal centers or whether this is done indirectly through respiratory networks remains unknown. This review will focus on arousal in response to hypoxia and CO(2) in the fetus and newborn and will outline what we know (and do not know) about the involvement of the carotid body in this process.	\N	\N
22685575	The attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in Parkinson's disease (PD) has long been considered neuropsychological evidence of the involvement of meso-prefrontal and prefrontal-striatal circuits in cognitive flexibility. However, recent studies have suggested that non-dopaminergic, posterior cortical pathologies may also contribute to this deficit. Although several neuroimaging studies have addressed this issue, the results of these studies were confounded by the use of tasks that required other cognitive processes in addition to set-shifting, such as rule learning and working memory. In this study, we attempted to identify the neural correlates of the attentional set-shifting deficit in PD using a compound letter task and 18F-fluoro-deoxy-glucose (FDG) positron emission tomography during rest. Shift cost, which is a measure of attentional set-shifting ability, was significantly correlated with hypometabolism in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, including the putative human frontal eye field. Our results provide direct evidence that dysfunction in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes a primary contribution to the attentional set-shifting deficit that has been observed in PD patients.	\N	\N
22686406	Mind wandering occurs when a person's stream of thought moves from the primary task to task-unrelated matters. Some theories of mind wandering suggest that it is caused by decreased attentional control associated with lower working memory (WM) capacity. Others suggest that it is caused by attention being directed toward internally generated thoughts and that it is associated with higher WM capacity. These ideas were assessed testing older adults because they have been argued to have reduced attentional control and lower WM capacity. The first account predicts that mind wandering should increase in older adults, while the second account predicts the opposite. Two experiments show that older adults exhibited a lower rate of mind wandering than younger adults. However, when using text interest as a covariate, the age difference in mind wandering disappeared. These results are further addressed in light of participants' current concerns and preserved situation model processing in cognitive aging.	\N	\N
22687333	A dynamic systems model was used to generate parameters describing a phenotype of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) behavior in a sample of 36 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and/or fibromyalgia (FM) and 36 case-matched healthy controls. Altered neuroendocrine function, particularly in relation to somatic symptoms and poor sleep quality, may contribute to the pathophysiology of these disorders. Blood plasma was assayed for cortisol and ACTH every 10 min for 24h. The dynamic model was specified with an ordinary differential equation using three parameters: (1) ACTH-adrenal signaling, (2) inhibitory feedback, and (3) non-ACTH influences. The model was "personalized" by estimating an individualized set of parameters from each participant's data. Day and nighttime parameters were assessed separately. Two nocturnal parameters (ACTH-adrenal signaling and inhibitory feedback) significantly differentiated the two patient subgroups ("fatigue-predominant" patients with CFS only versus "pain-predominant" patients with FM and comorbid chronic fatigue) from controls (all p's<.05), whereas daytime parameters and diurnal/nocturnal slopes did not. The same nocturnal parameters were significantly associated with somatic symptoms among patients (p's<.05). There was a significantly different pattern of association between nocturnal non-ACTH influences and sleep quality among patients versus controls (p<.05). Although speculative, the finding that patient somatic symptoms decreased when more cortisol was produced per unit ACTH, is consistent with cortisol's anti-inflammatory and sleep-modulatory effects. Patients' HPA systems may compensate by promoting more rapid or sustained cortisol production. Mapping "behavioral phenotypes" of stress-arousal systems onto symptom clusters may help disentangle the pathophysiology of complex disorders with frequent comorbidity.	\N	\N
22691441	Recent data suggest that word valence modulates subsequent cognitive processing. However, the contribution of word arousal is less understood. In this study, behavioral and electrophysiological measures to neutral nouns and pseudowords that were preceded by either a high-arousal or a low-arousal word were recorded during a lexical decision task. Effects were found at an electrophysiological level. Target words and pseudowords elicited enhanced N100 amplitudes when they were preceded by high- compared to low-arousing words. This effect may reflect perceptual potentiation during the allocation of attentional resources when the new stimulus is processed. Enhanced amplitudes in a late positivity when target words and pseudowords followed high-arousal primes were also observed, which could be related to sustained attention during supplementary analyses at a post-lexical level.	\N	\N
22694365	Dual-tasking probes divided attention and causes performance changes that are associated with an increased risk for falls in the elderly. There is no systematic review investigating the effect of task type and complexity on the prediction of elderly falls. This article synthesizes research evidence regarding this issue on the contents of dual-tasking walking. Relevant studies were systematically identified from electronic databases of Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane CENTRAL and PsycINFO, and the reference lists of identified articles. The selection criteria were defined a priori. Two independent reviewers classified task types based on properties for cognitive demand, assessed the methodological quality with a customized checklist, and calculated the odds ratio of fall prediction. There was one study of reaction time, one of discrimination and decision-making, 10 of mental tracking, three of verbal fluency and five of manual tasks. The methodological heterogeneity was manifested in the selection criteria, faller classification, tasks and measures, resulting in substantial heterogeneity (I(2) 87-92%). Meta-analyses resulted in a significant pooled odds ratio 1.33 (95% CI 1.18-1.50). The mental tracking task was the only type that yielded a significant odds ratio 3.30 (95% CI 2.00-5.44). Running meta-analyses separately for simple and difficult mental tracking task showed similar odds ratios. The mental tracking task yielded significant dual-task-related changes for fall prediction. Most studies successively used an appropriate level of task complexity specific to the specified population of interest. More research is required for definite conclusions regarding the effect of task type and complexity.	\N	\N
22696535	It is well established that the prefrontal cortex is involved during memory-guided tasks whereas visually guided tasks are controlled in part by a frontal-parietal network. However, the nature of the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control is not as well established. As such, this study examines the spatiotemporal pattern of brain activity that occurs during the transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control. We measured 128-channel scalp electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy individuals while they performed a grip force task. After visual feedback was removed, the first significant change in event-related activity occurred in the left central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in prefrontal cortex by 400 ms. Low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was used to localize the strongest activity to the left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex. A second experiment altered visual feedback gain but did not require memory. In contrast to memory-guided force control, altering visual feedback gain did not lead to early changes in the left central and midline prefrontal regions. Decreasing the spatial amplitude of visual feedback did lead to changes in the midline central region by 300 ms, followed by changes in occipital activity by 400 ms. The findings show that subjects rely on sensorimotor memory processes involving left ventral premotor cortex and ventral prefrontal cortex after the immediate transition from visually guided to memory-guided force control.	\N	\N
22704744	The Family Smoking Prevention and Control Act gave the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) legal authority to mandate graphic warning labels on cigarette advertising and packaging. The FDA requires that these graphic warning labels be embedded into cigarette advertising and packaging by September 2012. The aim of this study was to examine differences in recall and viewing patterns of text-only versus graphic cigarette warning labels and the association between viewing patterns and recall. Participants (current daily smokers; N=200) were randomized to view a cigarette advertisement with either text-only or graphic warning labels. Viewing patterns were measured using eye-tracking, and recall was later assessed. Sessions were conducted between November 2008 and November 2009. Data analysis was conducted between March 2011 and July 2011. There was a significant difference in percentage correct recall of the warning label between those in the text-only versus graphic warning label condition, 50% vs 83% (χ(2)=23.74, p=0.0001). Time to first viewing of the graphic warning label text and dwell time duration (i.e., time spent looking) on the graphic image were significantly associated with correct recall. Warning labels that drew attention more quickly and resulted in longer dwell times were associated with better recall. Graphic warning labels improve smokers' recall of warning and health risks; these labels do so by drawing and holding attention.	\N	\N
22711264	Conceiving of development with reference to homology can help identify developmental continuity where surface form shows considerable variation across age. I argue that there is a homology of structure between the object-centred, or triadic, interactions that emerge in infancy and later language. The structure of triadic interaction in infancy is first described as involving joint attention and joint engagement about a shared topic, and then a case is made that this structure is maintained through three levels of complexity in language-single word utterances, multiword utterances, and finally complex constructions. A focus on the homological relation between these social interactive structures may be useful in revealing developmental continuities where these may be obscured by quite different surface forms.	\N	\N
22712535	Attentional disengagement from negative affective information and engagement toward positive affective information appears to reflect an avoidant coping mechanism, one that may be associated with the belief that negative emotions are dangerous or undesirable (BNED). To test this hypothesis, we conducted two studies using a dot-probe task measuring attentional preference among college undergraduates. In the first study, BNED was associated with an attentional preference for positive facial cues over negative facial cues, evident after 1000 ms of exposure. In the second study, we included three exposure-time conditions; BNED appeared to be associated with an early disengagement from negative facial cues between 500 and 750 ms post-exposure and a subsequent orientation toward positive facial cues between 750 and 1000 ms post-exposure. We discuss these results in relation to avoidant coping and the relationship between anxiety and attention to affective cues.	\N	\N
22716195	We investigate the effects of exenatide on excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS), driving performance and depression score in patients with type 2 diabetes with EDS. Eight obese patients with diabetes but without obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) participated in a placebo-controlled single-blind study during which multiple wakefulness and sleep latency test, Epworth score, driving performance, depression score, fasting glucose and glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels were assessed at baseline, end of placebo and treatment phase at baseline and after 22 weeks of treatment. Mean (±standard error of the mean) age, body mass index (kg m(2) ) and HbA1c [mmol mol(-1) (%)] of patients at baseline were 50 ± 4.9 years, 37.6 ± 1.1 and 65 ± 19 (8.06 ± 0.41), respectively. When compared to placebo, exenatide treatment was associated with a decrease in both subjective and objective sleepiness, based on the Epworth score reduction and the sleep latency increase assessed by multiple objective sleepiness and sustained attention (OSLER) tests, respectively. Mean sleep latency time (adjusted for change in HbA1c and weight) were 32.1 ± 1.7, 29.1 ± 1.7 and 37.7 ± 1.7, respectively (P = 0.002). Modelling for covariates suggested that improvement in mean sleep latency time is predicted by changes in weight (P = 0.003), but not by changes in HbA1c (P = 0.054). Epworth sleepiness score was reduced significantly (values for placebo versus exenatide: 11.3 ± 1.2 versus 5.7 ± 1.3; P = 0.003). No significant change was noted in the depression score and driving performance. Exenatide is associated with a significant reduction in objective sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes without OSA, independent of HbA1c levels. These findings could form a basis for further studies to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of sleepiness in obese patients with type 2 diabetes.	\N	\N
22732031	The present research demonstrates that very brief variations in affect, being around 1 s in length and changing from trial to trial independently from semantic relatedness of primes and targets, modulate the amount of semantic priming. Implementing consonant and dissonant chords (Experiments 1 and 5), naturalistic sounds (Experiment 2), and visual facial primes (Experiment 3) in an (in)direct semantic priming paradigm, as well as brief facial feedback in a summative priming paradigm (Experiment 4), yielded increased priming effects under brief positive compared to negative affect. Furthermore, this modulation took place on the level of semantic spreading rather than on strategic mechanisms (Experiment 5). Alternative explanations such as distraction, motivation, arousal, and cognitive tuning could be ruled out. This phasic affective modulation constitutes a mechanism overlooked thus far that may contaminate priming effects in all priming paradigms that involve affective stimuli. Furthermore, this mechanism provides a novel explanation for the observation that priming effects are usually larger for positive than for negative stimuli. Finally, it has important implications for linguistic research, by suggesting that association norms may be biased for affective words.	\N	\N
22732349	We studied the interaction between the control mechanisms subserving spatial attention and central attention using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm. Two stimuli, a pure tone (T(1)) and a circular visual array (T(2)), including a salient target and a salient distractor, were presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies, each requiring a speeded response. Target-specific and distractor-specific lateralized event-related potentials were isolated by placing one of them at a lateral position and the other on the vertical midline. As SOA was decreased, a progressive reduction and postponement of a T(2)-locked N2pc component was observed with a lateral target and a central distractor. No lateralized potentials were associated with a lateral distractor and a central target. The sustained posterior contralateral negativity (SPCN) was observed independently of SOA modulation, only with a lateral target. We also observed an earlier positive deflection, the Ppc (positivity posterior contralateral), that was contralateral to both lateral targets and distractors, whose amplitude and latency were not affected by SOA variations. We conclude that central processing interferes specifically with target processing reflected by the N2pc and SPCN. We propose that the Ppc reflects an initial, bottom-up response to the presence of a salient stimulus, whereas the N2pc and SPCN reflect the controlled deployment of spatial attention to targets and maintenance of target information in visual short-term memory, respectively.	\N	\N
22739547	This study was designed to assess sexual dysfunction in women suffering from type 2 diabetes mellitus. Forty-five type 2 diabetic, non-menopausal married women, aged 20-55 years, who were referred to Shahid Labbafinejad Clinics from March 2008 to June 2009 were included in this study. They were compared to 91 non-diabetic volunteers. Sexual function was evaluated by the sexual function questionnaire. Genitourinary examination was performed in all subjects. Blood sample tests were requested for fasting blood sugar, hemoglobin A(1c), 2-hour postprandial glucose and lipid profile measurements. Ophthalmologic and neurologic examinations (checking deep tendon reflexes) were done for cases. The mean age of cases and controls was 42.17± 5.91 and 34.96 ± 8.30 years, respectively (p < 0.001). The prevalence of a high probability of female sexual dysfunction in 6 domains including desire, arousal sensation, arousal lubrication, orgasm, pain and enjoyment was 71.1, 84.4, 55.6, 71.1, 8.9 and 66.7% in the diabetes mellitus women and 56.6, 67.0, 59.3, 57.1, 25.3 and 53.8% in the non-diabetic volunteers, respectively. Differences were statistically significant in the 3 domains of desire, arousal sensation and pain (p < 0.05). Deep tendon reflexes were normal in all and 12.5% showed diabetic retinopathy. Sexual dysfunction in cases as well as in controls was high; however, further studies with a higher number of patients are needed to confirm the results.	\N	\N
22744778	The aim of this study was to identify the motor, cognitive, and behavioral determinants of driving status and risk factors for driving cessation in Huntington's disease (HD). Seventy-four patients with HD were evaluated for cognitive, motor, psychiatric, and functional status using a standardized battery (Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale [UHDRS] and supplemental neuropsychological testing) during a research clinic visit. Chart review was used to categorize patients into two driving status categories: (1) "currently driving" included those driving and driving but with clinician recommendation to restrict, and (2) "not driving" included those with clinician recommendation to cease driving and those not currently driving because of HD. Multi- and univariate logistic regression was used to identify significant clinical predictors of those driving versus not driving. Global cognitive performance and UHDRS Total Functional Capacity scores provided the best predictive model of driving cessation (Nagelkerke R(2) = 0.65; P < 0.0001). Measures of learning (P = 0.006) and psychomotor speed/attention (P = 0.003) accounted for the overall cognitive finding. In univariate analyses, numerous cognitive, motor, and daily functioning items were significantly associated with driving. Although driving status is associated with many aspects of the disease, results suggest that the strongest association is with cognitive performance. A detailed cognitive evaluation is an important component of multidisciplinary clinical assessment in patients with HD who are driving.	\N	\N
22748562	Epidemiological, cross-sectional, and prospective studies suggest that insomnia, chronic pain, and depression frequently co-occur and are mutually interacting conditions. However, the mechanisms underlying these comorbid disorders have yet to be elucidated. Overlapping mechanisms in the central nervous system suggest a common neurobiological substrate(s) may underlie the development and interplay of these disorders. We propose that the mesolimbic dopamine system is an underappreciated and attractive venue for the examination of neurobiological processes involved in the interactions, development, exacerbation, and maintenance of this symptom complex. In the present article, studies from multiple disciplines are reviewed to highlight the role of altered dopaminergic function in the promotion of arousal, pain sensitivity, and mood disturbance. We argue that studies aiming to elucidate common factors accounting for the comorbidity of insomnia, chronic pain, and depression should evaluate functioning within the mesolimbic dopaminergic system and its effect on common processes known to be dysregulated in all three disorders.	\N	\N
22750676	To investigate which frames of reference guide shifts of attention triggered during eye and hand movement preparation and the specificity of their effects on somatosensory processing, we recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a Go/Nogo task where a cue indicated to prepare an eye movement toward--or a hand movement with--the left or right hand. Before the imperative stimulus, a tactile probe was presented to one hand. Spatially selective modulations of tactile processing were more sustained for hand than eye movements, indicating stronger attentional modulations for the modality of the effector's sensory organ. Importantly, attentional modulations of somatosensory processing as well as lateralized ERP components in the preparation interval were virtually identical under uncrossed and crossed hands conditions, suggesting that shifts of attention triggered during hand and eye movement preparation are guided by a common external reference frame.	\N	\N
22752788	Cognitive functions may be altered in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) and it has been proposed that vigilance and attention changes play a fundamental role in all aspects of cognitive deficits noted in this disease. The use of event-related potentials (ERPs) is a high-time resolution technique that can be used to explore the presence of cognitive dysfunction. We review 23 empirical articles on ERPs in OSAS in order to contribute to the clarification of the pattern of cognitive deficits that are specific to this disease and to see whether there might be an improvement of abnormal psychophysiological findings with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. We conclude that ERP studies have contributed to demonstrating changes in cognitive attentive processing in OSAS, mainly in association with altered functioning of the prefrontal cortex, and that CPAP treatment may improve vigilance and attention and generally improve cerebral information processing in these patients. The remaining deficits during sufficient CPAP therapy may, however, reflect irreversible hypoxic cerebral damage.	\N	\N
22776904	Amphetamine-based medications robustly suppress symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their exact mechanisms remain poorly understood. Recent hemodynamic imaging studies have suggested that amphetamines may modulate the prefrontal and anterior cingulate brain regions, although few studies have been published and the results have not been entirely consistent. Meanwhile, several electrophysiological studies have shown that abnormal fast oscillations (in the γ range) may be closely linked to inattention and other cardinal symptoms of ADHD. In this study, we utilized magnetoencephalography to examine how amphetamines modulate high-frequency brain activity in adults with ADHD. Participants performed an auditory attention task, which required sustained attention in one block and passive listening in a separate block. Participants completed the task twice in the on-medication and off-medication states. All data were analyzed using beamforming techniques to resolve cortical regions showing event-related synchronizations and desynchronizations. Our primary findings indicated that oral administration of amphetamine decreased γ-band event-related desynchronization activity significantly in the medial prefrontal area and decreased event-related synchronization in bilateral superior parietal areas, left inferior parietal, and the left inferior frontal gyrus. These results suggest that psychostimulants strongly modulate γ activity in frontal and parietal cortical areas, which are known to be central to the brain's core attentional networks.	\N	\N
22782542	Heightened anticipation of future events has been characterized as a feature of certain anxiety disorders. In functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, anticipation of fearful/threatening images has been shown to robustly activate the insular cortex and amygdala in healthy subjects, in subjects with high trait anxiety, and in some with anxiety disorders. Blood oxygenation level dependent activation in response to negative image anticipation is also sensitive to anxiolytic treatment, suggesting that image anticipation probes anxiety systems. It is not clear, however, if behavioral responses to image anticipation are also sensitive to anxiolytics. This study tested the hypothesis that anxiety behaviors during anticipation of negative images are sensitive to anxiolytic treatment. This study examined the effects of alprazolam and pregabalin treatment on potentiated startle during affective image anticipation. There was an effect of anticipation type (negative versus neutral versus positive) on startle reactivity and subjective ratings, suggesting that the task was effective in assaying negative anticipatory arousal. Both treatments significantly reduced overall startle magnitude. However, neither treatment specifically affected potentiated startle during aversive anticipation. These data suggest that potentiated startle in response to anticipation of aversive images is not sensitive to anxiolytic treatments in a healthy population, limiting its use as a predictive model of anxiolytic activity. This article is a US Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.	\N	\N
22796982	People suppressing their emotions while facing an emotional event typically remember it less well. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the impairing effect of emotion suppression on successful memory encoding are not well understood. Because successful memory encoding relies on the hippocampus and the amygdala, we hypothesized that memory impairments due to emotion suppression are associated with down-regulated activity in these brain areas. 59 healthy females were instructed either to simply watch the pictures or to down-regulate their emotions by using a response-focused emotion suppression strategy. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and free recall of pictures was tested afterwards. As expected, suppressing one's emotions resulted in impaired recall of the pictures. On the neural level, the memory impairments were associated with reduced activity in the right hippocampus during successful encoding. No significant effects were observed in the amygdala. In addition, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was strongly reduced during emotion suppression, and these reductions predicted free-recall performance. Our results indicate that emotion suppression interferes with memory encoding on the hippocampal level, possibly by decoupling hippocampal and prefrontal encoding processes, suggesting that response-focused emotion suppression might be an adaptive strategy for impairing hippocampal memory formation in highly arousing situations.	\N	\N
22800656	The goal of the present study was to determine whether female restrained and unrestrained eaters demonstrated differential levels of attentional bias to high calorie foods when they were presented as distractors in a flanker task. This task consisted of four blocks of 68 trials in which three food pictures were briefly presented simultaneously on a computer screen. On each trial a high or low calorie target food was presented in the center of a pair of high or low calorie food flanker pictures and participants' reaction times to answer a basic question about whether they would consume the target food for breakfast were recorded. In Experiment 1, in which all participants were fed a snack prior to engaging in the flanker task, there was no evidence that restrained (n=29) or unrestrained (n=37) eaters had an attentional bias. However, in Experiment 2, when participants completed the flanker task while hungry, restrained eaters (n=27) experienced response conflict only when low calorie targets were flanked by high calorie distractors, whereas unrestrained eaters (n=46) were distracted by high calorie flankers regardless of the caloric content of the target cue. The results from this implicit task indicate that flankers interfere with hungry participants' responses to varying degrees depending on their cognitive restraint. Whether attentional bias to food cues subsequently affects food choices and eating behavior is a topic for further investigation.	\N	\N
22806665	In this research work, we contribute with a behaviour learning process for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for multimodal active perception, devised to be emergent, scalable and adaptive. This framework is composed by models built upon a common spatial configuration for encoding perception and action that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors, using a Bayesian approach devised in previous work. The proposed learning process is shown to reproduce goal-dependent human-like active perception behaviours by learning model parameters (referred to as "attentional sets") for different free-viewing and active search tasks. Learning was performed by presenting several 3D audiovisual virtual scenarios using a head-mounted display, while logging the spatial distribution of fixations of the subject (in 2D, on left and right images, and in 3D space), data which are consequently used as the training set for the framework. As a consequence, the hierarchical Bayesian framework adequately implements high-level behaviour resulting from low-level interaction of simpler building blocks by using the attentional sets learned for each task, and is able to change these attentional sets "on the fly," allowing the implementation of goal-dependent behaviours (i.e., top-down influences).	\N	\N
22808722	The accuracy and variability of a sustained low-level force contraction (2% of maximum voluntary contraction) was measured while participants viewed unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images during a feedback occluded force control task. Exposure to pleasant and unpleasant images led to a relative increase in force production but did not alter the variability of force production compared to conditions in which participants viewed neutral images. Findings are discussed with respect to prior work, emphasizing arousal specific changes that emerge at low target force levels.	\N	\N
22815960	The ability to quickly detect changes in our surroundings has been crucial to human adaption and survival. In everyday life we often need to identify whether an object is new and if an object has changed its location. In the current event-related potential (ERP) study we investigated the electrophysiological correlates and the time course in detecting different types of changes of an objecṫs location and identity. In a delayed match-to-sample task participants had to indicate whether two consecutive scenes containing a road, a house, and two objects, were either the same or different. In six randomly intermixed conditions the second scene was identical, one of the objects had changed its identity, one of the objects had changed its location, or the objects had switched locations. The results reveal different time courses for the processing of identity and location changes in spatial scenes. Whereas location changes elicited a posterior N2 effect, indicating early mismatch detection, followed by a P3 effect reflecting post-perceptual processing, identity changes elicited an anterior N3 effect, which was delayed and functionally distinct from the N2 effect found for the location changes. The condition in which two objects switched position elicited a late ERP effect, reflected by a P3 effect similar to that obtained for the location changes. In sum, this study is the first to cohesively show different time courses for the processing of location changes, identity changes, and object switches in spatial scenes, which manifest themselves in different electrophysiological correlates.	\N	\N
22824198	Preterm infants are exposed to loud noises during their stay in the neonatal intensive care unit which can lead to physiologic and behavioral alterations and even hearing loss. The use of earmuffs can reduce sound level and these changes. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the earmuffs in preterm infants solely cared for in closed incubators. A comparative prospective study comprising 20 clinically stable preterm infants weighing less than 1500 g cared in closed incubator was conducted. Preterm infants acted as their own controls whereby they were observed without earmuffs (Group 1) for 2 days and with earmuffs (Group 2) on consecutive 2 days. The preterm infants' physiologic responses and Anderson Behavioral State Scoring System (ABSS) scores were assessed over 30s every 2h for 8h during daytime for 4 days. Out of 20 preterm infants, 6 were male and 14 female with a mean birth weight of 1220 ± 209 g, gestational age of 29.9 ± 2.1 weeks. The total number of measurements was 320. The mean ABSS scores of Group 1 and 2 were 3.07±1.1 and 1.34 ± 0.3, respectively. Statistically significant difference was noted between the means of ABSS scores (p<0.001). Preterm infants with earmuffs (87.5%) were more frequently observed in a quiet sleep state of ABSS compared with those without earmuffs (29.4%). Noise level reduction was associated with significant improvement in behavioral states of ABSS. We suggest that noise reduction in preterm infants with earmuffs is helpful by improving sleep efficiency and increasing time of quiet sleep.	\N	\N
22834729	This review considers the challenges ahead for developing a generalizable strategy for the use of central thalamic deep brain stimulation (CT/DBS) to support arousal regulation mechanisms in the severely injured brain. Historical efforts to apply CT/DBS to patients with severe brain injuries and a proof-of-concept result from a single-subject study are discussed. Circuit and cellular mechanisms underlying the recovery of consciousness are considered for their relevance to the application of CT/DBS, to improve consciousness and cognition in nonprogressive brain injuries. Finally, directions for development, and testing of generalizable criteria for CT/DBS are suggested, which aim to identify neuronal substrates and behavioral profiles that may optimally benefit from support of arousal regulation mechanisms.	\N	\N
22844142	This multiple-study experiment evaluated the utility of assessing and treating severe self-injurious behavior SIB based on the outcomes of a functional analysis of precursor behavior. In Study 1, a precursor to SIB was identified using descriptive assessment and conditional probability analyses. In Study 2, a functional analysis of precursor behavior was conducted. Finally, study 3 evaluated the effects of a treatment in which precursor behavior produced the maintaining variable identified in the precursor functional analysis. Studies 1 and 3 were conducted in two settings in the participants natural environment, where data collection was ongoing throughout the course of the study. Results showed that it was possible to identify a precursor to infrequent but severe SIB, that a functional analysis of precursor behavior suggested a clear operant function, and that treatment based on the results of the precursor functional analysis reduced SIB in the natural environment.	\N	\N
22851806	Sleep is regulated by circadian and homeostatic processes and is highly organized temporally. Our study was designed to determine whether this organization is preserved in patients receiving mechanical ventilation (MV) and intravenous sedation. Observational study. Academic medical intensive care unit. Critically ill patients receiving MV and intravenous sedation. Continuous polysomnography (PSG) was initiated an average of 2.0 (1.0, 3.0) days after ICU admission and continued ≥ 36 h or until the patient was extubated. Sleep staging and power spectral analysis were performed using standard approaches. We also calculated the electroencephalography spectral edge frequency 95% SEF₉₅, a parameter that is normally higher during wakefulness than during sleep. Circadian rhythmicity was assessed in 16 subjects through the measurement of aMT6s in urine samples collected hourly for 24-48 hours. Light intensity at the head of the bed was measured continuously. We analyzed 819.7 h of PSG recordings from 21 subjects. REM sleep was identified in only 2/21 subjects. Slow wave activity lacked the normal diurnal and ultradian periodicity and homeostatic decline found in healthy adults. In nearly all patients, SEF₉₅ was consistently low without evidence of diurnal rhythmicity (median 6.3 [5.3, 7.8] Hz, n = 18). A circadian rhythm of aMT6s excretion was present in most (13/16, 81.3%) patients, but only 4 subjects had normal timing. Comparison of the SEF₉₅ during the melatonin-based biological night and day revealed no difference between the 2 periods (P = 0.64). The circadian rhythms and PSG of patients receiving mechanical ventilation and intravenous sedation exhibit pronounced temporal disorganization. The finding that most subjects exhibited preserved, but phase delayed, excretion of aMT6s suggests that the circadian pacemaker of such patients may be free-running.	\N	\N
22856389	The development of sustained attention in the preschool years is not yet fully understood. Delineating age-related changes of attentional proficiencies and deficiencies is important for understanding atypical developmental trajectories, specifically in neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by attentional difficulties. The objective of the current study was to develop preschool-appropriate measures for assessing sustained attention and to chart developmental changes in attention in early childhood. Using adapted computerized paradigms, the present study investigated age-related changes in visual and auditory sustained attention in seventy typically developing children aged 3 to 6 years. The results indicated that similar age-related gains in performance emerged across both visual and auditory attention tasks. The findings suggest that the adapted measures developed in this study are sensitive enough to capture developmental variations in attention performance.	\N	\N
22871541	The causative mechanisms of type 2 diabetes (T2D) on cognitive dysfunction are still undergoing development. To explore the cognitive dysfunction profile and its relation to the potential role of arterial stiffness in later middle age T2D patients. We studied 37 patients with T2D (age range 45-65 years) and 22 normal controls. All participants underwent comprehensive neuropsychological assessment. The carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) measurements were taken with the PulsePen device. Our results showed significantly poorer performance on all tests assessing attention/executive functions and processing speed in patients with T2D. In addition to cognitive slowing T2D patients demonstrated significant deficits in almost all measures of verbal episodic memory after adjustment for age, education and blood pressure (BP) levels (p<0.05). Carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (CF-PWV) appeared significantly higher in T2D subjects than in normal controls after adjustment for age and BP level (p<0.001). Significant relationship was observed between CF-PWV and cognitive status. We revealed that arterial stiffness was increased and associated with cognitive impairment in T2D. The cognitive profile indicates hippocampal amnestic type mild cognitive impairment associated with a pronounced dysexecutive syndrome suggesting that diabetes may affect cognition through both vascular and neurodegenerative processes. However, neurodegenerative cognitive profile caused by hippocampal atrophy in a pure vascular process could not be excluded.	\N	\N
22872509	We used the Re-enactment of intention paradigm to investigate whether children would re-enact what an adult intended to do in a video presentation as they do when presented with a live demonstration (Meltzoff in Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995). Unlike the 18-month-old infants studied by Meltzoff (Dev Psychol 31(5):838-850, 1995), the 18- and 24-month-olds in the current study did not frequently imitate unsuccessful goal-directed actions presented in a video model. Children who performed better in the task also tended to share more of their attention with the experimenter during co-viewing of the video. Performance on the Re-enactment of intention task was positively related to categorization score, an independent measure of cognitive functioning.	\N	\N
22875718	This study was conducted to test interpersonal, attitudinal, and sexual predictors of sexual assertiveness in a Spanish sample of 1,619 men and 1,755 women aged 18-87 years. Participants completed measures of sexual assertiveness, solitary and dyadic sexual desire, sexual arousal, erectile function, sexual attitudes, and frequency of partner abuse. In men, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, more positive attitudes toward sexual fantasies and erotophilia, higher dyadic desire, and higher sexual arousal. In women, higher sexual assertiveness was predicted by less non-physical abuse, less solitary sexual desire and higher dyadic sexual desire, arousal, erotophilia, and positive attitudes towards sexual fantasies. Results were discussed in the light of prevention and educational programs that include training in sexual assertiveness skills.	\N	\N
22878512	The authors examined longitudinal associations between 2 categories of parent verbal responsiveness and language comprehension and production 1 year later in 40 toddlers and preschoolers with a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Parent-child play samples using a standard toy set were digitally captured and coded for child engagement with objects and communication acts and for parent verbal responses to play and communication. After controlling for parent education, child engagement, and initial language level, only parent directives for language that followed into the child's focus of attention accounted for unique variance in predicting both comprehension and production 1 year later. A series of exploratory analyses revealed that parent comments that followed into the child's focus of attention also accounted for unique variance in later comprehension and production for children who were minimally verbal at the initial time period. Child developmental level may warrant different types of linguistic input to facilitate language learning. Children with ASD who have minimal linguistic skills may benefit from parent language input that follows into the child's focus of attention. Children with ASD who are verbally fluent may need more advanced language input to facilitate language development.	\N	\N
22878565	Affinity is a computerized assessment tool that combines viewing time and self-report measures of sexual interest. The present study was designed to assess the diagnostic properties of Affinity with respect to sexual interest in prepubescent children. Reliability of both self-report and viewing time components was estimated to be high. The group profile of a sample of pedophilic adult male child molesters (n = 42, all of whom admitted their offenses) differed from the group profiles of male community controls (n = 95) and male nonsexual offenders (n = 27), respectively. More specifically, both ratings and viewing times for images showing small children or prejuvenile children were significantly higher within the child molester sample than in either of the other two groups, attesting to the validity of the measures. Overall classification accuracy, however, was mediocre: A multivariate classification routine yielded 50% sensitivity for child molester status at the cost of 13% false positives. The implications for forensic use of Affinity are discussed.	\N	\N
22882160	Recent studies propose that a mechanism termed "inhibitory tagging" acts upon the processing of the target at the attended location by temporarily blocking the stimulus-response mapping. Here we combined the cue-target paradigm with the Stroop task and measured event-related potential (ERP) responses to the color of a color word presented at the previously attended (cued) or unattended (uncued) location. We found that the conflict-related N450 effect emerged later and had a smaller size at the cued than the uncued location. The overall ERP responses to the target showed lower P1 and N1 amplitude at the cued than the uncued location. Although the P1/N1 effect may reflect deficient perceptual processing of the target, the delay of the N450 suggests that the link between perceptual processing and response activation is temporarily blocked at the previously attended location.	\N	\N
22882736	Previous research with adults indicates that plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings in adult non-smokers and weekly smokers, but not daily smokers. The present research extends this study to adolescents aged 14-19 years. Mixed-model experimental design, with smoking status as a between-subjects factor and pack type (branded or plain pack) and eye gaze location (health warning or branding) as within-subjects factors. Three secondary schools in Bristol, UK. A convenience sample of adolescents comprising never-smokers (n = 26), experimenters (n = 34), weekly smokers (n = 13) and daily smokers (n = 14). Number of eye movements to health warnings and branding on plain and branded packs. Analysis of variance, irrespective of smoking status revealed more eye movements to health warnings than branding on plain packs, but an equal number of eye movements to both regions on branded packs (P = 0.033). This was observed among experimenters (P < 0.001) and weekly smokers (P = 0.047), but not among never-smokers or daily smokers. Among experimenters and weekly smokers, plain packaging increases visual attention to health warnings and away from branding. Daily smokers, even relatively early in their smoking careers, seem to avoid the health warnings on cigarette packs. Adolescent never-smokers attend the health warnings preferentially on both types of packs, a finding which may reflect their decision not to smoke.	\N	\N
22888795	This study addresses the relationship between trait impulsivity and inhibitory control, two features known to be impaired in a number of psychiatric conditions. While impulsivity is often measured using psychometric self-report questionnaires, the inhibition of inappropriate, impulsive motor responses is typically measured using experimental laboratory tasks. It remains unclear, however, whether psychometrically assessed impulsivity and experimentally operationalized inhibitory performance are related to each other. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between these two traits in a large sample using correlative and latent variable analysis. A total of 504 healthy individuals completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) and a battery of four prepotent response inhibition paradigms: the antisaccade, Stroop, stop-signal, and go/no-go tasks. We found significant associations of BIS impulsivity with commission errors on the go/no-go task and directional errors on the antisaccade task, over and above effects of age, gender, and intelligence. Latent variable analysis (a) supported the idea that all four inhibitory measures load on the same underlying construct termed "prepotent response inhibition" and (b) revealed that 12% of variance of the prepotent response inhibition construct could be explained by BIS impulsivity. Overall, the magnitude of associations observed was small, indicating that while a portion of variance in prepotent response inhibition can be explained by psychometric trait impulsivity, the majority of variance remains unexplained. Thus, these findings suggest that prepotent response inhibition paradigms can account for psychometric trait impulsivity only to a limited extent. Implications for studies of patient populations with symptoms of impulsivity are discussed.	\N	\N
22888823	The present study investigated parental attention and sensitivity to their child's pain and the moderating role of child's facial pain expressiveness and induced threat. Sixty-two parents (49 mothers; 13 fathers) of schoolchildren observed their child undergoing painful and nonpainful heat trials and were requested to rate the presence of pain after each trial. Painful versus nonpainful trials were signaled by the presence of either a yellow or blue circle; one color served as a cue for possible pain delivery (i.e., conditioned pain cue), whereas the other served as a cue for a nonpainful trial. A subsequent visual search task (VST) assessed attention to pain cues by asking parents to identify a target presented within the conditioned pain cue or one of several other colored circles. Parents were randomly assigned to a "high threat" or "low threat" group in which either threatening or neutral information about the child's pain was provided. Signal detection analyses indicated that parents' ability to detect pain (i.e., sensitivity) was enhanced for parents in the high-threat group and for parents whose children expressed high pain. Visual search analyses indicated attentional engagement to child pain only among parents in the high-threat group whose child showed high-pain expressiveness. In all other circumstances, a tendency to avoid pain cues was observed. These findings attest to the importance of pain-related threat in understanding parent attention to child pain. Theoretical and clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.	\N	\N
22895881	Active exploration of the visual world depends on sequential shifts of gaze that bring prioritized regions of a scene into central vision. The efficiency of this system is commonly attributed to a mechanism of "inhibition of return" (IOR) that discourages re-examination of previously-visited locations. Such a process is fundamental to computational models of attentional selection and paralleled by neurophysiological observations of inhibition of target-related activity in visuomotor areas. However, studies examining eye movements in naturalistic visual scenes appear to contradict the hypothesis that IOR promotes exploration. Instead, these reports reveal a surprisingly strong tendency to shift gaze back to the previously fixated location, suggesting that refixations might even be facilitated under natural conditions. Here we resolve this apparent contradiction, based on a probabilistic analysis of gaze patterns recorded during both free-viewing and search of naturalistic scenes. By simulating saccadic selection based on instantaneous influences alone, we show that the observed frequency of return saccades is in fact substantially less than predicted for a memoryless system, demonstrating that refixation is actively inhibited under natural viewing conditions. Furthermore, these observations reveal that gaze history significantly influences the way in which natural scenes are explored, contrary to accounts that suggest visual search has no memory.	\N	\N
22896722	Item-specific spatial information is essential for interacting with objects and for binding multiple features of an object together. Spatial relational information is necessary for implicit tasks such as recognizing objects or scenes from different views but also for explicit reasoning about space such as planning a route with a map and for other distinctively human traits such as tool construction. To better understand how the brain supports these two different kinds of information, we used functional MRI to directly contrast the neural encoding and maintenance of spatial relations with that for item locations in equivalent visual scenes. We found a double dissociation between the two: whereas item-specific processing implicates a frontoparietal attention network, including the superior frontal sulcus and intraparietal sulcus, relational processing preferentially recruits a cognitive control network, particularly lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and inferior parietal lobule. Moreover, pattern classification revealed that the actual meaning of the relation can be decoded within these same regions, most clearly in rostrolateral PFC, supporting a hierarchical, representational account of prefrontal organization.	\N	\N
22900551	In this article the author argues that in order to be psychoanalysis, the 'here and now' technical approach needs to be firmly grounded theoretically and technically in a practice that includes the notion of reverie or its equivalent. The author has argued previously that the analyst's theory is the essential 'third' of the two-person analytic situation. She now suggests that it is specifically the theories of temporality and the attitude of 'evenly suspended attention' or its more contemporary development, 'reverie', that are the crucial aspects of that theory. She refers to these essential aspects as the 'theory in practice' in so far as they are more than a technical approach or a theory of practice but reflect directly a particular analyst's internalisation of the whole psychoanalytic theoretical corpus. While she believes this to be an essential component in any true psychoanalysis, in developing her argument the author looks at situations in which the analyst is particularly prone to forgo this temporal aspect, as is the case when patients show an absence of symbolic thinking within the analytic situation. In fact, with those patients reverie and the visual images it produces within the analyst's mind offer perhaps the only hope of a meeting ground between the concrete and the symbolic and the possibility of avoiding an impasse. Impasse, she suggests, has at its root the absence of reverie as a third and temporal element, inevitably giving rise to concrete thinking on the part of patient and analyst and so to a situation that cannot evolve.	\N	\N
22914520	Despite shorter duty hours, fatigue remains a problem among medical residents. The authors tested the effect of a short, mid-day nap on the cognitive functioning and alertness of first-year internal medicine (IM) residents during normal duty hours. This was a controlled, interventional study performed between July 2008 and April 2010. The authors recruited a nap group of 18 residents and a rest (control) group of 11 residents. Investigators connected all participants to an ambulatory sleep monitor before the beginning of their shifts in order to monitor rolling eye movements, a proxy for attention failures. At mid-day, both groups took Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) to evaluate their cognitive functioning and then were placed in a reclining chair designed for napping. The authors instructed nap group residents to nap for up to 20 minutes and chatted with control group residents to prevent them from napping. All residents took the CPT II again immediately after the intervention. Residents' attention failures were recorded until the end of the workday. The authors compared the mean outcome parameters of the two groups through analysis of variance, using effect-of-treatment and baseline covariates. Nap group participants slept a mean of 8.4±3.0 minutes. Compared with controls whose cognitive functioning and number of attention failures did not change from morning to afternoon, the nap group's cognitive functioning improved and their number of attention failures decreased. A short, mid-day nap can improve cognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents.	\N	\N
22923230	Progressive asphyxia, produced by a prolonged voluntary breath hold (end-expiratory apnoea), evokes large bursts of muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA). These bursts increase in amplitude until the asphyxic break point is reached, at which point the bursts are inhibited. We tested the hypothesis that lung inflation, rather than relief from hypoxia and hypercapnia, is responsible for the inhibition of MSNA. Multiunit MSNA was recorded from motor fascicles of the common peroneal nerve in 11 subjects. Following a period of quiet breathing, subjects were instructed to behave as follows: (i) to hold their breath in expiration for as long as they could (mean duration 32.3 ± 1.9 s); (ii) to take a single breath of room air, 100% N(2) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) at the asphyxic break point; (iii) to exhale and continue the apnoea until the next break point; and then (iv) to resume breathing. All subjects reported relief during inhalation of any gas, and could continue holding their breath for a further 30.7 ± 2.8 s with room air, 18.6 ± 1.7 s with N(2) and 11.8 ± 1.8 s with 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2). Despite the exaggerated chemoreceptor drive in the latter two conditions (hence the significantly shorter latencies to the subsequent asphyxic break point), the inhibition still occurred; moreover, there was no significant difference in duration of the inhibition of MSNA following the single breath of room air (7.6 ± 0.7 s), N(2) (6.2 ± 0.6 s) or 10% CO(2) + 90% N(2) (5.5 ± 0.4 s). Following the resumption of breathing, however, the duration of MSNA inhibition (11.0 ± 1.0 s) was significantly longer than that following a single breath. To investigate the involvement of chemoreceptors in the respiratory modulation of MSNA further, the same gases were used during an inspiratory-capacity apnoea, which causes a brief inhibition of MSNA during the inflation phase and a sustained increase during the hold phase. The duration of the apnoea was shortest after a breath of 10% O(2) + 90% N(2), but the latency until the bursts resumed after the inspiratory breath hold were similar for all gases, which suggests that there is no chemoreceptor involvement during the sympathetic silence seen during the inflation phase of inspiratory-capacity apnoeas. We conclude that neither peripheral nor central chemoreceptors are responsible for the inhibition of muscle vasoconstrictor drive following an end-expiratory apnoea or an end-inspiratory apnoea. Rather, we suggest that the inhibition is evoked by stretch receptors in the lungs and/or chest wall, which may also contribute to the longer inhibition associated with the hyperventilation following the subsequent resumption of rhythmic breathing.	\N	\N
22934427	To investigate the behavior difference of allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy between study group and control group. One hundred and seventeen children diagnosed as allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy were enrolled in our study were divided into study group and control group. Forty-two children treated with local steroid nasal spray for two to three months and antihistamine were control group. Seventy-five children treated with endoscopic adenoidectomy and drug treatment were study group; All children' parents were inquired for their clinical presentation. No distinctive differences were found between the two groups (P > 0.05) in adenoid hypertrophy, accompanying nasal problems and clinical questionnaire scoring. Significant statistical distinction were found (P < 0.05) in snoring, sleep disturbance and frequent arousal, nasal obstructive moth-breathing, and recurrent respiratory tract infection between the two groups after three-month follow up. Endoscopic adenoidectomy should be taken into account for allergic rhinitis with adenoid hypertrophy in children. Adenoidectomy would be useful for the improvement of behavior symptoms.	\N	\N
22934682	Theories of motor learning predict that training a movement reduces the amount of attention needed for its performance (i.e., more automatic). If training one movement transfers, then the amount of attention needed for performing a second movement should also be reduced, as measured under dual task conditions. The authors' purpose was to test whether dual task paradigms are feasible for detecting transfer of training between two naturalistic movements. Immediately following motor training, subjects improved performance of a second untrained movement under single and dual task conditions. Subjects with no training did not. Improved performance in the untrained movement was likely due to transfer, and suggests that dual tasks may be feasible for detecting transfer between naturalistic actions.	\N	\N
22935330	We studied the effects of training on auditory attention in healthy adults with a speech perception task involving dichotically presented syllables. Training involved bottom-up manipulation (facilitating responses from the harder-to-report left ear through a decrease of right-ear stimulus intensity), top-down manipulation (focusing attention on the left-ear stimuli through instruction), or their combination. The results showed significant training-related effects for top-down training. These effects were evident as higher overall accuracy rates in the forced-left dichotic listening (DL) condition that sets demands on attentional control, as well as a response shift toward left-sided reports in the standard DL task. Moreover, a transfer effect was observed in an untrained auditory-spatial attention task involving bilateral stimulation where top-down training led to a relatively stronger focus on left-sided stimuli. Our results indicate that training of attentional control can modulate the allocation of attention in the auditory space in adults. Malleability of auditory attention in healthy adults raises the issue of potential training gains in individuals with attentional deficits.	\N	\N
22936100	We conducted a series of experiments to determine whether negative priming is used in the process of target selection for a saccadic eye movement. The key questions addressed the circumstances in which the negative priming of an object takes place, and the distinction between spatial and object-based effects. Experiment 1 revealed that after fixating a target (cricket ball) amongst an array of semantically related distracters, saccadic eye movements in a subsequent display were faster to the target than to the distracters or new objects, irrespective of location. The main finding was that of the facilitation of a recent target, not the inhibition of a recent distracter or location. Experiment 2 replicated this finding by using silhouettes of objects for selection that is based on feature shape. Error rates were associated with distracters with high target-shape similarity; therefore, Experiment 3 presented silhouettes of animals using distracters with low target-shape similarity. The pattern of results was similar to that of Experiment 2, with clear evidence of target facilitation rather than the inhibition of distracters. Experiment 4 and 5 introduced a distracter together with the target into the probe display, to generate a level of competitive selection in the probe condition. In these circumstances, clear evidence of spatial inhibition at the location of the previous distracters emerged. We discuss the implications for our understanding of selective attention and consider why it is essential to supplement response time data with the analysis of eye movement behaviour in spatial negative priming paradigms.	\N	\N
22937090	In this single case study, visuospatial neglect patient P1 demonstrated a dissociation between an intact ability to make appropriate reflexive eye movements to targets in the neglected field with latencies of <400 ms, while failing to report targets presented at such durations in a separate verbal detection task. In contrast, there was a failure to evoke the usually robust Remote Distractor Effect in P1, even though distractors in the neglected field were presented at above threshold durations. Together those data indicate that the tight coupling that is normally shown between attention and eye movements appears to be disrupted for low-level orienting in P1. A comparable disruption was also found for high-level cognitive processing tasks, namely reading and scene scanning. The findings are discussed in relation to sampling, attention and awareness in neglect.	\N	\N
22939462	Left fronto-cortical hypoactivity, thought to reflect reduced activity in approach-related systems, and right parietal hypoactivity, associated with emotional under-arousal, have been noted in major depressive disorder (MDD). Altered theta activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has also been associated with the disorder. We assessed resting frontal and parietal alpha asymmetry and power in non-medicated MDD (N = 53; 29 females) and control (N = 43; 23 females) individuals. Theta activity was examined using standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) in the ACC [BA24ab and BA32 comprising the rostral ACC and BA25/subgenual (sg) ACC]. The MDD group, and particularly depressed males, displayed increased overall frontal and parietal alpha power and left midfrontal hypoactivity (alpha(2)-indexed). They also exhibited increased sgACC theta(2) activity. MDD females had increased right parietal activity, suggesting increased emotive arousal. Thus, unmedicated depressed adults were characterized by lower activity in regions implicated in approach/positive affective tendencies as well as diffuse cortical hypoarousal, though sex specific modulations emerged. Altered theta in the sgACC may reflect emotion regulation abnormalities in MDD.	\N	\N
22948452	The aim of this study was to compare female sexual function after surgical treatment of anterior vaginal prolapse with either small intestine submucosa grafting or traditional colporrhaphy. Subjects were randomly assigned, preoperatively, to the small intestine submucosa graft (n = 29) or traditional colporrhaphy (n = 27) treatment group. Postoperative outcomes were analyzed at 12 months. The Female Sexual Function Index questionnaire was used to assess sexual function. Data were compared with independent samples or a paired Student's t-test. In the small intestine submucosa group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.5±7.2 to 24.4±7.5 (p<0.001). In the traditional colporrhaphy group, the total mean Female Sexual Function Index score increased from 15.3±6.8 to 24.2±7.0 (p<0.001). Improvements were noted in the domains of desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain. There were no differences between the two groups at the 12-month follow-up. Small intestine submucosa repair and traditional colporrhaphy both improved sexual function postoperatively. However, no differences were observed between the two techniques.	\N	\N
22948506	To evaluate the influence of climacteric symptoms on the sexual function in middle-aged women. A cross-sectional population study was conducted on a sample of 370 middle-aged women, aged 40 to 65 years-old, cared for at the Basic Health Units in Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. We used a questionnaire containing questions on sociodemographic, clinical, and behavioral characteristics. Sexual function was evaluated by the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), while the menopause symptoms by the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). In the studied group, 67% of the women reported risk for sexual dysfunction (FSFI≤26.5). All FSFI domains (desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, satisfaction, and pain) were lower in women with risk for sexual dysfunction (p<0.001). The arousal, orgasm, and pain domains were most likely to contribute to lower FSFI scores. All somatovegetative, urogenital, and psychological MRS symptoms were more elevated in women with risk for sexual dysfunction, being significant for all comparisons (p<0.001). Logistic regression analysis revealed that the likelihood of women with risks of sexual dysfunction to present hot flushes, depression, sexual problems, and vaginal dryness was, respectively, 2.1 (95%CI 1.2 - 3.5); 2.4 (95%CI 1.5 - 4.1); 2.3 (95%CI 1.4 - 3.8), and 2.2 (95%CI 1.3 - 3.6) times higher, respectively, compared to those without any risk. Climacteric symptoms seem to influence the sexual function in middle-aged women.	\N	\N
22954837	Balance training to improve postural control in elderly can contribute to the prevention of falls. Video games that require body movements have the potential to improve balance. However, research about the effects of type of visual feedback (i.e. the exergame) on the quality of movement and experienced workout intensity is scarce. In this study twelve healthy older and younger subjects performed anterior-posterior or mediolateral oscillations on a wobble board, in three conditions: no feedback, real-time visual feedback, and real-time visual feedback with a competitive game element. The Elderly moved slower, less accurately and more irregularly than younger people. Both feedback conditions ensured a more controlled movement technique on the wobble-board and increased experienced workout intensity. The participants enjoyed the attention demanding competitive game element, but this game did not improve balance performance more than interacting with a game that incorporated visual feedback. These results show the potential of exergames with visual feedback to enhance postural control.	\N	\N
22960269	The hyperarousal model of primary insomnia suggests that a deficit of attenuating arousal during sleep might cause the experience of non-restorative sleep. In the current study, we examined EEG spectral power values for standard frequency bands as indices of cortical arousal and sleep protecting mechanisms during sleep in 25 patients with primary insomnia and 29 good sleeper controls. Patients with primary insomnia demonstrated significantly elevated spectral power values in the EEG beta and sigma frequency band during NREM stage 2 sleep. No differences were observed in other frequency bands or during REM sleep. Based on prior studies suggesting that EEG beta activity represents a marker of cortical arousal and EEG sleep spindle (sigma) activity is an index of sleep protective mechanisms, our findings may provide further evidence for the concept that a simultaneous activation of wake-promoting and sleep-protecting neural activity patterns contributes to the experience of non-restorative sleep in primary insomnia.	\N	\N
22963503	We previously found that Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) improves learning and performance in a task where subjects learn to detect potential threats indicated by small target objects hidden in a complex virtual environment. In the present study, we examined the hypothesis that these effects on learning and performance are related to changes in attention. The effects of tDCS were tested for three forms of attention (alerting, orienting, and executive attention) using the Attention Network Task (ANT), which were compared with performance on the object-learning task. Participants received either 0.1 mA (N = 10) or 2.0 mA (N = 9) tDCS during training and were tested for performance in object-identification before training (baseline-test) and again immediately after training (immediate test). Participants next performed the Attention Networks Task (ANT), and were later tested for object-identification performance a final time (delayed test). Alerting, but not orienting or executive attention, was significantly higher for participants receiving 2.0 mA compared with 0.1 mA tDCS (p < 0.02). Furthermore, alerting scores were significantly correlated with the proportion of hits (p < 0.01) for participants receiving 2.0 mA. These results indicate that tDCS enhancement of performance in this task may be related in part to the enhancement of alerting attention, which may benefit the initial identification, learning and/or subsequent recognition of target objects indicating potential threats.	\N	\N
22964544	Since the inception of the field of psychoneuroimmunolology research, there has been an appreciation that the physiological response to stressors includes modulation of immune function. Investigators initially focused on the effect of stress on cellular migration and immunosuppression and the resultant decreases in tumor surveillance, anti-viral T cell immunity and antigen-specific antibody responses. More recently, it has become clear that exposure to stressors also potentiate innate immune processes. Stressor exposure, for example, can change the activation status of myeloid lineage cells such as monocytes, macrophages, neutrophils, and microglia, leading to a primed state. In addition, stressor exposure increases the synthesis and release of a vast cadre' of inflammatory proteins both in the blood and within tissues (i.e., spleen, liver, adipose, vasculature and brain). The mechanisms for stress-evoked innate immune 'arousal' remain unknown. The goals of this presidential address are the following: (1) offer a personalized, brief overview of stress and immunity with a focus on 'aroused' innate immunity; (2) describe sterile inflammatory processes and the role of the inflammasome; and (3) suggest that these same processes likely contribute to primed myeloid cells and inflammatory protein responses (systemic and tissue) produced by stress in the absence of pathogens.	\N	\N
22965527	The aim of this study was to measure forces created by progressive mandibular advancement with an oral device, during natural sleep, in a sample of adult patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). A pressure transducer system was placed on the acrylic arms of a two-piece oral appliance (Herbst type) used by nine moderate to severe OSAS patients, in addition to all captors routinely used for polysomnography. Strains on the left and right sides were collected, during stable sleep stages without arousal, for each step of 1 mm advancement. The mean force in this sample was 1.18 N/mm and showed an almost linear evolution. Measurements showed intra- and inter-individual variability. The force values recorded in this study may explain the occlusal and skeletal side effects associated with long-term use of these oral appliances. They illustrate the influence of the extent of mandibular advancement, and indicate a possible dose-dependent effect.	\N	\N
22971667	Guide dogs help visually impaired persons both physically and psychologically. More than half of all candidate dogs do not qualify, mainly for behavioral reasons. Improved training efficacy is desirable, and earlier prediction of qualification-related traits would be beneficial. In a previous study, we identified 'Distraction', assessed during the training period, as an important behavioral trait for judging the qualification of guide dogs at the Japan Guide Dog Association. As a second step, we aimed to develop an index that can predict during the puppy period. In this study, candidate guide dogs, 5-month-old Labrador retrievers, were assessed by puppy raisers using a newly developed questionnaire that consisted of 20 items. The same dogs were assessed later, at 15 months, by trainers to determine 'Distraction'. In principal components analysis, nine items, including excitability toward strangers, initiative while out for a walk, and exploration, composed the first principal component (PC1). When we compared PC1 points with 'Distraction' points, the two categories were positively correlated (n=110, r(s)=0.31, P=0.0009). Although the accuracy of the questionnaire should be increased, the results of the present study suggest that it may be possible to assess and predict 'Distraction', which is associated with disqualification for guide dogs, early in the puppy-raising period.	\N	\N
22975896	This study reports an experiment investigating the relative effects of intramodal, crossmodal and bimodal cues on visual and auditory temporal order judgements. Pairs of visual or auditory targets, separated by varying stimulus onset asynchronies, were presented to either side of a central fixation (±45°), and participants were asked to identify the target that had occurred first. In some of the trials, one of the targets was preceded by a short, non-predictive visual, auditory or audiovisual cue stimulus. The cue and target stimuli were presented at the exact same locations in space. The point of subjective simultaneity revealed a consistent spatiotemporal bias towards targets at the cued location. For the visual targets, the intramodal cue elicited the largest, and the crossmodal cue the smallest, bias. The bias elicited by the bimodal cue fell between the intramodal and crossmodal cue biases, with significant differences between all cue types. The pattern for the auditory targets was similar apart from a scaling factor and greater variance, so the differences between the cue conditions did not reach significance. These results provide evidence for multisensory integration in exogenous attentional cueing. The magnitude of the bimodal cueing effect was equivalent to the average of the facilitation elicited by the intramodal and crossmodal cues. Under the assumption that the visual and auditory cues were equally informative, this is consistent with the notion that exogenous attention, like perception, integrates multimodal information in an optimal way.	\N	\N
22993448	Non-motor symptoms are very common among patients with Parkinson's disease since the earliest stage, but little is known about their progression and their relationship with dopaminergic replacement therapy. We studied non-motor symptoms before and after 2 years from dopaminergic therapy introduction in ninety-one newly diagnosed previously untreated PD patients. At baseline, nearly all patients (97.8%) referred at least one non-motor symptom. At follow-up, only few non-motor symptoms significantly changed. Particularly, depression and concentration became less frequent, while weight change significantly increased after introduction of dopamine agonists. We reported for the first time a 2-year prospective study on non-motor symptoms before and after starting therapy in newly diagnosed PD patients. Even if non-motor symptoms are very frequent in early stage, they tend to remain stable during the early phase of disease, being only few non-motor symptoms affected from dopaminergic therapy and, specifically, by the use of dopamine agonists.	\N	\N
22998058	Recent neuroimaging and surgical results support the crucial role of white matter in mediating motor and higher-level processing within the frontal lobe, while suggesting the limited compensatory capacity after damage to subcortical structures. Consequently, an accurate knowledge of the anatomofunctional organization of the pathways running within this region is mandatory for planning safe and effective surgical approaches to different diseases. The aim of this dissection study was to improve the neurosurgeon's awareness of the subcortical anatomofunctional architecture for a lateral approach to the frontal region, to optimize both resection and postoperative outcome. Ten human hemispheres (5 left, 5 right) were dissected according to the Klingler technique. Proceeding lateromedially, the main association and projection tracts as well as the deeper basal structures were identified. The authors describe the anatomy and the relationships among the exposed structures in both a systematic and topographical surgical perspective. Structural results were also correlated to the functional responses obtained during resections of infiltrative frontal tumors guided by direct cortico-subcortical electrostimulation with patients in the awake condition. The eloquent boundaries crucial for a safe frontal lobectomy or an extensive lesionectomy are as follows: 1) the motor cortex; 2) the pyramidal tract and premotor fibers in the posterior and posteromedial part of the surgical field; 3) the inferior frontooccipital fascicle and the superior longitudinal fascicle posterolaterally; and 4) underneath the inferior frontal gyrus, the head of the caudate nucleus, and the tip of the frontal horn of the lateral ventricle in the depth. Optimization of results following brain surgery, especially within the frontal lobe, requires a perfect knowledge of functional anatomy, not only at the cortical level but also with regard to subcortical white matter connectivity.	\N	\N
22999215	Optimized therapy in epilepsy should include individual care for cognitive functions. Here we introduce a computerized screening instrument, called "Computerized Cognitive Testing in Epilepsy" (CCTE), which allows for time-efficient repetitive assessment of the patient's cognitive profile regarding the domains of memory and attention, which are frequently impaired due to side effects of antiepileptic medication. The CCTE battery takes 30min and covers tasks of verbal and figural memory, cognitive speed, attention and working memory. The patient's results are displayed immediately in comparison to age-related normative data. For evaluation of psychometrics and clinical correlations, data from patients of a tertiary referral epilepsy center (n=240) and healthy subjects (n=83) were explored. CCTE subtests show good reliability and concurrent validity compared to standard neuropsychological tests (p<0.01). Adverse cognitive effects of antiepileptic medication can be detected (p<0.05), e.g. significant negative effects of increasing drug load. Specific epilepsy subgroups, e.g. focal versus primary generalized epilepsy or right versus left mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, showed different CCTE profiles. CCTE appears valuable for early detection of individual cognitive alterations related to medication. In addition, it displays interesting differences between epilepsy syndromes. The CCTE battery provides a standardized, time- and personnel-efficient assessment of cognitive functions open to a large number of patients and applicable for clinical and scientific use in epilepsy.	\N	\N
22999984	To compare the frequency of airway complications during removal of the Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) in 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients. Prospective randomized study. Operating room at a university hospital. 92 ASA physical status 1 and 2 pediatric patients, aged 2 to 6 years. Participants were randomized to two groups: anesthesia state (anesthesia group) and awake state (awake group). Anesthesia was induced and maintained with sevoflurane. Patients were allowed to maintain spontaneous respiration. In the anesthesia group, the LMA was removed during anesthesia with 2.2% of sevoflurane. In the awake group, the LMA was removed when patients met the recovery criteria, including facial grimace, spontaneous eye opening, and purposeful arm movement. During and after removal of the LMA, the frequencies of airway-related complications including cough, severe salivation, LMA biting or teeth clenching, breath holding, laryngospasm, desaturation (SpO(2) < 95%), and vomiting, were recorded. The frequencies of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia also were compared. The frequency of airway-related complications was significantly less in the anesthesia group than the awake group (4.8% vs 37.2%, P = 0.001). Of the complications, cough, desaturation, excessive secretion, and LMA biting were less common in the anesthesia group. No differences between groups were noted in the frequency of upper airway obstruction and duration of emergence from anesthesia. In 2 to 6 year old pediatric patients, an adequate anesthetic state is preferable to the awake state during LMA removal, producing fewer complications.	\N	\N
23001075	Urinary and sexual dysfunctions are recognized complications of rectal cancer surgery. Their incidence after robotic surgery is as yet unknown. The aim of this study was to prospectively evaluate the impact of robotic surgery for rectal cancer on sexual and urinary functions in male and female patients. From April 2008 to December 2010, 74 patients undergoing fully robotic resection for rectal cancer were prospectively included in the study. Urinary and sexual dysfunctions affecting quality of life were assessed with specific self-administered questionnaires in all patients undergoing robotic total mesorectal excision (RTME). Results were calculated with validated scoring systems and statistically analyzed. The analyses of the questionnaires completed by the 74 patients who underwent RTME showed that sexual function and general sexual satisfaction decreased significantly 1 month after intervention: 19.1 ± 8.7 versus 11.9 ± 10.2 (P < 0.05) for erectile function and 6.9 ± 2.4 versus 5.3 ± 2.5 (P < 0.05) for general satisfaction in men; 2.6 ± 3.3 versus 0.8 ± 1.4 (P < 0.05) and 2.4 ± 2.5 versus 0.7 ± 1.6 (P < 0.05) for arousal and general satisfaction, respectively, in women. Subsequently, both parameters increased progressively, and 1 year after surgery, the values were comparable to those measured before surgery. Concerning urinary function, the grade of incontinence measured 1 year after the intervention was unchanged for both sexes. RTME allows for preservation of urinary and sexual functions. This is probably due to the superior movements of the wristed instruments that facilitate fine dissection, coupled with a stable and magnified view that helps in recognizing the inferior hypogastric plexus.	\N	\N
23010335	In a forward-masked intensity discrimination task, we manipulated the perceived lateralization of the masker via variation of the interaural time difference (ITD). The maskers and targets were 500 Hz pure tones with a duration of 30 ms. Standards of 30 and 60 dB SPL were combined with 60 or 90 dB SPL maskers. As expected, the presentation of a forward masker perceived as lateralized to the other side of the head as the target resulted in a significantly smaller elevation of the intensity difference limen than a masker lateralized ipsilaterally. This binaural release from masking in forward-masked intensity discrimination cannot be explained by peripheral mechanisms because varying the ITD leaves the neural representation in the monaural channels (i.e., in the auditory nerve) unaltered. Instead, our results are compatible with the assumption that lateralization differences between masker and target promote object segregation and therefore facilitate object-based selective attention to the target.	\N	\N
23011860	Sleep homeostasis occurs during prolonged wakefulness. Drowsiness and sleep pressure are its behavioral manifestations and, when sleep is allowed, there is a sleep rebound of sufficient duration and intensity to compensate for the previous deprivation. Adenosine is one of the molecules involved in sleep homeostasic regulation. Caffeine and theophylline, stimulants widely consumed by the humans, are antagonists. It is an endogenous factor, resulting from ATP metabolism in neurons and glia. Adenosine accumulates in the extracellular space, where it can exert regulatory actions on the sleep-wakefulness cycle circuits. Adenosine acts through the purinergic receptors A1 and A2. This paper reviews: 1) the metabolic pathways of cerebral adenosine, and the mechanisms of its release by neurons and glia to the extracellular space; 2) the actions of adenosine and its antagonists in regions of the central nervous system related to wakefulness, non-REM sleep, and REM sleep, and 3) the synaptic mechanisms involved in these actions.	\N	\N
23017595	It is widely reported that inverting a face dramatically affects its recognition. Previous studies have shown that face inversion increases the amplitude and delays the latency of the face-specific N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) and also enhances the amplitude of the occipital P1 component (latency 100-132 ms). The present study investigates whether these effects of face inversion can be modulated by visual spatial attention. Participants viewed two streams of visual stimuli, one to the left and one to the right of fixation. One stream consisted of a sequence of alphanumeric characters at 6.67 Hz, and the other stream consisted of a series of upright and inverted images of faces and houses presented in randomized order. The participants' task was to attend selectively to one or the other of the streams (during different blocks) in order to detect infrequent target stimuli. ERPs elicited by inverted faces showed larger P1 amplitudes compared to upright faces, but only when the faces were attended. In contrast, the N170 amplitude was larger to inverted than to upright faces only when the faces were not attended. The N170 peak latency was delayed to inverted faces regardless of attention condition. These inversion effects were face specific, as similar effects were absent for houses. These results suggest that early stages of face-specific processing can be enhanced by attention, but when faces are not attended the onset of face-specific processing is delayed until the latency range of the N170.	\N	\N
23019004	Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is activated during detection of salient stimuli, including pain, in the sensory environment. Right TPJ damage more often produces spatial neglect than left TPJ damage. We recently reported a right lateralized system of white matter connectivity of the TPJ. However, lateralization in intrinsic TPJ functional connectivity during a task/stimuli-independent state has not been fully characterized. Here we used resting-state functional MRI in healthy humans to compare the functional connectivity of right and left TPJ with salience- and attention-related brain networks. Independent components analysis revealed that both right and left TPJ were functionally connected with a network that included the anterior insula, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), and mid-cingulate cortex, considered to be the salience/ventral attention network. Dual regression revealed this network was more strongly connected with right TPJ than left TPJ. Seed-based functional connectivity analysis showed 1) negative connectivity the TPJ bilaterally with the "default mode network"; 2) positive connectivity of TPJ bilaterally with the salience/ventral attention network; 3) stronger connectivity between right TPJ compared with left TPJ with regions within the salience/ventral attention network and mid-insula, S2, and temporal/parietal opercula (implicated in pain); and 4) stronger connectivity of left TPJ compared with right TPJ with the "executive control network," including the dorsomedial/medial PFC, inferior frontal gyrus, and cerebellum (crus I/II). Our findings build on classic lesion and neuroimaging studies, demonstrating a complex spatial network organization of lateralization in TPJ functional connectivity in the absence of an overt stimulus.	\N	\N
23022432	The effect of aging on functional network activation associated with task-switching was examined in 24 young (age=25.2±2.73 years) and 23 older adults (age=65.2±2.65 years) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study goals were to (1) identify a network shared by both young and older adults, (2) identify additional networks in each age group, and (3) examine the relationship between the networks identified and behavioral performance in task-switching. Ordinal trend covariance analysis was used to identify the networks, which takes advantage of increasing activation with greater task demand to isolate the network of regions recruited by task-switching. Two task-related networks were found: a shared network that was strongly expressed by both young and older adults and a second network identified in the young data that was residualized from the shared network. Both networks consisted of regions associated with task-switching in previous studies including the middle frontal gyrus, the precentral gyrus, the anterior cingulate, and the superior parietal lobule. Not only was pattern expression of the shared network associated with reaction time in both age groups, the difference in the pattern expression across task conditions (task-switch minus single-task) was also correlated with the difference in RT across task conditions. On the contrary, expression of the young-residual network showed a large age effect such that older adults do not increase expression of the network with greater task demand as young adults do and correlation between expression and accuracy was significant only for young adults. Thus, while a network related to RT is preserved in older adults, a different network related to accuracy is disrupted.	\N	\N
23030631	Accurate measurement of a child's executive functioning (EF) is important for diagnosis, description of functional impairment, and treatment planning. EF assessment typically consists of administration of a battery of performance-based tests involving abilities such as attention, inhibition, reasoning, planning, and mental flexibility. In recent years, observer (e.g., parent) rating scales have been added to the typical EF battery. However, research has revealed that performance-based tests and parent rating scales are not highly correlated. In other words, level of impairment indicated by one source of data often does not match level of impairment indicated by the other source of data. This disagreement places the clinician in a difficult situation when attempting to interpret evaluation results. The profession of pediatric neuropsychology needs to provide guidance about handling this disagreement. Using the current assessment tools, specific EF subdomains may need to be examined systematically to identify precisely where the disagreements lie. Perhaps the relative validity of the two data sources can be determined, and decisions can be made about what to emphasize and what/when to interpret cautiously. Alternatively, perhaps the goal should be to develop and/or refine measurement tools to increase agreement in order to improve accuracy and validity of test interpretation. At this time, the results of performance-based tests and rating scales of EF are being used together but are not being integrated. Evidence-based practice requires that more work be done to enhance the use of these two sources of data.	\N	\N
23041338	Neuroimaging has demonstrated anatomical overlap between covert and overt attention systems, although behavioral and electrophysiological studies have suggested that the two systems do not rely on entirely identical circuits or mechanisms. In a parallel line of research, topographically-specific modulations of alpha-band power (~8-14 Hz) have been consistently correlated with anticipatory states during tasks requiring covert attention shifts. These tasks, however, typically employ cue-target-interval paradigms where attentional processes are examined across relatively protracted periods of time and not at the rapid timescales implicated during overt attention tasks. The anti-saccade task, where one must first covertly attend for a peripheral target, before executing a rapid overt attention shift (i.e. a saccade) to the opposite side of space, is particularly well-suited for examining the rapid dynamics of overt attentional deployments. Here, we asked whether alpha-band oscillatory mechanisms would also be associated with these very rapid overt shifts, potentially representing a common neural mechanism across overt and covert attention systems. High-density electroencephalography in conjunction with infra-red eye-tracking was recorded while participants engaged in both pro- and anti-saccade task blocks. Alpha power, time-locked to saccade onset, showed three distinct phases of significantly lateralized topographic shifts, all occurring within a period of less than 1s, closely reflecting the temporal dynamics of anti-saccade performance. Only two such phases were observed during the pro-saccade task. These data point to substantially more rapid temporal dynamics of alpha-band suppressive mechanisms than previously established, and implicate oscillatory alpha-band activity as a common mechanism across both overt and covert attentional deployments.	\N	\N
23046905	Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard tones were presented at a regular 300 ms inter-stimulus interval (ISI). One deviant, otherwise identical to the standard, was preceded by a 100 ms ISI. Two other deviants, presented with the standard ISI, differed from the standard in their spectral makeup. We found significant differences between ERP responses elicited by the standard and each of the deviant sounds. The results suggest that the ability to extract both temporal and spectral regularities from a sound sequence is already functional within the first few months of life. The scalp distribution of all three deviant-stimulus responses was influenced by the infants' state of alertness.	\N	\N
23051899	Lifetime experiences shape people's attitudes toward sexual stimuli. Visual sexual stimulation (VSS), for instance, may be perceived as pleasurable by some, but as disgusting or ambiguous by others. VSS depicting explicit penile-vaginal penetration (PEN) is relevant in this respect, because the act of penetration is a core sexual activity. In this study, 20 women without sexual complaints participated. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a single-target implicit association task to investigate how brain responses to PEN were modulated by the initial associations in memory (PEN-'hot' vs PEN-disgust) with such hardcore pornographic stimuli. Many brain areas responded to PEN in the same way they responded to disgust stimuli, and PEN-induced brain activity was prone to modulation by subjective disgust ratings toward PEN stimuli. The relative implicit PEN-disgust (relative to PEN-'hot') associations exclusively modulated PEN-induced brain responses: comparatively negative (PEN-disgust) implicit associations with pornography predicted the strongest PEN-related responses in the basal forebrain (including nucleus accumbens and bed nucleus of stria terminalis), midbrain and amygdala. Since these areas are often implicated in visual sexual processing, the present findings should be taken as a warning: apparently their involvement may also indicate a negative or ambivalent attitude toward sexual stimuli.	\N	\N
23062452	Deficits in the communication and identifying of feelings are usually observed in substance abuse. Research in several countries has reported sensation seeking and alexithymia implication in addiction. According to a cognitive-developmental model of emotional experience proposed, alexithymia is a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotion that can be seen as an impairment in the ability to consciously experience feeling in the context of autonomic activation indicate of emotional arousal. The primary objective of this study was to identify certain personality dimensions linked with emotions' regulation, i.e. Zuckerman's sensation seeking, alexithymia, and emotional awareness in ecstasy and cocaine users at techno parties. Subjects were divided in two groups: 37 male ecstasy or cocaine abusers, and 37 male non-drug users. We hypothesized that ecstasy and cocaine users would exhibit high levels of sensation seeking (high level of sensation seeking,), and emotional dysregulation (high level of alexithymia and depression, low level of emotional awareness). The methodology comprised a questionnaire developed for the study, designed to record sociodemographic data and evaluate psychoactive substance use, the MlINI (mini international psychiatric interview), the Zuckerman 40-item Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS-IV), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-13). Subjects were recruited during rave-parties. The results showed significantly higher sensation seeking scores for ecstasy and cocaine users for the score total and the disinhibition and experience seeking subdimensions. Ecstasy and cocaine abusers exhibited higher TAS-20 and BDI-13 scores and lower levels of emotional awareness than non-drug users. No correlation between the TAS-20 and depression symptomatology emerged. No significant correlations were found between LEAS and TAS-20. These results provide new elements concerning the profile of drug users at techno parties and illustrate the changing practices of ecstasy use. The LEAS and the TAS-20 were not intercorrelated; it seems plausible that they reflect two sides of the emotional states self-report. These results reinforce the suggestion of combining the use of self-reports with non self-report methods.	\N	\N
23066810	Considerable evidence suggests that subliminal information can trigger cognitive and neural processes. Here, we examined whether elicitation of orienting response by personally significant (PS) verbal information requires conscious awareness of the input. Subjects were exposed to the Concealed Information Test (CIT), in which autonomic responses for autobiographical items are typically larger than for control items. These items were presented subliminally using two different masking protocols: single or multiple presentation of the masked item. An objective test was used to verify unawareness to the stimuli. As predicted, PS items elicited significantly stronger skin conductance responses than the control items in both exposure conditions. The results extend previous findings showing that autonomic responses can be elicited following subliminal exposure to aversive information, and also may have implications on the applied usage of the CIT.	\N	\N
23074247	The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) can enhance the impact of positive social cues but may reduce that of negative ones by inhibiting amygdala activation, although it is unclear whether the latter causes blunted emotional and mnemonic responses. In two independent double-blind placebo-controlled experiments, each involving over 70 healthy male subjects, we investigated whether OXT affects modulation of startle reactivity by aversive social stimuli as well as subsequent memory for them. Intranasal OXT potentiated acoustic startle responses to negative stimuli, without affecting behavioral valence or arousal judgments, and biased subsequent memory toward negative rather than neutral items. A functional MRI analysis of this mnemonic effect revealed that, whereas OXT inhibited amygdala responses to negative stimuli, it facilitated left insula responses for subsequently remembered items and increased functional coupling between the left amygdala, left anterior insula, and left inferior frontal gyrus. Our results therefore show that OXT can potentiate the protective and mnemonic impact of aversive social information despite reducing amygdala activity, and suggest that the insula may play a role in emotional modulation of memory.	\N	\N
23078760	The current study investigated the time course of the implicit processing of erotic stimuli using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs elicited by erotic pictures were compared with those by three other types of pictures: non-erotic positive, negative, and neutral pictures. We observed that erotic pictures evoked enhanced neural responses compared with other pictures at both early (P2/N2) and late (P3/positive slow wave) temporal stages. These results suggested that erotic pictures selectively captured individuals' attention at early stages and evoked deeper processing at late stages. More importantly, the amplitudes of P2, N2, and P3 only discriminated between erotic and non-erotic (i.e., positive, neutral, and negative) pictures. That is, no difference was revealed among non-erotic pictures, although these pictures differed in both valence and arousal. Thus, our results suggest that the erotic picture processing is beyond the valence and arousal.	\N	\N
23083097	The present study provides first evidence that attentional breadth responses can be influenced by proximity-distance goals in adult attachment relationships. In a sample of young couples, we measured attachment differences in the breadth of attentional focus in response to attachment-related cues. Results showed that priming with a negative attachment scenario broadens attention when confronted with pictures of the attachment figure in highly avoidant men. In women, we found that attachment anxiety was associated with a more narrow attentional focus on the attachment figure, yet only at an early stage of information processing. We also found that women showed a broader attentional focus around the attachment figure when their partner was more avoidantly attached. This pattern of results reflects the underlying action of attachment strategies and provides insight into the complex and dynamic influence of attachment on attentional processing in a dyadic context.	\N	\N
23085239	We investigated the precision of orientation representations with two tasks, change detection and recall. Previously change detection has been measured only with relatively large orientation changes compared to psychophysical thresholds. In the first experiment, we measured the observers' ability (d') to detect small changes in orientation (5-30°) with 1-4 Gabor items. With one item even a 10° change was well detected (average d'=2.5). As the amount of change increased to 30°, the d' increased to 5.2. When the number of items was increased, the d's gradually decreased. In the second experiment, we used a recall task and the observers adjusted the orientation of a probe Gabor to match the orientation of a Gabor held in the memory. The standard deviation (s.d.) of errors was calculated from the Gaussian distribution fitted to the data. As the number of items increased from 1 to 6, the s.d. increased from 8.6° to 19.6°. Even with six items, the observers did not make any random adjustments. The results show a square root relation between the d'/s.d. and the number of items. The d' in change detection is directly proportional to the square root of (1/n) and the orientation change. The increase of the s.d. in recall task is inversely proportional to square root of (1/n). The results suggest that limited resources and precision of representations, without additional assumptions, determine the memory performance.	\N	\N
23088575	Reviews of the effects of noise on performance carried out in the 1980s suggested that results depended on the type of noise, nature of the task, and characteristics of the person performing in noise. This general view has been confirmed in the recent meta-analysis and synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011). There are, however, some notable omissions from this review. For example, beneficial effects of noise in low alertness states receive no coverage, and yet these provide the strongest support for arousal theories. The importance of predictability and perceived control was also overlooked, yet relevant studies, especially those looking at aftereffects of noise, are crucial for explanations based on compensatory effort. Also neglected was research emphasizing the importance of examining the microstructure of responding and strategies of performance. Recent accounts emphasize the importance of considering the specific processes involved in carrying out a task and show that analyses based on gross characteristics present an inappropriate profile of effects. Laboratory studies of auditory distraction are now largely restricted to investigation of the effects of irrelevant speech. Noise and performance research has also moved toward field studies, including effects of chronic noise exposure on children. Future noise research is likely to focus on different noise parameters and performance outcomes, potentially leading to the investigation of different underlying mechanisms. This type of research will have clear implications for policy and practice.	\N	\N
23095428	Several chronic health conditions of childhood, including pediatric cancers, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and sickle cell disease (SCD) are associated with significant neurocognitive impairments that can compromise educational attainment and future vocational opportunities. The prominence of attentional deficits as part of the neurocognitive sequelae associated with each of these conditions has led some researchers to draw parallels with another chronic condition that manifests in childhood, specifically the inattentive subtype of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Because ADHD shares similar neurocognitive and symptomatological features with pediatric cancer, TBI, and SCD, stimulant medications may be indicated to treat associated deficits in each condition. However, relatively few studies have investigated the safety and effectiveness of stimulant medications in treating neurocognitive sequelae in children with cancer, TBI, or SCD. Thus, clinicians have received little guidance regarding a potentially useful treatment modality for ameliorating the neurocognitive deficits that can profoundly impact the educational, psychosocial, and vocational development of youth with these chronic health conditions. We provide a review of the literature and synthesize current developments in research regarding treatment with stimulant medication for children with cancer, TBI, and SCD, as well as discuss special considerations for each condition.	\N	\N
23104227	Research has shown that water supplementation positively affects cognitive performance in children and adults. The present study considered whether this could be a result of expectancies that individuals have about the effects of water on cognition. Forty-seven participants were recruited and told the study was examining the effects of repeated testing on cognitive performance. They were assigned either to a condition in which positive expectancies about the effects of drinking water were induced, or a control condition in which no expectancies were induced. Within these groups, approximately half were given a drink of water, while the remainder were not. Performance on a thirst scale, letter cancellation, digit span forwards and backwards and a simple reaction time task was assessed at baseline (before the drink) and 20 min and 40 min after water consumption. Effects of water, but not expectancy, were found on subjective thirst ratings and letter cancellation task performance, but not on digit span or reaction time. This suggests that water consumption effects on letter cancellation are due to the physiological effects of water, rather than expectancies about the effects of drinking water.	\N	\N
23106374	In the present study, we tested whether subliminal abrupt-onset cues capture attention in a bottom-up or top-down controlled manner. For our tests, we varied the searched-for target-contrast polarity (i.e., dark or light targets against a gray background) over four experiments. In line with the bottom-up hypothesis, our results indicate that subliminal-onset cues capture attention independently of the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 1), and this effect is not stronger for targets that matched the searched-for target-contrast polarity (Experiment 2). In fact, even to-be-ignored cues associated with a no-go response captured attention in a salience-driven way (Experiment 3). For supraliminal cues, we found attentional capture only by cues with a matching contrast polarity, reflecting contingent capture (Experiment 4). The results point toward a specific role of subliminal abrupt onsets for attentional capture.	\N	\N
23111150	Epidemiological studies have associated the negative effects of sedentary time and sedentary patterns on health indices. However, these studies have used methodologies that do not directly measure the sedentary state. Recent technological developments in the area of motion sensors have incorporated inclinometers, which can measure the inclination of the body directly, without relying on self-report or count thresholds. This paper aims to provide a detailed description of methodologies used to examine a range of relevant variables, including sedentary levels and patterns from an inclinometer-based motion sensor. The activPAL Professional physical activity logger provides an output which can be interpreted and used without the need for further processing and additional variables were derived using a custom designed MATLAB® computer program. The methodologies described have been implemented on a sample of 44 adolescent females, and the results of a range of daily physical activity and sedentary variables are described and presented. The results provide a range of objectively measured and objectively processed variables, including total time spent sitting/lying, standing and stepping, number and duration of daily sedentary bouts and both bed hours and non-bed hours, which may be of interest when making association between physical activity, sedentary behaviors and health indices.	\N	\N
23117329	The present study examined whether the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning is mediated by psychological well-being in elderly persons working night shifts. The role of psychological well-being has been neglected so far in the relationship between bright light and cognitive performance. Sleepiness and mood were applied as indicators of psychological well-being. Cognitive functioning was examined in terms of concentration, working memory, and divided attention. A total of thirty-two test persons worked in three consecutive simulated night shifts, 16 under bright light (3,000 lux) and 16 under room light (300 lux). Concentration, working memory, and divided attention were measured by computerised tasks. The hypothesised mediators were recorded by questionnaires. Mediation analyses were conducted for estimating direct, total, and indirect effects in simple mediation models. Results indicate that sleepiness and mood did not function as mediators in the prediction of concentration, working memory, and/or divided attention by light exposure. Sleepiness led to an underestimation of the positive bright-light effect on concentration performance. Mood showed only a random effect due to the positive bright-light effect on working memory. Sleepiness and mood could completely be excluded as mediators in the relationship between light exposure and cognitive functioning. This study underlines that psychological well-being of elderly persons is not a critical component in the treatment of bright light on cognitive performance in the night shift workplace. In summary, it becomes evident that bright light has a strong direct and independent effect on cognitive performance, particularly on working memory and concentration.	\N	\N
23121170	Interpersonal self-support is an indigenous Chinese personality concept. It represents the idealized notion of the kind of personality traits that help individuals deal with interpersonal problems and develop and maintain the harmonic and appropriate social relationships required in China's collectivistic and interdependent culture. It also was assumed to be a protective personality factor with regard to mental health and was found to be negatively related to psychosomatic symptoms. In the current study, cognitive processing of interpersonal information is assumed to be an underlying mechanism that connects interpersonal self-support with interpersonal relationships and mental health. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias on positive and negative interpersonal information was related to high and low interpersonal self-support. A spatial cueing task and the emotional Stroop task were administered to two samples of high and low interpersonal self-support Chinese undergraduate students to measure attentional bias. The results from both experiments suggested that high interpersonal self-support students had an attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information, while low interpersonal self-support students preferentially attended to negative interpersonal information. Study 1 indicated that attentional bias toward positive interpersonal information was easily engaged in the high interpersonal self-support group, while attentional bias toward negative interpersonal information was both easy to engage and difficult to disengage in the low interpersonal self-support students. These results support our hypotheses that high interpersonal self-support people engage in positive processing of interpersonal information, whereas low interpersonal self-support people engage in negative processing of interpersonal information. The differential balance between positive and negative processing on interpersonal information may explain why interpersonal self-support predicts both mental health and interpersonal relationships. In addition, the relational schema may explain why interpersonal self-support is associated with an attentional bias toward interpersonal information.	\N	\N
23124137	Face processing is a neural mechanism that allows understanding social information and cues conveyed by faces, whose dysfunction has been postulated to underlie some of the behavioral impairments characterizing autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A special region of the cortex, the fusiform gyrus (FG), is believed to be the specific area for processing face features and emotions. However, behavioral, fMRI and ERP studies addressed to investigate the role of FG dysfunction in ASD have led to conflicting results. Using a high-density EEG system, we recorded the face-sensitive ERP to neutral and emotional (happiness and fearful) faces, as a measure of early activity of the FG, in children with high functioning ASD. By controlling a number of experimental and clinical variables that could have biased previous research--such as gaze direction, attention to tasks, stimulus appearance and clinical profiles--we aimed to assess the effective role of the FG in the face emotion processing deficit hypothesized in ASD. No significant differences in early face-sensitive ERP components were found between ASD and neurotypical children. However, a systematic latency delay and amplitude reduction of all early potentials were observed in the ASD group, regardless of the stimulus, although more evident for emotions. Therefore, we can assume a diffuse dysfunction of neural mechanisms and networks in driving and integrating social information conveyed by faces, in particular when emotions are involved, rather than a specific impairment of the FG-related face processing circuit. Nevertheless, there is need of further investigation.	\N	\N
23124187	Growing research literature has documented the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for anxiety and depressive disorders. Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) teaches a series of mindfulness meditation and yoga practices, delivered in a group format during eight weekly sessions plus one full-day session. This case report demonstrates how MBSR was associated with dramatic clinical improvement of an individual with symptoms of panic, generalized anxiety, and depression. Scores on clinical assessment measures suggested clinically severe levels of anxious arousal, generalized anxiety, worry, fear of negative evaluation, and depression at the beginning of the intervention. The scores on all these measures fell well within normal limits 7 weeks later at the end of the intervention, and no remaining symptoms were reported afterward. Increased life satisfaction and quality of life were documented as well. This case illustrates the potential benefit of MBSR as an alternative or adjunctive treatment for comorbid anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms.	\N	\N
23127474	Typing performance involves hierarchically structured control systems: At the higher level, an outer loop generates a word or a series of words to be typed; at the lower level, an inner loop activates the keystrokes comprising the word in parallel and executes them in the correct order. The present experiments examined contributions of the outer- and inner-loop processes to the control of speed and accuracy in typewriting. Experiments 1 and 2 involved discontinuous typing of single words, and Experiments 3 and 4 involved continuous typing of paragraphs. Across experiments, typists were able to trade speed for accuracy but were unable to type at rates faster than 100 ms/keystroke, implying limits to the flexibility of the underlying processes. The analyses of the component latencies and errors indicated that the majority of the trade-offs were due to inner-loop processing. The contribution of outer-loop processing to the trade-offs was small, but it resulted in large costs in error rate. Implications for strategic control of automatic processes are discussed.	\N	\N
23128366	New methods to enhance colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates are needed. The web offers novel possibilities to educate patients and to improve health behaviors, such as cancer screening. Evidence supports the efficacy of health communications that are targeted and tailored to improve the uptake of recommendations. We identified unscreened women at average risk for CRC from the scheduling databases of obstetrics and gynecology practices in 2 large health care systems. Participants consented to a randomized controlled trial that compared CRC screening uptake after receipt of CRC screening information delivered via the web or in print form. Participants could also be assigned to a control (usual care) group. Women in the interventional arms received tailored information in a high- or low-monitoring Cognitive Social Information Processing model-defined attentional style. The primary outcome was CRC screening participation at 4 months. A total of 904 women were randomized to the interventional or control group. At 4 months, CRC screening uptake was not significantly different in the web (12.2%), print (12.0%), or control (12.9%) group. Attentional style had no effect on screening uptake for any group. Some baseline participant factors were associated with greater screening, including higher income (P = .03), stage of change (P < .001), and physician recommendation to screen (P < .001). A web-based educational intervention was no more effective than a print-based one or control (no educational intervention) in increasing CRC screening rates in women at average risk of CRC. Risk messages tailored to attentional style had no effect on screening uptake. In average-risk populations, use of the Internet for health communication without additional enhancement is unlikely to improve screening participation. clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00459030.	\N	\N
23130782	In three related manuscripts we describe our drug development program for the treatment of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD). In this first theoretical article we will defend the hypothesis that different causal mechanisms are responsible for the emergence of HSDD: low sexual desire in women (with HSDD) could be due to either a relative insensitive brain system for sexual cues or to enhanced activity of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. This distinction in etiological background was taken into account when designing and developing new pharmacotherapies for this disorder. Irrespective of circulating plasma levels of testosterone, administration of sublingual 0.5 mg testosterone increases the sensitivity of the brain to sexual cues. The effects of an increase in sexual sensitivity of the brain depend on the motivational state of an individual. It might activate sexual excitatory mechanisms in low sensitive women, while it could evoke (or strengthen) sexual inhibitory mechanisms in women prone to sexual inhibition. Sexual stimulation in the brain is necessary for phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor (PDE5i)-mediated increase in genital sexual response. Accordingly, a single dose of T+PDE5i might enhance sexual responsiveness, especially in women with low sensitivity to sexual cues. In other women sexual stimulation might elicit a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-mediated phasic increase in sexual inhibition, in which activity of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT, serotonin) is involved. We hypothesize that a single dose of 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor agonist (5-HT(1A)ra) will reduce the sexual-stimulation-induced PFC-mediated sexual inhibition during a short period after administration. Consequently, treatment with T+5-HT(1A)ra will be more effective, in particular in women exhibiting sexual inhibition. Based on the results of our efficacy studies described in parts 2 and 3 of the series, we conclude that tailoring on-demand therapeutics to different underlying etiologies might be a useful approach to treat common symptoms in subgroups of women with HSDD.	\N	\N
23148868	In 3 human predictive learning experiments, we investigated whether the allocation of attention can come under the control of contextual stimuli. In each experiment, participants initially received a conditional discrimination for which one set of cues was trained as relevant in Context 1 and irrelevant in Context 2, and another set was relevant in Context 2 and irrelevant in Context 1. For Experiments 1 and 2, we observed that a second discrimination based on cues that had previously been trained as relevant in Context 1 during the conditional discrimination was acquired more rapidly in Context 1 than in Context 2. Experiment 3 revealed a similar outcome when new stimuli from the original dimensions were used in the test stage. Our results support the view that the associability of a stimulus can be controlled by the stimuli that accompany it.	\N	\N
23151577	Biological clocks are genetically encoded oscillators that allow organisms to anticipate changes in the light-dark environment that are tied to the rotation of Earth. Clocks enhance fitness and growth in prokaryotes, and they are expressed throughout the central nervous system and peripheral tissues of multicelled organisms in which they influence sleep, arousal, feeding and metabolism. Biological clocks capture the imagination because of their tie to geophysical time, and tools are now in hand to analyse their function in health and disease at the cellular and molecular level.	\N	\N
23151960	Many theories of category learning incorporate mechanisms for selective attention, typically implemented as attention weights that change on a trial-by-trial basis. This is because there is relatively little data on within-trial changes in attention. We used eye tracking and mouse tracking as fine-grained measures of attention in three complex visual categorization tasks to investigate temporal patterns in overt attentional behavior within individual categorization decisions. In Experiments 1 and 2, we recorded participants' eye movements while they performed three different categorization tasks. We extended previous research by demonstrating that not only are participants less likely to fixate irrelevant features, but also, when they do, these fixations are shorter than fixations to relevant features. We also found that participants' fixation patterns show increasingly consistent temporal patterns. Participants were faster, although no more accurate, when their fixation sequences followed a consistent temporal structure. In Experiment 3, we replicated these findings in a task where participants used mouse movements to uncover features. Overall, we showed that there are important temporal regularities in information sampling during category learning that cannot be accounted for by existing models. These can be used to supplement extant models for richer predictions of how information is attended to during the buildup to a categorization decision.	\N	\N
23153115	Emerging evidence suggests that some individuals may be simultaneously more responsive to the effects from environmental adversity and enrichment (i.e., differential susceptibility). Given that parenting behavior and a variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the 3'untranslated region of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene are each independently associated with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), our goal was to evaluate the potential interactive effects of child DAT1 genotype with positive and negative parenting behaviors on childhood ADHD. We recruited an ethnically diverse sample of 150 six- to nine-year-old boys and girls with and without ADHD. Children were genotyped for a common polymorphism of the DAT1 gene, and objective counts of observed parenting behavior (i.e., negativity and praise) were obtained from a valid parent-child interaction task. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the interactive effects of DAT1 and observed parenting with a latent ADHD factor. We detected a significant interaction between observed praise and child DAT1 (coded additively), which suggested that praise was associated with increased ADHD, but only among youth with the 9/10 genotype. In addition, a marginally significant interaction between DAT1 (coded additively and recessively) and observed negativity emerged for ADHD, such that negativity was positively associated with ADHD but only for youth with the 9/9 genotype. Although differential susceptibility theory was not fully supported, these preliminary results suggest that interactive exchanges between parenting behavior and child genotype potentially contribute to the development of ADHD. Clinical implications for interactions between parenting behavior and child genotype are discussed.	\N	\N
23154040	In order to become a proficient user of language, infants must detect temporal cues embedded within the noisy acoustic spectra of ongoing speech by efficient attentional engagement. According to the neuro-constructivist approach, a multi-sensory dysfunction of attentional engagement - hampering the temporal sampling of stimuli - might be responsible for language deficits typically shown in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). In the present study, the efficiency of visual attentional engagement was investigated in 22 children with SLI and 22 typically developing (TD) children by measuring attentional masking (AM). AM refers to impaired identification of the first of two sequentially presented masked objects (O1 and O2) in which the O1-O2 interval was manipulated. Lexical and grammatical comprehension abilities were also tested in both groups. Children with SLI showed a sluggish engagement of temporal attention, and individual differences in AM accounted for a significant percentage of unique variance in grammatical performance. Our results suggest that an attentional engagement deficit - probably linked to a dysfunction of the right fronto-parietal attentional network - might be a contributing factor in these children's language impairments.	\N	\N
23156620	The study was designed to show how driver attention to the road scene and engagement of a choice of secondary tasks are affected by the level of automation provided to assist or take over the basic task of vehicle control. It was also designed to investigate the difference between support in longitudinal control and support in lateral control. There is comparatively little literature on the implications of automation for drivers' engagement in the driving task and for their willingness to engage in non-driving-related activities. A study was carried out on a high-level driving simulator in which drivers experienced three levels of automation: manual driving, semiautomated driving with either longitudinal or lateral control provided, and highly automated driving with both longitudinal and lateral control provided. Drivers were free to pay attention to the roadway and traffic or to engage in a range of entertainment and grooming tasks. Engagement in the nondriving tasks increased from manual to semiautomated driving and increased further with highly automated driving. There were substantial differences in attention to the road and traffic between the two types of semiautomated driving. The literature on automation and the various task analyses of driving do not currently help to explain the effects that were found. Lateral support and longitudinal support may be the same in terms of levels of automation but appear to be regarded rather differently by drivers.	\N	\N
23156621	A driving simulator study compared the effect of changes in workload on performance in manual and highly automated driving. Changes in driver state were also observed by examining variations in blink patterns. With the addition of a greater number of advanced driver assistance systems in vehicles, the driver's role is likely to alter in the future from an operator in manual driving to a supervisor of highly automated cars. Understanding the implications of such advancements on drivers and road safety is important. A total of 50 participants were recruited for this study and drove the simulator in both manual and highly automated mode. As well as comparing the effect of adjustments in driving-related workload on performance, the effect of a secondary Twenty Questions Task was also investigated. In the absence of the secondary task, drivers' response to critical incidents was similar in manual and highly automated driving conditions. The worst performance was observed when drivers were required to regain control of driving in the automated mode while distracted by the secondary task. Blink frequency patterns were more consistent for manual than automated driving but were generally suppressed during conditions of high workload. Highly automated driving did not have a deleterious effect on driver performance, when attention was not diverted to the distracting secondary task. As the number of systems implemented in cars increases, an understanding of the implications of such automation on drivers' situation awareness, workload, and ability to remain engaged with the driving task is important.	\N	\N
23160204	Do stimuli appear to be closer when they are more threatening? We tested people's perceptions of distance to stimuli that they felt were threatening relative to perceptions of stimuli they felt were disgusting or neutral. Two studies demonstrated that stimuli that emitted affective signals of threat (e.g., an aggressive male student) were seen as physically closer than stimuli that emitted affective signals of disgust (e.g., a repulsive male student) or no affective signal. Even after controlling for the direct effects of physiological arousal, object familiarity, and intensity of the negative emotional reaction, we found that threatening stimuli appeared to be physically closer than did disgusting ones (Study 2). These findings highlight the links among biased perception, action regulation, and successful navigation of the environment.	\N	\N
23167479	Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a main cause of mortality and morbidity. Association studies between hospitalization variables and cognitive impairment after TBI are frequently retrospective, including non-consecutive patients showing variable degrees of TBI severity, and poor management of missing (drop out) cases. We assessed prospectively the demographic and hospitalization variables of 234 consecutive patients with severe TBI (admission Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] ≤8) and determined their independent association with cognitive performance in a representative sample (n = 46) of surviving patients (n = 172) evaluated 3 (±1.8) years after hospitalization. In all, 85% of patients were male and the mean age was 34 (SD ±13) years. The education level was 9 (±4.7) years. As expected, education and age showed a moderately to strong linear relationship with the cognitive performance in 14 of 15 neuropsychological tests (R coefficient = 0.6-0.8). The cognitive test scores were not independently associated with gender, admission GCS, associated trauma, and Marshal CT classification. Admission-elevated blood glucose levels and the presence of sub-arachnoid haemorrhage were independently associated with lower scores on Rey Auditory Verbal Learning retention and Logical Memory-I tests, respectively. After correction for education and age distribution, the variables that are commonly associated with mortality or Glasgow Outcome Scale including admission pupils' examination, Marshal CT Classification, GCS, and serum glucose showed a limited predictive power for long-term cognitive prognosis. Identification of clinical, radiological, and laboratory variables as well as new biomarkers independently associated with cognitive outcome remains an important challenge for further work involving severe TBI patients.	\N	\N
23167664	Clozapine, a second generation antipsychotic which is relatively safe in overdose, has been used as an effective treatment alternative to traditional antipsychotics. The therapeutic use in children remains controversial. However, in accordance with the increasing prescription in adults, the accidental ingestion in childhood becomes more frequent. We report the youngest case of accidental clozapine ingestion. A 13-month-old girl presented with acute respiratory insufficiency and coma of unknown origin. The medical history, laboratory and radiological assessment did not link to aetiology until an almost spontaneous arousal after 22 h pointed towards intoxication. The initial standard drug screening using immunoassay had been negative. Hence, liquid chromatography mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was performed, and clozapine was detected with a serum concentration of 736 ng/mL. This case illustrates the diagnostic and forensic pitfalls in a coma of unknown origin due to the limits of toxicological screening immunoassays. LC-MS/MS analysis by an established method showed clozapine metabolites (norclozapine and clozapine-N-oxide) are detectable for longer period, especially in urine, when compared with clozapine. The clinical course is presented in unique correlation with plasma and urine concentrations of clozapine and its metabolites. The elimination pattern of clozapine in toddlers is similar to adults, and the toxic dose was found to be lower when compared with school-age children and adults.	\N	\N
23179030	This article proposes a means for better understanding the self and consciousness. Data indicate that the basic "emotional brain" continually computes potential survival risk against reward to rank consequent "emotion scores" for all sensory inputs. These scores compete to yield winner-takes-all outcomes that determine the choice of attention or action. This mechanism prevails regardless of whether the competing options gain their emotion scores through a rational or an intuitive pathway. There is no need to postulate any homunculus or inner self in control of such choice; indeed, our belief in a first-person self in overall control is wrong. The self is a passive construct arising from each individual's social development, where language acquisition vastly heightens communication and awareness not only outwardly, but also inwardly, as if to a controlling "inner I." However, when society comes to hold the maturing being accountable for his or her actions, the brain must respond, and it does so in the only way it can, by deeming that this passive, inner self-construct act as if it were the active self in charge. Consciousness emerges when the language-based output of the higher brain is referred for ownership to this artificial self-construct.	\N	\N
23181686	We investigated the role of implicit spatiotemporal learning in the Posner spatial cueing of attention task. During initial training, the proportion of different trial types was altered to produce a complex pattern of spatiotemporal contingencies between cues and targets. For example, in the short invalid and long valid condition, targets reliably appeared either at an uncued location after a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 100 ms) or at a cued location after a long SOA (350 ms). As revealed by postexperiment questioning, most participants were unaware of these manipulations. Whereas prior studies have examined reaction times during training, the current study examined the long-term effect of training on subsequent testing that removed these contingencies. An initial experiment found training effects only for the long SOAs that typically produce inhibition of return (IOR) effects. For instance, after short invalid and long valid training, there was a benefit at long SOAs rather than an IOR effect. A 2nd experiment ruled out target-cue overlap as an explanation of the difference between learning for long versus short SOAs. Rather than a mix of perfectly predictable spatiotemporal contingencies, Experiment 3 used only short SOA trials during training with a probabilistic spatial contingency. There was a smaller but reliable training effect in subsequent testing. These results demonstrate that implicit learning for specific combinations of location and SOA can affect behavior in spatial cueing paradigms, which is a necessary result if more generally spatial cueing reflects learned spatiotemporal regularities.	\N	\N
23200451	Driver distraction is estimated to be one of the leading causes of motor vehicle accidents. However, little is known about the role of emotional distraction on driving, despite evidence that attention is highly biased toward emotion. In the present study, we used a dual-task paradigm to examine the potential for driver distraction from emotional information presented on roadside billboards. This purpose was achieved using a driving simulator and three different types of emotional information: neutral words, negative emotional words, and positive emotional words. Participants also responded to target words while driving and completed a surprise free recall task of all the words at the end of the study. The findings suggest that driving performance is differentially affected by the valence (negative versus positive) of the emotional content. Drivers had lower mean speeds when there were emotional words compared to neutral words, and this slowing effect lasted longer when there were positive words. This may be due to distraction effects on driving behavior, which are greater for positive arousing stimuli. Moreover, when required to process non-emotional target stimuli, drivers had faster mean speeds in conditions where the targets were interspersed with emotional words compared to neutral words, and again, these effects lasted longer when there were positive words. On the other hand, negative information led to better memory recall. These unique effects may be due to separate processes in the human attention system, particularly related to arousal mechanisms and their interaction with emotion. We conclude that distraction that is emotion-based can modulate attention and decision-making abilities and have adverse impacts on driving behavior for several reasons.	\N	\N
23211268	We investigated motion extrapolation in object tracking in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a multiple-object-tracking task (MOT; three targets, three distractors) combined with a probe detection task to investigate the distribution of attention around a target object. We found anisotropic probe detection rates with increased probe detection at locations where a target is heading. In Experiment 2, we introduced a black line (wall) in the center of the screen and block-wise manipulated the object's motion: either objects bounced realistically against the wall or objects went through the wall. Just before a target coincided with the wall, a probe could appear either along the bounce path or along the straight path. In addition to MOT, we included a single-object-tracking task (SOT; one target, five distractors) to control for attentional load. We found that linear extrapolation is dominant (better probe detection along the straight path than bounce path) regardless of attentional load and the motion condition. Anticipation of bouncing behavior did occur but only when attentional load was low. We conclude that attention is not tightly bound to moving target objects but encompasses the object's current position and the area in front of it. Furthermore, under the present experimental conditions, the visuo-attentional system does not seem to anticipate object bounces in the MOT task.	\N	\N
23212302	In brain surgery procedures, such as deep brain stimulation, drug-resistant epilepsy and tumour surgery, the patient is intentionally awakened to map functional neural bases via electrophysiological assessment. This assessment can involve patient's body movements; thus, increasing the mechanical load on the head-restraint systems used for keeping the skull still during the surgery. The loads exchanged between the head and the restraining device can potentially result into skin and bone damage. The aim of this work is to assess such loads for laying down the requirements of a surgical robotics system for dynamic head movements compensation by fast moving arms and by an active restraint able to damp such actions. A Mayfield(®) head clamp was tracked and instrumented with strain gages (SGs). SG locations were chosen according to finite element analyses. During an actual brain surgery, displacements and strains were measured and clustered according to events that generated them. Loads were inferred from strain data. The greatest force components were exerted vertically (median 5.5 N, maximum 151.87 N) with frequencies up to 1.5 Hz. Maximum measured displacement and velocity were 9 mm and 60 mm/s, with frequencies up to 2.8 Hz. The analysis of loads and displacements allowed to identify the surgery steps causing maximal loads on the head-restraint device.	\N	\N
23216374	Studies on adults have revealed a disadvantageous effect of negative emotional stimuli on executive functions (EF), and it is suggested that this effect is amplified in children. The present study's aim was to assess how emotional facial expressions affected working memory in 9- to 12-year-olds, using a working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli. Additionally, we explored how degree of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in typically developing children was related to performance on the same task. Before employing the working memory task with emotional facial expressions as stimuli, an independent sample of 9- to 12-year-olds was asked to recognize the facial expressions intended to serve as stimuli for the working memory task and to rate the facial expressions on the degree to which the emotion was expressed and for arousal to obtain a baseline for how children during this age recognize and react to facial expressions. The first study revealed that children rated the facial expressions with similar intensity and arousal across age. When employing the working memory task with facial expressions, results revealed that negatively valenced expressions impaired working memory more than neutral and positively valenced expressions. The ability to successfully complete the working memory task increased between 9 to 12 years of age. Children's total problems were associated with poorer performance on the working memory task with facial expressions. Results on the effect of emotion on working memory are discussed in light of recent models and empirical findings on how emotional information might interact and interfere with cognitive processes such as working memory.	\N	\N
23216771	The unique role of the EEG alpha rhythm in different states of cortical activity is still debated. The main theories regarding alpha function posit either sensory processing or attention allocation as the main processes governing its modulation. Closing and opening eyes, a well-known manipulation of the alpha rhythm, could be regarded as attention allocation from inward to outward focus though during light is also accompanied by visual change. To disentangle the effects of attention allocation and sensory visual input on alpha modulation, 14 healthy subjects were asked to open and close their eyes during conditions of light and of complete darkness while simultaneous recordings of EEG and fMRI were acquired. Thus, during complete darkness the eyes-open condition is not related to visual input but only to attention allocation, allowing direct examination of its role in alpha modulation. A data-driven ridge regression classifier was applied to the EEG data in order to ascertain the contribution of the alpha rhythm to eyes-open/eyes-closed inference in both lighting conditions. Classifier results revealed significant alpha contribution during both light and dark conditions, suggesting that alpha rhythm modulation is closely linked to the change in the direction of attention regardless of the presence of visual sensory input. Furthermore, fMRI activation maps derived from an alpha modulation time-course during the complete darkness condition exhibited a right frontal cortical network associated with attention allocation. These findings support the importance of top-down processes such as attention allocation to alpha rhythm modulation, possibly as a prerequisite to its known bottom-up processing of sensory input.	\N	\N
23217629	This study analyzes the effects of attention disruption factors, such as sending text messages (STM) and performing searching navigation (SN) on driving performance patterns while actively driving, centering on motion signals. To this end, it analyzes not only data on control of the vehicle including the Anterior-Posterior Coefficient of Variation (APCV), Medial-Lateral Coefficient of Variation (MLCV), and Deviation of Vehicle Speed but also motion data such as the Jerk-Cost function (JC). A total of 55 drivers including 28 males (age: 24.1 ± 1.5, driving experience: 1.8 years ± 1.7 years) and 27 females (age: 23.8 ± 2.6, driving experience: 1.5 ± 1.0) participated in this study. All subjects were instructed to drive at a constant speed (90 km/h) for 2 min while keeping a distance of 30 m from the front car also running at a speed of 90 km/h. They were requested to drive for the first 1 min and then drive only (Driving Only) or conduct tasks while driving for the subsequent 1 min (Driving + STM or Driving + SN). The information on APCV, MLCV, and deviation of speed were delivered by a driving simulator. Furthermore, the motion signal was measured using 4 high-speed infrared cameras and based on the measurement results, JCs in a total of 6 parts including left shoulder (L.shoulder), left elbow (L.elbow), left hand (L.hand), right knee (R.knee), right ankle (R.ankle), and right toe (R.toe) were calculated. Differences among the results of 3 conditions of experiment, Driving Only, Driving + STM, and Driving + SN, were compared and analyzed in terms of APCV, MLCV, Deviation of Vehicle Speed, and JC. APCV and Deviation of Vehicle Speed increased in Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. MLCV increased in Driving + STM and Driving + SN, rather than in Driving Only. In the case of most JCs except that of L.hand, the values increased in Driving + SN, compared to Driving Only. This study indicated that JC could be a reliable parameter for the evaluation of driving performance patterns. In addition, it was discovered that additional tasks under driving, such as STM and SN, impaired smoothness or proficiency in driving motion, thereby increasing anterior-posterior and medio-lateral variability and deviation of speed.	\N	\N
23221862	The current state of knowledge suggests that disruption of neuronal information integration may be a common mechanism of anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. A neural system critical for information integration is the thalamocortical system whose specific and nonspecific divisions may play the roles for representing and integrating information, respectively. How anesthetics affect the function of these systems individually is not completely understood. The authors studied the effect of propofol on thalamocortical functional connectivity in the specific and nonspecific systems, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Eight healthy volunteers were instructed to listen to and encode 40 English words during wakeful baseline, light sedation, deep sedation, and recovery in the scanner. Functional connectivity was determined as the temporal correlation of blood oxygen level-dependent signals with seed regions defined within the specific and nonspecific thalamic nuclei. Thalamocortical connectivity at baseline was dominantly medial and bilateral frontal and temporal for the specific system, and medial frontal and medial parietal for the nonspecific system. During deep sedation, propofol reduced functional connectivity by 43% (specific) and 79% (nonspecific), a significantly greater reduction in the nonspecific than in the specific system and in the left hemisphere than in the right. Upon regaining consciousness, functional connectivity increased by 58% (specific) and 123% (nonspecific) during recovery, exceeding their values at baseline. Propofol conferred differential changes in functional connectivity of the specific and nonspecific thalamocortical systems, particularly in left hemisphere, consistent with the verbal nature of stimuli and task. The changes in nonspecific thalamocortical connectivity may correlate with the loss and return of consciousness.	\N	\N
23224515	Fragile X syndrome (FXS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are both genetic disorders which present with similar cognitive-behavioral problems, but distinct social phenotypes. Despite these social differences both syndromes display poor social relations which may result from abnormal social processing. This study aimed to manipulate the location of socially salient information within scenes to investigate the visual attentional mechanisms of: capture, disengagement, and/or general engagement. Findings revealed that individuals with FXS avoid social information presented centrally, at least initially. The WS findings, on the other hand, provided some evidence that difficulties with attentional disengagement, rather than attentional capture, may play a role in the WS social phenotype. These findings are discussed in relation to the distinct social phenotypes of these two disorders.	\N	\N
23228587	Prominent models of social phobia highlight the role played by attentional factors, such as self-focused attention, in the development and maintenance of social phobia. Elevated self-focused attention is associated with increases in self-rated anxiety. Treatments that aim to modify and change attentional processes, specifically self-focused attention, will have a direct effect on social phobia symptoms. Thus, Attention Training targets attentional focus. The present study aimed to investigate the efficacy of Attention Training in comparison to an established treatment for social phobia, Cognitive Therapy. Participants (Intention-to-treat = 45; completers = 30) were allocated to either 6 weeks of Attention Training or Cognitive Therapy. It was hypothesized that both treatments would be effective in reducing social phobia symptoms, but that Attention Training would work primarily by reducing levels of self-focused attention. The results found an overall effectiveness of both treatment conditions in reducing social phobia symptoms. However, Attention Training significantly improved scores on the Self-Focused Attention questionnaire and the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation questionnaire compared to Cognitive Therapy. Attention Training seems to be a promising treatment for social phobia.	\N	\N
23233157	Working memory (WM) and attention have been studied as separate cognitive constructs, although it has long been acknowledged that attention plays an important role in controlling the activation, maintenance, and manipulation of representations in WM. WM has, conversely, been thought of as a means of maintaining representations to voluntarily guide perceptual selective attention. It has more recently been observed, however, that the contents of WM can capture visual attention, even when such internally maintained representations are irrelevant, and often disruptive, to the immediate external task. Thus, the precise relationship between WM and attention remains unclear, but it appears that they may bidirectionally impact one another, whether or not internal representations are consistent with the external perceptual goals. This reciprocal relationship seems, further, to be constrained by limited cognitive resources to handle demands in either maintenance or selection. We propose here that the close relationship between WM and attention may be best described as a give-and-take interdependence between attention directed toward either actively maintained internal representations (traditionally considered WM) or external perceptual stimuli (traditionally considered selective attention), underpinned by their shared reliance on a common cognitive resource. Put simply, we argue that WM and attention should no longer be considered as separate systems or concepts, but as competing and influencing one another because they rely on the same limited resource. This framework can offer an explanation for the capture of visual attention by irrelevant WM contents, as well as a straightforward account of the underspecified relationship between WM and attention.	\N	\N
23234490	People have significant psychological resources to improve their well-being and performance, but these resources often go unused and could be better harnessed. In the medical domain, it is well established that these resources can be mobilized under certain conditions, for example in the context of the placebo effect. Here we explored whether the placebo principle can be used to enhance cognitive performance. To do so, we employed a modified placebo induction--a bogus priming method that we told participants would unconsciously enhance their knowledge and that they should hence trust their skills in an upcoming knowledge test. Participant performance was indeed enhanced, compared to a group that did not think the priming process would improve their knowledge. The study documents the relevance of the placebo effect outside the medical and therapeutic setting.	\N	\N
23237079	Previous theories about the etiology of cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) emphasized trait factors such as neurological impairment. State factors, other than mood symptoms, that may exacerbate functional deficits have not yet been considered. The purpose of this study was to examine autonomic nervous system (ANS) arousal following cognitive challenge. The study compared patients with BD and healthy controls (HC) in physiological measures and neuropsychological test scores. Thirty euthymic patients with BD and 22 HC completed the study. Participants completed mood [Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS)], anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and substance abuse (Drug Abuse Screening Test-20 item and Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test) measures. They were connected to an electrogram, a sensitive thermometer for measuring finger temperature, and electrodes that measure galvanic skin response. After a five-min baseline measurement in a restful state, participants completed a computerized neuropsychological battery (CNS Vital Signs). The group with BD reported significantly more mood symptoms (BDI-II, t = 3.71, p < 0.001; YMRS, t = 6.73, p < 0.001) and scored higher on a measure of trait-anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, t = 2.91, p < 0.001) than HC. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed higher arousal on all physiological measures in the BD group relative to HC at baseline [F(3,48) = 13.1, p < 0.001] and during cognitive testing [F(3,48) = 11.3, p < 0.001]. The increase in physiological arousal from a restful state to the time of testing was higher for the BD group [F(3,37) = 8.06, p < 0.001]. With respect to cognitive data, HC scored higher than patients with BD across the measures of memory (F = 8.5, p < 0.001), sustained (F = 9.5, p < 0.001) and complex (F = 2.7, p < 0.04) attention, processing speed (F = 10.0, p < 0.001), reaction time (F = 7.8, p < 0.001), cognitive flexibility (F = 19.7, p < 0.001), working memory (F = 10.8, p < 0.001), and social acuity (F = 5.7, p < 0.01), with partial eta-squared from 0.18 to 0.62. Correlational analysis revealed significant associations between various cognitive test scores and changes in physiological arousal from baseline to testing (-0.59 ≤ r ≤ 0.22). Relative to HC, patients with BD experience larger changes in ANS arousal between a restful baseline and cognitive testing, and achieve lower cognitive test scores. Further research is needed to determine whether acute physiological symptoms of anxiety directly compromise cognitive functioning in BD.	\N	\N
23237331	The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.	\N	\N
23242199	Performance of unimanual movements is associated with bihemispheric activity in the motor cortex in old adults. However, the causal functional role of the ipsilateral MC (iMC) for motor control is still not completely known. Here, the behavioral consequences of interference of the iMC during training of a complex motor skill were tested. Healthy old (58-85 years) and young volunteers (22-35 years) were tested in a double-blind, cross-over, sham-controlled design. Participants attended 2 different study arms with either cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (ctDCS) or sham concurrent with training. Motor performance was evaluated before, during, 90 min, and 24 h after training. During training, a reduced slope of performance with ctDCS relative to sham was observed in old compared with young (F = 5.8, P = 0.02), with a decrease of correctly rehearsed sequences, an effect that was evident even after 2 consecutive retraining periods without intervention. Furthermore, the older the subject, the more prominent was the disruptive effect of ctDCS (R(2) = 0.50, P = 0.01). These data provide direct evidence for a causal functional link between the iMC and motor skill acquisition in old subjects pointing toward the concept that the recruitment of iMC in old is an adaptive process in response to age-related declines in motor functions.	\N	\N
23244316	Rumination, defined as repetitive thinking about negative information, has been found to lead to serious maladaptive consequences, including longer and more severe episodes of major depression. In this review, we present and discuss research findings motivated by the formulation that individual differences in cognitive processes that control how information is processed influence the likelihood that thoughts will become repetitive and negative. Several studies have demonstrated that a tendency to ruminate (i.e., trait rumination) is related to difficulties updating working memory (WM) and disengaging from and forgetting no-longer-relevant information. Other investigators have documented that trait rumination is also associated with an enhanced ability to ignore distracting information and with more stable maintenance of task-relevant information. In contrast to trait rumination, a state of rumination has been found to be related to widespread deficits in cognitive control. In this article, we discuss how the current accounts of control functioning cannot explain this pattern of anomalous control functioning. To explain these findings, including unexpected and contradictory results, we present an attentional scope model of rumination that posits that a constricted array of thoughts, percepts, and actions that are activated in WM or available for selection from long-term memory affects the control functioning of trait ruminators. This model explains, at a cognitive level, why rumination is particularly likely to arise when individuals are in a negative mood state; it also accounts for a number of findings outside of the rumination-control literature and generates several novel predictions.	\N	\N
23250122	Stroke thrombolysis is limited by the "last-seen well" principle, which defines stroke onset time. A significant minority of stroke patients (~15%) awake with their symptoms and are by definition ineligible for thrombolysis because they were "last-seen well" at the time they went to bed implying an interval that is most often greater than three hours. A single-centre prospective, safety study was designed to thrombolyse 20 subjects with stroke-on-awakening. Patients were eligible for inclusion if they were last seen well less than 12 hours previously, specifically including those who awoke from sleep with their stroke deficits. They had a baseline computed tomogram (CT) scan with an ASPECTS score greater than 5, no evidence of well-evolved infarction and a CT angiogram / Trans-cranial Doppler ultrasound study demonstrating an intracranial arterial occlusion. Patients fulfilled all other standard criteria for stroke thrombolysis. The primary outcome was safety defined by symptomatic ICH or death. Among 89 screened patients, 20 were treated with thrombolysis. Two patients (10%) died due to massive carotid territory stroke and two patients (10%) died of stroke complications. Two patients (10%) showed asymptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) (petechial hemorrhage) and none symptomatic ICH. Reasons for exclusion were: (a) ASPECTS ≤ 5 (29); (b) well-evolved infarcts on CT (19); (c) historical mRS > 2 (17); (d) no demonstrable arterial occlusion or were too mild to warrant treatment (10). Patients who awake with their deficits can be safely treated with thrombolysis based upon a tissue window defined by NCCT and CTA/TCD.	\N	\N
23252922	Attention deficit has been reported in both schizophrenia patients and patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The aim of this study was to elucidate the deficits in sustained attention and associated neural network dysfunctions in schizophrenia patients and MDD patients, and to investigate the difference between the two patient groups. Twelve schizophrenia patients, 12 patients with non-psychotic MDD, and 12 healthy control subjects participated in this study. A sustained attention to response task (SART) was used to measure attention capacity. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) during attention tasks was measured using H(2) (15) O positron emission tomography. Statistical parametric mapping and analysis of covariance were performed to compare the behavioral performance and CBF changes during SART among three groups. Behavioral performances were not significantly different among the three groups except for an increased commission error rate in the schizophrenia group. Regional CBF during SART was significantly reduced in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the left cuneus, and the right superior parietal lobule and increased in the right superior frontal gyrus and the right cuneus in the schizophrenia group compared to the healthy control group. In the MDD group, neither significant regional CBF difference nor behavioral deficit was found compared to the healthy control group. Behavioral performance deficit and perfusion changes in the prefrontal and parietal cortices during SART were observed only in the schizophrenia group. Prefrontal and parietal network dysfunction for sustained attention may be involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23261418	The memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002) posits the importance of a short delay (the 'interruption lag') before an interrupting task to encode suspended goals for retrieval post-interruption. Two experiments used the theory of soft constraints (Gray, Simms, Fu & Schoelles, 2006) to investigate whether the efficacy of an interruption lag could be improved by increasing goal-state access cost to induce a more memory-based encoding strategy. Both experiments used a copying task with three access cost conditions (Low, Medium, and High) and a 5-s interruption lag with a no lag control condition. Experiment 1 found that the participants in the High access cost condition resumed more interrupted trials and executed more actions correctly from memory when coupled with an interruption lag. Experiment 2 used a prospective memory test post-interruption and an eyetracker recorded gaze activity during the interruption lag. The participants in the High access cost condition with an interruption lag were best at encoding target information during the interruption lag, evidenced by higher scores on the prospective memory measure and more gaze activity on the goal-state during the interruption lag. Theoretical and practical issues regarding the use of goal-state access cost and an interruption lag are discussed.	\N	\N
23265305	To study the sexual activities and prevalence of sexual dysfunctions in midlife Chinese women and their correlations with demographic factors, sexual dissatisfaction and interpersonal difficulty. This is a cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of women aged 40-60, who requested gynecological checkup or attend social activities at Women's Club. Sexual activities, sexual dysfunctions, sexual dissatisfaction, demographic factors and interpersonal difficulty were assessed by self-administered questionnaire. Among 371 eligible subjects, 22.4% and 39.6% women had low intimacy and coitus frequency (0 to <12 acts in one year), respectively. The odds ratios for low coital frequency in the natural menopausal and surgical menopausal subgroups were 3.00 and 5.09, respectively (95% confidence interval: 1.73-5.19 and 1.77-14.69, respectively). Overall, 77.2% women had at least one type of sexual dysfunctions; this proportion was highest in the surgically menopausal subgroup (88.9%) followed by the naturally menopausal subgroup (79.3%), the perimenopausal subgroup (78.2%) and the premenopausal subgroup (72.2%) (p=0.003). No lubrication (42.9%) was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected naturally and surgically menopaused women (p=0.001). Sexual dysfunction was the major contributor to sexual dissatisfaction (0.80), followed by interpersonal difficulty (0.2). Arousal disorder was the pivot of interaction between sexual dissatisfaction, menopausal status and low coital frequency. Chinese women had fewer intimate contacts and less coitus when menopause progressed. No lubrication was the commonest sexual dysfunction and predominantly affected menopaused women. Our model showed that sexual dysfunction is the main contributor to sexual dissatisfaction.	\N	\N
23274853	Behavioral studies suggest that postural control requires increased cognitive control and visuospatial processing with aging. Consequently, performance can decline when concurrently performing a postural and a demanding cognitive task. We aimed to identify the neural substrate underlying this effect. A demanding cognitive task, requiring visuospatial transformations, was performed with varying postural loads. More specifically, old and young subjects performed mental rotations of abstract figures in a seated position and when standing on a force platform. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify brain regions associated with mental rotation performance. Old as compared to young subjects showed increased blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) responses in a frontoparietal network as well as activations in additional areas. Despite this overall increased activation, they could still modulate BOLD responses with increasing task complexity. Importantly, activity in left lingual gyrus was highly predictive (r = -0.83, adjusted R(2) = 0.65) of the older subjects' degree of success in mental rotation performance when shifting from a sitting to a standing position. More specifically, increased activation in this area was associated with better performance, once postural load increased.	\N	\N
23275056	To assess for the increased risk of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in young children with prenatal methamphetamine exposure from the multicenter, longitudinal Infant Development, Environment, and Lifestyle (IDEAL) study. The IDEAL study enrolled 412 mother-infant pairs at 4 sites (Tulsa, OK; Des Moines, IA; Los Angeles, CA; and Honolulu, HI). Methamphetamine-exposed subjects (n = 204) were identified by self-report and/or gas chromatography/mass spectrometry confirmation of amphetamine and metabolites in infant meconium. Matched subjects (n = 208) denied methamphetamine use and had a negative meconium screen. This analysis included a subsample of 301 subjects who were administered the Conners' Kiddie Continuous Performance Test (K-CPT) at 5.5 years of age (153 exposed and 148 comparison). Hierarchical linear models adjusted for covariates tested exposure effects on K-CPT measures. Using the same covariates, logistic regression was used to determine the effect of exposure on the incidence of a positive ADHD confidence index score, defined as greater than 50%. There were no differences between the groups in omission or commission errors or reaction time for correct trials. However, methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in other outcomes predictive of ADHD, including increased slope of reaction time across blocks (p < .001), increased variability in reaction time with longer interstimulus intervals (p < .01), and increased likelihood of greater than 50% on the ADHD confidence index (odds ratio, 3.1; 95% confidence interval, 1.2-7.8; p = .02). Prenatal methamphetamine exposure was associated with subtle differences in K-CPT scores at 5.5 years of age. Even at this relatively young age, these children exhibit indicators of risk for ADHD and warrant monitoring.	\N	\N
23276727	Coordinated joint engagement (CJE) is a behavioral measure used in the infant-caregiver interaction paradigm to measure joint attention. To know how mothers scaffold infant attention to prompt joint engagement states, this study attempted to determine (a) which specific maternal attention-directing strategies facilitate CJE in mother-infant interactions and (b) how attention-directing strategies precede a range of infant engagement states. Free play in 33 low-SES dyads was analyzed sequentially, a method that reveals temporal relations between the behaviors involved in an interaction. Maintaining was the only strategy that preceded CJE, and Introducing and Redirecting preceded infant Engagement with Object, Onlooking, and Supported Joint Engagement. The results point to the scaffolding role of Maintaining and the mediating role of Introducing and Redirecting maternal strategies. To understand how low-SES infants attain CJE is important given the relation between joint attention and cognitive development. Implications of the results for interventions aimed at reducing socioeconomic inequities in early cognitive development are discussed.	\N	\N
23279174	Schizophrenia is a complex epigenetic puzzle, the antecedents of which are presumed to lie in neurodevelopmental dysmaturation. This dysmaturation has an impact on children and adolescents at genetic risk for schizophrenia. In this framework, normative mechanisms of brain development that are highly dynamic in adolescence are likely to be disrupted in the at-risk adolescent brain. It is likely that what is affected is the integrity of brain networks that sub-serve fundamental domains of function such as sustained attention. Notably, expansion in proficiency in sustained attention that is characteristic of typical development is likely to be compromised in adolescents at risk for schizophrenia. This confluence of at-risk adolescents and neuro-behavioral domains of inquiry is discussed. We outline the evidence for developmental antecedents of schizophrenia, and their bases in systems and molecular mechanisms in the brain. Then we juxtapose these results against neuro-behavioral evidence of attention deficits in high-risk populations, and fMRI evidence of dysfunctional responses in critical brain regions. We end by advocating the application of systems-based approaches toward understanding the progression of network dysfunction in the adolescent risk-state.	\N	\N
23280545	Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) has shown beneficial aphrodisiac effects in some animal and human studies. The aim of the present study was to assess the safety and efficacy of saffron on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced sexual dysfunction in women. This was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study. Thirty-eight women with major depression who were stabilized on fluoxetine 40 mg/day for a minimum of 6 weeks and had experienced subjective feeling of sexual dysfunction entered the study. The patients were randomly assigned to saffron (30 mg/daily) or placebo for 4 weeks. Measurement was performed at baseline, week 2, and week 4 using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). Side effects were systematically recorded. Thirty-four women had at least one post-baseline measurement and completed the study. Two-factor repeated measure analysis of variance showed significant effect of time × treatment interaction [Greenhouse-Geisser's corrected: F(1.580, 50.567) = 5.366, p = 0.012] and treatment for FSFI total score [F(1, 32) = 4.243, p = 0.048]. At the end of the fourth week, patients in the saffron group had experienced significantly more improvement in total FSFI (p < 0.001), arousal (p = 0.028), lubrication (p = 0.035), and pain (p = 0.016) domains of FSFI but not in desire (p = 0.196), satisfaction (p = 0.206), and orgasm (p = 0.354) domains. Frequency of side effects was similar between the two groups. It seems saffron may safely and effectively improve some of the fluoxetine-induced sexual problems including arousal, lubrication, and pain.	\N	\N
23288020	To verify the auditory selective attention in children with stroke. Dichotic tests of binaural separation (non-verbal and consonant-vowel) and binaural integration - digits and Staggered Spondaic Words Test (SSW) - were applied in 13 children (7 boys), from 7 to 16 years, with unilateral stroke confirmed by neurological examination and neuroimaging. The attention performance showed significant differences in comparison to the control group in both kinds of tests. In the non-verbal test, identifications the ear opposite the lesion in the free recall stage was diminished and, in the following stages, a difficulty in directing attention was detected. In the consonant- vowel test, a modification in perceptual asymmetry and difficulty in focusing in the attended stages was found. In the digits and SSW tests, ipsilateral, contralateral and bilateral deficits were detected, depending on the characteristics of the lesions and demand of the task. Stroke caused auditory attention deficits when dealing with simultaneous sources of auditory information.	\N	\N
23297206	Language production and spatial attention are the most salient lateralized cerebral functions, and their complementary specialization has been observed in the majority of the population. To investigate whether the complementary specialization has a causal origin (the lateralization of one function causes the opposite lateralization of the other) or rather is a statistical phenomenon (different functions lateralize independently), we determined the lateralization for spatial attention in a group of individuals with known atypical right hemispheric (RH) lateralization for speech production, based on a previous large-scale screening of left-handers. We show that all 13 participants with RH language dominance have left-hemispheric dominance for spatial attention, and all but one of 16 participants with left-hemispheric language dominance are RH dominant for spatial attention. Activity was observed in the dorsal fronto-parietal pathway of attention, including the inferior parietal sulcus and superior parietal lobule, the frontal eye-movement field, and the inferior frontal sulcus/gyrus, and these regions functionally colateralized in the hemisphere dominant for attention, independently of the side of lateralization. Our results clearly support the Causal hypothesis about the complementary specialization, and we speculate that it derives from a longstanding evolutionary origin. We also suggest that the conclusions about lateralization based on an unselected sample of the population and laterality assessment using coarse functional transcranial Doppler sonography should be interpreted with more caution.	\N	\N
23299718	The neuropeptide orexin is synthesized by neurons exclusively located in the hypothalamus. However, these neurons send axons over virtually the entire brain and spinal cord and therefore constitute a unique central orexinergic system. It is well known that central orexin plays a crucial role in the regulation of various basic non-somatic and somatic physiological functions, including feeding, energy homeostasis, the sleep/wake cycle, reward, addiction, and neuroendocrine, as well as motor control. Moreover, the absence of orexin results in narcolepsy-cataplexy, a simultaneous somatic and non-somatic dysfunction. In this review, we summarize these central functions of the orexinergic system and associated diseases, and suggest that this system may hold a key position in somatic-non-somatic integration.	\N	\N
23300231	This paper focuses on an innovative intersection between education, health and arts. Taking a broad definition of health it examines some social and psychological well-being impacts of extended collaborations between a theatre company and children with communication difficulties. It seeks to test aspects of Fredrickson's(1) broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions in a primary school curriculum context. The researcher participated in a project called Speech Bubbles. The programme was devised by theatre practitioners and aimed at six- and seven-year-olds with difficulties in speech, language and communication. Sessions were observed, videoed and analysed for levels of child well-being using an established scale. In addition, responses regarding perceived improvements in speech, language and communication were gathered from school records and teachers, teaching assistants, practitioners and parents. Data were captured using still images and videos, children's recorded commentaries, conversations, written feedback and observation. Using grounded research methods, themes and categories arose directly from the collected data. Fluency, vocabulary, inventiveness and concentration were enhanced in the large majority of referred children. The research also found significant positive developments in motivation and confidence. Teachers and their assistants credited the drama intervention with notable improvements in attitude, behaviour and relationships over the year. Aspects of many children's psychological well-being also showed marked signs of progress when measured against original reasons for referral and normal expectations over a year. An unexpected outcome was evidence of heightened well-being of the teaching assistants involved. Findings compared well with expectations based upon Fredrickson's theory and also the theatre company's view that theatre-making promotes emotional awareness and empathy. Improvements in both children's well-being and communication were at least in part related to the sustained and playful emphases on the processes and practice of drama, clear values and an inclusive environment.	\N	\N
23303907	Circadian rhythms occur in almost all species and control vital aspects of our physiology, from sleeping and waking to neurotransmitter secretion and cellular metabolism. Epidemiological studies from recent decades have supported a unique role for circadian rhythm in metabolism. As evidenced by individuals working night or rotating shifts, but also by rodent models of circadian arrhythmia, disruption of the circadian cycle is strongly associated with metabolic imbalance. Some genetically engineered mouse models of circadian rhythmicity are obese and show hallmark signs of the metabolic syndrome. Whether these phenotypes are due to the loss of distinct circadian clock genes within a specific tissue versus the disruption of rhythmic physiological activities (such as eating and sleeping) remains a cynosure within the fields of chronobiology and metabolism. Becoming more apparent is that from metabolites to transcription factors, the circadian clock interfaces with metabolism in numerous ways that are essential for maintaining metabolic homeostasis.	\N	\N
23317941	Neonates with hypoplastic left heart syndrome have significant hemodynamic threats to cerebral perfusion and are at risk of reduced neurodevelopmental performance. We hypothesized that cerebral hypoxia, detectable by near-infrared spectroscopy in the early postoperative period, would be related to later neurodevelopmental performance. The study population was a sequential cohort of patients who had undergone stage 1 palliation of hypoplastic left heart syndrome under standard conditions, including neonatal perioperative monitoring with cerebral near-infrared spectroscopy, and who had undergone a neurodevelopmental assessment at age 4 to 5 years. The neonatal demographic and 48-hour perioperative hemodynamic parameters, including cerebral oxygen saturation, were tested for their relationship to 4 domains of neurodevelopmental performance, including visual-motor integration in childhood in univariate and multivariate models. The neurodevelopmental scores were classified as low if less than 85 (-1 standard deviation) and abnormal if less than 70 (-2 standard deviations). For the 51 patients in the surgical cohort, the early survival was 94%, the cumulative survival was 86%, and the neurodevelopmental assessment was completed by 21 (48%) of the survivors, without evidence of an ascertainment bias. At the test age of 56.3 ± 5.5 months, the composite neurodevelopmental index, constructed from equally weighted measures in 4 domains, was 97.6 ± 9.6, not different from the age-based norms, with 3 of 21 in the low range and none abnormal. The mean visual-motor integration was 93.4 ± 14, slightly less than the population norm (P < .05), with 2 of 21 having low scores and 1 abnormal scores. In patients with low to abnormal visual-motor integration, the perioperative stage 1 palliation cerebral oxygenation saturation was significantly lower (63.6 ± 8.1 vs 67.8 ± 8.1, P < .05). Two patients had discrete embolic strokes after their initial hospitalization; the occurrence of late stroke reduced the visual-motor integration performance but was not related to the early cerebral oxygen saturation. Nonlinear relationships of cerebral oxygen saturation to the neurodevelopmental measures found cerebral oxygen saturation thresholds of 49% to 62%. The hours at a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and 55% were related to low visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index scores in the univariate and multivariate models. A multivariate model of age and weight at stage 1 palliation, cerebral oxygen saturation, arterial oxygen saturation, cardiopulmonary bypass and deep hypothermic circulatory arrest times, and later stroke predicted visual-motor integration to an important degree (R(2) = 0.53, P < .001). The actual and predicted visual-motor integration and neurodevelopmental index were normal when a cerebral oxygen saturation less than 45% and other risk conditions were avoided. Neurodevelopmental performance was related to demographic, neonatal perioperative physiologic, and later factors. Perioperative cerebral oxygenation assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy can detect hypoxic-ischemic conditions associated with injury and reduced neurodevelopmental performance and was the most significant physiologic factor identified. These data suggest that efforts to avoid cerebral hypoxia are likely to improve the outcomes in this high-risk population.	\N	\N
23328130	The aim of this study was to compare sleep pattern, tiredness sensation and quality of life between different chronotypes in train drivers from a Brazilian transportation company. Ninety-one train drivers, working a rotary work schedule including night shift, were divided into three groups according to their chronotype (morning types, intermediate or evening types) and were assessed for their sleep and quality of life, as characterized by a subjective questionnaire and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), applied before and immediately after the night shift. The pattern of activity and rest was measured for 10 days by actigraphy, and the chronotype was determined through the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Forty-one (45.1%) individuals were classified as morning type, 44 (48.4%) were classified as intermediate and 6 (6.6%) as evening type. The evening types had a tendency to remain awake for a longer period of time before the night shift (p = 0.05) and scored worse overall for quality of life compared to morning types (p = 0.11). There was no significant difference between the groups regarding variability in the PVT performance, even when covaried by the period of waking time before the test. There was no significant difference either in feelings of fatigue before and after starting the shift. Although the evening type number was small, evening type individuals scored worse relative to sleep and quality of life than morning type individuals.	\N	\N
23328270	The antiepileptic drug ezogabine (EZG; US adopted name for retigabine [the international nonproprietary name]) reduces neuronal excitability by enhancing potassium channel activity. EZG has been approved as adjunctive treatment for adults with partial-onset seizures. The goal of this study was to examine the impact of coadministration of ethanol 1 g/kg on the safety and tolerability of EZG and the consequences of coadministration on pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) parameters in healthy volunteers. In a randomized, 4-way crossover, partially double-blind study, volunteers received 4 oral treatments (EZG 200 mg + ethanol placebo [light apple juice]; placebo + ethanol 1 g/kg; EZG 200 mg + ethanol 1 g/kg; or placebo + ethanol placebo) separated by 5 to 21 days. PK and PD parameters were evaluated in 17 healthy volunteers (19 to 55 years) who were currently moderate alcohol drinkers. Ethanol coadministration increased EZG AUC(0-∞) and C(max) by 36% and 23%, respectively. EZG had no impact on ethanol PK. Ethanol alone impaired balance, blurred vision, and increased intoxication and dizziness. Objective tests (reaction times, response accuracy, attention, and manual tracking) were also impaired by ethanol. EZG treatment alone had no impact on PD measures other than a variable, transient increase in blurred vision (vision clear-crisp visual analog scale scores). Treatments were generally tolerated, with no serious adverse events or discontinuations owing to adverse events. Ethanol increased EZG exposure, which did not seem to be clinically relevant. Except for an increase in blurred vision, impairment effects observed were related primarily to ethanol and were not exacerbated by the addition of EZG, which was generally tolerated with or without ethanol.	\N	\N
23331374	Individual variation in serotonergic function is associated with reactivity, risk for affective disorders, as well as an altered response to disease. Our study used a nonhuman primate model to further investigate whether a functional polymorphism in the promoter region for the serotonin transporter gene helps to explain differences in proinflammatory responses. Homology between the human and rhesus monkey polymorphisms provided the opportunity to determine how this genetic variation influences the relationship between a psychosocial stressor and immune responsiveness. Leukocyte numbers in blood and interleukin-6 (IL-6) responses are sensitive to stressful challenges and are indicative of immune status. The neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio and cellular IL-6 responses to in vitro lipopolysaccharide stimulation were assessed in 27 juvenile male rhesus monkeys while housed in stable social groups (NLL  = 16, NS  = 11) and also in 18 animals after relocation to novel housing (NLL  = 13, NS  = 5). Short allele monkeys had significantly higher neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios than homozygous Long allele carriers at baseline [t(25) = 2.18, P = 0.02], indicative of an aroused state even in the absence of disturbance. In addition, following the housing manipulation, IL-6 responses were more inhibited in short allele carriers (F1,16  = 8.59, P = 0.01). The findings confirm that the serotonin transporter gene-linked polymorphism is a distinctive marker of reactivity and inflammatory bias, perhaps in a more consistent manner in monkeys than found in many human studies.	\N	\N
23332428	Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) tend to be more vulnerable to various forms of voiding dysfunction and nocturnal enuresis (NE). We attempt to compare the clinical manifestations and attentional performance between ADHD children with NE and those without NE. We consecutively enrolled children diagnosed with ADHD in child and adolescent psychiatric clinics. The questionnaires for evaluation of ADHD symptoms and voiding dysfunction symptoms were administered to all study participants. All participants also received the Test Battery for Attention Performance (TAP) for assessment of attentional function. A total of 53 children were enrolled in this study, comprising 47 boys and six girls. The prevalence rate of NE was 28.3%. Children in the NE group had statistically significant higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score (5.40 ± 3.66 vs.3.16 ± 2.74; p = 0.018) and two subscales of "When I wet myself, my underwear is soaked" (p < 0.001) and "I miss having a bowel movement every day" (p = 0.047). There were no significant differences with regard to all psychiatric evaluations between the NE and non-NE groups. In the TAP test, the NE group showed a significantly shorter reaction time in the domain of inhibitory control, working memory, and auditory sustained attention than the non-NE group. Children with ADHD have a high prevalence of NE. ADHD children with NE had a significantly higher dysfunctional voiding symptom score and shorter reaction time in most domains of the TAP test. Further study is needed to discern the impact of NE on the neuropsychological function of ADHD children.	\N	\N
23332817	Inhibition of return (IOR) reflects a bias to preferentially attend to non-previously attended or inspected spatial locations. IOR is paramount to efficiently explore our environment, by avoiding repeated scanning of already visited locations. Patients with left visual neglect after right parietal damage or fronto-parietal disconnection demonstrated impaired manual, but not saccadic, IOR for right-sided targets (Bourgeois et al., 2012). Here we aimed at investigating in healthy participants the causal role of distinct cortical sites within the right hemisphere in manual and saccadic IOR, by evaluating the offline effects of repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on the right intra-parietal sulcus (IPS) and the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). Our results show that rTMS over both sites lastingly interfered with manual but not saccadic IOR for right-sided targets. This behavioral pattern closely mimicked the performance of neglect patients evaluated with the same paradigm. In contrast, for left-sided targets, rTMS over the right IPS impaired both manual and saccadic IOR, while rTMS over the right TPJ produced no modulation in either task. We concluded that distinct parietal nodes of the dorsal and ventral spatial attention networks of the right hemisphere make different contributions to exogenous orienting processes implicated in IOR, and that such effects are hemifield- and task-dependent.	\N	\N
23336519	The present study addresses gaps in the literature on affect-biased health perceptions by (a) investigating health bias while considering both valence and arousal components of affect; (b) establishing the presence of, and variability in, affective health bias at the daily level; and (c) exploring daily health bias in a non-clinical, community sample of adults. Participants were 477 adults (aged 33-80 years) who reported daily health events, health satisfaction and affect for up to 56 days. Health bias was present when the effect of a given day's health events on that day's health satisfaction was significantly moderated by that day's affect. Multilevel modelling was used to investigate fixed and random within-day effects. Daily health satisfaction. Significant interaction effects indicated the presence of health bias on the daily level: positively valenced affect buffered the negative impact of health events on health satisfaction, whereas negatively valenced affect exacerbated this association; additionally, valence emerged as the most salient characteristic of positive affect, whereas arousal was a differentiating factor for negative affect. The results provide evidence that both valence and arousal components of affect are important to consider when investigating day-level health bias, and that these effects can be detected using a general population of adults.	\N	\N
23337080	Memory tasks combining storage and distracting tasks performed at either encoding or retrieval have provided divergent results pointing towards accounts of forgetting in terms of either temporal decay or event-based interference respectively. The aim of this study was to shed light on the possible sources of such a divergence that could rely on methodological aspects or deeper differences in the memory traces elicited by the different paradigms used. Methodological issues were explored in a first series of experiments by introducing at retrieval computer-paced distracting tasks that involved articulatory suppression, attentional demand, or both. A second series of experiments that used a similar design was intended to induce differences in the nature of memory traces by increasing the time allowed for encoding the to-be-remembered items. Although the introduction of computer-paced distracting tasks allowed for a strict control of temporal parameters, the first series of experiments replicated the effects usually attributed to event-based interference. However, deeper encoding abolished these effects while time-related effects remained unchanged. These findings suggest that the interplay between temporal factors and event-based interference in forgetting at short term is more complex than expected and could depend on the nature of memory traces.	\N	\N
23337616	Previous research has demonstrated that emotional material is more likely to be remembered than neutral material (Hamann, 2001). The present study employed the item-method of directed forgetting in order to examine whether emotionally negative words are not only easier to remember, but also harder to forget. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were additionally measured in order to investigate the processes of selective rehearsal and active inhibition in directed forgetting. The results demonstrated directed forgetting effects for both neutral and negative words, with a stronger effect for negative items. Late positive potentials (LPPs) for 'to-be-remembered' (TBR) relative to 'to-be-forgotten' (TBF) cues were enhanced when the cues followed negative in comparison to neutral words, indicating the greater selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. Frontal positivities to TBF relative to TBR cues were not modulated by word valence, indicating that inhibitory processes were unaffected by emotion. Taken together, the present research demonstrates for the first time that, not only are emotionally negative words prone to the same directed forgetting effects as neutral words, but that these effects are in fact enhanced for negative words and due to increased selective rehearsal of TBR negative items. The discrepancies between the present findings and those of previous studies are discussed.	\N	\N
23345413	Attention to a spatial location or feature in a visual scene can modulate the responses of cortical neurons and affect perceptual biases in illusions. We add attention to a cortical model of spatial context based on a well-founded account of natural scene statistics. The cortical model amounts to a generalized form of divisive normalization, in which the surround is in the normalization pool of the center target only if they are considered statistically dependent. Here we propose that attention influences this computation by accentuating the neural unit activations at the attended location, and that the amount of attentional influence of the surround on the center thus depends on whether center and surround are deemed in the same normalization pool. The resulting form of model extends a recent divisive normalization model of attention (Reynolds & Heeger, 2009). We simulate cortical surround orientation experiments with attention and show that the flexible model is suitable for capturing additional data and makes nontrivial testable predictions.	\N	\N
23347592	Sexual function of women suffering from pelvic organ prolapse (POP) and/or urinary incontinence (UI) is adversely affected. However, our current understanding of the exact relationship between female sexual dysfunction and POP and/or UI is incomplete. A qualitative study can improve our understanding by describing what women themselves perceive as the real problem. To gain a more in-depth understanding of the impact of POP and/or UI on the different categories of female sexual dysfunction by way of a qualitative study. Qualitative semistructured interviews were conducted in 37 women scheduled for pelvic floor surgery, and one was excluded from analysis due to incomplete recordings. The impact of POP and/or UI on female sexual function. Only 17% of women were completely positive about their sex life. Both POP and UI had a negative effect on body image. Women with POP had a negative image of their vagina, which caused them to be insecure about their partner's sexual experience, while women with UI were embarrassed about their incontinence and pad use, and feared smelling of urine. Worries about the presence of POP during sexual activity, discomfort from POP, and reduced genital sensations were the most important reasons for decreased desire, arousal, and difficulty reaching an orgasm in women with POP. Fear of incontinence during intercourse affected desire, arousal, and orgasm and could be a cause for dyspareunia in women with UI. Desire was divided into two main elements: "drive" and "motivation." Although "drive," i.e., spontaneous sexual interest, was not commonly affected by POP and/or UI, a decrease in "motivation" or the willingness to engage in sexual activity was the most common sexual dysfunction mentioned. Body image plays a key role in the sexual functioning of women with POP and/or UI with the biggest impact on women's "motivation."	\N	\N
23350301	This review examines attention research appearing in The American Journal of Psychology over the journal's rich 125-year history. In particular, the review examines studies focused on selective attention's role in modulating the influence of distraction and the methods used to capture the nature of selective attention. Special attention is given to classic articles by Treisman (1964a, 1964b), Neisser (1963), and Eriksen and Rohrbaugh (1970), whose methods and results are examined in detail in light of current theory and research in selective attention.	\N	\N
23351098	Past research suggests that high approach-motivated positive affects narrow attentional scope and cause greater late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes. However, because arousal is related to motivational intensity, arousal may be responsible for these past findings. The present research investigated whether arousal, manipulated independently of affect using physical exercise, would influence attentional and LPP responses to stimuli. Results revealed that appetitive (vs. neutral) pictures evoked larger LPPs over central and left frontal regions, and caused more attentional narrowing. Individual differences in approach motivation predicted more attentional narrowing following appetitive stimuli. However, manipulated arousal did not influence attentional scope or LPPs to neutral or appetitive stimuli. Results suggest that attentional narrowing and LPPs to appetitive stimuli are related to approach motivation rather than enhanced general arousal.	\N	\N
23356511	Previous research regarding anxiety and female sexual functioning has yielded conflicting conclusions. This study examined the effect of state/trait anxiety and anxiety sensitivity on sexual responding and the propensity toward sexual inhibition/excitation in women without an anxiety disorder (n = 100, M age = 28.8 years) compared with women with an anxiety disorder (panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, n = 30, M age = 30.2 years). Participants completed self-report measures of state and trait anxiety, anxiety sensitivity, sexual functioning, and sexual inhibition/excitation. Women with an anxiety disorder reported worse sexual functioning compared with those without an anxiety disorder (except for desire, lubrication, and pain) and a greater propensity toward sexual inhibition, because of the threat of performance failure and its consequences. Dispositional anxiety and related worries significantly predicted various types of sexual dysfunctions. Findings suggested the importance of considering the relation between anxiety and sexual functioning to design optimal prevention and therapeutic interventions for women with anxiety disorders.	\N	\N
23356552	The prefrontal cortex and its connections with other cortical areas participate in processing erotic stimuli and hence sexual arousal. Visual erotic stimuli elicit sexual arousal that is associated with changes in electroencephalographic activity. The electroencephalographic correlation analysis provides information on the functional synchronization among areas. This study analyzed the functional interaction among the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices during sexual arousal in young men induced by observing erotic photographs. In 2 groups of heterosexual men-an erotic stimulation group and a neutral stimulation group-the authors recorded electroencephalograms at the F3, F4, T3, T4, P3, and P4 derivations under 2 conditions: baseline and visual stimulation. Heart rate was monitored as a measure of peripheral activation. Participants in the erotic stimulation group reported a moderate degree of sexual arousal and a decrease in heart rate. Decreased inter- and intrahemispheric correlations of the fast frequencies were obtained only in erotic stimulation. These data support differential hemisphere participation in modulating sexual arousal and show that decreased synchronization patterns between prefrontal and posterior cortices (parietal and temporal) favor sexual arousal in young men. The results of this study may contribute to a better understanding of the central nervous system's mechanisms that underlie sexual arousal.	\N	\N
23366539	This paper describes EEG analysis of frontal lobe area in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness. Arousal maintenance state is considered different physiological state from the normal sleep onset. To analyze the EEG of frontal area might be important because we believe that the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness causes neuron activities from the frontal lobe, which coordinates behavior, to hypothalamus, which coordinates wakefulness and sleep. It is, however, hard to use EEG signals in the frontal area consistently because blinking artifacts are mixed in the EEG signals. In this paper, we have analyzed the EEG signals of the frontal lobe in arousal maintenance state against sleepiness after removing the eye-blinking artifact from the scalp EEG signals using an ICA denoising method. As a result, the EEG signals of the frontal area in the arousal maintenance state against sleepiness have wide bandwidth as in the EEG of the occipital area. It strengthens our speculation, i.e., the EEG desynchronization occurs because of the neuron activities from the frontal lobe to hypothalamus in order to maintain arousal state against sleepiness.	\N	\N
23369930	This study examined the effect of pain interference and attentional interference on the anticipatory postural adjustments of trunk muscles in patients with nonspecific chronic low back pain. Fifty-nine patients performed rapid flexion movements of the right arm under 6 conditions, namely a control condition and conditions with different attention demands. The latency between the activations of the shoulder and different trunk muscles, as measured with surface electromyography, was used as the outcome. Using repeated measures analysis of variance, attention conditions and group comparisons were tested between those who scored high and low on pain intensity, fear of movement, or pain catastrophizing. There were significant (although minimal) interactive effects but significant and potentially clinically relevant group and attention main effects. The group with the lowest scores showed delayed activity (14 to 29 ms) relative to those with higher scores. One attention-demanding condition delayed (20 to 35 ms) the latencies of some trunk muscles relative to the control condition, namely the one that was the most attention-demanding according to the reaction time results. These findings suggest that patients with chronic low back pain, who are characterized by higher scores on some pain-related variables (visual analog scale, Tampa Scale of Kinesiophobia, Pain Catastrophizing Scale), react favorably to protect the spine from further pain and injuries but would be at greater risk of injury when performing a complex physical task requiring more attention demand.	\N	\N
23371434	Hyperarousal is a hallmark of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD has been associated with increased blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) in veteran populations. We retrospectively identified male patients consulted to outpatient psychiatry at the Iowa City Veterans Affairs Healthcare System. Patients were divided into PTSD (n = 88) and non-PTSD (n = 98) groups. All PTSD patients and a subset of non-PTSD patients had documented blast exposure during service. The study investigated whether patients with PTSD had higher systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and heart rate (HR) than patients without PTSD. The effect of trauma exposure on BP was also examined. Mean SBP (133.8 vs. 122.3 mm Hg; p < .001), DBP (87.6 vs. 78.6 mm Hg; p < .001), and HR (78.9 vs. 73.1 bpm; p < .001) were all significantly higher in the PTSD group. Trauma-exposed patients without PTSD had significantly higher BP than nonexposed patients. The prevalence of hypertension (HTN) was 34.1% (diagnosed and undiagnosed) among PTSD patients. Patients with PTSD had higher BP and HR compared to patients without PTSD. Trauma exposure may increase BP in this population. These findings will increase awareness about the cardiovascular implications of PTSD.	\N	\N
23374543	The dominant model that informs clinical training for preventing violence and managing aggression posits arousal as mediated downwards from higher cortical structures. This view results in an often-misplaced reliance on verbal and cognitive techniques for de-escalation. The emergence of sensory modulation, via the Six Core Strategies, is an alternative or complementary approach that is associated with reduced rates of seclusion and restraint. Sensory-based interventions are thought to promote adaptive regulation of arousal and emotion, but this connection has had limited theoretical and empirical development. This paper presents results of a pilot trial of sensory-based interventions in four inpatient mental health units in New Zealand. Narrative analysis of interview and focus group data suggest that modifications to the environment and the use of soothing stimuli moderate or optimize arousal and promote an ability to adaptively regulate emotion. Findings are discussed in light of recent advances in the neurophysiology of emotional regulation and the General Aggression Model that posits arousal and maladaptive emotional regulation as precursors to aggression.	\N	\N
23375117	In recent years, chewing has been discussed as producing effects of maintaining and sustaining cognitive performance. We have reported that chewing may improve or recover the process of working memory; however, the mechanisms underlying these phenomena are still to be elucidated. We investigated the effect of chewing on aspects of attention and cognitive processing speed, testing the hypothesis that this effect induces higher cognitive performance. Seventeen healthy adults (20-34 years old) were studied during attention task with blood oxygenation level-dependent functional (fMRI) at 3.0 T MRI. The attentional network test (ANT) within a single task fMRI containing two cue conditions (no cue and center cue) and two target conditions (congruent and incongruent) was conducted to examine the efficiency of alerting and executive control. Participants were instructed to press a button with the right or left thumb according to the direction of a centrally presented arrow. Each participant underwent two back-to-back ANT sessions with or without chewing gum, odorless and tasteless to remove any effect other than chewing. Behavioral results showed that mean reaction time was significantly decreased during chewing condition, regardless of speed-accuracy trade-off, although there were no significant changes in behavioral effects (both alerting and conflict effects). On the other hand, fMRI analysis revealed higher activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and left frontal gyrus for the executive network and motor-related regions for both attentional networks during chewing condition. These results suggested that chewing induced an increase in the arousal level and alertness in addition to an effect on motor control and, as a consequence, these effects could lead to improvements in cognitive performance.	\N	\N
23377282	Although major depression is projected to be among the top three causes of disability-adjusted life years lost in 2030, relatively little is known concerning the extent to which depressed mood states can bias social-economic decision making away from optimal outcomes. One experimental framework to study the interaction between negative emotion and social-economic decisions is the ultimatum game (UG), where the fair, cooperative player altruistically punishes the unfair, non-cooperative player. To assess a potential susceptibility of altruistic punishment to depressed mood, we repeatedly administered the UG task to a cohort of 20 currently depressed patients with a diagnosis of recurrent major depressive disorder and 20 healthy controls. Furthermore, valence and arousal ratings of emotionally laden pictures were obtained from all participants in order to assess a depressed mood-related distortion of emotion judgments. Compared to healthy controls, depressed patients over-sanctioned unfair proposals in the UG and judged emotional stimuli too negatively. Thus, major depression is associated with a negative emotional bias that hampers social-economic decision making and produces large personal costs.	\N	\N
23381193	Spatial visualization abilities are positively related to performance on science, technology, engineering, and math tasks, but this relationship is influenced by task demands and learner strategies. In two studies, we illustrate these interactions by demonstrating situations in which greater spatial ability leads to problematic performance. In Study 1, chemistry students observed and explained sets of simultaneously presented displays depicting chemical phenomena at macroscopic and particulate levels of representation. Prior to viewing, the students were asked to make predictions at the macroscopic level. Eye movement analyses revealed that greater spatial ability was associated with greater focus on the prediction-relevant macroscopic level. Unfortunately, that restricted focus was also associated with lower-quality explanations of the phenomena. In Study 2, we presented the same displays but manipulated whether participants were asked to make predictions prior to viewing. Spatial ability was again associated with restricted focus, but only for students who completed the prediction task. Eliminating the prediction task encouraged attempts to integrate the displays that related positively to performance, especially for participants with high spatial ability. Spatial abilities can be recruited in effective or ineffective ways depending on alignments between the demands of a task and the approaches individuals adopt for completing that task.	\N	\N
23381483	People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit superior performance in visual search compared to others. However, most studies demonstrating this advantage have employed simple, uncluttered images with fully visible targets. We compare the performance of high-functioning adults with ASD and matched controls on a naturalistic luggage screening task. Although the two groups were equally accurate in detecting targets, the ASD adults improve in their correct elimination of target-absent bags faster than controls. This feature of their behavior is extremely important for many real-world monitoring tasks that require sustained attention for long time periods. Further analyses suggest that this improvement is attributable neither to the motor speed nor to the level of intelligence of the adults with ASD. These findings may have possible implications for employment opportunities of adult individuals with ASD.	\N	\N
23382513	Although the literature on parent-child interactions in young children with autism has examined dyadic style, synchrony, and sustained engagement, the examination of parental skill in sustaining and developing play skills themselves has not been targeted. This study examined the extent to which parents of young children with autism match and scaffold their child's play. Sixteen dyads of parents and their children with autism participated in this study along with 16 matched dyads of typically developing children. Both groups were administered a structured play assessment and were observed during a 10-min free play situation. Strategies of play were examined and results revealed that parents of children with autism initiated more play schemes and suggested and commanded play acts more than parents of typical children. They also responded to their child's play acts more often with a higher level play act, while parents of typical children matched/expanded their responses to their child. Parent imitation was also related to longer sequences of play. The findings can guide further research and play intervention for parents.	\N	\N
23387907	Sexual health issues for women who have cancer are an important and under-diagnosed and under-treated survivorship issue. Survivorship begins at the time a cancer is detected and addresses health-care issues beyond diagnosis and acute treatment. This includes improving access to care and quality-of-life considerations, as well as dealing with the late effects of treatment. Difficulties with sexual function are one of the more common late effects in women. This article attempted to characterize the etiology, prevalence, and treatment for sexual health concerns for women with gynecological cancer. A systematic survey of currently available relevant literature published in English was conducted. The issue of sexual health for women with cancer is a prevalent medical concern that is rarely addressed in clinical practice. The development of sexual morbidity in the female cancer survivor is a multifactorial problem incorporating psychological, physiologic, and sociological elements. Treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and hormonal manipulation appear to have the greatest influence on the development of sexual consequences. Sexual complaints include but are not limited to changes in sexual desire, arousal, and orgasmic intensity and latency. Many women suffer from debilitating vaginal dryness and painful intercourse. Many of the sexual health issues experienced by cancer survivors can be addressed in clinical practice. A multimodal treatment paradigm is necessary to effectively treat these sexual complaints in this special patient population.	\N	\N
23399829	Conceptualizations of emotion regulation have led to the identification of cognitive and behavioral regulatory abnormalities that contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders. However, existing research on emotion regulation in anxiety and mood disorders has primarily focused on the regulation of negative emotions rather than positive emotions. Recent findings indicate that disturbances in positive emotion regulation occur across emotional disorders, and may be a generative target for treatment research. The aims of this paper are to: 1. Present a transdiagnostic model of positive emotion disturbances in emotional disorders; 2. Review evidence for disturbances in positive emotion regulation in emotional disorders across categories of emotion regulation; and 3. Propose treatment strategies that may address these disturbances.	\N	\N
23407975	Multisensory visuo-vestibular cortical areas are important for spatial orientation and facilitate the control of the brainstem-mediated vestibular ocular reflex (VOR). Despite reports of visual input and cognitive tasks modulating the VOR through cortical control, it is unknown whether higher-order visual stimuli such as bistable perception and attention tasks involving visual imagery have an effect on the VOR. This is a possibility since such stimuli recruit cortical areas overlapping with those engaged during vestibular activation. Here we used a novel paradigm in which human subjects view bistable perceptual stimuli or perform complex attention tasks during concurrent vestibular stimulation. Bistable perceptual phenomena and attention tasks asymmetrically modulated the VOR but only if they involved a visuospatial component (e.g., binocular motion rivalry but not color rivalry). Strikingly, the lateralization effect was dependent upon the subjects' handedness, making this report the first behavioral demonstration that vestibular cortical processing is strongly lateralized to the non-dominant hemisphere. Furthermore, we show that perceptual transitions can modulate the dynamics of the vestibular system contingent upon the presence of a spatial component in the perceptual transition stimuli. Both perceptual transitions and attentional tasks are thought to invoke a redirection of spatial attention. We infer that such redirection of spatial attention engages multisensory vestibular cortical areas that modulate low-level vestibular function which, in turn, may contribute to spatial orientation.	\N	\N
23413011	An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that a response in one task can be activated automatically on the basis merely of instructed stimulus-response (S-R) mappings belonging to another task. Such instruction-based response activations are considered to be evidence for the formation of S-R associations on the basis of the S-R mappings for an upcoming, but not yet executed, task. A crucial but somewhat neglected assumption is that instructed S-R associations are formed only under conditions that impose a sufficient degree of task preparation. Accordingly, in the present study we investigated the relation between task preparation and the instruction-based task-rule congruency effect, which is an index of response activation on the basis of instructions. The results from two experiments demonstrated that merely instructed S-R mappings of a particular task only elicit instruction-based response activations when that task is prepared for to a sufficient degree. Implications are discussed for the representation of instructed S-R mappings in working memory.	\N	\N
23417238	A subject's sensitivity to a stimulus variation can be studied by estimating the psychometric function. Generally speaking, three parameters of the psychometric function are of interest: the performance threshold, the slope of the function, and the rate at which attention lapses occur. In the present study, three psychophysical procedures were used to estimate the three-parameter psychometric function for an auditory gap detection task. These were an up-down staircase (up-down) procedure, an entropy-based Bayesian (entropy) procedure, and an updated maximum-likelihood (UML) procedure. Data collected from four young, normal-hearing listeners showed that while all three procedures provided similar estimates of the threshold parameter, the up-down procedure performed slightly better in estimating the slope and lapse rate for 200 trials of data collection. When the lapse rate was increased by mixing in random responses for the three adaptive procedures, the larger lapse rate was especially detrimental to the efficiency of the up-down procedure, and the UML procedure provided better estimates of the threshold and slope than did the other two procedures.	\N	\N
23419275	This study aimed to further understanding of intimate partner stalking victimization in post-abuse women, with particular attention to the definition of stalking (with or without fear and threat) most predictive of posttraumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. In community midlife women with histories of divorce (N = 192), a history of stalking victimization accompanied by fear and threat was positively correlated with PTS symptom severity, after accounting for other partner abuse. The presence, compared with absence, of fear-and-threat stalking history doubled the odds of symptomatic levels of hyperarousal. Greater physical assault and injury chronicity differentiated fear-and-threat stalked women from other stalked women. Stalking contributed to a fuller understanding of PTS symptoms in women, showing particular relevance for hyperarousal.	\N	\N
23419887	To compare a mindfulness-based intervention with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for the group treatment of anxiety disorders. One hundred five veterans (83% male, mean age=46 years, 30% minority) with one or more DSM-IV anxiety disorders began group treatment following randomization to adapted mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or CBT. Both groups showed large and equivalent improvements on principal disorder severity thru 3-month follow up (ps<.001, d=-4.08 for adapted MBSR; d=-3.52 for CBT). CBT outperformed adapted MBSR on anxious arousal outcomes at follow up (p<.01, d=.49) whereas adapted MBSR reduced worry at a greater rate than CBT (p<.05, d=.64) and resulted in greater reduction of comorbid emotional disorders (p<.05, d=.49). The adapted MBSR group evidenced greater mood disorders and worry at Pre, however. Groups showed equivalent treatment credibility, therapist adherence and competency, and reliable improvement. CBT and adapted MBSR were both effective at reducing principal diagnosis severity and somewhat effective at reducing self-reported anxiety symptoms within a complex sample. CBT was more effective at reducing anxious arousal, whereas adapted MBSR may be more effective at reducing worry and comorbid disorders.	\N	\N
23421322	Two experiments examined the impact of encoding conditions and information content in memory for positive, neutral, and negative pictures. We examined the hypotheses that the positivity effect in memory (i.e., a bias in favor of positive or against negative information in later life) would be reduced when (a) pictures were viewed under structured as opposed to unstructured conditions, and (b) contained social as opposed to nonsocial content. Both experiments found that the positivity effect observed with nonsocial stimuli was absent with social stimuli. In addition, little evidence was obtained that encoding conditions affected the strength of the positivity effect. We argue that some types of social stimuli may engage different types of processing than nonsocial stimuli, perhaps encouraging self-referential processing that engages attention and supports memory. This processing may then conflict with the goal-driven, top-down processing that is hypothesized to drive the positivity effect. Thus, our results identify further boundary conditions associated with the positivity effect in memory, arguing that stimulus factors as well as situational goals may affect its occurrence. Further research awaits to determine if this effect is specific to all social stimuli or specific subsets.	\N	\N
23427480	Accurately assessing how physicians perform in practice remains an unresolved psychometric challenge. Neither chart reviews nor patient surveys indicate when physicians overlook important information, which can result in a missed opportunity for a correct diagnosis and appropriate plan of care. Standardized patient (SP) assessments provide an opportunity for direct observation of clinical behavior and are increasingly used in licensure examinations. (SPs who are sent incognito are termed unannounced standardized patients [USPs].) One study showed that physicians had particular difficulty adapting care to individual patient context ("contextual error"). In a subsequent study with the same actors, SP cases, and outcomes, an intervention was deployed to reduce contextual error among medical students. In an exploratory reanalysis of data from the two studies, clinicians' assessments of SPs and USPs were compared. Participants in the first study were 65 board-certified internists visited by USPs; the 59 participants in the second were fourth-year medical students examining SPs in a clinical performance center. Attending physicians measured with USPs significantly underperformed medical students measured with SPs in the probing of biomedical red flags (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45 [0.30 to 0.67]) and contextual red flags (OR = 0.66 [0.45 to 0.99]) and in planning appropriate care (OR = 0.43 [0.27 to 0.67]). Across these two studies, attending physicians underperformed medical students on the same outcomes, measured with the same patient cases presented by the same actors. Studies that seek to assess elicitation and incorporation of patient information by physicians as measures of individualization of care should weigh the benefits and costs of direct observation by USPs.	\N	\N
23432829	Elucidating the neural basis of joint attention in infancy promises to yield important insights into the development of language and social cognition, and directly informs developmental models of autism. We describe a new method for evaluating responding to joint attention performance in infancy that highlights the 9- to 10-month period as a time interval of maximal individual differences. We then demonstrate that fractional anisotropy in the right uncinate fasciculus, a white matter fiber bundle connecting the amygdala to the ventral-medial prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal pole, measured in 6-month-olds predicts individual differences in responding to joint attention at 9 months of age. The white matter microstructure of the right uncinate was not related to receptive language ability at 9 months. These findings suggest that the development of core nonverbal social communication skills in infancy is largely supported by preceding developments within right lateralized frontotemporal brain systems.	\N	\N
23434910	When sleep followed implicit training on a motor sequence, children showed greater gains in explicit sequence knowledge after sleep than adults. This greater explicit knowledge in children was linked to their higher sleep slow-wave activity and to stronger hippocampal activation at explicit knowledge retrieval. Our data indicate the superiority of children in extracting invariant features from complex environments, possibly as a result of enhanced reprocessing of hippocampal memory representations during slow-wave sleep.	\N	\N
23437628	Our conception of attention is intricately linked to limited processing capacity and the consequent requirement to select, in both space and time, what objects and actions will have access to these limited resources. Seminal studies by Treisman (Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136, 1980) and Broadbent (Perception and Psychophysics, 42, 105-113, 1987; Raymond et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18, 849-860, 1992) offered the field tasks for exploring the properties of attention when searching in space and time. After describing the natural history of a search episode we briefly review some of these properties. We end with the question: Is there one attentional "beam" that operates in both space and time to integrate features into objects? We sought an answer by exploring the distribution of errors when the same participant searched for targets presented at the same location with items distributed over time (McLean et al. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35A, 171-186, 1982) and presented all at once with items distributed over space (Snyder Journal of Experimental Psychology; 92, 428-431, 1972). Preliminary results revealed a null correlation between spatial and temporal slippage suggesting separate selection mechanisms in these two domains.	\N	\N
23443466	Previous research has failed to find a consistent relation between Sluggish Cognitive Tempo (SCT) and executive function (EF) in youth with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) when laboratory-based neuropsychological tasks of EF are used, whereas recent research with youth and adults suggests a significant relation between SCT and ratings of EF. The purpose of this study was to examine ADHD dimensions and SCT symptoms in relation to ratings of EF in adolescents with ADHD. Fifty-two adolescents (ages 12-16; 70 % male) participated in this study. Parents and teachers completed validated measures of SCT, ADHD symptoms, and EF in daily life. Adolescents' intelligence and academic achievement were also assessed. ADHD and SCT symptoms were significantly correlated with ratings of EF. Regression analyses demonstrated that, as hypothesized, ADHD hyperactive-impulsive symptoms were strongly associated with behavioral regulation EF deficits, with ADHD inattentive and SCT symptoms unrelated to behavioral regulation EF when hyperactive-impulsivity symptoms were included in the model. The parent-reported SCT Slow scale measuring motivation, initiative, and apathy predicted both parent- and teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits above and beyond youth characteristics and ADHD symptoms. In contrast, teacher-reported ADHD inattention was most clearly associated with teacher-reported metacognitive EF deficits. This study provides preliminary evidence for the importance of SCT symptoms in relation to metacognitive EF deficits among adolescents with ADHD and the need to further investigate the overlap and distinctiveness of SCT/ADHD. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings.	\N	\N
23446727	Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a very heterogeneous neurobiological condition. It is the most common neurodevelopmental disorder in the childhood population. Its prevalence is estimated to be 3-6% in school-age children. AIM. To review the characteristics of patients with inattentive subtype ADHD, including those who could be grouped in a more homogenous subtype which the DSM-5 proposes for classification as the restrictive subtype. The characteristic triad of symptoms consists of attention deficit, hyperactivity and impulsivity. The diagnostic criteria are defined in the DSM-IV-TR. For those with deterioration due to ADHD with no significant hyperactivity problems, this manual offers a confusing diagnostic label. Indeed, the neurobiological substrate underlying the diverse subtypes seems to be different in certain aspects, since the frontostriatal circuit appears to be more affected in combined ADHD, while the frontoparietal circuit is more compromised in the inattentive subtype. For these and other reasons, the DSM-5 will reformulate the different subtypes of ADHD and will probably include a new subgroup that will comprise those patients who satisfy at least six inattention criteria and fewer than two criteria for hyperactivity-impulsivity (restrictive ADHD). The definition of this subgroup could make it easier to detect some patients who have so far received little attention from the point of view of both research and clinical practice.	\N	\N
23450537	The Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) is an age-specific disorder, characterised by epileptic seizures, a characteristic electroencephalogram (EEG), psychomotor delay and behavioural disorder. It occurs more frequently in males and onset is usually before the age of eight years, with a peak between three and five years of age. Late cases occurring in adolescence and early adulthood have rarely been reported. Language is frequently affected, with both slowness in ideation and expression in addition to difficulties of motor dysfunction. Severe behavioural disorders (e.g. hyperactivity, aggressiveness and autistic tendencies) and personality disorders are nearly always present. There is also a tendency for psychosis to develop with time. The long-term prognosis is poor; although the epilepsy often improves, complete seizure freedom is rare and conversely the mental and psychiatric disorders tend to worsen with time. To compare the effects of pharmaceutical therapies used to treat LGS in terms of control of seizures and adverse effects. Many people who suffer from this syndrome will already be receiving other antiepileptic medications at the time of their entry into a trial. However, for the purpose of this review we will only consider the effect of the single therapeutic agent being trialled (often as add-on therapy). We searched the Cochrane Epilepsy Group's Specialized Register (18 October 2012), the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL, The Cochrane Library Issue 10 of 12, 2012) and MEDLINE (1946 to October week 2, 2012). We also searched EMBASE (1980 to March 2003). We imposed no language restrictions. We searched the International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number (ISRCTN) register (18 October 2012) for ongoing trials and in addition, we contacted pharmaceutical companies and colleagues in the field to seek any unpublished or ongoing studies. All randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of the administration of drug therapy to patients with LGS. Two review authors independently extracted data. Analysis included assessing study quality, as well as statistical analysis of the effects on overall seizure rates and effects on specific seizure types (e.g. drop attacks), adverse effects and mortality. We found nine RCTs, but were unable to perform any meta-analysis, because each trial looked at different populations, different therapies and considered different outcomes. The optimum treatment for LGS remains uncertain and no study to date has shown any one drug to be highly efficacious; rufinamide, lamotrigine, topiramate and felbamate may be helpful as add-on therapy, clobazam may be helpful for drop seizures. Until further research has been undertaken, clinicians will need to continue to consider each patient individually, taking into account the potential benefit of each therapy weighed against the risk of adverse effects.	\N	\N
23454277	Using electrophysiology, the attentional functions of target selection and distractor filtering were investigated during visual search. Observers searched for multiple tilted line segments amidst vertical distractors. In different conditions, observers were either looking for a specific line orientation ("feature-based" selection), or for any tilted line ("salience-based"). The search array could contain both left- and rightward tilted lines simultaneously (requiring spatial filtering) or only one line type (no filtering). The amplitude of the P1 event-related potential component was reduced during feature-based selection, compared to salience-based selection. The N1 showed a similar effect, at least when filtering was required. Amplitudes were also somewhat reduced when competing nontarget stimuli required filtering. Interactions between selection and filtering became stronger on the N2a and P3. When both feature-based selection and filtering were required, N2a amplitude was highest, and P3 amplitude was lowest. The results support an early locus of feature-based attentional selection in multi-item search.	\N	\N
23457685	Typical interventions for acute pain in children attempt to reduce pain by directing attention away from pain. Conversely, mindfulness involves devoting attention to one's experience in an accepting and nonjudgmental way. However, the effect that instructing children to mindfully devote attention to acute pain has on pain outcomes is unknown. To examine whether mindful attention can help children attend to pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing pain tolerance; to compare the effects of mindful attention with a well-established intervention designed to take attention away from pain (guided imagery); and to test whether baseline coping style or trait mindfulness alter the effects of these interventions. A total of 82 children (10 to 14 years of age) completed measures of coping style and trait mindfulness. Participants then received either mindful attention or guided imagery instructions designed to direct attention toward or away from pain, respectively, before participating in a cold pressor task. The mindful attention group reported more awareness of the physical sensations of pain and thoughts about those sensations. Overall, there were no between-group differences in measures of pain intensity or pain tolerance during the cold pressor task, and no evidence of an interaction between baseline characteristics of the child and experimental condition. Mindful attention was successful in helping children focus attention on experimental pain without increasing pain intensity or decreasing tolerance compared with a well-established intervention for acute pain reduction.	\N	\N
23460366	Intervention studies indicate that children's early child-care experiences can be leveraged to foster their development of effective self-regulation skills. It is less clear whether typical child-care experiences play a similar role. In addition, evidence suggests that children with a common variant of the DRD4 gene (48-bp VNTR, 7-repeat) may be more sensitive to their experiences than those without this variant. Using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, we considered the degree to which children's early child-care experiences-quantity, quality, and type-were associated with their attention and self-regulation abilities in prekindergarten, and, in particular, whether these relations were conditional on DRD4 genotype. G × E interactions were evident across multiple neuropsychological and observational measures of children's attention and self-regulation abilities. Across most outcome measures, DRD4 7+ children spending fewer hours in child care showed more effective attention/self-regulation abilities. For those without a copy of the DRD4 7-repeat allele, such associations were typically null. The results for child-care quality and type indicated no interactions with genotype; the main-effect associations were somewhat inconsistent.	\N	\N
23462516	Parkinson's disease (PD) patients frequently develop obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). In order to clarify the clinical significance of OSA in PD, we compared descriptive variables between PD patients with OSA (PD+OSA) and without (PD-OSA), and between the PD+OSA group and a group of OSA patients without PD (control OSA). The apnea hypopnea index (AHI) cutoff of 15 episodes/hour on polysomnogram (PSG) was used to assign 107 PD patients to groups; OSA-related symptoms and PSG findings were then compared. Demographic and PSG variables were compared between PD+OSA patients and 31 OSA controls. Twenty-four patients with PD (22.4%) were classified as PD+OSA. There were no significant differences in descriptive variables between the PD+OSA and PD-OSA groups. The PD+OSA group had a higher arousal index on PSG than the PD-OSA group, although the two groups had similar ESS scores. The PD+OSA patients had a lower respiratory arousal index and a smaller decrease in oxygen saturation than the control OSA group, despite having a similar AHI. The prevalence of OSA in PD did not differ from that in the general elderly population, indicating that the clinical significance of OSA as a contributor to daytime sleepiness in PD is low.	\N	\N
23474283	Changes in gut microbiota have been reported to alter signaling mechanisms, emotional behavior, and visceral nociceptive reflexes in rodents. However, alteration of the intestinal microbiota with antibiotics or probiotics has not been shown to produce these changes in humans. We investigated whether consumption of a fermented milk product with probiotic (FMPP) for 4 weeks by healthy women altered brain intrinsic connectivity or responses to emotional attention tasks. Healthy women with no gastrointestinal or psychiatric symptoms were randomly assigned to groups given FMPP (n = 12), a nonfermented milk product (n = 11, controls), or no intervention (n = 13) twice daily for 4 weeks. The FMPP contained Bifidobacterium animalis subsp Lactis, Streptococcus thermophiles, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, and Lactococcus lactis subsp Lactis. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after the intervention to measure brain response to an emotional faces attention task and resting brain activity. Multivariate and region of interest analyses were performed. FMPP intake was associated with reduced task-related response of a distributed functional network (49% cross-block covariance; P = .004) containing affective, viscerosensory, and somatosensory cortices. Alterations in intrinsic activity of resting brain indicated that ingestion of FMPP was associated with changes in midbrain connectivity, which could explain the observed differences in activity during the task. Four-week intake of an FMPP by healthy women affected activity of brain regions that control central processing of emotion and sensation.	\N	\N
23475816	The higher order processes involved in self-regulation are generally thought to depend on cognitive (attentional/executive) functions with limited resources. Experimental studies further show that exerting self-control in a first task results in decreased performance in other following self-control tasks, which may be interpreted as the consequence of either effective or perceived resource depletion outlasting the first task. Given that higher order cognitive/attentional processes are also considered to be involved in pain modulatory mechanisms, we tested the idea that pain could be influenced by prior mobilization of cognitive resources. The present study investigated the consequences of performing a cognitively demanding task on subsequent pain (ratings) and spinal nociceptive responses (nociceptive flexion reflex, NFR) elicited by noxious electrical stimulations in healthy volunteers. Participants received four noxious stimulations immediately after each of six successive blocks (2 min each) of a numerical Stroop task in a neutral condition (low cognitive demand) and six successive blocks in an interference condition (high cognitive demand). Results revealed that pain was rated higher following the condition requiring higher cognitive control. A similar effect was observed on the NFR. These findings suggest that pain regulation mechanisms including the descending pain modulatory system may be less efficient after the performance of tasks requiring high cognitive control resulting in stronger pain experience.	\N	\N
23480071	Sex and disgust seem like strange bedfellows. The premise of this review is that disgust-based mechanisms nevertheless hold great promise for improving our understanding of sexual behavior, including dysfunctions. Disgust is a defensive emotion that protects the organism from contamination. Accordingly, disgust is focused on the border of the self, with the mouth and vagina being the body parts that show strongest disgust sensitivity. Given the central role of these organs in sexual behavior, together with the fact that bodily products are among the strongest disgust elicitors, the critical question seems not whether disgust may interfere with sex but rather how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all. We argue that sexual arousal plays a critical role in counteracting disgust-induced avoidance via lowering the threshold for engaging in "disgusting sex." Following this, all mechanisms that interfere with the generation of sexual arousal or enhance the disgusting properties of sexual stimuli may hamper the functional transition from a sex-avoidance into an approach disposition. Since prolonged contact is the most powerful means to reduce disgust, disgust-based mechanisms that counteract sexual approach may give rise to a self-perpetuating cycle in which enhanced sexual disgust becomes a chronic feature.	\N	\N
23492952	Our daily life is characterized by multiple response options that need to be cascaded in order to avoid overstrain of restricted response selection resources. While response selection and goal activation in action cascading are likely driven by a process varying from serial to parallel processing, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms that may underlie interindividual differences in these modes of response selection. To investigate these mechanisms, we used a stop-change paradigm for the recording of event-related potentials and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography source localizations in healthy subjects. Systematically varying the stimulus onset asynchrony (the temporal spacing of "stop" and "change" signals), we applied mathematical constraints to classify subjects in more parallel or more serial goal activators during action cascading. On that basis, the electrophysiological data show that processes linking stimulus processing and response execution, but not attentional processes, underlie interindividual differences in either serial or parallel response selection modes during action cascading. On a systems level, these processes were mediated via a distributed fronto-parietal network, including the anterior cingulate cortex (Brodman area 32, BA32) and the temporo-parietal junction (BA40). There was a linear relation between the individual degree of overlap in activated task goals and electrophysiological processes.	\N	\N
23499978	There is a long-running debate over the extent to which volitional attention can modulate the appearance of visual stimuli. Here we use monocular rivalry between afterimages to explore the effects of attention on the contents of visual experience. In three experiments, we demonstrate that attended afterimages are seen for longer periods, on average, than unattended afterimages. This occurs both when a feature of the afterimage is attended directly and when a frame surrounding the afterimage is attended. The results of these experiments show that volitional attention can dramatically influence the contents of visual experience.	\N	\N
23506806	We examined (a) what rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time and/or pause time) predict reading and mathematics ability and (b) what processing skills involved in RAN (speed of processing, response inhibition, working memory, and/or phonological awareness) may explain its relationship with reading and mathematics. A sample of 72 children were followed from the beginning of kindergarten until the end of Grade 1 and were assessed on measures of RAN, general cognitive ability, speed of processing, attention, working memory, phonological awareness, reading, and mathematics. The results indicated that pause time was the critical component in both the RAN-reading and RAN-mathematics relationships and that it shared most of its predictive variance in reading and mathematics with speed of processing and working memory. Our findings further suggested that, unlike the relationship between RAN and reading fluency in Grade 1, there is nothing in the RAN task that is uniquely related to math.	\N	\N
23507254	Post event processing (PEP) in social anxiety disorder involves rumination about social events after the fact, and is thought to be a crucial feature of the maintenance of the disorder. The current experiment aimed to manipulate the use of PEP in individuals with social anxiety disorder. Forty-one individuals with social anxiety disorder completed a videotaped speech. Anxiety ratings and degree of PEP were measured after the task as well as the day following the experiment. Individuals in the distract group reported a greater decrease in anxiety from baseline to post-experimental task than those asked to focus. Individuals in the distract group also reported higher PEP about the task than those instructed to complete a focus task, which appeared to be partially accounted for by baseline differences in symptom severity and state anxiety. Degree of PEP was positively correlated with anxiety ratings, both after the experimental task as well as 24 hours later. These findings suggest that naturalistic PEP is problematic for individuals with social anxiety disorder, especially for those with more severe symptoms. A distraction task, even with breakthrough PEP, appears to have useful short-term effects on anxiety reduction as compared to focus instructions.	\N	\N
23513046	This study compares the behavioral profile of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) who were diagnosed using the Canadian Guidelines with children with prenatal alcohol exposure who did not meet criteria for a FASD diagnosis. To accomplish this, we used caregiver and teacher questionnaires evaluating different aspects of behavior. Investigated were 170 children, 109 who received a diagnosis of FASD (Diagnosed Group) and 61 who did not (Non-Diagnosed Group). On the caregiver report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the CBCL, more executive function difficulties on the BRIEF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. On teacher report, children in the Diagnosed Group had more internalizing and externalizing problems on the TRF and more attention problems on the Conner's Rating Scale, compared to the Non-Diagnosed Group. For both informants, more children in the Diagnosed group had scores in the clinically elevated range. Overall, the present results identify key caregiver- and teacher-rated profiles of children with FASD diagnoses. These profiles will aid in better understanding, diagnosing and providing focused treatment approaches for children with FASD.	\N	\N
23516055	Sensory feedback and the required attentional demands are important aspects in prosthesis acceptance. In this study, hand-opening feedback is provided and the performance in a virtual grasping task is investigated. Simultaneously, a secondary task was performed to investigate the attentional demands. Ten nondisabled subjects performed the tasks with and without feedback about the hand opening through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators on the forearm. Activation of one stimulator corresponded to one hand-opening position. For the dual-task experiments, subjects simultaneously performed a secondary auditory counting task. The addition of vibrotactile feedback increased the performance (expressed in percentages of correct hand positions, mean absolute errors in position, and percentages of deviations up to one hand-opening position), but the duration of the tasks was also increased. Three levels of distraction (no distraction, counting task, count and subtract task) were applied, which did not influence the performance in the grasping tasks except for the highest level of distraction. We concluded that the proposed method to provide hand-opening feedback through an array of eight vibrotactile stimulators is successful because the performance in a grasping task increases but it is not significantly attention demanding.	\N	\N
23516802	With the assumption that circadian rhythms influence human performance, the work of live line electricians was reorganized and evaluated. The hypothesis was that in highly physical and attention-demanding work, the organization of tasks, according to the ideal period of day and day of week, should diminish stress and consequent work risks. There are only a few studies reporting the work of electricians and even fewer approaching work organization. Moreover, these investigations often do not consider human physiological limitations and capabilities as well as task demands. A new work system was proposed with consideration of (a) the circadian cycles and homeostatic processes; (b) the effect of heat, which is a zeitgeber (synchronizer) for the biological clocks; and (c) the degree of physical and mental demands of the different performed tasks, which was assessed on the basis of opinions of the electricians and physiological markers of stress that are controlled by circadian rhythms. The traditional and new systems were compared on the basis of two cognitive indices (the arrangement of matchsticks and the perception of a minute) and three physiological markers of mental-to-physical loads (heart frequency and the level of adrenaline and noradrenaline). Both physical and mental loads were reduced in the new system. Work organization should include consideration of human circadian rhythms, mainly when stressful and high-risk tasks are involved. The findings can be applied in any work design, but they are especially suited for highly demanding work carried out outdoors.	\N	\N
23521354	Children with autism have characteristic difficulties with joint attention. In educational settings, this can present a challenge when directing a child's attention to new objects and activities. Drawing on videotaped interactions between teachers and two children with autism recorded in Finland, we use conversation analysis to examine how teachers manage such transitions during one-to-one teaching. We show how adjusting material objects can be used to manage the child's engagement and how these adjustments can escalate into more conspicuous actions so as to direct the child's attention. Rather than examining participants' use of communicational objects, we are instead concerned with practices that use task-related objects. We thereby offer an empirically grounded account of the interactional practices involved in achieving joint attention through the objects themselves.	\N	\N
23521494	Mental functions are influenced by states of physiological arousal. Afferent neural activity from arterial baroreceptors at systole conveys the strength and timing of individual heartbeats to the brain. We presented words under limited attentional resources time-locked to different phases of the cardiac cycle, to test a hypothesis that natural baroreceptor stimulation influences detection and subsequent memory of words. We show memory for words presented around systole was decreased relative to words at diastole. The deleterious memory effect of systole was greater for words detected with low confidence and amplified in individuals with low interoceptive sensitivity, as indexed using a heartbeat counting task. Our observations highlight an important cardiovascular channel through which autonomic arousal impacts a cognitive function, an effect mitigated by metacognition (perceptual confidence) and interoceptive sensitivity.	\N	\N
23523374	Lifestyles involving sleep deprivation are common, despite mounting evidence that both acute total sleep deprivation and chronically restricted sleep degrade neurobehavioral functions associated with arousal, attention, memory and state stability. Current research suggests dynamic differences in the way the central nervous system responds to acute versus chronic sleep restriction, which is reflected in new models of sleep-wake regulation. Chronic sleep restriction likely induces long-term neuromodulatory changes in brain physiology that could explain why recovery from it may require more time than from acute sleep loss. High intraclass correlations in neurobehavioral responses to sleep loss suggest that these trait-like differences are phenotypic and may include genetic components. Sleep deprivation induces changes in brain metabolism and neural activation that involve distributed networks and connectivity.	\N	\N
23527644	Attention is a complex construct that taps into multiple mechanisms. One type of attention that is underinvestigated in autism is incidentally or implicitly guided attention. The purpose of this study is to characterize how children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) direct spatial attention based on incidental learning. Children with high-functioning ASD and typically developing children engaged in a visual search task. For the first half of the study, over multiple trials, the target was more often found in some locations than other locations. For the second half, the target was equally likely to appear in all locations. We measured search performance for targets located in the high-probability and low-probability locations. Children with ASD were able to direct spatial attention using incidentally learned information about the target's location probability. Although unaware of the experimental manipulation, children with ASD were faster and more efficient in finding a target in the high-probability locations than low-probability locations, and this bias dissipated after the target's location probability was even. The pace and magnitude of learning, as well as later adjustment to new statistics, were comparable between children with ASD and typically developing children. Incidentally learned attention is preserved in children with ASD.	\N	\N
23543105	Humans are thought to be able to form shared representations, considered a keystone of social cognition. However, whether and to what extent such representations are social in nature is still open for debate. In the present study, we address the question of whether action co-representation can be modulated by social attitudes, such as judgments about one's own social status. Two groups of participants performed an Interactive Simon task after the experimental induction of a feeling of social inclusion or exclusion (ostracism) by means of a virtual ball tossing game. Results showed a compatibility effect in included, but not in excluded participants. This indicates that judgments about one's own social status modulate action co-representation. We suggest that this modulation may occur by way of a redirection of one's attentional focus away from others when one experiences social exclusion. This is a far-reaching issue given the increasing need for integration in modern society. Indeed, if integration fails, modern society fails also.	\N	\N
23545077	The present study evaluated the socio-emotional development of very preterm born infants at 12 months corrected age. Forty-one infants born very preterm (<29 weeks of gestation) were compared to 22 infants born full term on a standardized behavioral assessment and a parental temperament questionnaire, both measuring emotional reactivity to joy, anger and fear, as well as sustained attention. The behavioral assessment showed that very preterm infants exhibited as much joy as full term infants during a joy-eliciting episode. However, they expressed a significantly higher reactivity in anger-eliciting situations and a reduced reactivity toward fear-eliciting situations. For all three emotion-eliciting situations, the preterm infants reacted with a higher level of motor activity. The preterm infants also exhibited a distinct attention pattern with a significantly higher initial attention level which declined rapidly throughout the episode. The questionnaire did not show any group differences. The clinical relevance of these results in terms of preliminary hallmarks of later behavioral difficulties such attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder are discussed as well as the inconsistencies observed between the questionnaire and the behavioral assessment.	\N	\N
23548574	Early mother-infant interactions are characterised by periods of synchronous interaction that are interrupted by periods of mismatch; the experience of such mismatches and their subsequent repair is held to facilitate the development of infant self-regulatory capacities (Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). Infant responding to such interactive challenge is assumed to be a function of both maternal behaviour and pre-existing infant characteristics. However, the latter has received relatively little attention. In a prospective longitudinal study of a sample comprising high and low adversity dyads (n=122), we examined the contributions of both maternal sensitivity and neonatal irritability to infant behavioural and physiological responding to the interactive challenge of the Still Face paradigm. Results indicated that higher levels of maternal sensitivity were associated with more regulated infant behaviour during the Still Face paradigm. Neonatal irritability also predicted poorer behavioural and heart rate recovery following the Still Face challenge. Furthermore, there was an interaction such that irritable infants with insensitive mothers showed the worst behavioural outcomes. The findings highlight the importance of the interplay between maternal and infant characteristics in determining dyadic responding.	\N	\N
23549856	The aim of the study is to examine the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) impact of the nocturnal awakenings and the duration of the sleep in the Finnish middle-aged and older population. Cross-sectional sample consisted of 823 community-dwelling persons aged 55-75 living in a single municipality in a rural area of Eastern Finland. Frequency of the nocturnal awakenings was dichotomized as reporting "frequent," if the participant reported subjectively awakening "often" or "very often," and "infrequent" if the participant reported awakening "sometimes" or less frequently. HRQOL was measured with a preference-based HRQOL-index instrument, 15D. Analyses were adjusted for gender, BMI, morbidities, depression, employment and marital status, current smoking and drinking, exercise, recommendation to exercise from a health care professional, and subjective opinion about own exercise habits. Frequent nocturnal awakenings had statistically and clinically significant negative impact on HRQOL, the mean (SE) adjusted marginal HRQOL impact being -0.0416 (0.006). More than 10 and less than 6.5 h of daily sleep were associated with higher probability of having low HRQOL, adjusted odd ratios (95 % CI) being 2.65 (1.11-6.33) and 2.65 (1.55-4.52), respectively. However, the changes in daily sleep duration did not have noticeable influence on the significance or magnitude of the negative HRQOL impact of the frequent nocturnal awakenings. Nocturnal awakenings displayed a strong independent association with decreased HRQOL. The findings suggest that both clinicians and researchers should pay closer attention to nocturnal awakenings and other sleep problems in order to find ways to improve the quality of life in individuals with such conditions.	\N	\N
23557983	In relative terms, Spanish motorcyclists are more likely to be involved in crashes than other drivers and this tendency is constantly increasing. The objective of this study is to identify the factors that are related to being an offender in motorcycle accidents. A binary logit model is used to differentiate between offender and non-offender motorcyclists. A motorcyclist was considered to be offender when s/he had committed at least one traffic offense at the moment previous to the crash. The analysis is based on the official accident database of the Spanish general directorate of traffic (DGT) for the 2003-2008 time period. A number of explanatory variables including motorcyclist characteristics and environmental factors have been evaluated. The results suggest that inexperienced, older females, not using helmets, absent-minded and non-fatigued riders are more likely to be offenders. Moreover, riding during the night, on weekends, for leisure purposes and along roads in perfect condition, mainly on curves, predict offenses among motorcyclists. The findings of this study are expected to be useful in developing traffic policy decisions in order to improve motorcyclist safety.	\N	\N
23558103	In listening to multi-part music, auditory streams can be attended to either selectively or globally. More specifically, musicians rely on prioritized integrative attention which incorporates both stream segregation and integration to assess the relationship between concurrent parts. In this fMRI study, we used a piano duet to investigate which factors of a leader-follower relationship between parts grab the listener's attention and influence the perception of multi-part music. The factors considered included the structural relationship between melody and accompaniment as well as the temporal relationship (asynchronies) between parts. The structural relationship was manipulated by cueing subjects to the part of the duet that had to be prioritized. The temporal relationship was investigated by synthetically shifting the onset times of melody and accompaniment to either a consistent melody or accompaniment lead. The relative importance of these relationship factors for segregation and integration as attentional mechanisms was of interest. Participants were required to listen to the cued part and then globally assess if the prioritized stream was leading or following compared to the second stream. Results show that the melody is judged as more leading when it is globally temporally ahead whereas the accompaniment is not judged as leading when it is ahead. This bias may be a result of the interaction of salience of both leader-follower relationship factors. Interestingly, the corresponding interaction effect in the fMRI-data yields an inverse bias for melody in a fronto-parietal attention network. Corresponding parameter estimates within the dlPFC and right IPS show higher neural activity for attending to melody when listening to a performance without a temporal leader, pointing to an interaction of salience of both factors in listening to music. Both frontal and parietal activation implicate segregation and integration mechanisms and a top-down influence of salience on attention and the perception of leader-follower relations in music.	\N	\N
23567211	Research done in two Polish cities has uncovered an influence of an approaching tram on pedestrian behaviour. The measurements were done by counting pedestrians waiting for a green signal, crossing on red signal safely, or crossing on red signal taking a risk of being hit by a car, differentiating between pedestrians attempting to board a public transport vehicle and other pedestrians. It was expected, that pedestrian behaviour might be influenced by traffic control predictability, therefore two cities were chosen for the task: Wrocław with fixed time traffic control and Poznań with a majority of traffic responsive traffic signals. Data from the measurements was compared in order to find behaviour patterns - the comparison led to a conclusion, that an attempt to get on board of an incoming public transport vehicle can be a major cause for pedestrians to violate a red signal, including an increase of unsafe behaviour. These pedestrians may provoke other pedestrians to cross on a red signal. On the other hand if traffic control guarantees boarding the public transport vehicle, passengers-to-be may be even more obedient than other pedestrians.	\N	\N
23574346	An experiment (N=123) examined how individuals cognitively process online news stories depicting African-American characters with stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent attributes and whether distracting online ads interfere with story processing. Two cognitive control functions, updating and inhibition, were predicted to moderate the effects of distracting ads. Recall of characters' attributes and overall characters' description were included in the study as dependent measures. Findings indicated that distracting online ads hinder recall of information about and descriptions of story characters. Inhibition and updating affect dependent measures and moderate the effects of distracting online ads on characters' descriptions.	\N	\N
23574348	A considerable literature suggests that the right hemisphere is dominant in vigilance for novel and survival-related stimuli, such as predators, across a wide range of species. In contrast to vigilance for change, change blindness is a failure to detect obvious changes in a visual scene when they are obscured by a disruption in scene presentation. We studied lateralised change detection using a series of scenes with salient changes in either the left or right visual fields. In Study 1 left visual field changes were detected more rapidly than right visual field changes, confirming a right hemisphere advantage for change detection. Increasing stimulus difficulty resulted in greater right visual field detections and left hemisphere detection was more likely when change occurred in the right visual field on a prior trial. In Study 2 an intervening distractor task disrupted the influence of prior trials. Again, faster detection speeds were observed for the left visual field changes with a shift to a right visual field advantage with increasing time-to-detection. This suggests that a right hemisphere role for vigilance, or catching attention, and a left hemisphere role for target evaluation, or maintaining attention, is present at the earliest stage of change detection.	\N	\N
23574875	To investigate the correlations between cognitive function and clinical outcome variables. Patients diagnosed for the first time with schizophrenia between January 2004 and June 2010 were cognitively tested in conjunction with diagnostic procedures. Cognitive test data were connected to Danish healthcare registers and patients were followed in the registers from their first contact with psychiatric in- and outpatient care until October 2011. Patients had impaired attention, processing speed and executive function as measured by Trail Making Test part B; their executive functions, as measured by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), and working memory, as measured by Rigshospitalet's digit span test, were unaffected as compared to norms. The admission rate, from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study, was predicted by Trail Making Test part A, Rey's Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), RAVLT (total learning), RAVLT (memory), d2 Test of Attention (total) and d2 type 2 error (error of commission), independent of gender, age and schizophrenia subtype. The length of hospitalization after the schizophrenia diagnosis was mainly determined by the schizophrenia subtype (schizophrenia simplex: incidence rate ratio (IRR) 0.24; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.15-0.40, p < 0.001). Diagnosis was secondarily determined by deficits in attention and executive function, Trail Making Test part B, d2 Test of Attention (total), d2 type 1 error (error of omission), d2 type 2 error, and also by age and substance use disorder. The outpatient contact rate from schizophrenia diagnosis to the end of the study was predicted by d2 Test of Attention, Trail Making Test part A, and d2 type 2 error. The annual rate of criminal conviction, institutionalization and social retirement pension was mainly predicted by substance misuse. Cognitive function only predicted hospitalization and outpatient contacts to a minor degree in a cohort of newly diagnosed patients with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
23576114	Looking for a target in a visual scene becomes more difficult as the number of stimuli increases. In a signal detection theory view, this is due to the cumulative effect of noise in the encoding of the distractors, and potentially on top of that, to an increase of the noise (i.e., a decrease of precision) per stimulus with set size, reflecting divided attention. It has long been argued that human visual search behavior can be accounted for by the first factor alone. While such an account seems to be adequate for search tasks in which all distractors have the same, known feature value (i.e., are maximally predictable), we recently found a clear effect of set size on encoding precision when distractors are drawn from a uniform distribution (i.e., when they are maximally unpredictable). Here we interpolate between these two extreme cases to examine which of both conclusions holds more generally as distractor statistics are varied. In one experiment, we vary the level of distractor heterogeneity; in another we dissociate distractor homogeneity from predictability. In all conditions in both experiments, we found a strong decrease of precision with increasing set size, suggesting that precision being independent of set size is the exception rather than the rule.	\N	\N
23586449	Verbal and physical dating aggression is prevalent among college-aged men and women, especially a pattern of mutual aggression in which both partners engage in aggression. Alcohol intoxication and anger arousal have been implicated in the occurrence of aggression, and the ability to regulate one's emotions may interact with both alcohol intoxication and emotional arousal to predict dating aggression. The current study is the first known experimental investigation to examine the effects of alcohol intoxication, alcohol expectancies, emotion regulation, and emotional arousal on dating aggression. Participants were randomized to receive alcohol (n = 48), placebo (n = 48), or no alcohol (n = 48). Intoxicated men and women expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those in the no-alcohol condition, and individuals in the placebo condition did not significantly differ from those in the alcohol and no-alcohol conditions. These results suggest that the pharmacological effects of alcohol were important to the occurrence of dating aggression, whereas the effects of expectancy are less clear. Among those less able to engage in cognitive reappraisal, individuals who consumed or believed they consumed alcohol expressed more verbal and physical aggression intentions than those who received no alcohol. Those with higher arousal who were better able to suppress their emotions expressed fewer verbal and physical aggression intentions than those with lower arousal. In addition to reducing alcohol consumption, interventions for dating aggression might incorporate emotion regulation skills, with a focus on understanding the circumstances in which cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression are relatively more effective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).	\N	\N
23596189	Alexithymia and increased interoceptive awareness have been associated with affective disorders as well as with altered insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function. Brain imaging studies have demonstrated an association between neurotransmitter function and affective disorders as well as personality traits. Here, we first examined the relationship between alexithymic facets as assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and interoceptive awareness (assessed with the Body Perception Questionnaire) in 18 healthy subjects. Second, we investigated their association with glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations in the left insula and the ACC using 3-Tesla proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Behaviorally, we found a close association between alexithymia and interoceptive awareness. Furthermore, glutamate levels in the left insula were positively associated with both alexithymia and awareness of autonomic nervous system reactivity, while GABA concentrations in ACC were selectively associated with alexithymia. Although preliminary, our results suggest that increased glutamate-mediated excitatory transmission-related to enhanced insula activity-reflects increased interoceptive awareness in alexithymia. Suppression of the unspecific emotional arousal evoked by increased awareness of bodily responses in alexithymics might thus be reflected in decreased neuronal activity mediated by increased GABA concentration in ACC.	\N	\N
23601793	In the present research we explored the role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory retrieval process of positive vs. negative emotional stimulus, as a function of the anxiety levels. Anxiety behavior showed a consistent attentional bias toward negative and aversive memories, induced by a right frontal cortical superiority. This effect was analyzed by using a rTMS paradigm that induced a cortical activation of the left DLPFC. Subjects, who were divided in two different groups depending on their anxiety level (high/low-anxiety, State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory, STAI), were required to perform a task consisting of two experimental phases: an encoding-phase, where some lists composed by positive and negative emotional words were presented to the subjects; and a retrieval-phase, where the old stimuli and new stimuli were presented for a recognition performance. We found that the rTMS stimulation affects the memory retrieval of emotional material. High-anxiety subjects benefit in greater measure from the left DLPFC stimulation with a reduced negative bias. This result suggested that left DLPFC activation favors the memory retrieval of positive emotional information and might limit the "unbalance effect" induced by a right hemispheric superiority at a high level of anxiety. The potentiality of TMS for anxiety behavior modulation was also discussed.	\N	\N
23619205	Past research has reported that a small proportion of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) have excess beta activity in their EEG, rather than the excess theta typical of the syndrome. This atypical group has been tentatively labeled as hyperaroused. The aim of this study was to determine whether these children have a hyperaroused central nervous system. Participants included 104 boys aged 8 to 13 years old, with a diagnosis of either the Combined or Inattentive type of AD/HD (67 combined type), and 67 age-matched male controls. Ten and a half minutes of EEG and skin conductance (SCL) were simultaneously recorded during an eyes-closed resting condition. The EEG was Fourier transformed and estimates of total power, and relative power in the delta, theta, alpha, and beta bands, and the theta/beta ratio, were calculated. AD/HD patients were divided into an excess beta group and a typical excess theta group. Relative to controls, the typical excess theta group had significantly increased frontal total power, theta and theta/beta ratio, with reduced alpha and beta across the scalp. The excess beta group had significantly reduced posterior total power, increased centro-posterior delta, globally reduced alpha, globally increased beta activity, and globally reduced theta/beta ratio. Both AD/HD groups had significantly reduced SCL compared to the control group, but the two groups did not differ from each other on SCL. These results indicate that AD/HD children with excess beta activity are not hyperaroused, and confirm that the theta/beta ratio is not associated with arousal. This is the first study of arousal measures in AD/HD children with excess beta activity, and has implications for existing models of AD/HD.	\N	\N
23620190	Stress contributes to headaches, and effective interventions for headaches routinely include relaxation training (RT) to directly reduce negative emotions and arousal. Yet, suppressing negative emotions, particularly anger, appears to augment pain, and experimental studies suggest that expressing anger may reduce pain. Therefore, we developed and tested anger awareness and expression training (AAET) on people with headaches. Young adults with headaches (N = 147) were randomized to AAET, RT, or a wait-list control. We assessed affect during sessions, and process and outcome variables at baseline and 4 weeks after treatment. On process measures, both interventions increased self-efficacy to manage headaches, but only AAET reduced alexithymia and increased emotional processing and assertiveness. Yet, both interventions were equally effective at improving headache outcomes relative to controls. Enhancing anger awareness and expression may improve chronic headaches, although not more than RT. Researchers should study which patients are most likely to benefit from an emotional expression or emotional reduction approach to chronic pain.	\N	\N
23624574	Transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) and identification-production frameworks predict that repetition priming will be reduced by encoding-phase divided attention (DA) in implicit memory tasks that involve conceptual analysis of test stimuli and require responses that go beyond the identification of the test cue. This prediction was tested using the verb generation task. Verb generation priming was weakly affected by a number classification distracting task at encoding that impacted recognition, was affected more by a more demanding mental arithmetic task, and was abolished entirely by a selective attention manipulation. Priming originating largely from a process unique to the verb generation task was also found to be attention-sensitive. DA affected priming equivalently for high-competition and low-competition items, against the identification-production framework which predicts greater DA effects on priming in high-competition conditions. The results fit comfortably within the TAP framework.	\N	\N
23625323	Minimal hepatic encephalopathy is a syndrome caused by liver cirrhosis and accompanied by a broad spectrum of cognitive symptoms. The objective of the present study was to describe the prevalence of minimal hepatic encephalopathy in cirrhotic patients and to compare their cognitive performance with controls using standardized tests. Patients receiving medication or experiencing comorbidities associated with cognitive disorders were excluded. The final cohort was compared with a control-matched group using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), as well as Simple Drawing, Clock Drawing, Rey Auditory-Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT), Random Letter, Stroop, Trail-Making Test (TMT) A and B, Boston Naming, Category Verbal Fluency, Digit Span, Constructional Praxis, Processing Speed, and Similarities Tests. The results indicated no differences in the prevalence of cognitive complaints spontaneously reported by 29 patients with cirrhosis versus 22 healthy controls. The most affected tests included: MMSE (26.3 ± 2 vs. 28.1 ± 1.8 points; p = 0.004), learning (35.4 ± 9 vs. 41 ± 9.1 points; p = 0.041), retroactive interference (0.67 ± 0.22 vs. 0.84 ± 0.16 points; p = 0.004), and recognition (8.7 ± 2.6 vs. 11.2 ± 4.1 points; p = 0.024) in RAVLT, TMT-A (63.2 ± 29.3 vs. 47.6 ± 16.5 s; p = 0.029) and TMT-B (197.9 ± 88.1 vs. 146.8 ± 76.5 s; p = 0.03). No differences were observed with respect to age, gender, and education. In conclusion, MMSE proved to be a useful tool for detecting global cognitive impairment experienced by cirrhosis patients. Moreover, the most impaired cognitive functions were verbal episodic memory and information processing speed. These findings suggest that minimal hepatic encephalopathy represents a disorder that affects the medial temporal system and, possibly, the prefrontal cortex, and this requires further study.	\N	\N
23627722	Classification is a flexible process that can be affected by mood. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the idea that mood may modulate categorization behavior through an attentional weighting mechanism in which mood changes the attention afforded to different stimulus dimensions. In two experiments, participants learn and are tested on categories while in a calm or sad mood. In Experiment 1, sad participants are faster to learn one- and two-dimensional category structures, but show no advantage on a three-dimensional category structure. In Experiment 2, the generalized context model of categorization is used to measure dimensional weighting. The results suggest that sad participants have a narrower focus of attention, but that the narrowing tends to be on diagnostic dimensions.	\N	\N
23632202	Repeated action observation has been shown to alter the cortical representation of the observed movement in the motor system. This change in cortical representation is thought to reflect a motor adaptation to observational training (observational training effect). One factor that may impact the observational training effect is the degree of motor system activation that occurs during the observation of the action (i.e., individual differences in the responsiveness of the motor system during action observation). The present study was conducted to test this hypothesis by assessing the relationship between the change in motor system activity during action observation and the change in cortical representation of action following repeated action observation. To this end, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was used to evoke contractions of thumb muscles in two different protocols: 1) during the observation of thumb movements to assess the responsiveness of each individual's corticospinal system during action observation; and, 2) after the observation of 1800 thumb movements to assess the amount of adaptation in the representation of the thumb following repeated action observation. The key finding was the significant positive relationship between the level of corticospinal system activation during action observation and the amount of change in the direction of TMS evoked thumb movements. These data support the hypothesized relationship between motor system activation during action observation and the motor systems adaptation following observational training. They are also consistent with the notion that a common neural mechanism underlies these effects.	\N	\N
23637913	Online social media are increasingly facilitating our social interactions, thereby making available a massive "digital fossil" of human behavior. Discovering and quantifying distinct patterns using these data is important for studying social behavior, although the rapid time-variant nature and large volumes of these data make this task difficult and challenging. In this study, we focused on the emergence of "collective attention" on Twitter, a popular social networking service. We propose a simple method for detecting and measuring the collective attention evoked by various types of events. This method exploits the fact that tweeting activity exhibits a burst-like increase and an irregular oscillation when a particular real-world event occurs; otherwise, it follows regular circadian rhythms. The difference between regular and irregular states in the tweet stream was measured using the Jensen-Shannon divergence, which corresponds to the intensity of collective attention. We then associated irregular incidents with their corresponding events that attracted the attention and elicited responses from large numbers of people, based on the popularity and the enhancement of key terms in posted messages or "tweets." Next, we demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using a large dataset that contained approximately 490 million Japanese tweets by over 400,000 users, in which we identified 60 cases of collective attentions, including one related to the Tohoku-oki earthquake. "Retweet" networks were also investigated to understand collective attention in terms of social interactions. This simple method provides a retrospective summary of collective attention, thereby contributing to the fundamental understanding of social behavior in the digital era.	\N	\N
23639615	Imitation is commonly considered as a hierarchical process. The current study explored the reproduction of a multi-task course in deferred imitation. Eighty-five children between 3.5 and 7.5 years old were divided into five groups and instructed to watch a live human adult demonstrator who performed simple successive actions, such as walking, jumping, grasping, carrying objects from one location to another through six sessions. After a five-minute delay, the children were individually instructed to reproduce the course. Their responses were videotaped and coded in dichotomous data at two hierarchical levels, namely goals and their spatial location. The main findings showed no improvement in the replication of goals due either to age or trials. However, there was an improvement in the integration of the goals' spatial location over trials. This signifies that imitation is an active reconstruction mechanism hierarchically organized.	\N	\N
23640591	Advanced mathematical models have the potential to capture the complex metabolic and physiological processes that result in energy expenditure (EE). Study objective is to apply quantile regression (QR) to predict EE and determine quantile-dependent variation in covariate effects in nonobese and obese children. First, QR models will be developed to predict minute-by-minute awake EE at different quantile levels based on heart rate (HR) and physical activity (PA) accelerometry counts, and child characteristics of age, sex, weight, and height. Second, the QR models will be used to evaluate the covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR across the conditional EE distribution. QR and ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are estimated in 109 children, aged 5-18 yr. QR modeling of EE outperformed OLS regression for both nonobese and obese populations. Average prediction errors for QR compared with OLS were not only smaller at the median τ = 0.5 (18.6 vs. 21.4%), but also substantially smaller at the tails of the distribution (10.2 vs. 39.2% at τ = 0.1 and 8.7 vs. 19.8% at τ = 0.9). Covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE for the nonobese and obese children differed across quantiles (P < 0.05). The associations (linear and quadratic) between PA and HR with EE were stronger for the obese than nonobese population (P < 0.05). In conclusion, QR provided more accurate predictions of EE compared with conventional OLS regression, especially at the tails of the distribution, and revealed substantially different covariate effects of weight, PA, and HR on EE in nonobese and obese children.	\N	\N
23643925	The cingulate cortex is regarded as the backbone of structural and functional connectivity of the brain. While its functional connectivity has been intensively studied, little is known about its effective connectivity, its modulation by behavioral states, and its involvement in cognitive performance. Given the previously reported effects on cingulate functional connectivity, we investigated how eye-closure and sleep deprivation changed cingulate effective connectivity, estimated from resting-state high-density electroencephalography (EEG) using a novel method to calculate Granger Causality directly in source space. Effective connectivity along the cingulate cortex was dominant in the forward direction. Eyes-open connectivity in the forward direction was greater compared to eyes-closed, in well-rested participants. The difference between eyes-open and eyes-closed connectivity was attenuated and no longer significant after sleep deprivation. Individual variability in the forward connectivity after sleep deprivation predicted subsequent task performance, such that those subjects who showed a greater increase in forward connectivity between the eyes-open and the eyes-closed periods also performed better on a sustained attention task. Effective connectivity in the opposite, backward, direction was not affected by whether the eyes were open or closed or by sleep deprivation. These findings indicate that the effective connectivity from posterior to anterior cingulate regions is enhanced when a well-rested subject has his eyes open compared to when they are closed. Sleep deprivation impairs this directed information flow, proportional to its deleterious effect on vigilance. Therefore, sleep may play a role in the maintenance of waking effective connectivity.	\N	\N
23643938	As planners and public health officials in many cities around the world seek to increase bicycle ridership, bicyclists who are performing a secondary task (such as listening to a portable music device) may pose a risk to public safety. This study examines bicycling safety and potentially distracted behavior in The Hague, the Netherlands, a place where bicycling is a common, everyday travel mode among all walks of life and where bicycling infrastructure is well developed. Based on 1360 observations of bicycling behavior, this study shows that bicyclists who were using a cell phone, listening to a portable music device, or talking with other bicyclists exhibited more unsafe behaviors than those bicyclists who were not performing a secondary task. Furthermore, bicyclists who were performing a secondary task also more frequently created situations where other people had to evade them to avoid an accident. As with distracted car driving, the performance of a secondary task while bicycling may be unsafe for the person engaging in the behavior as well as for other people around them.	\N	\N
23656993	Traumatic coma is associated with disruption of axonal pathways throughout the brain, but the specific pathways involved in humans are incompletely understood. In this study, we used high angular resolution diffusion imaging to map the connectivity of axonal pathways that mediate the 2 critical components of consciousness-arousal and awareness-in the postmortem brain of a 62-year-old woman with acute traumatic coma and in 2 control brains. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography guided tissue sampling in the neuropathologic analysis. High angular resolution diffusion imaging tractography demonstrated complete disruption of white matter pathways connecting brainstem arousal nuclei to the basal forebrain and thalamic intralaminar and reticular nuclei. In contrast, hemispheric arousal pathways connecting the thalamus and basal forebrain to the cerebral cortex were only partially disrupted, as were the cortical "awareness pathways." Neuropathologic examination, which used β-amyloid precursor protein and fractin immunomarkers, revealed axonal injury in the white matter of the brainstem and cerebral hemispheres that corresponded to sites of high angular resolution diffusion imaging tract disruption. Axonal injury was also present within the gray matter of the hypothalamus, thalamus, basal forebrain, and cerebral cortex. We propose that traumatic coma may be a subcortical disconnection syndrome related to the disconnection of specific brainstem arousal nuclei from the thalamus and basal forebrain.	\N	\N
23663456	The target article focuses on the predictive coding of "what" and "where" something happened and the "where" and "what" response to make. We extend that scope by addressing the "when" aspect of perception and action. Successful interaction with the environment requires predictions of everything from millisecond-accurate motor timing to far future events. The hierarchical framework seems appropriate for timing.	\N	\N
23663497	It is often helpful to distinguish between a theory (Marr's computational level) and a specific implementation of that theory (Marr's physical level). However, in the target article, a single implementation of predictive coding is presented as if this were the theory of predictive coding itself. Other implementations of predictive coding have been formulated which can explain additional neurobiological phenomena.	\N	\N
23663498	In important ways, Clark's "hierarchical prediction machine" (HPM) approach parallels the research agenda we have been pursuing. Nevertheless, we remain unconvinced that the HPM offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. The apparent convergence of research interests is offset by a profound divergence of theoretical starting points and ideal goals.	\N	\N
23663531	Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models).	\N	\N
23663865	Predictive processing models of cognition are promising an elegant way to unite action, perception, and learning. However, in the current formulations, they are species-unspecific and have very little particularly human about them. I propose to examine how, in this framework, humans can be able to massively interact and to build shared worlds that are both material and symbolic.	\N	\N
23666554	Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported increased activation of the mesolimbic system in response to anticipation of rewarding stimuli. The anticipation of uncertain outcomes evokes activation in the amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and insula. Drugs known to effect dopaminergic and serotonergic neurons also alter regional activation. Benzylpiperazine (BZP) and/or trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) have been recreationally used worldwide for more than a decade. BZP affects mainly dopaminergic neurons, while TFMPP has serotonergic effects. We investigated the effects of an acute dose of BZP, TFMPP or a combination of BZP and TFMPP on the anticipation of reward in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study using fMRI. An event-related gambling paradigm was completed by healthy controls 90 min after taking an oral dose of either BZP (200 mg), TFMPP (either 50 or 60 mg), BZP + TFMPP (100 + 30 mg) or placebo. After giving BZP, the anticipation of a $4 reward decreased the activation of the inferior frontal gyrus, insula and occipital regions in comparison to placebo. TFMPP increased the activation of the putamen but decreased the activity in the insula relative to placebo. When BZP and TFMPP were given in combination, activation of the rolandic operculum occurred. The magnitude of reward also affected neural correlates. We propose that the effects of BZP and TFMPP on dopaminergic and serotonergic circuitry, respectively, reflect regional changes. The dopaminergic effects of BZP appear to increase positive arousal and subsequently reduce the response to uncertainty, while TFMPP appears to alter the response to uncertainty by increasing emotional responses.	\N	\N
23677737	Snoring is a common symptom among the adult population, and it is the most common complaint in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome. Patients who snore in a sitting position while taking a nap or sleeping may have a narrower upper airway. The aim of this study was to evaluate if snoring in a sitting position is a predictor of OSA in patients. We prospectively enrolled 166 SS+ (with a history of snoring in a sitting position) subjects and 139 SS- (who denied having a history of snoring in a sitting position) patients. All of the participants received questionnaires as well as a standard polysomnography thereafter. Patients with self-reported snoring in a sitting position (with a tilt position greater than 70°, SS+ group) had a higher body mass index as well as greater neck, waist, and buttock circumference and scored higher on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale. During the polysomnographic study, the SS+ group had a higher percentage of N1 sleep and lower percentage of N2 sleep. In addition, the SS+ group had a higher apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) as well as higher arousal index and oxygen desaturation index. The sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 5) were 0.59 and 0.73, respectively, with a positive predictive value of 0.93. The likelihood ratio was 2.2. On the other hand, the sensitivity and specificity of the SS+ group for moderate to severe OSA (defined as AHI ≥ 15) were 0.82 and 0.48, respectively. Both SS+ and greater neck circumference have a high likelihood ratio for diagnosing OSA. In the present study, the symptoms of self-reported snoring in a sitting position and greater neck circumference can be useful clinical predictors of OSA in Chinese patients.	\N	\N
23682731	The NAB is a comprehensive battery assessing five cognitive domains (Attention, Language, Memory, Spatial, Executive Function). Despite the advantage of co-normative domain data, its clinical utility is not well established because few studies have reported full-battery findings. The aim of this study was to determine if the NAB was sensitive to well documented hemispheric differences in language and spatial skills after unilateral stroke. We compared demographically matched control participants (n = 52) and individuals after left (LHD, n = 36) or right (RHD, n = 33) hemisphere damage due to stroke on the NAB, parts of the Western Aphasia Battery, and traditional visuospatial tasks. Both stroke groups showed impaired NAB Attention, Spatial, and Executive Functions relative to controls, while the LHD group was more impaired than control and RHD groups on Language and Memory modules. LHD patients with aphasia on traditional measures performed worse than control and non-aphasic LHD patients on all NAB domains. RHD patients with spatial impairment on traditional measures performed worse than controls, but not RHD patients without spatial impairment, on the NAB Spatial domain. Findings suggest the NAB is generally comparable to traditional language and visuospatial measures, and it sufficiently detects attention and executive deficits.	\N	\N
23683312	Cognition research suggests that allocating attention resources to evolutionarily relevant stimuli is facilitated suggesting that sexual stimuli interfere with human information processing. In a group of gay (n = 13) and straight men (n = 13) recruited in Finland, Germany and Italy, we investigated if and how sexually relevant visual stimuli affect information processing of both a target one (T1) and a subsequent target two (T2) in a dual target rapid serial visual presentation procedure. We hypothesized that: (1) due to the attentional blink (AB) phenomenon, the accuracy of reporting of T2 would decrease when following accurately identified sexually preferred T1 compared to accurately identified non-sexually preferred T1; 2) due to the pop out effect, the accuracy of reporting of T1 and T2 would be relatively increased when T1 and T2 were sexually preferred by the participants compared to when they were not. Our findings did not support hypothesis 1 but supported hypothesis 2. We further found that the pop out effect had a good capacity to differentiate sexual preference between the groups of gay and straight men. We conclude that dual target rapid serial visual presentation can be used as an attention-based measurement to differentiate sexual preference in men. Limitations and the applicability in the field of measuring sexual preference were discussed.	\N	\N
23685191	Observers often fail to detect substantial changes in a visual scene. This so-called change blindness is often taken as evidence that visual representations are sparse and volatile. This notion rests on the assumption that the failure to detect a change implies that representations of the changing objects are lost all together. However, recent evidence suggests that under change blindness, object memory representations may be formed and stored, but not retrieved. This study investigated the fate of object memory representations when changes go unnoticed. Participants were presented with scenes consisting of real world objects, one of which changed on each trial, while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants were first asked to localize where the change had occurred. In an additional recognition task, participants then discriminated old objects, either from the pre-change or the post-change scene, from entirely new objects. Neural traces of object memories were studied by comparing ERPs for old and novel objects. Participants performed poorly in the detection task and often failed to recognize objects from the scene, especially pre-change objects. However, a robust old/novel effect was observed in the ERP, even when participants were change blind and did not recognize the old object. This implicit memory trace was found both for pre-change and post-change objects. These findings suggest that object memories are stored even under change blindness. Thus, visual representations may not be as sparse and volatile as previously thought. Rather, change blindness may point to a failure to retrieve and use these representations for change detection.	\N	\N
23685391	The pupil constricts in response to light increments and dilates with light decrements. Here we show that a picture of the sun, introducing a small overall decrease in light level across the field of view, results in a pupillary constriction. Thus, the pictorial representation of a high-luminance object (the sun) can override the normal pupillary dilation elicited by a light decrement. In a series of experiments that control for a variety of factors known to modulate pupil size, we show that the effect (a) does not depend on the retinal position of the images and (b) is modulated by attention. It has long been known that cognitive factors can affect pupil diameter by producing pupillary dilations. Our results indicate that high-level visual analysis (beyond the simple subcortical system mediating the pupillary response to light) can also induce pupillary constriction, with an effect size of about 0.1 mm.	\N	\N
23696214	Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) demonstrate deficits in language comprehension, but little is known about how they process spoken language as it unfolds. Real-time lexical comprehension is associated with language and cognition in children without ASD, suggesting that this may also be the case for children with ASD. This study adopted an individual differences approach to characterizing real-time comprehension of familiar words in a group of 34 three- to six-year-olds with ASD. The looking-while-listening paradigm was employed; it measures online accuracy and latency through language-mediated eye movements and has limited task demands. On average, children demonstrated comprehension of the familiar words, but considerable variability emerged. Children with better accuracy were faster to process the familiar words. In combination, processing speed and comprehension on a standardized language assessment explained 63% of the variance in online accuracy. Online accuracy was not correlated with autism severity or maternal education, and nonverbal cognition did not explain unique variance. Notably, online accuracy at age 5½ was related to vocabulary comprehension 3 years earlier. The words typically learned earliest in life were processed most quickly. Consistent with a dimensional view of language abilities, these findings point to similarities in patterns of language acquisition in typically developing children and those with ASD. Overall, our results emphasize the value of examining individual differences in real-time language comprehension in this population. We propose that the looking-while-listening paradigm is a sensitive and valuable methodological tool that can be applied across many areas of autism research.	\N	\N
23698323	We explored the associations of job strain with sleep and alertness of shift working female nurses and nursing assistants. Participants (n=95) were recruited from the Finnish Public Sector Study, from hospital wards that belonged to the top or bottom quartiles on job strain. Participants' own job strain was at least as high in high-strain group or low in low-strain group as the ward's average. The study included three-week measurements with sleep diary and actigraphy. Psychomotor Vigilance Test (PVT) was performed during one pre-selected morning and night shift and a day off. Sleep efficiency before morning shifts was lower in the high-strain than low-strain group (p=0.03). Low-strain group took more often (72 vs. 45%; p<0.01) and longer naps (62 vs. 35 min; p=0.01) before the first night shift than high-strain group. Difficulties initiating sleep were more common in high-strain group, especially after evening shifts (p<0.01). High-strain group had more often at least one lapse in PVT during the night shift (p=0.02). Average sleep duration (06:49 h) and efficiency (89%) did not differ between these groups. In conclusion, high job strain is associated with difficulties initiating sleep and reduced psychomotor vigilance in night shifts. Shift working contributed to impaired sleep in both high and low job strain group. Individual and organization-based actions are needed to promote sufficient sleep in shift working nurses, especially with high job strain.	\N	\N
23701388	This study extracted the error-related negativity (ERN) waveform component recorded from a visual-spatial attention and a visual short-term memory task to assess rigorously the long-term and cumulative effects of concussions on evaluative processes of cognitive control related to performance monitoring. This study demonstrates that, relative to control athletes, multiply concussed athletes show significant ERN amplitude reduction elicited by error generation. These cumulative effects of concussions on ERN amplitude were found in two distinct experimental paradigms designed to solicit concussion-sensitive cognitive abilities such as attention and short-term memory. This suggests that the mechanisms that contribute to the evaluation of cognitive performance may be significantly affected following multiple concussions even in low-conflict situations.	\N	\N
23707592	Sleep and the functional connectome are research areas with considerable overlap. Neuroimaging studies of sleep based on EEG-PET and EEG-fMRI are revealing the brain networks that support sleep, as well as networks that may support the roles and processes attributed to sleep. For example, phenomena such as arousal and consciousness are substantially modulated during sleep, and one would expect this modulation to be reflected in altered network activity. In addition, recent work suggests that sleep also has a number of adaptive functions that support waking activity. Thus the study of sleep may elucidate the circuits and processes that support waking function and complement information obtained from fMRI during waking conditions. In this review, we will discuss examples of this for memory, arousal, and consciousness after providing a brief background on sleep and on studying it with fMRI.	\N	\N
23707891	In two experiments, participants were required to identify a target stimulus by means of same/different judgments. Previously, they had received simultaneous or blocked pre-exposures to the target and a similar stimulus. Participants' ability to judge pre-exposed stimuli as different was better after simultaneous than after blocked pre-exposures. However, the benefit of the simultaneous schedule disappeared when, after pre-exposure, the distinctive elements were made common (and some common elements made distinctive) by changing their shape and position within the stimulus (Experiment 1). Similar results were obtained when only one of the aforementioned physical features was modified (Experiment 2). These manipulations did not affect performance when the stimuli had been pre-exposed in separate blocks of trials. These findings support the idea that the effect of simultaneous pre-exposure on stimulus differentiation is based on a selective attention process by which attention is selectively directed towards the distinctive features of the stimuli and away from the common features (Gibson, 1969).	\N	\N
23718701	The ability to inhibit is a major developmental dimension. Previous studies examined developmental change in instructed inhibition. The current study, however, focused on intentional inhibition. We examined heart rate responses to intentional action and inhibition, with a focus on developmental differences. Three age groups (8-10, 11-12, and 18-26 years) performed a child-friendly marble paradigm in which they had to choose between intentionally acting on, or inhibiting, a prepotent response. As instructed, all age groups chose to intentionally inhibit on approximately 50 percent of the intentional trials. A pronounced heart rate deceleration was observed during both intentional action and intentional inhibition, but this deceleration was most pronounced for intentional inhibition. Heart rate responses did not differentiate between age groups, suggesting that intentional action and inhibition reach mature levels early in childhood.	\N	\N
23720086	The CHRNA4 gene is known to be associated with individual differences in attention. However, its associations with other cognitive functions remain to be elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of genetic variations in CHRNA4 on rapid scene categorization by 100 healthy human participants. In Experiment 1, we also conducted the Attention Network Test (ANT) in order to examine whether the genetic effects could be accounted for by attention. CHRNA4 was genotyped as carrying the TT, CT, or CC allele. The scene categorization task required participants to judge whether the category of a scene image (natural or man-made) was consistent with a cue word displayed at the response phase. The target-mask stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) ranged from 13 to 93 ms. In comparison with CC-allele carriers, CT- and TT-allele carriers responded more accurately at the long SOA (93 ms) only during natural-scene categorization. In contrast, we observed no consistent association between CHRNA4 and the ANT, and no intertask correlation between scene categorization and the ANT. To validate our natural-scene categorization results, Experiment 2, carried out with an independent sample of 100 participants and a different stimulus set, successfully replicated the association between CHRNA4 genotypes and natural-scene categorization accuracy at long SOAs (67 and 93 ms). Our findings demonstrate, for the first time, that genetic variations in CHRNA4 can moderately contribute to individual differences in natural-scene categorization performance.	\N	\N
23723144	A variety of techniques exist for eliciting acute psychological stress in the laboratory; however, they vary in terms of their ease of use, reliability to elicit consistent responses and the extent to which they represent the stressors encountered in everyday life. There is, therefore, a need to develop simple laboratory techniques that reliably elicit psychobiological stress reactivity that are representative of the types of stressors encountered in everyday life. The multitasking framework is a performance-based, cognitively demanding stressor, representative of environments where individuals are required to attend and respond to several different stimuli simultaneously with varying levels of workload. Psychological (mood and perceived workload) and physiological (heart rate and blood pressure) stress reactivity was observed in response to a 15-min period of multitasking at different levels of workload intensity in a sample of 20 healthy participants. Multitasking stress elicited increases in heart rate and blood pressure, and increased workload intensity elicited dose-response increases in levels of perceived workload and mood. As individuals rarely attend to single tasks in real life, the multitasking framework provides an alternative technique for modelling acute stress and workload in the laboratory.	\N	\N
23724570	Because no studies have examined learning in hypnosis in an academic setting, the current study tested whether learning in hypnosis impacts test performance. Participants (N = 43) were randomly assigned into a hypnosis or a control group. Participants listened to an academic lecture, answered questions about their hypnotic depth, and completed a quiz based on the lecture. The data was analyzed using multilevel modeling predicting test performance from group placement. Learning in the hypnosis predicted significantly worse performance compared to the control group. This relationship was significantly mediated by attention, which had a positive relationship to test performance. However, the altered state of awareness produced by the hypnosis condition was associated with a more significant decrease in test performance.	\N	\N
23727542	Attentional biases to threat are considered central to anxiety disorders, however physiological evidence of their nature and time course is lacking. Event-related potentials (ERPs) characterized sensory and cognitive changes while 20 outpatients with panic disorder (PD), 20 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and 20 healthy controls (HCs) responded to the color (emotional Stroop task) or meaning of threatening and neutral stimuli. ERPs indicated larger P1 amplitude and longer N1 latency in OCD, and shorter P1 latency in PD, to threatening (versus neutral) stimuli, across instructions to attend to, or ignore, threat content. Emotional Stroop interference correlated with phobic anxiety and was significant in PD. Participants with emotional Stroop interference had augmented P1 and P3 amplitudes to threat (versus neutral) stimuli when color-naming. The results suggest early attentional biases to threat in both disorders, with disorder-specific characteristics. ERPs supported preferential early attentional capture and cognitive elaboration hypotheses of emotional Stroop interference.	\N	\N
23727627	Sleepiness at the wheel is a risk factor for traffic accidents. Past studies have demonstrated the validity of the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) scores as a predictor of driving impairment in untreated patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS), but there is limited information on the validity of the maintenance of wakefulness test by MWT in predicting driving impairment in patients with hypersomnias of central origin (narcolepsy or idiopathic hypersomnia). The aim of this study was to compare the MWT scores with driving performance in sleep disorder patients and controls. 19 patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin (9 narcoleptics and 10 idiopathic hypersomnia), 17 OSAS patients and 14 healthy controls performed a MWT (4×40-minute trials) and a 40-minute driving session on a real car driving simulator. Participants were divided into 4 groups defined by their MWT sleep latency scores. The groups were pathological (sleep latency 0-19 min), intermediate (20-33 min), alert (34-40 min) and control (>34 min). The main driving performance outcome was the number of inappropriate line crossings (ILCs) during the 40 minute drive test. Patients with pathological MWT sleep latency scores (0-19 min) displayed statistically significantly more ILC than patients from the intermediate, alert and control groups (F (3, 46)=7.47, p<0.001). Pathological sleep latencies on the MWT predicted driving impairment in patients suffering from hypersomnias of central origin as well as in OSAS patients. MWT is an objective measure of daytime sleepiness that appears to be useful in estimating the driving performance in sleepy patients.	\N	\N
23731432	Following an emotional experience, individuals are confronted with the persistence of ruminative thoughts that disturb the undertaking of other activities. In the present study, we experimentally tested the idea that experiencing a negative emotion triggers a ruminative process that drains working memory (WM) resources normally devoted to other tasks. Undergraduate participants of high versus low WM capacity were administered the operation-word memory span test (OSPAN) as a measure of availability of WM resources preceding and following the presentation of negative emotional versus neutral material. Rumination was assessed immediately after the second OSPAN session and at a 24-hr delay. Results showed that both the individual's WM capacity and the emotional valence of the material influenced WM performance and the persistence of ruminative thoughts. Following the experimental induction, rumination mediated the relationship between the negative emotional state and the concomitant WM performance. Based on these results, we argue that ruminative processes deplete WM resources, making them less available for concurrent tasks; in addition, rumination tends to persist over time. These findings have implications for the theoretical modeling of the long-term effects of emotions in both daily life and clinical contexts.	\N	\N
23731911	The effect of dopamine agonists (DAs) on cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD) is not yet completely established. Previous papers reported a worsening effect on some cognitive functions with some DAs, but not with others, suggesting that DAs may differently affect cognition in PD patients according to their pharmacological characteristics. We set out to test the effect of rotigotine and cabergoline on cognitive functions in a group of forty non-demented early-mild PD patients (H &Y <2). Subjects were randomly divided into two groups and evaluated in a randomized cross-over study using neuropsychological tests; at the same time, motor function was monitored under three different treatment conditions: DA (rotigotine or cabergoline), L-dopa, and off therapy. Rotigotine and cabergoline were chosen because while they share a mixed D1 and D2 receptor profile, the former is non-ergolinic and the latter ergolinic. No significant differences were found in cognitive function between the basal condition and the DA treatments. On the basis of the present data, which we compare with previous findings regarding pramipexole IR and pergolide, we hypothesize that combined stimulation of both dopamine receptor families, as occurs with rotigotine, cabergoline, L-dopa and pergolide, may preserve cognitive functions more than pure D2 family stimulation.	\N	\N
23735486	It is well-established that environmental and biological risk factors contribute to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). There is also growing consensus that SIDS requires the intersection of multiple risk factors that result in the failure of an infant to overcome cardio-respiratory challenges. Thus, the critical next steps in understanding SIDS are to unravel the physiological determinants that actually cause the sudden death, to synthesize how these determinants are affected by the known risk factors, and to develop novel ideas for SIDS prevention. In this review, we will examine current and emerging perspectives related to cardio-respiratory dysfunctions in SIDS. Specifically, we will review: (1) the role of the preBötzinger complex (preBötC) as a multi-functional network that is critically involved in the failure to adequately respond to hypoxic and hypercapnic challenges; (2) the potential involvement of the preBötC in the gender and age distributions that are characteristic for SIDS; (3) the link between SIDS and prematurity; and (4) the potential relationship between SIDS, auditory function, and central chemosensitivity. Each section underscores the importance of marrying the epidemiological and pathological data to experimental data in order to understand the physiological determinants of this syndrome. We hope that a better understanding will lead to novel ways to reduce the risk to succumb to SIDS.	\N	\N
23744347	The reinforcing properties of nicotine may be mediated through release of various neurotransmitters both centrally and systemically. People who smoke report positive effects such as pleasure, arousal, and relaxation as well as relief of negative affect, tension, and anxiety. Opioid (narcotic) antagonists are of particular interest to investigators as potential agents to attenuate the rewarding effects of cigarette smoking. To evaluate the efficacy of opioid antagonists in promoting long-term smoking cessation. The drugs include naloxone and the longer-acting opioid antagonist naltrexone. We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialised Register for trials of naloxone, naltrexone and other opioid antagonists and conducted an additional search of MEDLINE using 'Narcotic antagonists' and smoking terms in April 2013. We also contacted investigators, when possible, for information on unpublished studies. We considered randomised controlled trials comparing opioid antagonists to placebo or an alternative therapeutic control for smoking cessation. We included in the meta-analysis only those trials which reported data on abstinence for a minimum of six months. We also reviewed, for descriptive purposes, results from short-term laboratory-based studies of opioid antagonists designed to evaluate psycho-biological mediating variables associated with nicotine dependence. We extracted data in duplicate on the study population, the nature of the drug therapy, the outcome measures, method of randomisation, and completeness of follow-up. The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow-up in patients smoking at baseline. Abstinence at end of treatment was a secondary outcome. We extracted cotinine- or carbon monoxide-verified abstinence where available. Where appropriate, we performed meta-analysis, pooling risk ratios using a Mantel-Haenszel fixed-effect model. Eight trials of naltrexone met inclusion criteria for meta-analysis of long-term cessation. One trial used a factorial design so five trials compared naltrexone versus placebo and four trials compared naltrexone plus nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) versus placebo plus NRT. Results from 250 participants in one long-term trial remain unpublished. No significant difference was detected between naltrexone and placebo (risk ratio (RR) 1.00; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.66 to 1.51, 445 participants), or between naltrexone and placebo as an adjunct to NRT (RR 0.95; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.30, 768 participants). The estimate was similar when all eight trials were pooled (RR 0.97; 95% CI 0.76 to 1.24, 1213 participants). In a secondary analysis of abstinence at end of treatment, there was also no evidence of any early treatment effect, (RR 1.03; 95% CI 0.88 to 1.22, 1213 participants). No trials of naloxone or buprenorphine reported abstinence outcomes. Based on data from eight trials and over 1200 individuals, there was no evidence of an effect of naltrexone alone or as an adjunct to NRT on long-term smoking abstinence, with a point estimate strongly suggesting no effect and confidence intervals that make a clinically important effect of treatment unlikely. Although further trials might narrow the confidence intervals they are unlikely to be a good use of resources.	\N	\N
23746822	To study the effects of antiepileptic treatment on sleep parameters and video-polysomnography (VPSG) seizures in nocturnal frontal lobe epilepsy (NFLE). Twenty patients with a clinical and VPSG diagnosis of NFLE (baseline polysomnography [PSG]) underwent a clinical follow-up and performed a second VPSG after effective antiepileptic treatment lasting for at least 6 months. Conventional sleep measures, cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) parameters, and objective VPSG seizures were assessed in NFLE patients before and after treatment and were compared with the results of 20 age- and gender-matched control subjects. Antiepileptic treatment determined a partial reduction of objective VPSG seizures of approximately 25% compared to baseline condition. Alterations of most conventional sleep measures recovered normal values, but nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep instability remained pathologically enhanced (CAP rate, +26% compared to controls) and was associated with persistence of daytime sleepiness. Residual epileptic events and high levels of unstable NREM sleep can define a sort of objective resistance of both seizures and disturbed arousal system to the therapeutic purpose of the antiepileptic drugs in NFLE. This finding could determine the need for new therapeutic options in this particular form of epilepsy.	\N	\N
23748945	The tobacco consumption continues being a worrying problem due to the negative consequences in the health. At presents, strategies of prevention based on the persuasion across clue pictures are used, which need to attract the attention of the smoker in order that they are effective. Nevertheless, the number of experimental studies in Spain on attentional biases in smokers is very limited. For it, in this study the aim was to verify the presence of visual attentional biases using the dot probe task in university smokers, stage where the smoking habit is consolidated. The sample was constituted by 337 students of the University of Huelva, with ages between 17 and 30 years. The participation was voluntary and the participants signed an informed assent. 135 subjects presented consumption history, which were distributed, according to classification of the WHO, in daily smokers, occasional smokers and former smokers. A experimental Ex post facto prospective design was used. The results showed that the smokers group was significantly later time to respond to the clue located in the same place that the tobacco picture than the group of not smokers. This shows that the smokers presented more difficulty to disconnect the attention towards smoking cues than not smokers.	\N	\N
23768150	In grapheme-colour synaesthesia, letters, numbers, and words elicit involuntary colour experiences. Recently, there has been much emphasis on individual differences and possible subcategories of synaesthetes with different underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are claims that for some, synaesthesia occurs prior to attention and awareness of the inducing stimulus. We first characterized our sample using two versions of the "Synaesthetic Congruency Task" to distinguish "projector" and "associator" synaesthetes who may differ in the extent to which their synaesthesia depends on attention and awareness. We then used a novel modification of the "Embedded Figures Task" that included a set-size manipulation to look for evidence of preattentive "pop-out" from synaesthetic colours, at both a group and an individual level. We replicate an advantage for synaesthetes over nonsynaesthetic controls on the Embedded Figures Task in accuracy, but find no support for pop-out of synaesthetic colours. We conclude that grapheme-colour synaesthetes are fundamentally similar in their visual processing to the general population, with the source of their unusual conscious colour experiences occurring late in the cognitive hierarchy.	\N	\N
23786210	Cognitive deficits in several domains have been demonstrated in early-onset schizophrenia patients but their profile and relation to depressive symptoms and intelligence need further characterization. The purpose was to characterize the profile of cognitive deficits in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients, assess the potential associations with depressive symptom severity, and examine whether cognitive deficits within several domains reflect intelligence impairments. This study compared attention, visual-construction, aspects of visual and verbal memory, and executive functions in chronic, early-onset schizophrenia patients (mean age = 20.7 years) (N = 18) and healthy controls (N = 38). Schizophrenia diagnoses were established at the time of the patients' first clinical presentation during childhood or adolescence and were confirmed five years later. In the chronic phase of early-onset schizophrenia, significant deficits were observed in all specific cognitive functions. The profile of cognitive deficits was jagged, and visual-construction, attention, and one aspect of verbal memory (verbal stories recall) were differentially impaired. Deficits of visual recall, visual recognition, and executive functions were accounted for by deficits in intelligence, while this was not the case for deficits of verbal recall of stories or attention. No significant associations were observed between the severity of cognitive deficits and that of depressive symptoms. Chronic, early-onset schizophrenia is characterized by a broad and jagged profile of cognitive deficits. Deficits of attention and verbal recall of stories appear not to be accounted for by deficits in intelligence, and the severity of cognitive deficits seems independent from that of depressive symptoms.	\N	\N
23797824	Vulnerability to transient insomnia is regarded as a predisposing factor for chronic insomnia. However, most individuals with transient insomnia do not develop chronic insomnia. The current study investigated the differential contributing factors for these two conditions to further the understanding of this phenomenon. Chronic insomnia patients and normal sleepers with high and low vulnerability to transient insomnia completed measures of pre-sleep arousal, dysfunctional sleep beliefs, and sleep-related safety behaviors. Both cognitive and somatic pre-sleep arousals were identified as significant predictors for transient insomnia. Dysfunctional beliefs regarding worry about insomnia and cognitive arousal were predictors for chronic insomnia. Sleep-related safety behavior, although correlated with insomnia severity, was not a significant predictor for both conditions. Dysfunctional beliefs associated with worry and losing control over sleep are the most critical factors in differentiating chronic insomnia from transient insomnia. These factors should be addressed to help prevent individuals with high sleep vulnerability from developing chronic sleep disturbance.	\N	\N
23809860	Although cocaine is known to be a highly addictive drug, there appears to be a select subset of individuals who are able to use the substance recreationally without developing dependence. These individuals do not report experiencing feelings of craving for cocaine, an important distinction from dependent users. However, no prior studies have compared attentional bias with cocaine cues between these groups to confirm this difference. Additionally, previous investigations into cognitive abilities in these individuals have been conflicting, and no research has been conducted on the neurobiological processes underlying cognitive functioning in this group. This study administered the emotional cocaine-word Stroop to 27 recreational cocaine users, 50 stimulant-dependent individuals, and 52 healthy control participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning. Behavioral and functional imaging results were compared between groups to assess attentional bias and cognitive effort to resist salient cocaine stimuli. Recreational users did not exhibit attentional bias to the cocaine words and did not differ from control subjects on task performance. Conversely, stimulant-dependent individuals were significantly more impaired on the task. Recreational participants also displayed a unique pattern of activation during performance, with significant underactivation in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices compared with both dependent users and control subjects. The absence of bias to cocaine-related stimuli in recreational users indicates they do not share attentional preference for these words with dependent users. Their distinct pattern of activation suggests a decreased need for cognitive control due to diminished desire for the drug, potentially serving as a resilience factor against dependence.	\N	\N
23815454	A selective deficit in the recollection of episodic details is frequently reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). Previous explanations implicate dopamine dysregulation in prefrontal structures on which strategic memory processes rely. However, neuroimaging advancements suggest dopaminergic dysregulation of hippocampally dependent memory processes. Accordingly, dopamine agonists, which target D3 receptors in the hippocampus, may impair hippocampal functioning, causing a more pronounced recollection decline. Recognition memory (RM), familiarity, and recollection were examined in 21 patients with mild-to-moderate PD (Hoehn and Yahr mean: 2.67). Patients were subdivided into two subgroups according to dopamine agonist (pramipexole [PPX] or ropinirole [RPR]), and completed matched versions of an RM test in a medicated and unmedicated condition (termed ON and OFF, respectively). Ten demographically matched healthy volunteers (HVs) also completed both RM tasks in two separate sessions. The PD group (PPX and RPR subgroups combined) showed impairments in RM and recollection, but spared familiarity. When subdivided by dopamine agonist, the PPX subgroup's ON-medication recollection performance was significantly lower than that of both the HVs and RPR subgroup. There was no evidence of decline in OFF-medication recollection or familiarity in either the PPX or RPR subgroups. Recollection in both PD subgroups correlated positively with a composite measure of recall, but not prefrontally dependent measures of cognitive control. These findings suggest that mild-to-moderate PD patients may show relatively preserved recollection and familiarity, but that recollection is selectively disrupted by PPX, but not RPR and that this effect may depend on disrupted hippocampal function rather than impaired pre-frontally dependent executive functions.	\N	\N
23832553	In this study, we have investigated the influence of available attentional resources on the dual-task costs of implementing a new action plan and the influence of movement planning on the transfer of information into visuospatial working memory. To approach these two questions, we have used a motor-memory dual-task design in which participants grasped a sphere and planned a placing movement toward a left or right target according to a directional arrow. Subsequently, they encoded a centrally presented memory stimulus (4 × 4 symbol matrix). While maintaining the information in working memory, a visual stay/change cue (presented on the left, center or right) either confirmed or reversed the planned movement direction. That is, participants had to execute either the prepared or the re-planned movement and finally reported the symbols at leisure. The results show that both, shifts of spatial attention required to process the incongruent stay/change cues and movement re-planning, constitute processing bottlenecks as they both reduced visuospatial working memory performance. Importantly, the spatial attention shifts and movement re-planning appeared to be independent of each other. Further, we found that the initial preparation of the placing movement influenced the report pattern of the central working memory stimulus. Preparing a leftward movement resulted in better memory performance for the left stimulus side, while the preparation of a rightward movement resulted in better memory performance for the right stimulus side. Hence, movement planning influenced the transfer of information into the capacity-limited working memory store. Therefore, our results suggest complex interactions in that the processes involved in movement planning, spatial attention and visuospatial working memory are functionally correlated but not linked in a mandatory fashion.	\N	\N
23834356	Motivation is well known to enhance working memory (WM) capacity, but the mechanism underlying this effect remains unclear. The WM process can be divided into encoding, maintenance, and retrieval, and in a change detection visual WM paradigm, the encoding and retrieval processes can be subdivided into perceptual and central processing. To clarify which of these segments are most influenced by motivation, we measured ERPs in a change detection task with differential monetary rewards. The results showed that the enhancement of WM capacity under high motivation was accompanied by modulations of late central components but not those reflecting attentional control on perceptual inputs across all stages of WM. We conclude that the "state-dependent" shift of motivation impacted the central, rather than the perceptual functions in order to achieve better behavioral performances.	\N	\N
23840558	The behavioral approach system (BAS) from Gray's reinforcement sensitivity theory is a neurobehavioral system involved in the processing of rewarding stimuli that has been related to dopaminergic brain areas. Gray's theory hypothesizes that the functioning of reward brain areas is modulated by BAS-related traits. To test this hypothesis, we performed an fMRI study where participants viewed erotic and neutral pictures, and cues that predicted their appearance. Forty-five heterosexual men completed the Sensitivity to Reward scale (from the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire) to measure BAS-related traits. Results showed that Sensitivity to Reward scores correlated positively with brain activity during reactivity to erotic pictures in the left orbitofrontal cortex, left insula, and right ventral striatum. These results demonstrated a relationship between the BAS and reward sensitivity during the processing of erotic stimuli, filling the gap of previous reports that identified the dopaminergic system as a neural substrate for the BAS during the processing of other rewarding stimuli such as money and food.	\N	\N
23845453	Attention to general and trauma-relevant threat was examined in individuals with clinical and subthreshold symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Participants' eye gaze was tracked and recorded while they viewed sets of four images over a 6-s presentation (one negative, positive, and neutral image, and either a general threat image or a trauma-relevant threat image). Two trauma-exposed groups (a clinical and a subthreshold PTSD symptom group) were compared to a non-trauma-exposed group. Both the clinical and subthreshold PTSD symptom groups attended to trauma-relevant threat images more than the no-trauma-exposure group, whereas there were no group differences for general threat images. A time course analysis of attention to trauma-relevant threat images revealed different attentional profiles for the trauma-exposed groups. Participants with clinical PTSD symptoms exhibited immediate heightened attention to the images relative to participants with no-trauma-exposure, whereas participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms did not. In addition, participants with subthreshold PTSD symptoms attended to trauma-relevant threat images throughout the 6-s presentation, whereas participants with clinical symptoms of PTSD exhibited evidence of avoidance. The theoretical and clinical implications of these distinct attentional profiles are discussed.	\N	\N
23849666	Increasing empirical studies suggest that the tripartite posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) model described in the DSM-IV does not accurately account for the underlying PTSD factor structure, and several alternative models have been proposed. The present study investigated a newly refined, five-factor model of PTSD symptoms in a sample of Chinese adolescent survivors of an earthquake. A total of 1198 middle school students (653 females, 526 males) with a mean age of 14.4 years (SD = 1.1, range: 11-18) participated in this study one month after an earthquake. The novel five-factor model comprised of intrusion, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal demonstrated significantly better fit than two alternative four-factor models. Further analyses revealed differentiable relations between the PTSD factors and external measures of anxiety and depression. These findings provide empirical support for the robustness of five-factor model, and carry implications for further reorganization of PTSD criteria.	\N	\N
23855999	The role of interoception and its neural basis with relevance to drug addiction is reviewed. Interoception consists of the receiving, processing, and integrating body-relevant signals with external stimuli to affect ongoing motivated behavior. The insular cortex is the central nervous system hub to process and integrate these signals. Interoception is an important component of several addiction relevant constructs including arousal, attention, stress, reward, and conditioning. Imaging studies with drug-addicted individuals show that the insular cortex is hypo-active during cognitive control processes but hyperactive during cue reactivity and drug-specific, reward-related processes. It is proposed that interoception contributes to drug addiction by incorporating an "embodied" experience of drug uses together with the individual's predicted versus actual internal state to modulate approach or avoidance behavior, i.e. whether to take or not to take drugs. This opens the possibility of two types of interventions. First, one may be able to modulate the embodied experience by enhancing insula reactivity where necessary, e.g. when engaging in drug seeking behavior, or attenuating insula when exposed to drug-relevant cues. Second, one may be able to reduce the urge to act by increasing the frontal control network, i.e. inhibiting the urge to use by employing cognitive training. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'NIDA 40th Anniversary Issue'.	\N	\N
23856173	Sleep inertia refers to the inability to attain full alertness following awakening from sleep and is a major component of hypersomnia. As event-related potentials (ERPs) are correlated to the degree of consciousness, they allow exploring information processing in transitional states of vigilance. Their modifications during forced awakening (FA) context have been shown to reflect sleep inertia. To assess the diagnostic value of a FA test using an oddball stimulation protocol during a nap in a representative sample of patients with excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). One hundred and seventy three patients [30 narcolepsy, 62 idiopathic hypersomnia, 33 sleep apnoea syndrome, and 48 other (mainly psychiatric) hypersomnia] performed an auditory target detection stimulation task during pre-, post-nap wakefulness, and during two successive intra-nap FA while the EEG was simultaneously recorded. Both the accuracy of target detection and the ERPs were evaluated. ERPs during forced awakening test were considered to reflect sleep inertia if they presented with a P300 delay and/or sleep negativities (N350/N550). Pre-nap behavior and ERPs were normal in all patients. Behavioral results were significantly worse during FA than during wakefulness for all groups of patients. P300 latencies were significantly delayed on FA conditions in each group of patients except the psychiatric group. Sensitivity and specificity for detection of sleep inertia were 64% and 94%, respectively, with predictive values of 96% (positive) and 50% (negative). Our results suggest that the FA test could be helpful as a diagnostic procedure for discriminating neurological from psychiatric hypersomnia.	\N	\N
23857779	The goals of the present study were to: (i) examine similarities and differences in behavioral/emotional problems manifested by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those with anxiety disorder (ANX); (ii) test the ability of each of the eight child behavioral checklist (CBCL) and teacher report form (TRF) syndrome scales to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group; and (iii) test the ability of an ASD scale derived by Ooi et al. to differentiate the ASD group from the ANX group. Archival CBCL and TRF data from 180 children between 4 and 18 years of age (119 males, 61 females) diagnosed with ASD (n = 86) or ANX (n = 94) at an outpatient child psychiatric clinic in Singapore were analyzed. The ASD group scored significantly higher on Social Problems and Attention Problems but significantly lower on Anxious/Depressed and Somatic Complaints than the ANX group. The groups did not show significant differences on Withdrawn/Depressed and Thought Problems. Both the CBCL and TRF ASD scales were significant predictors of the ASD group, with moderate to high sensitivity and specificity. Our findings for an Asian sample support the diagnostic overlap between ASD and ANX reported for Western samples and underscore the importance of treating ASD as both a unitary disease and as a web of overlapping configurations of underlying problem dimensions.	\N	\N
23857836	SSRIs are known for their sexual side-effects with a variable rate of sexual dysfunction (SD). 5HT2A (rs6311) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was found to have significant association with SD. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of female SDD, its clinical correlates and association with 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) treated with SSRIs. This was a cross-sectional study. We evaluated 95 female outpatients with MDD treated with SSRIs who were in remission. Outcome measures were stratified by the presence or absence of SDD. A buccal swab was obtained from each patient and sent for genotyping in the Pharmacogenomics and Medical Biotechnology Laboratory of Universiti Malaya. The overall prevalence of female SD was 32.6%. The prevalence of female SDD was 62.1%. Those with arousal problem, lubrication problem, sexual satisfaction problem, orgasm problem and problematic marriage were more likely to have sexual desire disorder. The majority of participants who had sexual desire disorder had genotype TT (42.4%) but there was no significant association observed. After controlling for age, number of children, education level, SSRI type, lubrication problem, orgasm problem, satisfaction problem and marital problem, only arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder by 8.5 times (odds ratio = 8.46, 95% confidence interval = 1.24-57.58; P = 0.018). This study showed that there was no significant association between SDD and the 5HT2A (rs6311) SNP. Arousal problem significantly enhanced the presence of sexual desire disorder.	\N	\N
23860302	The present study investigates how individuals distribute their attentional resources between a prospective memory task and an ongoing task. Therefore, metacognitive expectations about the attentional demands of the prospective-memory task were manipulated while the factual demands were held constant. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found attentional costs from a prospective-memory task with low factual demands to be significantly reduced when information about the low to-be-expected demands were provided, while prospective-memory performance remained largely unaffected. In Experiment 2, attentional monitoring in a more demanding prospective-memory task also varied with information about the to-be-expected demands (high vs. low) and again there were no equivalent changes in prospective-memory performance. These findings suggest that attention-allocation strategies of prospective memory rely on metacognitive expectations about prospective-memory task demands. Furthermore, the results suggest that attentional monitoring is only functional for prospective memory to the extent to which anticipated task demands reflect objective task demands.	\N	\N
23862902	Effects of word-level phonetic variation on the recognition of words with different pronunciation variants (e.g., center produced with/(out) [t]) are investigated via the semantic- and pseudoword-priming paradigms. A bias favoring clearly articulated words with canonical variants ([nt]) is found. By reducing the bias, words with different variants show robust and equivalent lexical activation. The equivalence of different word forms highlights a snag for frequency-based theories of lexical access: How are words and word productions with vastly different frequencies recognized equally well by listeners? A process-based account is proposed, suggesting that careful speech induces bottom-up processing and casual speech induces top-down processing.	\N	\N
23862914	This study reports a role of temporal regularity on the perception of auditory streams. Listeners were presented with two-tone sequences in an A-B-A-B rhythm that was either regular or had a controlled amount of temporal jitter added independently to each of the B tones. Subjects were asked to report whether they perceived one or two streams. The percentage of trials in which two streams were reported substantially and significantly increased with increasing amounts of temporal jitter. This suggests that temporal predictability may serve as a binding cue during auditory scene analysis.	\N	\N
23863955	Sleep deprivation immediately following an aversive event reduces fear by preventing memory consolidation during homeostatic sleep. This suggests that acute insomnia might act prophylactically against the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even though it is also a possible risk factor for PTSD. We examined total sleep deprivation and memory suppression to evaluate the effects of these interventions on subsequent aversive memory formation and fear conditioning. Active suppression of aversive memory impaired retention of event memory. However, although the remembered fear was more reduced in sleep-deprived than sleep-control subjects, suppressed fear increased, and seemed to abandon the sleep-dependent plasticity of fear. Active memory suppression, which provides a psychological model for Freud's ego defense mechanism, enhances fear and casts doubt on the potential of acute insomnia as a prophylactic measure against PTSD. Our findings bring into question the role of sleep in aversive-memory consolidation in clinical PTSD pathophysiology.	\N	\N
23864438	Although the relationship between alexithymia and psychopathology has been studied extensively in adults, research is lacking on alexithymia in childhood psychopathology. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between alexithymia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Italian version of the Alexithymia Questionnaire for Children was administered to a sample of 50 children with a DSM-IV diagnosis of ADHD, as assessed by means of the K-SADS PL, and to 100 healthy, age- and sex-matched children without ADHD. The total alexithymia score as well as the difficulty in identifying feelings (DIF) and externally oriented thinking factors were significantly associated with ADHD. The total alexithymia score, the DIF, and the difficulty in describing feelings factors were also significantly associated with symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity. No significant relationship between alexithymia and inattentiveness symptoms emerged. Results provide preliminary data on the relationship between alexithymia and ADHD. Findings point to an association between difficulty in identifying emotions and hyperactivity/impulsivity. Future studies conducted on larger patient samples, as well as longitudinal designs, are warranted to confirm our findings.	\N	\N
23865336	Vigilance is defined as the ability to maintain attention or alertness over prolonged periods of time. Since Mid-20th century, following the increasing man-machine communication, high level of vigilance has been demanded in many areas including driving safety, medical care and therapy, aerospace and military affairs, etc. Therefore, finding quick methods to improve the level of vigilance has become a key issue in medical study. Based on physical regulation, chemical regulation and physiological regulation, the research progress has been summarized in this paper. We, furthermore, also try to predict the future trend in this academic area and develop some tentative ideas about seeking more effective and convenient ways to improve the level of brain vigilance.	\N	\N
23875572	One of the most widespread views in vision research is that top-down control over visual selection is achieved by tuning attention to a particular feature value (e.g., red/yellow). Contrary to this view, previous spatial cueing studies showed that attention can be tuned to relative features of a search target (e.g., redder): An irrelevant distractor (cue) captured attention when it had the same relative color as the target (e.g., redder), and failed to capture when it had a different relative color, regardless of whether the distractor was similar or dissimilar to the target. The present study tested whether the same effects would be observed for eye movements when observers have to search for a color or shape target and when selection errors were very noticeable (resulting in an erroneous eye movement to the distractor). The results corroborated the previous findings, showing that capture by an irrelevant distractor does not depend on the distractor's similarity to the target but on whether it matches or mismatches the relative attributes of the search target. Extending on previous work, we also found that participants can be pretrained to select a color target in virtue of its exact feature value. Contrary to the prevalent feature-based view, the results suggest that visual selection is preferentially biased toward the relative attributes of a search target. Simultaneously, however, visual selection can be biased to specific color values when the task requires it, which rules out a purely relational account of attention and eye movements.	\N	\N
23892066	Existing batteries for FMRI do not precisely meet the criteria for comprehensive mapping of cognitive functions within minimum data acquisition times using standard scanners and head coils. The goal was to develop a battery of neuropsychological paradigms for FMRI that can also be used in other brain imaging techniques and behavioural research. Participants were 61 healthy, young adult volunteers (48 females and 13 males, mean age: 22.25 ± 3.39 years) from the university community. The battery included 8 paradigms for basic (visual, auditory, sensory-motor, emotional arousal) and complex (language, working memory, inhibition/interference control, learning) cognitive functions. Imaging was performed using standard functional imaging capabilities (1.5-T MR scanner, standard head coil). Structural and functional data series were analysed using Brain Voyager QX2.9 and Statistical Parametric Mapping-8. For basic processes, activation centres for individuals were within a distance of 3-11 mm of the group centres of the target regions and for complex cognitive processes, between 7 mm and 15 mm. Based on fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the distance between the activation centres was 0-4 mm. There was spatial variability between individual cases; however, as shown by the distances between the centres found with fixed-effect and random-effects analyses, the coordinates for individual cases can be used to represent those of the group. The findings show that the neuropsychological brain mapping battery described here can be used in basic science studies that investigate the relationship of the brain to the mind and also as functional localiser in clinical studies for diagnosis, follow-up and pre-surgical mapping.	\N	\N
23896527	Utilizing the high temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs), we examined how visual spatial or temporal cues modulated the auditory stimulus processing. The visual spatial cue (VSC) induces orienting of attention to spatial locations; the visual temporal cue (VTC) induces orienting of attention to temporal intervals. Participants were instructed to respond to auditory targets. Behavioral responses to auditory stimuli following VSC were faster and more accurate than those following VTC. VSC and VTC had the same effect on the auditory N1 (150-170 ms after stimulus onset). The mean amplitude of the auditory P1 (90-110 ms) in VSC condition was larger than that in VTC condition, and the mean amplitude of late positivity (300-420 ms) in VTC condition was larger than that in VSC condition. These findings suggest that modulation of auditory stimulus processing by visually induced spatial or temporal orienting of attention were different, but partially overlapping.	\N	\N
23902752	Prolonged adaptation to a stimulus, such as a drifting grating, lowers sensitivity for detecting similar stimuli, and changes their appearance, for example, making gratings of the same orientation appear of lower contrast and move more slowly. It has been suggested that adaptation is increased by sustained attention to the adapting stimulus and is decreased by distracting attention with a competing task. This paper describes a novel 2AFC (spatial) measure of adaptation in which adaptation and bias are carefully distinguished by the random interleaving of different test conditions. The experiment revealed significant adaptation of perceived velocity, but no effect of attentional distraction.	\N	\N
23912366	To assess the prevalence of sexual dysfunction in obese and overweight patients treated at the Professor Alberto Antunes University Hospital (HUPAA - UFAL). This is a descriptive study. The sample consisted of overweight or obese females. Anthropometric data were collected for assessment of body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC). In all subjects we measured the levels of blood glucose, total cholesterol and triglycerides. We applied a Portuguese-validated version of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSDI), which assesses sexual response as for desire, arousal, vaginal lubrication, orgasm, sexual satisfaction and pain. The total score is the sum of scores for each domain multiplied by the corresponding factor and can vary from '2 'to '36', a total score less than or equal to '26 ' being considered risky for sexual dysfunction. We evaluated 23 women with a mean age of 44, where 73.9% were obese and 82.6% had a highly increased risk for metabolic complications (WC e" 88 cm). The increased risk for sexual dysfunction was present in 78.3% of the interviewees, causing biopsychosocial impairment. Hypertension, diabetes and dyslipidemia were present in 33.3%, 22.2% and 61.1%, respectively, of patients at risk for sexual dysfunction. The analysis of the results demonstrates the need for better research and attention of physicians to patients with obesity or overweight.	\N	\N
23915296	Most free-recall experiments employ a paradigm in which participants are given a preset amount of time to retrieve items from a list. While much has been learned using this paradigm, it ignores an important component of many real-world retrieval tasks: the decision to terminate memory search. The present study examines the temporal characteristics underlying memory search by comparing within subjects a standard retrieval paradigm with a finite, preset amount of time (closed interval) to a design that allows participants to terminate memory search on their own (open interval). Calling on the results of several presented simulations, we anticipated that the threshold for number of retrieval failures varied as a function of the nature of the recall paradigm, such that open intervals should result in lower thresholds than closed intervals. Moreover, this effect was expected to manifest in interretrieval times (IRTs). Although retrieval-interval type did not significantly impact the number of items recalled or error rates, IRTs were sensitive to the manipulation. Specifically, the final IRTs in the closed-interval paradigm were longer than those of the open-interval paradigm. This pattern suggests that providing participants with a preset retrieval interval not only masks an important component of the retrieval process (the memory search termination decision), but also alters temporal retrieval dynamics. Task demands may compel people to strategically control aspects of their retrieval by implementing different stopping rules.	\N	\N
23916691	The control of dual-tasking effects is a daily challenge in stroke neurorehabilitation. It maybe one of the reasons why there is poor functional prognosis after a stroke in the right hemisphere, which plays a dominant role in posture control. The purpose of this study was to explore cognitive motor interference in right brain-lesioned and healthy subjects maintaining a standing position while performing three different tasks: a control task, a simple attentional task and a complex attentional task. We measured the sway area of the subjects on a force platform, including the center of pressure and its displacements. Results showed that stroke patients presented a reduced postural sway compared to healthy subjects, who were able to maintain their posture while performing a concomitant attentional task in the same dual-tasking conditions. Moreover, in both groups, the postural sway decreased with the increase in attentional load from cognitive tasks. We also noticed that the stability of stroke patients in dual-tasking conditions increased together with the weight-bearing rightward deviation, especially when the attentional load of the cognitive tasks and lower limb motor impairments were high. These results suggest that stroke patients and healthy subjects adopt a similar postural regulation pattern aimed at maintaining stability in dual-tasking conditions involving a static standing position and different attention-related cognitive tasks. Our results indicate that attention processes might facilitate static postural control.	\N	\N
23920422	We aimed to evaluate the efficacy of the selective H3 receptor inverse agonist MK-0249 to treat excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS). In this three-period, double-blind, crossover study, 125 patients (100 men, 25 women; mean age, 48.6 years) with obstructive sleep apnea receiving nasal continuous positive airway pressure therapy who had refractory EDS were randomized to 2 weeks each of daily MK-0249 (5, 8, 10, or 12 mg, adaptively assigned), modafinil 200 mg, and placebo. At baseline and after each treatment period, six maintenance of wakefulness tests (MWT) and Psychomotor Vigilance Tasks (PVT) were conducted at 2-h intervals, beginning 1h postdose (∼09:00). The Epworth sleepiness scale (ESS), Clinical Global Impression of Severity (CGIS) and Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST) also were assessed. The primary end point was MWT sleep latency averaged over the first four time points (MWT-early). MWT-early mean change from baseline sleep latency at week 2 was 1.2 min for placebo, 2.1 min for MK-0249 (top two doses pooled; P>.05 vs. placebo), and 5.9 min for modafinil (P < or = .001 vs. placebo). MK-0249 showed improvements vs placebo on secondary and exploratory end points of ESS, CGIS, PVT, and DSST. Insomnia adverse events (AEs) were greater for MK-0249 (combined doses, 17.5%) than for placebo (0.9%) or modafinil (1.8%). MK-0249 did not significantly affect MWT sleep latency. However, the pattern of improvement on subjective ratings and psychomotor performance end points suggested that MK-0249 was associated with changes in aspects of cognition and performance not captured by the MWT.	\N	\N
23935931	Auditory sensory modulation difficulties and problems with automatic re-orienting to sound are well documented in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Abnormal preattentive arousal processes may contribute to these deficits. In this study, we investigated components of the cortical auditory evoked potential (CAEP) reflecting preattentive arousal in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children aged 3-8 years. Pairs of clicks ('S1' and 'S2') separated by a 1 sec S1-S2 interstimulus interval (ISI) and much longer (8-10 sec) S1-S1 ISIs were presented monaurally to either the left or right ear. In TD children, the P50, P100 and N1c CAEP components were strongly influenced by temporal novelty of clicks and were much greater in response to the S1 than the S2 click. Irrespective of the stimulation side, the 'tangential' P100 component was rightward lateralized in TD children, whereas the 'radial' N1c component had higher amplitude contralaterally to the stimulated ear. Compared to the TD children, children with ASD demonstrated 1) reduced amplitude of the P100 component under the condition of temporal novelty (S1) and 2) an attenuated P100 repetition suppression effect. The abnormalities were lateralized and depended on the presentation side. They were evident in the case of the left but not the right ear stimulation. The P100 abnormalities in ASD correlated with the degree of developmental delay and with the severity of auditory sensory modulation difficulties observed in early life. The results suggest that some rightward-lateralized brain networks that are crucially important for arousal and attention re-orienting are compromised in children with ASD and that this deficit contributes to sensory modulation difficulties and possibly even other behavioral deficits in ASD.	\N	\N
23935959	There is growing debate on the use of drugs that promote cognitive enhancement. Amphetamine-like drugs have been employed as cognitive enhancers, but they show important side effects and induce addiction. In this study, we investigated the use of modafinil which appears to have less side effects compared to other amphetamine-like drugs. We analyzed effects on cognitive performances and brain resting state network activity of 26 healthy young subjects. A single dose (100 mg) of modafinil was administered in a double-blind and placebo-controlled study. Both groups were tested for neuropsychological performances with the Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices II set (APM) before and three hours after administration of drug or placebo. Resting state functional magnetic resonance (rs-FMRI) was also used, before and after three hours, to investigate changes in the activity of resting state brain networks. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) was employed to evaluate differences in structural connectivity between the two groups. Protocol ID: Modrest_2011; NCT01684306; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306. Results indicate that a single dose of modafinil improves cognitive performance as assessed by APM. Rs-fMRI showed that the drug produces a statistically significant increased activation of Frontal Parietal Control (FPC; p<0.04) and Dorsal Attention (DAN; p<0.04) networks. No modifications in structural connectivity were observed. Overall, our findings support the notion that modafinil has cognitive enhancing properties and provide functional connectivity data to support these effects. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01684306 http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01684306.	\N	\N
23939584	During the learning process, whether students remain attentive throughout instruction generally influences their learning efficacy. If teachers can instantly identify whether students are attentive they can be suitably reminded to remain focused, thereby improving their learning effects. Traditional teaching methods generally require that teachers observe students' expressions to determine whether they are attentively learning. However, this method is often inaccurate and increases the burden on teachers. With the development of electroencephalography (EEG) detection tools, mobile brainwave sensors have become mature and affordable equipment. Therefore, in this study, whether students are attentive or inattentive during instruction is determined by observing their EEG signals. Because distinguishing between attentiveness and inattentiveness is challenging, two scenarios were developed for this study to measure the subjects' EEG signals when attentive and inattentive. After collecting EEG data using mobile sensors, various common features were extracted from the raw data. A support vector machine (SVM) classifier was used to calculate and analyze these features to identify the combination of features that best indicates whether students are attentive. Based on the experiment results, the method proposed in this study provides a classification accuracy of up to 76.82%. The study results can be used as a reference for learning system designs in the future.	\N	\N
23954763	Major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with risk for chronic pain, but the mechanisms contributing to the MDD and pain relationship are unclear. To examine whether disrupted emotional modulation of pain might contribute, this study assessed emotional processing and emotional modulation of pain in healthy controls and unmedicated persons with MDD (14 MDD, 14 controls). Emotionally charged pictures (erotica, neutral, mutilation) were presented in 4 blocks. Two blocks assessed physiological-emotional reactions (pleasure/arousal ratings, corrugator electromyography (EMG), startle modulation, skin conductance) in the absence of pain and 2 blocks assessed emotional modulation of pain and the nociceptive flexion reflex (NFR, a physiological measure of spinal nociception) evoked by suprathreshold electric stimulations. Results indicated pictures generally evoked the intended emotional responses; erotic pictures elicited pleasure, subjective arousal, and smaller startle magnitudes, whereas mutilation pictures elicited displeasure, corrugator EMG activation, and subjective/physiological arousal. However, emotional processing was partially disrupted in MDD, as evidenced by a blunted pleasure response to erotica and a failure to modulate startle according to a valence linear trend. Furthermore, emotional modulation of pain was observed in controls but not MDD, even though there were no group differences in NFR threshold or emotional modulation of NFR. Together, these results suggest supraspinal processes associated with emotion processing and emotional modulation of pain may be disrupted in MDD, but brain to spinal cord processes that modulate spinal nociception are intact. Thus, emotional modulation of pain deficits may be a phenotypic marker for future pain risk in MDD.	\N	\N
23958342	The present study investigates the human brains' sensitivity to the valence strength of emotionally positive and negative chinese words. Event-Related Potentials were recorded, in two different experimental sessions, for Highly Positive (HP), Mildly Positive (MP) and neutral (NP) words and for Highly Negative (HN), Mildly Negative (MN) and neutral (NN) words, while subjects were required to count the number of words, irrespective of word meanings. The results showed a significant emotion effect in brain potentials for both HP and MP words, and the emotion effect occurred faster for HP words than MP words: HP words elicited more negative deflections than NP words in N2 (250-350 ms) and P3 (350-500 ms) amplitudes, while MP words elicited a significant emotion effect in P3, but not in N2, amplitudes. By contrast, HN words elicited larger amplitudes than NN words in N2 but not in P3 amplitudes, whereas MN words produced no significant emotion effect across N2 and P3 components. Moreover, the size of emotion-neutral differences in P3 amplitudes was significantly larger for MP compared to MN words. Thus, the human brain is reactive to both highly and mildly positive words, and this reactivity increased with the positive valence strength of the words. Conversely, the brain is less reactive to the valence of negative relative to positive words. These results suggest that human brains are equipped with increased sensitivity to the valence strength of positive compared to negative words, a type of emotional stimuli that are well known for reduced arousal.	\N	\N
23958795	One approach to hypnosis suggests that for hypnotic experience to occur frontal lobe activity must be attenuated. For example, cold control theory posits that a lack of awareness of intentions is responsible for the experience of involuntariness and/or the subjective reality of hypnotic suggestions. The mid-dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex and the ACC are candidate regions for such awareness. Alcohol impairs frontal lobe executive function. This study examined whether alcohol affects hypnotisability. We administered 0.8 mg/kg of alcohol or a placebo to 32 medium susceptible participants. They were subsequently hypnotised and given hypnotic suggestions. All participants believed they had received some alcohol. Participants in the alcohol condition were more susceptible to hypnotic suggestions than participants in the placebo condition. Impaired frontal lobe activity facilitates hypnotic responding, which supports theories postulating that attenuation of executive function facilitates hypnotic response, and contradicts theories postulating that hypnotic response involves enhanced inhibitory, attentional or other executive function.	\N	\N
23958866	Drugs-of-abuse may increase the salience of drug cues by sensitizing the dopaminergic (DA) system (Robinson and Berridge, 1993), leading to differential attention to smoking stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to assess attention to smoking cues but not using an ERP component associated with DA-mediated salience evaluation. In this study the DA-related P2a and the P3, were compared in smokers (N = 21) and non-smokers (N = 21) during an attention selection cue exposure task including both cigarette and neutral images. We predicted that both the P2a and P3 would be larger to targets than non-targets, but larger to non-target cigarette images than non-target neutral images only in the smokers, reflecting smokers' evaluation of smoking stimuli as relevant even when they were not targets. Results indicated that smokers showed behavioral cue reactivity, with more false alarms to cigarette images (responding to cigarette images when they were not targets) than non-smokers; however, both smokers and non-smokers had a larger P2a and P3 to cigarette images. Thus, while smokers showed behavioral evidence of differential salience evaluation of the cigarette images, this group difference was not reflected in differential brain activity. These findings may reflect characteristics of the ERPs (both ERP components were smaller in the smokers), the smoking sample (they were not more impulsive, i.e. reward sensitive, than the non-smokers, in contrast to prior studies) and the design (all participants were aware that the aim of the study was related to smoking).	\N	\N
23966452	A growing body of research has illuminated beneficial effects of a single bout of physical activity (i.e., acute exercise) on cognitive function in school-age children. However, the influence of acute exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function has not been reported. To address this shortcoming, the current study examined the effects of a 30-min bout of exercise on preschoolers' cognitive function. Preschoolers' cognitive function was assessed following a single bout of exercise and a single sedentary period. Results revealed that, after engaging in a bout of exercise, preschoolers exhibited markedly better ability to sustain attention, relative to after being sedentary (p = .006, partial eta square = .400). Based on these findings, providing exercise opportunities appears to enhance preschoolers' cognitive function.	\N	\N
23968792	The Western Neuro Sensory Stimulation Profile (WNSSP) presents a hierarchy of items suggestive of a sequence of recovery. The aim of this study was to understand the sequence of recovery of neurobehavioral function in patients with brain injury and determine whether this sequence was consistent with the WNSSP test item order. We conducted a retrospective clinical chart audit of 37 adult inpatients (mean age = 29 yr; 31 men, 6 women) with a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury and a minimum of two medical record entries on the WNSSP. The sequence of recovery was statistically derived from the content and structure of the WNSSP. Our analysis did not support the current item ordering of the WNSSP as a function of the sequence of recovery from coma, with the exception of the Arousal/Attention subscale. WNSSP item performance suggested a sequence of recovery; clinicians may consider a revised item order that reflects this observed order.	\N	\N
23980142	Cognitive emotion regulation has been widely shown in the laboratory to be an effective way to alter the nature of emotional responses. Despite its success in experimental contexts, however, we often fail to use these strategies in everyday life where stress is pervasive. The successful execution of cognitive regulation relies on intact executive functioning and engagement of the prefrontal cortex, both of which are rapidly impaired by the deleterious effects of stress. Because it is specifically under stressful conditions that we may benefit most from such deliberate forms of emotion regulation, we tested the efficacy of cognitive regulation after stress exposure. Participants first underwent fear-conditioning, where they learned that one stimulus (CS+) predicted an aversive outcome but another predicted a neutral outcome (CS-). Cognitive regulation training directly followed where participants were taught to regulate fear responses to the aversive stimulus. The next day, participants underwent an acute stress induction or a control task before repeating the fear-conditioning task using these newly acquired regulation skills. Skin conductance served as an index of fear arousal, and salivary α-amylase and cortisol concentrations were assayed as neuroendocrine markers of stress response. Although groups showed no differences in fear arousal during initial fear learning, nonstressed participants demonstrated robust fear reduction following regulation training, whereas stressed participants showed no such reduction. Our results suggest that stress markedly impairs the cognitive regulation of emotion and highlights critical limitations of this technique to control affective responses under stress.	\N	\N
23982009	We analysed the cognitive influence on walking in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, in the absence of clinical disability. A case-control study was conducted with 12 MS patients with no disability and 12 matched healthy controls. Subjects were referred for completion a timed walk test of 10 m and a 3D-kinematic analysis. Participants were instructed to walk at a comfortable speed in a dual-task (arithmetic task) condition, and motor planning was measured by mental chronometry. Scores of walking speed and cadence showed no statistically significant differences between the groups in the three conditions. The dual-task condition showed an increase in the double support duration in both groups. Motor imagery analysis showed statistically significant differences between real and imagined walking in patients. MS patients with no disability did not show any influence of divided attention on walking execution. However, motor planning was overestimated as compared with real walking.	\N	\N
23988395	To determine whether the Short-Term Executive Plus (STEP) cognitive rehabilitation program improves executive dysfunction after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Randomized, waitlist controlled trial with minimization and blinded outcome assessment. Community. Participants with TBI and executive dysfunction (N=98; TBI severity 50% moderate/severe; mean time since injury ± SD, 12±14y; mean age ± SD, 45±14y; 62% women; 76% white). STEP program: 12 weeks (9h/wk) of group training in problem solving and emotional regulation and individual sessions of attention and compensatory strategies training. Factor analysis was used to create a composite executive function measure using the Problem Solving Inventory, Frontal Systems Behavior Scale, Behavioral Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome, and Self-Awareness of Deficits Interview. Emotional regulation was assessed with the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale. The primary attention measure was the Attention Rating and Monitoring Scale. Secondary measures included neuropsychological measures of executive function, attention, and memory and measures of affective distress, self-efficacy, social participation, and quality of life. Intention-to-treat mixed-effects analyses revealed significant treatment effects for the composite executive function measure (P=.008) and the Frontal Systems Behavior Scale (P=.049) and Problem Solving Inventory (P=.016). We found no between-group differences on the neuropsychological measures or on measures of attention, emotional regulation, self-awareness, affective distress, self-efficacy, participation, or quality of life. The STEP program is efficacious in improving self-reported post-TBI executive function and problem solving. Further research is needed to identify the roles of the different components of the intervention and its effectiveness with different TBI populations.	\N	\N
23988869	In this study, we assessed whether unspecific attention processes signaled by general reaction times (RTs), as well as specific facilitatory (validity or facilitation effect) and inhibitory (inhibition of return, IOR) effects involved in the attentional orienting network, are affected by low vigilance due to both circadian factors and sleep deprivation (SD). Eighteen male participants performed a cuing task in which peripheral cues were nonpredictive about the target location and the cue-target interval varied at three levels: 200 ms, 800 ms, and 1,100 ms. Facilitation with the shortest and IOR with the longest cue-target intervals were observed in the baseline session, thus replicating previous related studies. Under SD condition, RTs were generally slower, indicating a reduction in the participants' arousal level. The inclusion of a phasic alerting tone in several trials partially compensated for the reduction in tonic alertness, but not with the longest cue-target interval. With regard to orienting, whereas the facilitation effect due to reflexive shifts of attention was preserved with sleep loss, the IOR was not observed. These results suggest that the decrease of vigilance produced by SD affects both the compensatory effects of phasic alerting and the endogenous component involved in disengaging attention from the cued location, a requisite for the IOR effect being observed.	\N	\N
23989094	The updated clinical practice guidelines for the management of pain, agitation, and delirium recommend either daily sedation interruption or maintaining light levels of sedation as methods to improve outcomes for patients who are sedated in the ICU. We review the evidence supporting both methods and discuss whether one method is preferable or if they should be used concurrently. Original research articles identified using the electronic PubMed database. Randomized controlled trials and large prospective cohort studies of mechanically ventilated ICU patients requiring sedation were selected. The methods of daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels (including avoidance of deep sedation) are safe in critically ill patients with no increase, and a potential decrease, in long-term psychiatric disturbances. Randomized trials comparing these methods with standard care, which has traditionally involved moderate to heavy sedation, found that both methods reduced duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay. Additionally, one trial noted that daily sedation interruption paired with spontaneous breathing trials improved 1-year survival, whereas a large observational study found that deep sedation was associated with decreased 180-day survival. Two common characteristics of these interventions in trials showing benefits were avoidance of deep levels of sedation and significant reductions in sedative doses, especially benzodiazepines. Thus, combining targeted light sedation with daily sedation interruption may be more beneficial than either method alone if sedative doses are reduced and arousal and mobility are facilitated during the ICU stay. Daily sedation interruption and targeting light sedation levels are safe and proven to improve outcomes for sedated ICU patients when these approaches result in reduced sedative exposure and facilitate arousal. It remains unclear as to whether one approach is superior, and further studies are needed to evaluate which patients benefit most from either or both techniques.	\N	\N
23991639	We review neuropsychological evidence for visual selection operating in different reference frames. There is general agreement that there may be a separation of coding space near to and farther from the body, and that deficits in selecting stimuli within each form of spatial representation may be impaired in patients with unilateral neglect. However, there remains a lack of consensus about whether all forms of spatial representation relate to the body or whether there are spatial representations based on reference frames abstracted from the body (allocentric and object-centered spatial codes). Here we will review the evidence for spatial coding in these more abstracted reference frames (allocentric and object-centered but also environmental) and argue for the psychological reality of (at least) allocentric spatial coding. We discuss computational accounts of how such codes may be created as objects are selected.	\N	\N
23992838	To assess the sexual function of young women with spina bifida and myelomeningocele and to determine the factors influencing their sexual function. A postal cross-sectional study using a self-administered questionnaire was performed in 44 women, mean age 27.66 ± 5.89 years, with spina bifida and myelomeningocele. The questionnaire included the Brief Index of Sexual Functioning for Women and questions about voiding mode, urinary symptoms, socioeconomic status, education level, lifestyle, and partnership. In parallel, data were also collected from the paediatric surgery records of patients who returned the questionnaire. The response rate was 56.8% (25/44). All domains of female sexual function (thoughts/desires, arousal, frequency of sexual activity, receptivity/initiation, pleasure/orgasm, relationship satisfaction) were altered. Urinary incontinence was likely to be the main factor responsible for altered sexual function and was associated with lower thoughts/desires, arousal, and receptivity/initiation scores. Wearing pads also constituted a limitation to achieving intimacy. Young myelomeningocele women report poor sexual functioning. The presence of urinary incontinence is associated with lower thoughts/desire, arousal, and receptivity/initiation.	\N	\N
23994913	To study changes in attention and executive functions during psychopharmacotherapy in patients with paranoid schizophrenia, we have examined 120 patients with a first episode of paranoid schizophrenia treated with typical and atypical neuroleptics. Clinical and statistical analyses have revealed the heterogeneity within treatment groups that allowed to define two subgroups. These subgroups were characterized by a differed disease course (favorable or poor type). Before remission was achieved, the effect of atypical neuroleptics on cognitive performance was higher compared to typical neuroleptics. After remission, when doses of neuroleptics were decreased, a type of disease course played a main role. At 6 months after remission, attention and executive functions have improved in subgroups with favorable course of disease regardless of treatment.	\N	\N
24000960	Immediately recalling a witnessed event can increase people's susceptibility to later postevent misinformation. But this retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) effect has been shown only when the initial recall test included specific questions that reappeared on the final test. Moreover, it is unclear whether this phenomenon is affected by the centrality of event details. These limitations make it difficult to generalize RES to criminal investigations, which often begin with free recall prior to more specific queries from legal officials and attorneys. In 3 experiments, we examined the influence of test formats (free recall vs. cued recall) and centrality of event details (central vs. peripheral) on RES. In Experiment 1, both the initial and final tests were cued recall. In Experiment 2, the initial test was free recall and the final test was cued recall. In Experiment 3, both the initial and final tests were free recall. Initial testing increased misinformation reporting on the final test for peripheral details in all experiments, but the effect was significant for central details only after aggregating the data from all 3 experiments. These results show that initial free recall can produce RES, and more broadly, that free recall can potentiate subsequent learning of complex prose materials.	\N	\N
24005260	Selective attention to features of interest facilitates object processing in a cluttered and dynamic environment. Previous research found that distinct networks of regions across cortex are activated depending on the attended feature. These networks typically consist of posterior feature-preferring regions and anterior regions involved in attentional processes. In the current study, we investigated the role of white matter connections between the posterior and anterior regions within these networks for attention to features of novel colored dynamic objects. We asked participants to perform a 1-back feature-attention task while we acquired both functional and diffusion-weighted images. Using tract-based spatial statistics and probabilistic tractography, we found that the right superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) connected posterior and anterior object-processing regions and that voxels within the SLF correlated with response times on the task. Posterior and anterior regions that were anatomically connected also had increased functional connectivity relative to posterior and anterior regions that were not connected. Our results demonstrate that both functional and structural information has to be taken into account to understand selective attention and object perception.	\N	\N
24010959	Although a beneficial role of post-training sleep for declarative memory has been consistently evidenced in children, as in adults, available data suggest that procedural memory consolidation does not benefit from sleep in children. However, besides the absence of performance gains in children, sleep-dependent plasticity processes involved in procedural memory consolidation might be expressed through differential interference effects on the learning of novel but related procedural material. To test this hypothesis, 32 10-12-year-old children were trained on a motor rotation adaptation task. After either a sleep or a wake period, they were first retested on the same rotation applied at learning, thus assessing offline sleep-dependent changes in performance, then on the opposite (unlearned) rotation to assess sleep-dependent modulations in proactive interference coming from the consolidated visuomotor memory trace. Results show that children gradually improve performance over the learning session, showing effective adaptation to the imposed rotation. In line with previous findings, no sleep-dependent changes in performance were observed for the learned rotation. However, presentation of the opposite, unlearned deviation elicited significantly higher interference effects after post-training sleep than wakefulness in children. Considering that a definite feature of procedural motor memory and skill acquisition is the implementation of highly automatized motor behaviour, thus lacking flexibility, our results suggest a better integration and/or automation or motor adaptation skills after post-training sleep, eventually resulting in higher proactive interference effects on untrained material.	\N	\N
24012196	Female sexual dysfunctions include a group of sexual complaints and disorders affecting women of all ages, and stemming from a heterogeneous array of etiologies and contributing factors. The classification system for sexual dysfunctions in the woman has evolved from a linear categorization of sexual desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain disorders to one that is more complex and overlapping. Personal distress is a key factor in defining a sexual problem as a dysfunction. The recently released Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, edition 5, collapses former definitions of female sexual disorders and moves away from the older linear model of diagnostic categories. Physicians should be open to discussing sexual problems with women, and may make use of validated questionnaires in the office setting. Evaluation tools available for assessing sexual function in the woman are in use in the research setting, as are physiological measures of assessment.	\N	\N
24018716	Temporal expectation is expectation with respect to the timing of an event such as the appearance of a certain stimulus. In this paper, temporal expectancy is investigated in the context of the theory of visual attention (TVA), and we begin by summarizing the foundations of this theoretical framework. Next, we present a parametric experiment exploring the effects of temporal expectation on perceptual processing speed in cued single-stimulus letter recognition with unspeeded motor responses. The length of the cue-stimulus foreperiod was exponentially distributed with one of six hazard rates varying between blocks. We hypothesized that this manipulation would result in a distinct temporal expectation in each hazard rate condition. Stimulus exposures were varied such that both the temporal threshold of conscious perception (t0 ms) and the perceptual processing speed (v letters s(-1)) could be estimated using TVA. We found that the temporal threshold t0 was unaffected by temporal expectation, but the perceptual processing speed v was a strikingly linear function of the logarithm of the hazard rate of the stimulus presentation. We argue that the effects on the v values were generated by changes in perceptual biases, suggesting that our perceptual biases are directly related to our temporal expectations.	\N	\N
24022995	It has been suggested that autism-specific imitative deficits may be reduced or even spared in object-related activities. However, most previous research has not sufficiently distinguished object movement reenactment (learning about the ways in which object move) from imitation (learning about the topography of demonstrated actions). Twenty children with autism (CWA) and 20 typically developing children (TDC) were presented with puzzle boxes containing prizes. Test objects and experimental conditions were designed to isolate object- and action-related aspects of demonstrations. There were four types of video demonstrations: (a) a full demonstration by an adult; (b) a ghost demonstration with object movements alone; (c) mimed solutions demonstrated adjacent to the objects; and (d) random actions performed on the surface of the objects. There were no significant between-group differences in the degree to which CWA and TDC matched the full demonstrations, the actual demonstrations or in their times to first solution in any of the conditions. Although there was no clear imitative deficit in the CWA, regression analyses were conducted to explore in more detail whether diagnosis, verbal intelligence quotient (VIQ), nonverbal IQ NVIQ, age or motor coordination predicted performance. The results are discussed in relation to the use of extrinsic vs. intrinsic rewards and the interplay between motor coordination and the relative rigidity vs. pliability of objects.	\N	\N
24025057	Survivors of severe brain injuries may end up in a state of 'wakeful unresponsiveness' or in a minimally conscious state. Pharmacological treatments of patients with disorders of consciousness aim to improve arousal levels and recovery of consciousness. We here provide a systematic overview of the therapeutic effects of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem in patients recovering from coma. Evidence from clinical trials using these commonly prescribed pharmacological agents suggests positive changes of the patients' neurological status, leading sometimes to dramatic improvements. These findings are discussed in the context of current hypotheses of these agents' therapeutic mechanisms on cerebral function. In order to improve our understanding of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms of these drugs, we suggest combining sensitive and specific behavioral tools with neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures in large randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled experimental designs. We conclude that the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of amantadine, apomorphine and zolpidem need further exploration to determine which treatment would provide a better neurological outcome regarding the patient's etiology, diagnosis, time since injury and overall condition.	\N	\N
24035639	The objective of this study was to obtain preliminary data on the cognitive function of children with unilateral hearing loss in order to identify, quantify, and interpret differences in cognitive and language functions between children with unilateral hearing loss and with normal hearing. Fourteen children ages 9-14 years old (7 with severe-to-profound sensorineural unilateral hearing loss and 7 sibling controls with normal hearing) were administered five tests that assessed cognitive functions of working memory, processing speed, attention, and phonological processing. Mean composite scores for phonological processing were significantly lower for the group with unilateral hearing loss than for controls on one composite and four subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group trended toward worse performance on one additional composite and on two additional phonological processing subtests. The unilateral hearing loss group also performed worse than the control group on the complex letter span task. Analysis examining performance on the two levels of task difficulty revealed a significant main effect of task difficulty and an interaction between task difficulty and group. Cognitive function and phonological processing test results suggest two related deficits associated with unilateral hearing loss: (1) reduced accuracy and efficiency associated with phonological processing, and (2) impaired executive control function when engaged in maintaining verbal information in the face of processing incoming, irrelevant verbal information. These results provide a possible explanation for the educational difficulties experienced by children with unilateral hearing loss.	\N	\N
24039108	Improved survival of children with brain tumors (BTs) has increased focus on ameliorating morbidity. To reduce the risk of progressive cognitive decline, remedial strategies need to be instituted early, based upon accurate appraisal of need, yet few studies have investigated cognition in BT children early post-diagnosis. The study aims were to investigate cognition in children with primary BTs 1, 6, and 12 months post-diagnosis compared with healthy children, exploring the impact of disease and treatment variables. Forty-eight children aged 2-16 years with primary BTs, referred to a Regional Neurosurgical Unit over the 2-year study period were eligible for enrollment. The "best friends" model was used to recruit matched controls. Cognition was assessed using age-appropriate Wechsler Intelligence scales; Children's Memory Scale; Test of Everyday Attention for Children, and Wechsler Quicktest. Patients with BTs had significantly reduced performance compared to controls early post-diagnosis in tests of Performance IQ, processing speed, verbal and visual memory, and selective attention. Improved performance over 12 months was seen in patients with BTs although also, for some measures, in controls. Significant deficits in cognitive performance were seen one year post-diagnosis for Verbal IQ; processing speed, visual and verbal immediate memory, and selective attention. Infratentorial site, high tumor grade, hydrocephalus, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy were associated with poorer functioning. Early cognitive impairment is present in BT children, sometimes prior to radiotherapy/chemotherapy treatment, and is associated with hydrocephalus, high tumor grade and infratentorial site. Future studies should investigate the role of early rehabilitation in improving cognition.	\N	\N
24040251	Several highly-cited experiments have presented evidence suggesting that neuroimages may unduly bias laypeople's judgments of scientific research. This finding has been especially worrisome to the legal community in which neuroimage techniques may be used to produce evidence of a person's mental state. However, a more recent body of work that has looked directly at the independent impact of neuroimages on layperson decision-making (both in legal and more general arenas), and has failed to find evidence of bias. To help resolve these conflicting findings, this research uses eye tracking technology to provide a measure of attention to different visual representations of neuroscientific data. Finding an effect of neuroimages on the distribution of attention would provide a potential mechanism for the influence of neuroimages on higher-level decisions. In the present experiment, a sample of laypeople viewed a vignette that briefly described a court case in which the defendant's actions might have been explained by a neurological defect. Accompanying these vignettes was either an MRI image of the defendant's brain, or a bar graph depicting levels of brain activity-two competing visualizations that have been the focus of much of the previous research on the neuroimage bias. We found that, while laypeople differentially attended to neuroimagery relative to the bar graph, this did not translate into differential judgments in a way that would support the idea of a neuroimage bias.	\N	\N
24044427	Joint attention (JA) is a cornerstone of adaptive human social functioning. Little functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has examined, in interactive paradigms, neural activation underlying bids for JA, met with a congruent or an incongruent social response. We developed a highly naturalistic fMRI paradigm utilizing eye-tracking to create real-time, contingent social responses to participant-initiated JA. During congruent responses to JA bids, we observed increased activation in the right amygdala, the right fusiform gyrus, anterior and dorsal anterior cingulate cortices, striatum, ventral tegmental area, and posterior parietal cortices. Incongruent responses to JA bids elicited increased activity localized to the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and bilateral cerebellum. No differences in eye-gaze patterns were observed during congruent or incongruent trials. Our results highlight the importance of utilizing interactive fMRI paradigms in social neuroscience and the impact of congruency in recruiting integrated social, reward, and attention circuits for processing JA.	\N	\N
24045099	This intervention examined whether fish-oil-supplementation in late infancy modifies free-play test scores and if this is related to blood pressure (BP) and mean RR interval. 83 Danish 9-month-old infants were randomized to ±fish oil (FO) (3.4±1.1mL/d) for 3months and 61 of these completed the free-play-test before and after the intervention. Most of the free-play scores changed during the intervention, but the intervention affected only the number of looks away from the toy, which was increased in +FO and decreased in -FO (p=0.037). The increased numbers of looks away were associated with an increase in erythrocyte eicosapentaenoic acid (r=0.401, p=0.017, n=35) and were also associated with a decrease in systolic-BP (r=-0.511, p<0.001, n=52). The results indicate that n-3 fatty acid intake also in late infancy can influence brain development and that the cognitive and cardiovascular effects may be related.	\N	\N
24053045	Our perspective on resting-state electroencephalogram (EEG) is that it provides a window into the substrate of cognitive and perceptual processing, reflecting the dynamic potential of the brain's current functional state. In an extended research program into the electrophysiology of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), we have examined resting-state EEG power and coherence, and event-related potentials (ERPs), in children, adolescents, and adults with the disorder. We sought initially to identify consistent AD/HD anomalies in these measures, relative to normal control subjects, and then to understand how these differences related to existing models of AD/HD. An emergent strand in this program has been to clarify the EEG correlates of "arousal" and to understand the role of arousal dysfunction as a core anomaly in AD/HD. To date, findings in this strand serve to rule out a commonly held dictum in the AD/HD field: that elevated theta/beta ratio is an indicator of hypo-arousal. In turn, this requires further work to elucidate the ratio's functional significance in the disorder. Our brain dynamics studies relating prestimulus EEG amplitude and phase states to ERP outcomes are expected to help in this regard, but we are still at a relatively early stage, currently examining these relationships in control children, in order to better understand normal aspects of brain dynamics before turning to children with AD/HD. This range of studies provides a framework for our recent work relating resting-state EEG anomalies, in individuals with AD/HD, to their symptom profile. This has had promising results, indicating links between increased inattention scores and reduced resting EEG gamma power. With resting-state EEG coherence, reduced left lateralized coherences across several bands have correlated negatively with inattention scores, while reduced frontal interhemispheric coherence has been correlated negatively with hyperactivity/impulsivity scores. Such linkages appear to provide encouraging leads for future EEG research in AD/HD.	\N	\N
24054320	The aim of the study was to explore whether temporal information processing can interfere with performance of a non-temporal task. A new methodology based on the Garner paradigm was employed. Participants were asked to classify two-dimensional stimuli according to either length or duration, with and without variation in the other (task-irrelevant) dimension. Garner interference was detected only with respect to classification by length when irrelevant variation in duration was present. Stroop interference was detected only in classification by length across compatible and non-compatible values of length and duration. Classification by length took more time when done with variation in duration than when duration was constant. Classification by length also took more time when length and duration were not compatible than when they were compatible. The findings indicate that the processing of duration is similar to the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The processing of duration consumes attentional resources and can interfere with the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The findings support attentional models of prospective duration judgment.	\N	\N
24056700	Sleep can strengthen memory for emotional information, but whether emotional memories can be specifically targeted and modified during sleep is unknown. In human subjects who underwent olfactory contextual fear conditioning, re-exposure to the odorant context in slow-wave sleep promoted stimulus-specific fear extinction, with parallel reductions of hippocampal activity and reorganization of amygdala ensemble patterns. Thus, fear extinction may be selectively enhanced during sleep, even without re-exposure to the feared stimulus itself.	\N	\N
24057352	Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) component of event-related potentials is elicited by stimuli violating the category rule of stimulus sequences, even if such stimuli are outside the focus of attention. Category-related vMMN emerges to colors, and color-related vMMN is sensitive to language-related effects. A higher-order perceptual category, bilateral symmetry is also represented in the memory processes underlying vMMN. As a relatively large body of research shows, violating the emotional category of human faces elicits vMMN. Another face-related category sensitive to the violation of regular presentation is gender. Finally, vMMN was elicited to the laterality of hands. As results on category-related vMMN show, stimulus representation in the non-conscious change detection system is fairly complex, and it is not restricted to the registration of elementary perceptual regularities.	\N	\N
24060644	Task performance can be enhanced by the addition of extra information to a visual environment in which observers search for a target stimulus. One example of such information is the repetition of the searched-for stimulus; a form of target redundancy. In the present study, the electrophysiological correlates of such target redundancy were investigated in a visual discrimination task. Observers were asked to look for targets in displays that always contained two salient singletons (tilted lines; targets and/or nontargets) against a background of vertical distractor lines. Displays contained either two redundant targets, two nontargets, or a single target and nontarget, at opposite sides of the visual field. Search was most efficient when two targets were shown, and effects of target redundancy were observed on the event-related potential as well. Target redundancy modulated the anterior N2, and the P3 in both an early and a late window. The results are compatible with models of visual attention that support a relatively late (i.e., central or decisional) locus of redundancy processing.	\N	\N
24065955	Complex neural circuits within the hypothalamus that govern essential autonomic processes and associated behaviors signal using amino acid and monoamine transmitters and a variety of neuropeptide (hormone) modulators, often via G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and associated cellular pathways. Relaxin-3 is a recently identified neuropeptide that is highly conserved throughout evolution. Neurons expressing relaxin-3 are located in the brainstem, but broadly innervate the entire limbic system including the hypothalamus. Extensive anatomical data in rodents and non-human primate, and recent regulatory and functional data, suggest relaxin-3 signaling via its cognate GPCR, RXFP3, has a broad range of effects on neuroendocrine function associated with stress responses, feeding and metabolism, motivation and reward, and possibly sexual behavior and reproduction. Therefore, this article aims to highlight the growing appreciation of the relaxin-3/RXFP3 system as an important "extrinsic" regulator of the neuroendocrine axis by reviewing its neuroanatomy and its putative roles in arousal-, stress-, and feeding-related behaviors and links to associated neural substrates and signaling networks. Current evidence identifies RXFP3 as a potential therapeutic target for treatment of neuroendocrine disorders and related behavioral dysfunction.	\N	\N
24068814	Cortical activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while human subjects viewed 12 stimulus colors and performed either a color-naming or diverted attention task. A forward model was used to extract lower dimensional neural color spaces from the high-dimensional fMRI responses. The neural color spaces in two visual areas, human ventral V4 (V4v) and VO1, exhibited clustering (greater similarity between activity patterns evoked by stimulus colors within a perceptual category, compared to between-category colors) for the color-naming task, but not for the diverted attention task. Response amplitudes and signal-to-noise ratios were higher in most visual cortical areas for color naming compared to diverted attention. But only in V4v and VO1 did the cortical representation of color change to a categorical color space. A model is presented that induces such a categorical representation by changing the response gains of subpopulations of color-selective neurons.	\N	\N
24070214	Sexual satisfaction is an important indicator of sexual health and is strongly associated with relationship satisfaction. However, research exploring lay definitions of sexual satisfaction has been scarce. We present thematic analysis of written responses of 449 women and 311 men to the question "How would you define sexual satisfaction?" The participants were heterosexual individuals with a mean age of 36.05 years (SD = 8.34) involved in a committed exclusive relationship. In this exploratory study, two main themes were identified: personal sexual well-being and dyadic processes. The first theme focuses on the positive aspects of individual sexual experience, such as pleasure, positive feelings, arousal, sexual openness, and orgasm. The second theme emphasizes relational dimensions, such as mutuality, romance, expression of feelings, creativity, acting out desires, and frequency of sexual activity. Our results highlight that mutual pleasure is a crucial component of sexual satisfaction and that sexual satisfaction derives from positive sexual experiences and not from the absence of conflict or dysfunction. The findings support definitions and models of sexual satisfaction that focus on positive sexual outcomes and the use of measures that incorporate items linked to personal and dyadic sexual rewards for both men and women.	\N	\N
24071775	Although there is evidence to suggest an association between ADHD and alcohol use in college students, results are inconclusive primarily because studies have failed to control for related variables. Thus, this study was designed to systematically compare the relative contributions of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity to alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in a sample of college students while controlling for effects of antisocial behaviors. A total of 192 undergraduate college students from a rural Midwestern university received class credit for participating in the study. They completed measures of alcohol use, ADHD symptoms, and antisocial behavior. Hierarchical regressions revealed inattention, but not hyperactivity/impulsivity, was related to alcohol-related problems even when controlling for antisocial behavior. However, neither inattention nor hyperactivity/impulsivity was related to alcohol use regardless of whether current antisocial behavior was controlled. Inattention may be an important factor related to alcohol-related problems in college students.	\N	\N
24079062	Post-lunch dip is a well-known phenomenon that results in a substantial deterioration in function and productivity after lunch. To assess whether a new herbal-based potentially wake-promoting beverage is effective in counteracting somnolence and reduced post-lunch performance. Thirty healthy volunteers were studied on three different days at the sleep clinic. On each visit they ate a standard lunch at noontime, followed by a drink of "Wake up," 50 mg caffeine, or a placebo in a cross-over double-blind regimen. At 30 and 120 minutes post-drinking, they underwent a battery of tests to determine the effects of the beverage. These included: a) a subjective assessment of alertness and performance based on a visual analog scale, and b) objective function tests: the immediate word recall test, the digit symbol substitution test (DSST), and hemodynamic measurements. The results of the three visits were compared using one-way analysis of variance, with P < 0.05 considered statistically significant. In all performance tests, subjective vigilance and effectiveness assessment, both Wake up and caffeine were significantly superior to placebo 30 minutes after lunch. However, at 2 hours after lunch, performance had deteriorated in those who drank the caffeine-containing drink, while Wake up was superior to both caffeine and placebo. Blood pressure and pulse were higher 2 hours after caffeine ingestion, compared to both Wake up and placebo. These results suggest that a single dose of Wake up is effective in counteracting the somnolence and reduced performance during the post-lunch hours. In the current study it had no adverse hemodynamic consequences.	\N	\N
24095116	The mind and body are intrinsically and dynamically coupled. Perceptions, thoughts and feelings change, and respond to, the state of the body. This chapter describes the integration of cognitive and affective processes with the autonomic control of bodily arousal, focusing on reciprocal effects of autonomic responses on decision making, error detection, memory and emotions. Neuroimaging techniques are beginning to detail the neuronal substrates mediating these interactions between mental and physiological states, implicating cortical regions (specifically insular and cingulate cortices) alongside subcortical (amygdala) and brainstem (notably dorsal pons) in these mechanisms. The extent to which bodily states influence mental processes is determined in part by "interoceptive sensitivity," an index of individual differences in the ability to detect one's own bodily sensations. Moreover, the misidentification or misattribution of interoceptive responses is implicated in a number of pathologies such as depersonalization, schizophrenia, and anxiety. Increasing knowledge of the mechanisms of body-mind interactions has wide ranging implications, from decision making to empathy, and may serve elucidate potential avenues of intervention for stress-sensitive conditions in which psychological, cognitive, and emotional factors impact on the expression of physical symptoms.	\N	\N
24099547	Four experiments investigated whether infants and adults infer that a novel entity that interacts in a contingent, communicative fashion with an experimenter is itself an intentional agent. The experiments contrasted the hypothesis that such an inference follows from amodal representations of the contingent interaction alone with the hypothesis that features of the experimenter's behavior might also influence intentional attribution. Twelve- to 13-month-old infants and adults observed a novel entity respond contingently to a confederate experimenter, the form of whose actions varied across conditions. For infants, intentionality attribution was assessed by the extent to which they subsequently followed the faceless entity's implied attentional focus. For adults, intentionality attribution was assessed from their use of psychological terms when later describing the entity's behavior. In both groups, construal of the entity as an intentional agent was limited to a subset of contingent interaction conditions. At both ages, the pattern of responses across conditions suggests that whether an observed contingent interaction can be seen as a social interaction influences the attribution of intentional agency. These results further indicate that the agent detection mechanism responding to third-party contingent interactions, as a context-sensitive process, is distinct from the mechanism responding to directly experienced contingent interactions, suggested by prior developmental work to be based solely on amodal representations of an entity's contingent reaction to behaviors of an infant.	\N	\N
24110382	Controlling a brain-actuated device requires the participant to look at and to split his attention between the interaction of the device with its environment and the status information of the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). Such parallel visual tasks are partly contradictory, with the goal of achieving a good and natural device control. Is there a possibility to free the visual channel from one of these tasks? To address this, a stimulation system based on 6 coin-motors is developed, which provides a spatially continuous tactile illusion as BCI feedback, so that the visual channel can be devoted to the device. Several experiments are conducted in this work, to optimize the tactile illusion patterns and to investigate the influence on the electroencephalogram (EEG). Finally, 6 healthy BCI participants compare visual with tactile feedback in online BCI recordings. The developed stimulator can be used without interfering with the EEG. All subjects are able to perceive this type of tactile feedback well, and no statistical degradation in the online BCI performance could be identified between visual and tactile feedback.	\N	\N
24111051	Aging is a process that is inevitable, and makes our body vulnerable to age-related diseases. Age is the most consistent factor affecting the sleep structure. Therefore, new automatic sleep staging methods, to be used in both of young and elderly patients, are needed. This study proposes an automatic sleep stage detector, which can separate wakefulness, rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep using only EEG and EOG. Most sleep events, which define the sleep stages, are reduced with age. This is addressed by focusing on the amplitude of the clinical EEG bands, and not the affected sleep events. The age-related influences are then reduced by robust subject-specific scaling. The classification of the three sleep stages are achieved by a multi-class support vector machine using the one-versus-rest scheme. It was possible to obtain a high classification accuracy of 0.91. Validation of the sleep stage detector in other sleep disorders, such as apnea and narcolepsy, should be considered in future work.	\N	\N
24111247	Sleep is a physiological process with an internal program of a number of well defined sleep stages and intermediate wakefulness periods. The sleep stages modulate the autonomous nervous system and thereby the sleep stages are accompanied by different regulation regimes for the cardiovascular and respiratory system. The differences in regulation can be distinguished by new techniques of cardiovascular physics. The number of patients suffering from sleep disorders increases unproportionally with the increase of the human population and aging, leading to very high expenses in the public health system. Therefore, the challenge of cardiovascular physics is to develop highly-sophisticated methods which are able to, on the one hand, supplement and replace expensive medical devices and, on the other hand, improve the medical diagnostics with decreasing the patient's risk. Methods of cardiovascular physics are used to analyze heart rate, blood pressure and respiration to detect changes of the autonomous nervous system in different diseases. Data driven modeling analysis, synchronization and coupling analysis and their applications to biosignals in healthy subjects and patients with different sleep disorders are presented. Newly derived methods of cardiovascular physics can help to find indicators for these health risks.	\N	\N
24111262	This paper proposes a novel feature called differential entropy for EEG-based vigilance estimation. By mathematical derivation, we find an interesting relationship between the proposed differential entropy and the existing logarithm energy spectrum. We present a physical interpretation of the logarithm energy spectrum which is widely used in EEG signal analysis. To evaluate the performance of the proposed differential entropy feature for vigilance estimation, we compare it with four existing features on an EEG data set of twenty-three subjects. All of the features are projected to the same dimension by principal component analysis algorithm. Experiment results show that differential entropy is the most accurate and stable EEG feature to reflect the vigilance changes.	\N	\N
24112932	The introduction of brain stimulation research techniques such as transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has greatly advanced the understanding of the somatosensory system in humans. Over the last several years, several studies have focused on applying TMS in a variety of contexts to alter transiently the excitability of the somatosensory cortex or regions that project to it and exert some control over its activity in specific behavioral contexts. Specific foci that are discussed in this chapter are methods of repetitive TMS, including theta-burst protocols, delivered to the primary somatosensory cortex that have been shown to affect behavioral indices of somatic sensation such as tactile perception. Similar stimulation techniques can also be applied to distant areas that interact with and modulate activity in somatosensory cortex (i.e., attentional or motor networks). For example, suppression of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex modifies the attention-modulation of somatosensory information in modality-specific cortices. Overall this chapter is focused on understanding the interaction of activity in systems that function with the somatosensory system in behavioral contexts. These include systems such as those that control attention, whether sustained or selective between sensory modalities, or those that control movement based on targets present in other sensory systems.	\N	\N
24113330	To investigate whether pre-attentive auditory discrimination is impaired in patients with essential tremor (ET) and to evaluate the role of age at onset in this function. Seventeen non-demented patients with ET and seventeen age- and sex-matched healthy controls underwent an EEG recording during a classical auditory MMN paradigm. MMN latency was significantly prolonged in patients with elderly-onset ET (>65 years) (p=0.046), while no differences emerged in either latency or amplitude between young-onset ET patients and controls. This study represents a tentative indication of a dysfunction of auditory automatic change detection in elderly-onset ET patients, pointing to a selective attentive deficit in this subgroup of ET patients. The delay in pre-attentive auditory discrimination, which affects elderly-onset ET patients alone, further supports the hypothesis that ET represents a heterogeneous family of diseases united by tremor; these diseases are characterized by cognitive differences that may range from a disturbance in a selective cognitive function, such as the automatic part of the orienting response, to more widespread and complex cognitive dysfunctions.	\N	\N
24116885	Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to the change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). To the extent that core affect can be characterised by the two dimensions of valence and arousal, EC has important implications for the origin of affective responses. However, the distinction between valence and arousal is rarely considered in research on EC or conditioned responses more generally. Measuring the subjective feelings elicited by a CS, the results from two experiments showed that (1) repeated pairings of a CS with a positive or negative US of either high or low arousal led to corresponding changes in both CS valence and CS arousal, (2) changes in CS arousal, but not changes in CS valence, were significantly related to recollective memory for CS-US pairings, (3) subsequent presentations of the CS without the US reduced the conditioned valence of the CS, with conditioned arousal being less susceptible to extinction and (4) EC effects were stronger for high arousal than low arousal USs. The results indicate that the conditioning of affective responses can occur simultaneously along two independent dimensions, supporting evidence in related areas that calls for a consideration of both valence and arousal. Implications for research on EC and the acquisition of emotional dispositions are discussed.	\N	\N
24117699	To better understand the neurobiological mechanisms by which mindfulness-based practices function in a psychotherapeutic context, this article details the definition, techniques, and purposes ascribed to mindfulness training as described by its Buddhist tradition of origin and by contemporary neurocognitive models. Included is theory of how maladaptive mental processes become habitual and automatic, both from the Buddhist and Western psychological perspective. Specific noting and labeling techniques in open monitoring meditation, described in the Theravada and Western contemporary traditions, are highlighted as providing unique access to multiple modalities of awareness. Potential explicit and implicit mechanisms are discussed by which such techniques can contribute to transforming maladaptive habits of mind and perceptual and cognitive biases, improving efficiency, facilitating integration, and providing the flexibility to switch between systems of self-processing. Finally, a model is provided to describe the timing by which noting and labeling practices have the potential to influence different stages of low- and high-level neural processing. Hypotheses are proposed concerning both levels of processing in relation to the extent of practice. Implications for the nature of subjective experience and self-processing as it relates to one's habits of mind, behavior, and relation to the external world, are also described.	\N	\N
24119895	To assess the effects of vaginal discharge on female sexual dysfunction (FSD) by using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI). In a study at a university hospital in Canakkale, Turkey, women affected by vaginal discharge and age-matched healthy control women were recruited between January and December 2012. Women were grouped in accordance with their vaginal discharge complaints and each participant completed the FSFI questionnaire. A total of 114 women were included in the study. Women in the first group (n=58) had no vaginal discharge or had physiologic vaginal discharge, those in the second group (n=29) had abnormal vaginal discharge with itching, and those in the third group (n=27) had abnormal vaginal discharge without itching. Compared with the first group, women in the second and third groups had higher FSFI scores for desire, arousal, orgasm, and pain, in addition to higher overall FSFI scores. Women with genital malodor had significantly higher FSFI scores than patients without genital malodor (23.83 ± 5.07 vs 21.15 ± 4.78; P=0.008). Women with abnormal vaginal discharges were found to have better FSFI scores for some domains. This finding may be attributed to the adverse effects of sexual intercourse on vaginal infections.	\N	\N
24120431	We investigated effects of inter-modal attention on concurrent visual and tactile stimulus processing by means of stimulus-driven oscillatory brain responses, so-called steady-state evoked potentials (SSEPs). To this end, we frequency-tagged a visual (7.5Hz) and a tactile stimulus (20Hz) and participants were cued, on a trial-by-trial basis, to attend to either vision or touch to perform a detection task in the cued modality. SSEPs driven by the stimulation comprised stimulus frequency-following (i.e. fundamental frequency) as well as frequency-doubling (i.e. second harmonic) responses. We observed that inter-modal attention to vision increased amplitude and phase synchrony of the fundamental frequency component of the visual SSEP while the second harmonic component showed an increase in phase synchrony, only. In contrast, inter-modal attention to touch increased SSEP amplitude of the second harmonic but not of the fundamental frequency, while leaving phase synchrony unaffected in both responses. Our results show that inter-modal attention generally influences concurrent stimulus processing in vision and touch, thus, extending earlier audio-visual findings to a visuo-tactile stimulus situation. The pattern of results, however, suggests differences in the neural implementation of inter-modal attentional influences on visual vs. tactile stimulus processing.	\N	\N
24123615	Adaptive ongoing behavior requires using immediate sensory input to guide upcoming actions. Using a novel paradigm with volitional exploration of visuo-spatial scenes, we revealed novel deficits among hippocampal amnesic patients in effective spatial exploration of scenes, indicated by less-systematic exploration patterns than those of healthy comparison subjects. The disorganized exploration by amnesic patients occurred despite successful retention of individual object locations across the entire exploration period, indicating that exploration impairments were not secondary to rapid decay of scene information. These exploration deficits suggest that amnesic patients are impaired in integrating memory for recent actions, which may include information such as locations just visited and scene content, to plan immediately forthcoming actions. Using a novel task that measured the on-line links between sensory input and behavior, we observed the critical role of the hippocampus in modulating ongoing behavior.	\N	\N
24125802	Drivers are not always aware that they are becoming impaired as a result of sleepiness. Using specific symptoms of sleepiness might assist with recognition of drowsiness related impairment and help drivers judge whether they are safe to drive a vehicle, however this has not been evaluated. In this study, 20 healthy volunteer professional drivers completed two randomized sessions in the laboratory - one under 24h of acute sleep deprivation, and one with alcohol. The Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) and a 30min simulated driving task (AusEdTM) were performed every 3-4h in the sleep deprivation session, and at a BAC of 0.00% and 0.05% in the alcohol session, while electroencephalography (EEG) and eye movements were recorded. After each test session, drivers completed the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the Sleepiness Symptoms Questionnaire (SSQ), which includes eight specific sleepiness and driving performance symptoms. A second baseline session was completed on a separate day by the professional drivers and in an additional 20 non-professional drivers for test-retest reliability. There was moderate test-retest agreement on the SSQ (r=0.59). Significant correlations were identified between individual sleepiness symptoms and the KSS score (r values 0.50-0.74, p<0.01 for all symptoms). The frequency of all SSQ items increased during sleep deprivation (χ(2) values of 28.4-80.2, p<0.01 for all symptoms) and symptoms were related to increased subjective sleepiness and performance deterioration. The symptoms "struggling to keep your eyes open", "difficulty maintaining correct speed", "reactions were slow" and "head dropping down" were most closely related to increased alpha and theta activity on EEG (r values 0.49-0.59, p<0.001) and "nodding off to sleep" and "struggling to keep your eyes open" were related to slow eye movements (r values 0.67 and 0.64, p<0.001). Symptoms related to visual disturbance and impaired driving performance were most accurate at detecting severely impaired driving performance (AUC on ROC curve of 0.86-0.91 for detecting change in lateral lane position greater than the change at a BAC of 0.05%). Individual sleepiness symptoms are related to impairment during acute sleep deprivation and might be able to assist drivers in recognizing their own sleepiness and ability to drive safely.	\N	\N
24128879	The present study investigated age-related attentional changes by comparing event-related potentials (ERPs) in young and older adults during a rapid serial visual presentation task. We focused on analyzing the P3a and the N2 in both the target stimulus and the immediately succeeding irrelevant stimulus. As compared with younger adults, older adults exhibited a marked reduction in the amplitude of the P3a and N2 elicited by the stimulus following the target stimulus. Moreover, in younger adults, the P3a and N2 amplitudes did not differ between both stimuli, whereas in older adults these ERP components were significantly reduced in the subsequent stimulus compared to the target one. The age-related attenuation of P3a and N2 amplitudes for the subsequent stimulus indicates that older adults take longer and have more difficulty shifting their attention from one stimulus to the next one.	\N	\N
24130703	It has been suggested that sleep selectively enhances memories with future relevance. Given that sleep's benefits can vary by item within a learning context, the present study investigated whether the amount of sleep-dependent consolidation may vary across items based on the value of the to-be-learned material. For this purpose, we used a value-based learning paradigm in which participants studied words paired with point values. There were two groups; participants either studied the words in the evening and were tested after a 12 hr interval containing a full night of sleep, or studied the words in the morning and were tested after 12 hr of continuous daytime wake. Free recall (F(1,36) = 19.35, p<.001) and recognition accuracy (F(1,36) = 7.59, p = .01) for words were better following sleep relative to wake. However there was no difference in the linear increase in the probability of delayed recall with increasing word value for sleep and wake groups (p = .74). Thus, while encoding may vary with the value of the to-be-learned item, sleep-dependent consolidation does not.	\N	\N
24131042	This study examines the effects of cognitive reappraisal on the cardiovascular response to affective stimuli. Participants (N = 53) were shown affective images and were asked either to attend to the images, or to downregulate negative affect through reappraisal of negative images or upregulate positive affect through reappraisal of positive images while continuous measures of cardiovascular activity were recorded. Reappraisal of negative images was associated with lower total peripheral resistance and larger cardiac output in the prestimulus period, whereas reappraisal of positive images was associated with less pronounced decreases of heart rate, cardiac output, and mean blood pressure in the viewing period as compared to unregulated conditions. The results indicate that cognitive reappraisal engenders adaptive hemodynamic profiles both during anticipation and during viewing of affective images depending on their valence and the regulatory goal.	\N	\N
24131316	Associations are confusable when they share an item. For example, double-function pairs (with the form AB, BC) are harder to remember than control pairs. Although ambiguous pairs are more difficult on average, it is not clear whether memories for associations compete directly with one another (associative competition hypothesis), as assumed by models that incorporate associative symmetry (bidirectional associations). Alternatively, associative interference results might be explained away by: (a) item suppression hypothesis: competition only between memory for the two target items (A and C are both targets of B); (b) candidate competition hypothesis: The cue (B) retrieves two potential targets, A and C, which compete to be output. These alternative hypotheses could explain previous results in the related, AB/AC learning procedure. Our procedure included a large amount of interference that had to be resolved within a single study set. Participants studied sets of control (single-function) and double-function pairs and were asked to produce one or two associates, respectively, to cue items. Recall of AB and BC were negatively correlated and could not be explained away by item suppression or competition between simultaneously retrieved candidate items. Thus, competition can occur at the level of representation of associations, regardless of which item is the cue, consistent with associative symmetry.	\N	\N
24133250	Using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), we studied how distributed visual representations in human occipitotemporal cortex are modulated by attention and link their modulation to concurrent activity in frontal and parietal cortex. We detected similar occipitotemporal patterns during a simple visuoperceptual task and an attention-to-working-memory task in which one or two stimuli were cued before being presented among other pictures. Pattern strength varied from highest to lowest when the stimulus was the exclusive focus of attention, a conjoint focus, and when it was potentially distracting. Although qualitatively similar effects were seen inside regions relatively specialized for the stimulus category and outside, the former were quantitatively stronger. By regressing occipitotemporal pattern strength against activity elsewhere in the brain, we identified frontal and parietal areas exerting top-down control over, or reading information out from, distributed patterns in occipitotemporal cortex. Their interactions with patterns inside regions relatively specialized for that stimulus category were higher than those with patterns outside those regions and varied in strength as a function of the attentional condition. One area, the frontal operculum, was distinguished by selectively interacting with occipitotemporal patterns only when they were the focus of attention. There was no evidence that any frontal or parietal area actively inhibited occipitotemporal representations even when they should be ignored and were suppressed. Using MVPA to decode information within these frontal and parietal areas showed that they contained information about attentional context and/or readout information from occipitotemporal cortex to guide behavior but that frontal regions lacked information about category identity.	\N	\N
24134143	The belief that alcohol makes you cheerful is one of the main reasons for engaging in high-risk drinking, especially among young adults. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between blood alcohol content (BAC) and cheerfulness, focus distraction, and sluggishness among students attending high school parties. Participants included 230 students attending high school parties. BAC, measured by use of a breath analyzer, self-reported cheerfulness (on a score from 0 to 16), focus distraction (score from 0 to 8), and sluggishness (score from 0 to 4) were assessed several times during the party. Data were analyzed by means of linear regression, including robust standard errors and stratified on sex. For girls, cheerfulness increased up to a BAC of 0.113 g% and decreased at higher BACs. At BACs of 0.020, 0.050, 0.100, and 0.150 g% cheerfulness was 11.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 10.4 to 11.6), 12.4 (95% CI: 11.8 to 12.9), 13.5 (95% CI: 13.0 to 14.0), and 13.1 (95% CI: 11.9 to 14.4), respectively. For boys, the association was linear with an increase of 0.18 points in cheerfulness (95% CI: 0.01 to 0.36) for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC: 0.22 (95% CI: 0.16 to 0.28) and 0.24 (95% CI: 0.14 to 0.33) points for girls and boys, respectively, per 0.010 g% increase in BAC. The degree of sluggishness increased only slightly with increasing BAC with 0.02 (95% CI: 0.02 to 0.05) and 0.03 (95% CI: -0.01 to 0.07) points for every 0.010 g% increase in BAC for girls and boys, respectively. Cheerfulness increased up to a certain BAC value for girls, while it increased linearly for boys. Focus distraction increased with increasing BAC.	\N	\N
24162862	Saccadic and manual reactions to a peripherally presented target are facilitated by removing a central fixation stimulus shortly before a target onset (the gap effect). The present study examined the effects of removal of a visible and invisible fixation point on the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. Participants were required to fixate a central fixation point and respond to a peripherally presented target as quickly and accurately as possible by making a saccade (Experiment 1) or pressing a corresponding key (Experiment 2). The fixation point was dichoptically presented, and visibility was manipulated by using binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression technique. In both saccade and key-press tasks, removing the visible fixation strongly quickened the responses. Furthermore, the invisible fixation, which remained on the display but suppressed, significantly delayed the saccadic response. Contrarily, the invisible fixation had no effect on the manual task. These results indicate that partially different processes mediate the saccadic gap effect and the manual gap effect. In particular, unconscious processes might modulate an oculomotor-specific component of the saccadic gap effect, presumably via subcortical mechanisms.	\N	\N
24188061	Emotion regulation is generally thought to be a critical ingredient for successful interpersonal relationships. Ironically, few studies have investigated the link between how well spouses regulate emotion and how satisfied they are with their marriages. We utilized data from a 13-year, 3-wave longitudinal study of middle-aged (40-50 years old) and older (60-70 years old) long-term married couples, focusing on the associations between downregulation of negative emotion (measured during discussions of an area of marital conflict at Wave 1) and marital satisfaction (measured at all 3 waves). Downregulation of negative emotion was assessed by determining how quickly spouses reduced signs of negative emotion (in emotional experience, emotional behavior, and physiological arousal) after negative emotion events. Data were analyzed using actor-partner interdependence modeling. Findings showed that (a) greater downregulation of wives' negative experience and behavior predicted greater marital satisfaction for wives and husbands concurrently and (b) greater downregulation of wives' negative behavior predicted increases in wives' marital satisfaction longitudinally. Wives' use of constructive communication (measured between Waves 1 and 2) mediated the longitudinal associations. These results show the benefits of wives' downregulation of negative emotion during conflict for marital satisfaction and point to wives' constructive communication as a mediating pathway.	\N	\N
24189992	Recent research has suggested that the extrinsic cognitive load generated by performing a nonlinguistic visual task while perceiving speech increases listeners' reliance on lexical knowledge and decreases their capacity to perceive phonetic detail. In the present study, we asked whether this effect is accounted for better at a lexical or a sublexical level. The former would imply that cognitive load directly affects lexical activation but not perceptual sensitivity; the latter would imply that increased lexical reliance under cognitive load is only a secondary consequence of imprecise or incomplete phonetic encoding. Using the phoneme restoration paradigm, we showed that perceptual sensitivity decreases (i.e., phoneme restoration increases) almost linearly with the effort involved in the concurrent visual task. However, cognitive load had only a minimal effect on the contribution of lexical information to phoneme restoration. We concluded that the locus of extrinsic cognitive load on the speech system is perceptual rather than lexical. Mechanisms by which cognitive load increases tolerance to acoustic imprecision and broadens phonemic categories were discussed.	\N	\N
24210355	The neurodevelopmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) has been associated with a social phenotype of hypersociability, non-social anxiety and an unusual attraction to faces. The current study uses eye tracking to explore attention allocation to emotionally expressive faces. Eye gaze and behavioural measures of anxiety and social reciprocity were investigated in adolescents and adults with WS when compared to typically developing individuals of comparable verbal mental age (VMA) and chronological age (CA). Results showed significant associations between high levels of behavioural anxiety and attention allocation away from the eye regions of threatening facial expressions in WS. The results challenge early claims of a unique attraction to the eyes in WS and suggest that individual differences in anxiety may mediate the allocation of attention to faces in WS.	\N	\N
24210745	The interpersonal theory of suicidal behavior proposes that fearlessness of death and physical pain insensitivity is a necessary requisite for self-inflicted lethal self-harm. Repeated experiences with painful and provocative events are supposed to cause an incremental increase in acquired capability. The present study examined whether playing a first-person shooter-game in contrast to a first-person racing game increases pain tolerance, a dimension of the acquired capability construct, and risk-taking behavior, a risk factor for developing acquired capability. N=81 male participants were randomly assigned to either play an action-shooter or a racing game before engaging in a game on risk-taking behavior and performing a cold pressor task (CPT). Participants exhibited higher pain tolerance after playing an action shooter game than after playing a racing game. Furthermore, playing an action shooter was generally associated with heightened risk-taking behavior. Group-differences were not attributable to the effects of the different types of games on self-reported mood and arousal. Overall these results indicate that action-shooter gaming alters pain tolerance and risk-taking behavior. Therefore, it may well be that long-term consumption of violent video games increases a person's capability to enact lethal self-harm.	\N	\N
24211372	Many theories of human sexual behavior assume that sexual stimuli obtain arousing properties through associative learning processes. It is widely accepted that classical conditioning contributes to the etiology of both normal and maladaptive human behaviors. Despite the hypothesized importance of basic learning processes in sexual behavior, research on classical conditioning of the sexual response in humans is scarce. In the present paper, animal studies and studies in humans on the role of pavlovian conditioning on sexual responses are reviewed. Animal research shows robust, direct effects of conditioning processes on partner- and place preference. On the contrast, the empirical research with humans in this area is limited and earlier studies within this field are plagued by methodological confounds. Although recent experimental demonstrations of human sexual conditioning are neither numerous nor robust, sexual arousal showed to be conditionable in both men and women. The present paper serves to highlight the major empirical findings and to renew the insight in how stimuli can acquire sexually arousing value. Hereby also related neurobiological processes in reward learning are discussed. Finally, the connections between animal and human research on the conditionability of sexual responses are discussed, and suggestions for future directions in human research are given.	\N	\N
24214215	Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to do something in the future, either in response to an event (event-based) or after a certain amount of time has elapsed (time-based). While the distinction between event- and time-based PM is widely acknowledged in the literature, little is known about the processes they share and those they do not. This is particularly true concerning their brain substrates, as almost all neuroimaging studies so far have focused on event-based PM. We proposed a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm assessing both event-based and time-based PM to 20 healthy young individuals. Analyses revealed that event- and time-based PM both induced activation in the posterior frontal and parietal cortices, and deactivation in the medial rostral prefrontal cortex. In addition, activation more specific to each condition, which may underlie differences in strategic monitoring, was highlighted. Thus, occipital areas were more activated during event-based PM, probably reflecting target-checking, while a network comprising the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the cuneus/precuneus and, to a lesser extent, the inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal gyrus, and the cerebellum, was more activated in time-based PM, which may reflect the involvement of time-estimation processes. These results confirm the allocation of attentional resources to the maintenance of intention for event-based and time-based PM, as well as the engagement of distinct mechanisms reflecting the monitoring strategies specific to each condition.	\N	\N
24215294	Even single words in isolation can evoke emotional reactions, but the mechanisms by which emotion is involved in automatic lexical processing are unclear. Previous studies using extremely similar materials and methods have yielded apparently incompatible patterns of results. In much previous work, however, words' emotional content is entangled with other non-emotional characteristics such as frequency of occurrence, familiarity and age of acquisition, all of which have potential consequences for lexical processing themselves. In the present study, the authors compare different models of emotion using the British Lexicon Project, a large-scale freely available lexical decision database. After controlling for the potentially confounding effects of non-emotional variables, a variety of statistical approaches revealed that emotional words, whether positive or negative, are processed faster than neutral words. This effect appears to be categorical rather than graded; is not modulated by emotional arousal; and is not limited to words explicitly referring to emotions. The authors suggest that emotional connotations facilitate processing due to the grounding of words' meanings in emotional experience.	\N	\N
24219022	People's ability to resist cognitive distraction is crucial in many situations. The present research examines individuals' resistance to attentional distraction under conditions of evaluative pressure. In a series of 4 studies, participants had to complete various attentional tasks while believing their intelligence was or was not under the scrutiny of an experimenter. Using a spatial cuing paradigm, Studies 1 through 3 demonstrated that feeling evaluated led participants to implement stronger feature-based attentional control, which resulted in more (or less) distraction when irrelevant information matched (did not match) the searched-for target. Study 4 ruled out the possibility that the above effects were due to voluntary shifts of attention and demonstrated that the control settings implemented under evaluative pressure resulted in stronger goal-contingent response priming. Thus, the way individuals relate to the task-the performance context in which they are-induces strong attentional selection biases. Altogether, the present findings highlight an overlooked form of top-down modulation of attention based on performance self-relevance. Implications for both the current models of attentional control and the current hypotheses on the impact of evaluative pressure on cognition, as well as the consequences for more complex performances, are discussed.	\N	\N
24219089	It has been suggested that individuals have an inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech, and that different acceptance of noise results in different hearing-aid (HA) use. The acceptable noise level (ANL) has been proposed for measurement of this property. It has been claimed that the ANL magnitude can predict hearing-aid use patterns. Many papers have been published reporting on different aspects of ANL, but none have challenged the predictive power of ANL. The purpose of this study was to discuss whether ANL can predict HA use and how more reliable ANL results can be obtained. Relevant literature regarding the ANL was found on Medline, Embase, and Google Scholar. Additional information was found as references in the included papers and through personal contacts, for instance when attending audiology conferences. Forty-five papers published in peer reviewed journals as well as a number of papers from trade journals, posters and oral presentations from audiology conventions. An inherent acceptance of noise in the presence of speech may exist, but no method for precise measurement of ANL is available. The ANL model for prediction of HA use has yet to be proven valid.	\N	\N
24229338	This study examined the impact of cognition on young children's ability to navigate a speech-generating device (SGD) with dynamic paging. Knowledge of which cognitive factors impact navigational skills could help clinicians select the most appropriate SGD for children who have complex communication needs. A total of 65 typically developing children aged 48-77 months were assessed using the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R) and the Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). Although significant correlations were found between the ability to navigate an SGD (using a taxonomic organization) and all cognitive factors except for cognitive flexibility, a stepwise linear regression revealed that sustained attention, categorization, and fluid reasoning were the most pragmatic set of factors to predict navigational skills. Future studies are needed to further understand the factors that impact children's navigational skills.	\N	\N
24231166	This article describes the relationship between expressive communication impairments and common challenging behaviors in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability. The communication challenges of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder/Intellectual Disability are described and several evidence-based intervention strategies are proposed to support communication so as to decrease challenging behaviors. Recommendations for practice are offered.	\N	\N
24231224	Individuals with chronic pain consider improved sleep to be one of the most important outcomes of treatment. Physical activity has been shown to have beneficial effects on sleep in the general population. Despite these findings, the physical activity-sleep relationship has not been directly examined in a sample of people with chronic pain. This study aimed to examine the association between objective daytime physical activity and subsequent objective sleep for individuals with chronic pain while controlling for pain and psychosocial variables. An observational, prospective, within-person study design was used. A clinical sample of 50 adults with chronic pain was recruited. Participation involved completing a demographic questionnaire followed by 5 days of data collection. Over this period, participants wore a triaxial accelerometer to monitor their daytime activity and sleep. Participants also carried a handheld computer that administered a questionnaire measuring pain, mood, catastrophizing, and stress 6 times throughout the day. The results demonstrated that higher fluctuations in daytime activity significantly predicted shorter sleep duration. Furthermore, higher mean daytime activity levels and a greater number of pain sites contributed significantly to the prediction of longer periods of wakefulness at night. The small sample size used in this study limits the generalizability of the findings. Missing data may have led to overestimations or underestimations of effect sizes, and additional factors that may be associated with sleep (eg, medication usage, environmental factors) were not measured. The results of this study suggest that engagement in high-intensity activity and high fluctuations in activity are associated with poorer sleep at night; hence, activity modulation may be a key treatment strategy to address sleep complaints in individuals with chronic pain.	\N	\N
24238471	Navigation without vision is a skill that is often employed in our daily lives, such as walking in the dark at night. Navigating without vision to a remembered target has previously been studied. However, little is known about the impact of age or obstacles on the attentional demands of a blind navigation task. This study examined the impacts of age and obstacles on reaction time (RT) and navigation precision during blind navigation in dual-task conditions. The aims were to determine the effects of age, obstacles, and auditory stimulus location on RT and navigation precision in a blind navigation task. Ten healthy young adults (24.5±2.5 years) and ten healthy older adults (69.5±2.9 years) participated in the study. Participants were asked to walk to a target located 8m ahead. In half the trials, the path was obstructed with hanging obstacles. Participants performed this task in the absence of vision, while executing a discrete RT task. Results demonstrated that older adults presented increased RT, linear distance travelled (LDT), and obstacle contact; that obstacle presence significantly increased RT compared to trials with no obstacles; and that an auditory stimulus emitted early versus late in the path increased LDT. Results suggest that the attentional demands of blind navigation are higher in older than young adults, as well as when obstacles are present. Furthermore, navigation precision is affected by age and when participants are distracted by the secondary task early in navigation, presumably because the secondary task interferes with path estimation.	\N	\N
24245500	Spatial symbols can guide attention to a specific location only when they convey information about both direction and distance. However, the spatial symbols that have been used in previous cuing studies only convey information about direction, but not distance. Consequently, previous studies have only demonstrated that spatial symbols can exert partial control over the guidance of attention to specific locations. The present study investigated whether spatial symbols can also exert a more complete form of control over the guidance of attention to specific locations by presenting symbolic cues that conveyed information about both direction and distance. The effects of each spatial dimension were isolated by varying the spatial validity of each dimension separately. Consistent with the notion of more complete control, the results of 4 experiments showed that observers routinely combined symbolic information about direction and distance to guide their attention to specific locations. Perhaps more importantly, the results also suggested that observers demonstrated greater expertise orienting in response to direction symbols, though this expertise was only observed when these symbols were both familiar and commonly used to orient attention in the outside world. These results extend current theories, and set a new standard for studying symbolic control.	\N	\N
24249815	Organophosphate exposures can affect children's neurodevelopment, possibly due to neurotoxicity induced by acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition, and may affect boys more than girls. We tested the hypothesis that lower AChE activity is associated with lower neurobehavioral development among children living in Ecuadorian floricultural communities. In 2008, we examined 307 children (age: 4-9 years; 52% male) and quantified AChE activity and neurodevelopment in 5 domains: attention/executive functioning, language, memory/learning, visuospatial processing, and sensorimotor (NEPSY-II test). Associations were adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics and height-for-age, flower worker cohabitation, and hemoglobin concentration. Mean ± standard deviation AChE activity was 3.14 ± 0.49 U/mL (similar for both genders). The range of scores among neurodevelopment subtests was 5.9 to 10.7 U (standard deviation: 2.6-4.9 U). Girls had a greater mean attention/executive functioning domain score than boys. In boys only, there were increased odds ratios of low (<9th percentile) neurodevelopment among those in the lowest tertile versus the highest tertile of AChE activity (odds ratios: total neurodevelopment: 5.14 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.84 to 31.48]; attention/executive functioning domain: 4.55 [95% CI: 1.19 to 17.38], memory/learning domain: 6.03 [95% CI: 1.17 to 31.05]) after adjustment for socioeconomic and demographic factors, height-for-age, and hemoglobin. Within these domains, attention, inhibition and long-term memory subtests were most affected. Low AChE activity was associated with deficits in neurodevelopment, particularly in attention, inhibition, and memory in boys but not in girls. These critical cognitive skills affect learning and academic performance. Added precautions regarding secondary occupational pesticide exposure would be prudent.	\N	\N
24259568	Attention, the prioritization of goal-relevant stimuli, and expectation, the modulation of stimulus processing by probabilistic context, represent the two main endogenous determinants of visual cognition. Neural selectivity in visual cortex is enhanced for both attended and expected stimuli, but the functional relationship between these mechanisms is poorly understood. Here, we adjudicated between two current hypotheses of how attention relates to predictive processing, namely, that attention either enhances or filters out perceptual prediction errors (PEs), the PE-promotion model versus the PE-suppression model. We acquired fMRI data from category-selective visual regions while human subjects viewed expected and unexpected stimuli that were either attended or unattended. Then, we trained multivariate neural pattern classifiers to discriminate expected from unexpected stimuli, depending on whether these stimuli had been attended or unattended. If attention promotes PEs, then this should increase the disparity of neural patterns associated with expected and unexpected stimuli, thus enhancing the classifier's ability to distinguish between the two. In contrast, if attention suppresses PEs, then this should reduce the disparity between neural signals for expected and unexpected percepts, thus impairing classifier performance. We demonstrate that attention greatly enhances a neural pattern classifier's ability to discriminate between expected and unexpected stimuli in a region- and stimulus category-specific fashion. These findings are incompatible with the PE-suppression model, but they strongly support the PE-promotion model, whereby attention increases the precision of prediction errors. Our results clarify the relationship between attention and expectation, casting attention as a mechanism for accelerating online error correction in predicting task-relevant visual inputs.	\N	\N
24281563	Very few studies have investigated the effects of individual disorder-specific treatment of social phobia (SP) in adolescents. The objective of this study was to compare the effects of individual cognitive therapy for SP, group cognitive behavioural therapy (CBTG) and attentional placebo (AP) among adolescents with a primary diagnosis of SP. A randomized controlled design was used, and a total of 279 adolescents were assessed. Fifty-seven adolescents, between 13 and 16 years old, were allocated to individual cognitive therapy, CBTG or AP. The participants were assessed before treatment, at the end of treatment and at a 12-month follow-up using both self-report and a semi-structured interview. The individual cognitive therapy showed significant reductions in symptoms, impairment and diagnostic criteria both at the end of treatment and at the 12-month follow-up. Compared with CBTG and AP, the individual cognitive therapy group demonstrated significantly greater effects on both symptom reduction and impairment. There were no significant differences between CBTG and AP. In a direct comparison between the most commonly used treatments for adolescent SP, we found that individual therapy was the most effective, yielding better effects than both CBTG and AP.	\N	\N
24292879	The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two 15-min naps on nurses who work at night in a three-shift system. Of the 15 nurses who were included as study subjects on a night shift, eight took two short naps (the Nap condition), and seven worked without taking a nap (the No-nap condition) during the night shift. We measured sublingual temperature and the bispectral index (BIS), obtained heart rate and heart rate variability measures from an electrocardiogram (ECG), and evaluated sleepiness and fatigue levels every hour using the Visual Analog Scale (VAS). Both subjective sleepiness and fatigue increased between 4:00 and 5:00, with no significant differences observed between the two groups. However, the low- to high-frequency ratio (LF/HF) in the Nap condition group was found to be significantly lower than in the No-nap condition group. Furthermore, a sudden, brief increase in HF values was observed in the No-nap condition group in the morning. The results of this study suggest that taking two short naps may effectively reduce tension and prevent a brief increase in HF values by suppressing sympathetic nervous activity in the morning.	\N	\N
24295123	Attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions and self-reported attentional control (AC) were analysed as predictors of the tendency to engage in dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Diminished attentional orienting predicted an increased tendency to engage in brooding rumination, and enhanced alertness predicted a greater chance of suppression, beyond trait anxiety and self-reported AC, which were not predictive of either rumination or suppression. This is the first study to show that some forms of dysfunctional emotion regulation are related to the attentional network functioning in emotionally neutral conditions. Results are discussed in relation to regulatory temperament and anxiety-related attentional biases literature.	\N	\N
24297128	CPAP therapy has remained the standard of care for the treatment of sleep apnea for nearly 4 decades. Its overall effectiveness, however, has been limited by incomplete adherence despite many efforts to improve comfort. Conventional alternative therapies include oral appliances and upper airway surgeries. Recently, several innovative alternatives to CPAP have been developed. These novel approaches include means to increase arousal thresholds, electrical nerve stimulation, oral vacuum devices, and nasal expiratory resistive devices. We will review the physiologic mechanisms and the current evidence for these novel treatments.	\N	\N
24307489	Psychological pain may be helpful in conceptualizing suicidal behavior, in that high motivation to avoid pain combined with painful feelings may contribute to an increased risk of suicide. However, no experimental study has tested this hypothesis. The aim of the present study is to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between anhedonia, pain avoidance motivation, and suicidal ideation. The sample comprised 40 depressed outpatients and 20 healthy control subjects. All participants completed the Beck Scale for Suicide Ideation (BSS), Beck Depression Inventory, Psychache Scale, Three-Dimensional Psychological Pain Scale, the monetary incentive delay (MID), and affective incentive delay (AID) tasks. Based on BSS scores, clinical participants were divided into high suicidal ideation (HSI) and low suicidal ideation (LSI) groups. In the AID task, the HSI group had longer response times (RTs) under the reward condition than those under the punishment condition (p = .002). The LSI and control groups had shorter RTs under the reward condition compared with those under the neural condition (p <.001 and p = .008, respectively). The LSI group also had shorter RTs under the reward condition than under the punishment condition (p = .003). Pain arousal (r = -.33, p <.01) and BSS scores were significantly negatively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and reward conditions. Pain avoidance (r = .35, p <.01) and BSS scores were positively correlated with differences in RTs between neutral and punishment conditions. The AID task was more sensitive than the MID task for the detection of participants' motivation in approaching hedonic experiences and avoiding pain. A suicidal mindset is manifested as decreased motivation to experience hedonia and increased motivation to avoid pain, which could be strong predictors of suicidal behavior.	\N	\N
24308752	Understanding the factors that contribute to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is critical for developing the most appropriate interventions for improving or maintaining the HRQOL in polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients. This study sought to determine the most significant predictors of the HRQOL in patients with PCOS. This was a cross-sectional study of 300 women with PCOS that was carried out in Kashan, Iran. A sample of women with PCOS was entered into the study and completed the following questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI), the Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale score, the modified polycystic ovary syndrome health-related quality of life questionnaire, the Female Sexual Function Index. Both direct and indirect relationships among clinical severity, psychological status, self-esteem, body image, and sexual function as independent predictors of HRQOL were examined using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. By using the SEM, we simultaneously test a number of possible hypotheses concerning the interrelations among the predictors of HRQOL in PCOS patients. In relation with severity of PCOS, reproductive history and menstrual status explained a high proportion of the variance of clinical variables (factor loading 0.37 and 0.34, respectively). The highest effect on HRQL was exerted by indirect effect of clinical factor (β = 0.90), self-esteem (β = 1.12), body image (β = 1.06), and sexual function (β = 0.26) that influenced negatively HRQOL. The infertility and menstrual domains were the most affected areas of HRQOL. In relation with sexual dysfunction, the most affected domains were desire and arousal. The highest effect of PCOS symptoms on HRQOL impairment among patients was exerted by self-esteem, body image, and sexual dysfunction. With regard to HRQOL in clinical routine, we conclude these mediating factors should be taken into consideration and adequately treated if present.	\N	\N
24308770	The present study addressed the ecological validity of the individual-focused experimental paradigm in sex research. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of partner presence vs. absence in the laboratory testing situation, and of manipulation of attentional focus, on genital and subjective sexual arousal of healthy women and men. Sexually functional heterosexual men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) and their partners participated in this study. During partner presence, the partner sat opposite to the participant; self-focused attention was experimentally manipulated by introducing, respectively, a semi-reflecting glass pane, and a wall-mounted camera. Perceived state self-focused attention and genital and subjective sexual arousal during presentation of audiovisual erotic film stimuli were assessed. Partner presence resulted in higher perceived self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.22) and lower genital responses to erotic stimulation (η(p)(2) = 0.21). The interaction of partner presence and increased self-focused attention differentially affected genital arousal in female and male participants (η(p)(2) = 0.38). The mean genital response in men was lower during private self-focus than during non-self-focus with the partner present but was higher during private self-focus with the the partner absent (η(p)(2) = 0.23). The genital response in women to public self-focus was lower than to private self-focus and to non-self-focus with their partner present (η(p)(2) = 0.36). With the partner absent, the genital response in women to private self-focus was lower than to non-self-focus (η(p)(2) = 0.23). Retrospective subjective arousal of women was higher with partner present (M = 3.2) than with partner absent (M = 2.9), whereas men reported higher retrospective subjective arousal with their partner absent (M = 3.5) than present (M = 3.1). These findings suggest that mere presence of the partner impacts the sexual response differentially in women and men. Enhancing the ecological validity of the individual-based laboratory paradigm for sex research warrants closer examination in future research.	\N	\N
24311058	The change blindness paradigm, in which participants often fail to notice substantial changes in a scene, is a popular tool for studying scene perception, visual memory, and the link between awareness and attention. Some of the most striking and popular examples of change blindness have been demonstrated with digital photographs of natural scenes; in most studies, however, much simpler displays, such as abstract stimuli or "free-floating" objects, are typically used. Although simple displays have undeniable advantages, natural scenes remain a very useful and attractive stimulus for change blindness research. To assist researchers interested in using natural-scene stimuli in change blindness experiments, we provide here a step-by-step tutorial on how to produce changes in natural-scene images with a freely available image-processing tool (GIMP). We explain how changes in a scene can be made by deleting objects or relocating them within the scene or by changing the color of an object, in just a few simple steps. We also explain how the physical properties of such changes can be analyzed using GIMP and MATLAB (a high-level scientific programming tool). Finally, we present an experiment confirming that scenes manipulated according to our guidelines are effective in inducing change blindness and demonstrating the relationship between change blindness and the physical properties of the change and inter-individual differences in performance measures. We expect that this tutorial will be useful for researchers interested in studying the mechanisms of change blindness, attention, or visual memory using natural scenes.	\N	\N
24321032	Subjects performed Sternberg-type memory recognition tasks (Sternberg paradigm) in four experiments. Category-instance names were used as learning and testing materials. Sternberg's original experiments demonstrated a linear relation between reaction time (RT) and memory-set size (MSS). A few later studies found no relation, and other studies found a nonlinear relation (logarithmic) between the two variables. These deviations were used as evidence undermining Sternberg's serial scan theory. This study identified two confounding variables in the fixed-set procedure of the paradigm (where multiple probes are presented at test for a learned memory set) that could generate a MSS RT function that was either flat or logarithmic rather than linearly increasing. These two confounding variables were task-switching cost and repetition priming. The former factor worked against smaller memory sets and in favour of larger sets whereas the latter factor worked in the opposite way. Results demonstrated that a null or a logarithmic RT-to-MSS relation could be the artefact of the combined effects of these two variables. The Sternberg paradigm has been used widely in memory research, and a thorough understanding of the subtle methodological pitfalls is crucial. It is suggested that a varied-set procedure (where only one probe is presented at test for a learned memory set) is a more contamination-free procedure for measuring the MSS effects, and that if a fixed-set procedure is used, it is worthwhile examining the RT function of the very first trials across the MSSs, which are presumably relatively free of contamination by the subsequent trials.	\N	\N
24333280	During free viewing visual search, observers often refixate the same locations several times before and after target detection is reported with a button press. We analyzed the rate of microsaccades in the sequence of refixations made during visual search and found two important components. One related to the visual content of the region being fixated; fixations on targets generate more microsaccades and more microsaccades are generated for those targets that are more difficult to disambiguate. The other empathizes non-visual decisional processes; fixations containing the button press generate more microsaccades than those made on the same target but without the button press. Pupil dilation during the same refixations reveals a similar modulation. We inferred that generic sympathetic arousal mechanisms are part of the articulated complex of perceptual processes governing fixational eye movements.	\N	\N
24345636	The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine the effects of emotion on memory for items and their associations. By presenting neutral and negative items with background contexts, Experiment 1 demonstrated that item memory was facilitated by emotional affect, whereas memory for an associated context was reduced. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated independently of the memoranda, by a threat of shock, whereby encoding trials occurred under conditions of threat or safety. Memory for context was equally impaired by the presence of negative affect, whether induced by threat of shock or a negative item, relative to retrieval of the context of a neutral item in safety. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with neutral and negative items as paired associates, including all combinations of neutral and negative items. The results showed both above effects: compared to a neutral item, memory for the associate of a negative item (a second item here, context in Experiments 1 and 2) is impaired, whereas retrieval of the item itself is enhanced. Our findings suggest that negative affect impairs associative memory while recognition of a negative item is enhanced. They support dual-processing models in which negative affect or stress impairs hippocampal-dependent associative memory while the storage of negative sensory/perceptual representations is spared or even strengthened.	\N	\N
24352689	Despite a growing acceptance that attention and memory interact, and that attention can be focused on an active internal mental representation (i.e., reflective attention), there has been a paucity of work focusing on reflective attention to 'sound objects' (i.e., mental representations of actual sound sources in the environment). Further research on the dynamic interactions between auditory attention and memory, as well as its degree of neuroplasticity, is important for understanding how sound objects are represented, maintained, and accessed in the brain. This knowledge can then guide the development of training programs to help individuals with attention and memory problems. This review article focuses on attention to memory with an emphasis on behavioral and neuroimaging studies that have begun to explore the mechanisms that mediate reflective attentional orienting in vision and more recently, in audition. Reflective attention refers to situations in which attention is oriented toward internal representations rather than focused on external stimuli. We propose four general principles underlying attention to short-term memory. Furthermore, we suggest that mechanisms involved in orienting attention to visual object representations may also apply for orienting attention to sound object representations.	\N	\N
24367795	Disturbed sleep is a common problem in both chronic pain and major depressive disorder (MDD). Moreover, many patients with chronic pain are depressed. To examine the effects of depression on the sleep behaviour of chronic pain patients by comparing patients who did or did not meet diagnostic criteria for MDD. A total of 60 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain underwent structured diagnostic interviews for MDD and insomnia, and completed questionnaires assessing pain severity, disability, sleep quality, beliefs and attitudes about sleep, and sleep hygiene. For four consecutive days, they also completed a sleep diary, and reported on sleep hygiene practices and presleep arousal. Thirty-three patients (55%) met diagnostic criteria for MDD, most of whom (n=32 [97%]) also fulfilled criteria for insomnia disorder. Insomnia was also common among patients without MDD (21 of 27&nbsp;[78%]). Participants with MDD had higher self-reports of pain, disability, dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, and, on a prospective basis, greater presleep arousal and poorer sleep hygiene. However, diary assessments of specific sleep parameters (eg, sleep onset latency, total sleep time, sleep efficiency) did not differ between the groups. Chronic pain patients with comorbid MDD exhibited more dysfunctional beliefs about sleep, poorer sleep hygiene practices and greater presleep arousal; however, diary-recorded sleep characteristics may not differ from those of patients without MDD. Chronic pain itself may disturb sleep so extensively that MDD introduces little additive effect. MDD in chronic pain may be related to the cognitive and behavioural aspects of insomnia, rather than to an incremental disturbance in the initiation or maintenance of sleep.	\N	\N
24368220	Visual marking refers to the phenomenon in which old items in a visual search are excluded from the search when new items appear in the visual field. Visual marking may result from inhibition of irrelevant information at the location of old items before new items appear. Moreover, sensitivity to increments in contrast at the old locations has been shown to be lower than that to increments at the new locations. We used equivalent noise analysis to examine whether the reduction in sensitivity is the result of an increase in internal noise or a decrease in calculation efficiency. Following a search in which reaction time was measured, participants were asked to indicate whether a Gaussian luminance blob was present. Parameters estimated from the threshold-versus-noise contrast function indicated that calculation efficiency at old locations was lower than that at new locations, and internal noise did not increase at old locations but rather decreased slightly. Thus, the reduction in sensitivity at old locations is attributable a decrease in calculation efficiency. These data suggest that an inhibitory template for visual marking may benefit visual search by diverting limited attentional resources, such as time and resolution, away from previewed locations and reserving them for the target search.	\N	\N
24372764	The sympathetic nervous system and children's sleep serve critical arousal regulation functions. Shortened pre-ejection period, a reliable indirect index of greater sympathetic nervous system activity, has been associated with reduced sleep duration and quality in adults, but limited evidence exists in children regarding associations between pre-ejection period and sleep. We examined relations between pre-ejection period reactivity in response to a laboratory-based stressor and multiple parameters of actigraphy-based sleep duration and quality in children. The sample included 123 boys and 112 girls [mean age = 11.31 years, standard deviation (SD) = 0.63 years]. Controlling for body mass index, sex and pre-ejection period baseline, increased sympathetic nervous system reactivity, indexed by a lower level of pre-ejection period during the challenge than the baseline, was associated with worse sleep quality indicated by lower sleep efficiency, greater sleep activity and greater long wake episodes. The findings add to a small literature on relations between sympathetic nervous system functioning and children's sleep, suggesting that poor sleep quality is related to dysregulation of this stress response system.	\N	\N
24374558	The visual system is exquisitely adapted to the task of extracting conceptual information from visual input with every new eye fixation, three or four times a second. Here we assess the minimum viewing time needed for visual comprehension, using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of a series of six or 12 pictures presented at between 13 and 80 ms per picture, with no interstimulus interval. Participants were to detect a picture specified by a name (e.g., smiling couple) that was given just before or immediately after the sequence. Detection improved with increasing duration and was better when the name was presented before the sequence, but performance was significantly above chance at all durations, whether the target was named before or only after the sequence. The results are consistent with feedforward models, in which an initial wave of neural activity through the ventral stream is sufficient to allow identification of a complex visual stimulus in a single forward pass. Although we discuss other explanations, the results suggest that neither reentrant processing from higher to lower levels nor advance information about the stimulus is necessary for the conscious detection of rapidly presented, complex visual information.	\N	\N
24379080	Unlike men, heterosexual women's genital arousal is gender nonspecific, such that heterosexual women show relatively similar genital arousal to sexual stimuli depicting men and women but typically report greater subjective arousal to male stimuli. Based on the ovulatory-shift hypothesis-that women show a mid-cycle shift in preferences towards more masculine features during peak fertility-we predicted that heterosexual women's genital and subjective arousal would be gender specific (more arousal towards male stimuli) during peak fertility. Twenty-two naturally-cycling heterosexual women were assessed during the follicular and luteal phases of their menstrual cycle to examine the role of menstrual cycle phase in gender specificity of genital and subjective sexual arousal. Menstrual cycle phase was confirmed with salivary hormone assays; phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced. Women's genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns were gender nonspecific, irrespective of cycle phase. Cycle phase at first testing session did not influence genital or subjective arousal in the second testing session. Similar to previous research, women's genital and subjective sexual arousal varied with cues of sexual activity, but neither genital nor subjective sexual arousal varied by gender cues, with the exception of masturbation stimuli, where women showed higher genital arousal to the stimuli depicting male compared to female actors. These data suggest that menstrual cycle phase does not influence the gender specificity of heterosexual women's genital and subjective sexual arousal.	\N	\N
24382820	This study examined correlations between surgical recommendations based on either drug-induced sleep endoscopy (DISE) or common awake examination methods in patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS). Prospective, blinded, clinical trial at a university hospital. An otorhinolaryngologist designed surgical plans for patients with OSAS after clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, the Müller maneuver, and Friedman staging. A second otorhinolaryngologist blinded to the previous plans made surgical recommendations after DISE. A third person tested agreement between the two sets of plans using Cohen's kappa statistic and the chi-squared test. One hundred and sixty-two patients (15 females, 147 males) completed the protocol. Good correlation was observed between DISE and Friedman staging regarding recommendations for isolated oropharyngeal or multilevel surgery (kappa = 0.61). Correlations between DISE and clinical examination, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver regarding surgical procedures on specific structures contributing to upper airway obstruction ranged from fair for velum/tonsil surgery (k = 0.41-0.60) to poor (k = 0.01-0.20) for tongue-base, lateral pharyngeal wall, and epiglottal surgery. The most informative value was DISE versus clinical evaluation, lateral cephalometry, and the Müller maneuver, which changed surgical recommendations concerning the structures contributing to hypopharyngeal or laryngeal obstruction in > 40% of patients. Our results indicate that DISE provides more information about the anatomical locations and pattern of obstruction, particularly regarding the specific structures contributing to hypopharyngeal and laryngeal obstruction. DISE changes surgical decision making compared to awake evaluation methods.	\N	\N
24387832	The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of intention to fall asleep on sleep quality in good sleepers using polysomnographic and subjective nap parameters. We hypothesized that high intention to sleep would lead to arousal, worsening sleep quality. A counterbalanced 2 × 2 experimental design with one intra-individual (neutral versus motivating instruction) and one inter-individual (instruction sequence) variable was used. Thirty-three good sleepers (22 females; mean age: 24.1 ± 8.4 years) each attended two 1-h daytime polysomnographic recording sessions in the laboratory. When providing motivating instruction, the experimenter insisted on the importance of falling asleep as quickly as possible and promised a financial reward. Compared with neutral instruction, motivating instruction was associated with increased waking after sleep onset, number of awakenings and arousal index during napping. No relationship between instruction and subjective nap appraisal was found. The effect of high intention on sleep fragmentation remained significant after controlling for habitual napping, depression, anxiety and sleepiness. Thus, our findings suggest that high intention to fall asleep worsened sleep quality, especially in terms of sleep fragmentation, in good sleepers.	\N	\N
24390823	Attention can modulate processing of visual input according to task-relevant features, even as early as approximately 100 ms after stimulus presentation. In the present study, event-related potential and behavioral data revealed that inhibition of distractor features, rather than activation of target features, is the primary driver of early feature-based selection in human observers. This discovery of inhibition consistent with task goals during early visual processing suggests that inhibition plays a much larger role at an earlier stage of target selection than previously recognized. It also highlights the importance of understanding the role of inhibition (in addition to activation) in attention.	\N	\N
24405496	To assess cognitive function in children and adolescents presenting with acute conversion symptoms. Fifty-seven participants aged 8.5-18 years (41 girls and 16 boys) with conversion symptoms and 57 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed the IntegNeuro neurocognitive battery, an estimate of intelligence, and self-report measures of subjective emotional distress. Participants with conversion symptoms showed poorer performance within attention, executive function, and memory domains. Poorer performance was reflected in more errors on specific tests: Switching of Attention (t(79) = 2.17, p = .03); Verbal Interference (t(72) = 2.64, p = .01); Go/No-Go (t(73) = 2.20, p = .03); Memory Recall and Verbal Learning (interference errors for memory recall; t(61) = 3.13, p < .01); and short-delay recall (t(75) = 2.05, p < .01) and long-delay recall (t(62) = 2.24, p = .03). Poorer performance was also reflected in a reduced span of working memory on the Digit Span Test for both forward recall span (t(103) = -3.64, p < .001) and backward recall span (t(100) = -3.22, p < .01). There was no difference between participants and controls on IQ estimate (t(94) = -589, p = .56), and there was no correlation between cognitive function and perceived distress. Children and adolescents with acute conversion symptoms have a reduced capacity to manipulate and retain information, to block interfering information, and to inhibit responses, all of which are required for effective attention, executive function, and memory.	\N	\N
24411524	The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that dual-hemisphere transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) could improve performance in a tactile spatial discriminative task, compared with uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS. Nine healthy adults participated in this double-blind, sham-controlled, and cross-over design study. The performance in a grating orientation task (GOT) in the right index finger was evaluated before, during, immediately after and 30min after the dual-hemisphere, uni-hemisphere (1mA, 20min), or sham tDCS (1mA, 30s) over S1. In the dual-hemisphere and sham conditions, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the right S1. In the uni-hemisphere condition, anodal tDCS was applied over the left S1, and cathodal tDCS was applied over the contralateral supraorbital front. The percentage of correct responses on the GOT during dual-hemisphere tDCS was significantly higher than that in the uni-hemisphere or sham tDCS conditions when the grating width was set to 0.75mm (all p<0.05). Dual-hemisphere tDCS over S1 improved performance in a tactile spatial discrimination task in healthy volunteers. Dual-hemisphere tDCS may be a useful strategy to improve sensory function in patients with sensory dysfunctions.	\N	\N
24411652	The main objective was to explore early-age conditions associated to Substance Use Disorders (SUD) in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); secondly, to determine which of those conditions are specific to ADHD subjects; and finally, to compare ADHD and non-ADHD subjects in terms of SUD lifetime prevalence and professional, social and personal adjustment. Comparison between ADHD adults with (n=236) and without lifetime SUD (n=309) regarding clinical characteristics of ADHD, externalization disorders, temperamental traits, environmental factors, academic history and family psychiatric history; secondly, ADHD subjects were compared to a non-ADHD group (n=177) concerning those variables. The following variables were found to be positively associated to SUD in ADHD subjects: ADHD severity, CD and ODD comorbidities, temperamental characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone" and "frequent temper tantrums"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school", family history of SUD and ADHD, and male gender; ADHD inattentive subtype and "fearful" were inversely associated to SUD. From those variables, "frequent temper tantrums" was also associated to SUD in non-ADHD subjects. ADHD subjects had higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment than non-ADHD subjects. Findings suggest a significant association between ADHD, SUD and early-age conditions, such as CD and ODD comorbidity; other variables from childhood, namely, ADHD subtype, temper characteristics ("fearful", "accident prone"), "sexual abuse", "be suspended from school" and family history of ADHD are associated to SUD in ADHD subjects, but not in non-ADHD subjects. Moreover, this study confirms both the higher prevalence of lifetime SUD and greater professional, social and personal impairment in ADHD subjects than in non-ADHD subjects.	\N	\N
24415407	We present the German adaptation of the Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang in Technical Report No. C-1. Gainsville: University of Florida, Center for Research in Psychophysiology). A total of 1,003 Words-German translations of the ANEW material-were rated on a total of six dimensions: The classic ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance (as in the ANEW corpus) were extended with additional arousal ratings using a slightly different scale (see BAWL: Võ et al. in Behavior Research Methods 41: 531-538, 2009; Võ, Jacobs, & Conrad in Behavior Research Methods 38: 606-609, 2006), along with ratings of imageability and potency. Measures of several objective psycholinguistic variables (different types of word frequency counts, grammatical class, number of letters, number of syllables, and number of orthographic neighbors) for the words were also added, so as to further facilitate the use of this new database in psycholinguistic research. These norms can be downloaded as supplemental materials with this article.	\N	\N
24422248	Patients with extinction fail to report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus, and patients with unilateral neglect fail to report a contralesional stimulus even when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. Whereas extinction and neglect are common following stroke, the related phenomenon of anti-extinction is rare--there are four cases of anti-extinction in the literature, and all four cases demonstrated anti-extinction in the visual modality. Patients with anti-extinction do report a contralesional stimulus when it is presented at the same time as an ipsilesional stimulus; but, like patients with neglect, they fail to report a contralesional stimulus when there is no competing ipsilesional stimulus. We present the first case ofanti-extinction in the tactile modality.	\N	\N
24427146	Researchers studying the emotional impact of music have not traditionally been concerned with the principled relationship between form and function in evolved animal signals. The acoustic structure of musical forms is related in important ways to emotion perception, and thus research on non-human animal vocalizations is relevant for understanding emotion in music. Musical behavior occurs in cultural contexts that include many other coordinated activities which mark group identity, and can allow people to communicate within and between social alliances. The emotional impact of music might be best understood as a proximate mechanism serving an ultimately social function. Recent work reveals intimate connections between properties of certain animal signals and evocative aspects of human music, including (1) examinations of the role of nonlinearities (e.g., broadband noise) in non-human animal vocalizations, and the analogous production and perception of these features in human music, and (2) an analysis of group musical performances and possible relationships to non-human animal chorusing and emotional contagion effects. Communicative features in music are likely due primarily to evolutionary by-products of phylogenetically older, but still intact communication systems. But in some cases, such as the coordinated rhythmic sounds produced by groups of musicians, our appreciation and emotional engagement might be driven by an adaptive social signaling system. Future empirical work should examine human musical behavior through the comparative lens of behavioral ecology and an adaptationist cognitive science. By this view, particular coordinated sound combinations generated by musicians exploit evolved perceptual response biases - many shared across species - and proliferate through cultural evolutionary processes.	\N	\N
24448520	Contextual cueing reflects a memory-based attentional guidance process that develops through repeated exposure to displays in which a target location has been consistently paired with a specific context. In two experiments, we compared 20 younger children's (6-7 years old), 20 older children's (9-10 years old), and 20 young adults' (18-21 years old) abilities to acquire contextual cueing effects from displays in which half of the distracters predicted the location of the target and half did not. Across experiments, we varied the similarity between the predictive and nonpredictive distracters and the target. In Experiment 1, the predictive distracters were visually similar to the target and dissimilar from the nonpredictive distracters. In Experiment 2, the nonpredictive distracters were also similar to the target and predictive distracters. All three age groups exhibited contextual cueing in Experiment 1, although the effect was not as strong for the younger children relative to older children and adults. All participants exhibited weaker contextual cueing effects in Experiment 2, with the younger children not exhibiting significant contextual cueing at all. Apparently, when search processes could not be guided to the predictive distracters on the basis of salient stimulus features, younger children in particular experienced difficulty in implicitly identifying and using aspects of the context to facilitate with the acquisition of contextual cueing effects.	\N	\N
24451416	Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI) are common, but their outcomes are not very well known. A prospective study was conducted in Annecy hospital, France (CHRA), to assess the incidence of disorders 6 months after the injury and to identify risk factors for persistent disorders. All patients admitted to the emergency department after a mild brain injury between February 2006 and July 2007 were included. They were contacted by telephone 6 months later to detect (by questionnaire) the presence of persistent disorders. Patients reporting disorders were referred to the l ocal brain injury centre for a follow-up check-up. Ninety three of the 795 patients contacted reported disorders: memory disorders (80%), sleep disorders (79%), headaches (65%), irritability (64%), speech disorders (64%) and concentration disorders (62%). Disorders at 6 months were independently associated with age, female gender, presence of headache at the initial examination and CT scan performed in the emergency department. The disorders reported in this study were consistent with the results of previous studies. As these disorders are usually nonspecific, a case-control study or an exposed-unexposed study would be necessary to determine whether or not these disorders are linked to mTBI.	\N	\N
24462326	To assess sexual function among women via self-evaluation of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) and to determine risk factors for FSD among Korean women. A preliminary questionnaire-based study in Ansan, Korea, enrolled 935 women between January and December 2010. Participants completed the Female Sexual Function Index and a self-administered survey. Participants were divided into 2 groups: in the recognized group (RG), women were aware of their sexual problems; in the unrecognized group (URG), women were not. The prevalence of FSD was 46.1% (n=431). The prevalence of recognized FSD was 21.5% (n=201), whereas that of unrecognized FSD was 24.6% (n=230) Younger women showed a significantly more positive attitude toward sex compared with older individuals (P<0.001). Sexual desire, sexual arousal, dyspareunia, lubrication, and sexual satisfaction were factors of sexual dysfunction in the RG. In the URG, sexual arousal, sexual desire, orgasm, dyspareunia, and sexual satisfaction were identified as significant factors. Women in the RG had positive attitudes toward sex, whereas those in the URG had negative attitudes. Women who were unsatisfied with their sexual life did not express a need for treatment. The sociocultural background of Korean women should be considered in the diagnosis and treatment of FSD.	\N	\N
24462384	The standard of care for pediatric patients with ependymoma involves postoperative radiation therapy. Prior research suggests that conformal radiation therapy (CRT) is associated with relative sparing of cognitive and academic functioning, but little is known about the effect of CRT on emotional and behavioral functioning. A total of 113 patients with pediatric ependymoma underwent CRT using photons as part of their enrollment on an institutional trial. Patients completed annual evaluations of neurocognitive functioning during the first 5 years after CRT. Emotional and behavioral functioning was assessed via the Child Behavior Checklist. Before CRT, emotional and behavioral functioning were commensurate with those of the normative population and within normal limits. After 5 years, means remained within normal limits but were significantly below the normative mean. Linear mixed models revealed a significant increase in attention problems over time. These problems were associated with age at diagnosis/CRT, tumor location, and extent of resection. A higher-than-expected incidence of school problems was present at all assessment points after baseline. The use of photon CRT for ependymoma is associated with relatively stable emotional and behavioral functioning during the first 5 years after treatment. The exception is an increase in attention problems. Results suggest that intervening earlier in the survivorship period-during the first year posttreatment-may be beneficial.	\N	\N
24473941	This internet-based study provided descriptive information and exploratory analyses on 1,795 male and 139 female members of the Adult Baby/Diaper Lover (ABDL) community. Based on prior research, some research questions focused on the degree to which ABDL behavior was associated with negative mood states, parental relationships, and attachment style. Based on clinical experience, a second research question focused on discerning two possible subgroups within the ABDL community: persons focused on role play behavior and persons who were primarily interested in sexual arousal in their ABDL behavior. The results showed modest support for the former research questions, but notable support for the last research question. Because of some overlap between the two hypothesized subgroups, additional subgroups may exist. Males in the ABDL community identified their ABDL interests earlier than females and these males may be more focused on sexual aspects of ABDL practices. Both males and females perceived being dominated as important in their ABDL behavior. Most participants were comfortable with their ABDL behavior and reported few problems. ABDL behavior may represent a sexual subculture that is not problematic for most of its participants.	\N	\N
24475313	Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to a motion illusion in which a flash at one end of a bar prior to the bar's instantaneous presentation or removal results in the percept of motion. While some theories attribute the origin of ILM to attention or early perceptual mechanisms, others have proposed that ILM results from impletion mechanisms that reinterpret the static bar as one in motion. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined participants while they made decisions about the direction of motion in which a bar appeared to be removed. Preceding the instantaneous removal of the bar with a flash at one end resulted in a motion percept away from the flash. If this flash and the bar's removal overlapped in time, it appeared that the bar was removed towards the flash (reverse ILM). Independent of the motion type, brain responses indicated activations in areas associated with motion (MT+), endogenous and exogenous attention (intraparietal sulcus, frontal eye fields, and ventral frontal cortex), and response selection (ACC). ILM was associated with lower percept scores and higher activations in ACC relative to real motion, but no differences in shape-selective areas emerged. This pattern of brain activation is consistent with the attentional gradient model or bottom-up accounts of ILM in preference to impletion.	\N	\N
24490947	The human visual system is continuously confronted with dynamic visual input. One challenge that the visual system must solve, therefore, is recognizing when two distinct objects have appeared at a given location despite their brief presentation and rapid succession, that is, temporal object segmentation. Here we examined the role of magnocellular neurons in this process. We measured temporal object segmentation via object substitution masking (OSM), which reflects the failure to distinguish the target and mask as distinct objects through time. We isolated the selective role of magnocellular neurons by comparing performance under conditions of pulsed luminance pedestals, which are designed to saturate the magnocellular response, with that in a steady-pedestal condition that leaves both magnocellular and parvocellular channels available to process the target. Across two experiments, we found that OSM magnitude was enhanced under pulsed-pedestal conditions, in which the magnocellular response was impaired. This indicates that magnocellular neurons contribute to temporal object segmentation. Given that temporal object segmentation has consequences for which stimuli are consciously perceived, this demonstrates a functional mechanism via which magnocellular neurons contribute to determining the contents conscious perception. Implications for models of specialization of dorsal and ventral cortical streams are discussed.	\N	\N
24492883	A physiologically based mathematical model of sleep-wake cycles is used to examine the effects of shift rotation interval (RI) (i.e., the number of days spent on each shift) on sleepiness and circadian dynamics on forward rotating 3-shift schedules. The effects of the schedule start time on the mean shift sleepiness are also demonstrated but are weak compared to the effects of RI. The dynamics are studied for a parameter set adjusted to match a most common natural sleep pattern (i.e., sleep between 0000 and 0800) and for common light conditions (i.e., 350 lux of shift lighting, 200 lux of daylight, 100 lux of artificial lighting during nighttime, and 0 lux during sleep). Mean shift sleepiness on a rotating schedule is found to increase with RI, reach maximum at intermediate RI=6 d, and then decrease. Complete entrainment to shifts within the schedules is not achieved at RI≤10 d. However, circadian oscillations synchronize to the rotation cycles, with RI=1,2 d and RI≥6 d demonstrating regular periodic changes of the circadian rhythm. At rapid rotation, circadian phase stays within a small 4-h interval, whereas slow rotation leads to around-the-clock transitions of the circadian phase with constantly delayed sleep times. Schedules with RI=3-5 d are not able to entrain the circadian rhythms, even in the absence of external circadian disturbances like social commitments and days off. To understand the circadian dynamics on the rotating shift schedules, a shift response map is developed, showing the direction of circadian change (i.e., delay or advance) depending on the relation between the shift start time and actual circadian phase. The map predicts that the un-entrained dynamics come from multiple transitions between advance and delay behavior on the shifts in the schedules. These are primarily caused by the imbalance between the amount of delay and advance on the different shift types within the schedule. Finally, it is argued that shift response maps can aid in the development of shift schedules with desired circadian characteristics.	\N	\N
24493837	Numerous studies have investigated the neural substrates supporting cognitive reappraisal, identifying the importance of cognitive control processes implemented by prefrontal cortex (PFC). This study examined how valence and attention affect the processes used for cognitive reappraisal by asking participants to passively view or to cognitively reappraise positive and negative images with full or divided attention. When participants simply viewed these images, results revealed few effects of valence or attention. However, when participants engaged in reappraisal, there was a robust effect of valence, with the reappraisal of negative relative to positive images associated with more widespread activation, including within regions of medial and lateral PFC. There also was an effect of attention, with more lateral PFC recruitment when regulating with full attention and more medial PFC recruitment when regulating with divided attention. Within two regions of medial PFC and one region of ventrolateral PFC, there was an interaction between valence and attention: in these regions, divided attention reduced activity during reappraisal of positive but not negative images. Critically, participants continued to report reappraisal success even during the Divided Attention condition. These results suggest multiple routes to successful cognitive reappraisal, depending upon image valence and the availability of attentional resources.	\N	\N
24498297	Cognitive impairment is associated with a negative prognosis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as well as with clinical specificity. We investigate neuropsychological function in ALS patients without known genetic mutations in a Korean tertiary clinic. Three hundred and eighteen patients were enrolled in a prospective longitudinal cohort from September 2008 to February 2012. At the time of diagnosis of sporadic ALS, we carried out genetic and comprehensive neuropsychological tests on all patients, and collected demographic and clinical characteristics. Six cognitive domains, namely executive function, attention, language, calculation, visuospatial function and memory were evaluated. ANOVA and t-tests were used to assess differences in clinical characteristics and neuropsychological parameters between sporadic ALS patients. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazard model were used for survival analysis. One hundred and sixty-six patients were categorized into five subtypes: normal cognition (ALS pure), cognitive impairment (ALSci), behavioral impairment (ALSbi), frontotemporal dementia (ALS-FTD), and other types of dementia. Seventy patients (70/166, 42.2%) were cognitively or behaviorally impaired. Among the impaired patients, eight (8/166, 4.8%) had FTD-type dementia and one (1/166, 0.6%) was Alzheimer's disease-type. The ALS patients with cognitive impairment (ALSci) and with FTD (ALS-FTD) were more severely impaired in executive function, attention, language and memory than the cognitively intact ALS patients (ALS pure). In a survival analysis, ALSci (β = 1.925, p = 0.025) and ALS-FTD groups (β = 4.150, p = 0.019) tended to have shorter survival than the ALS pure group. About half of ALS patients without known genetic variation have cognitive or behavioral impairment. ALS patients with cognitive abnormalities, especially FTD, have a poorer prognosis than those without cognitive impairment. In neuropsychological profiling, executive tasks were effective in identifying cognitive impairment in the ALS patients. It would be useful for clinicians to classify ALS according to neuropsychological profiles, and screen for subtle cognitive impairment.	\N	\N
24512247	Emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are viewed as important cognitive processes underlying symptoms of depression. To date, there is a limited understanding of the interplay among these processing biases. This study tested the dependence of memory on depression-related biases in attention and interpretation. Subclinically depressed and nondepressed participants completed a computerized version of the scrambled sentences test (measuring interpretation bias) while their eye movements were recorded (measuring attention bias). This task was followed by an incidental free recall test of previously constructed interpretations (measuring memory bias). Path analysis revealed a good fit for the model in which selective orienting of attention was associated with interpretation bias, which in turn was associated with a congruent bias in memory. Also, a good fit was observed for a path model in which biases in the maintenance of attention and interpretation were associated with memory bias. Both path models attained a superior fit compared with path models without the theorized functional relations among processing biases. These findings enhance understanding of how mechanisms of attention and interpretation regulate what is remembered. As such, they offer support for the combined cognitive biases hypothesis or the notion that emotionally biased cognitive processes are not isolated mechanisms but instead influence each other. Implications for theoretical models and emotion regulation across the spectrum of depressive symptoms are discussed.	\N	\N
24534417	Low sexual desire is the most common sexual complaint in women. As a result, many women suffer from sexual dissatisfaction which often negatively interferes with their quality of life. These complaints have been classified as the condition Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), and have recently been merged with the condition Female Sexual Arousal Disorder (FSAD) into the diagnosis Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (FSIAD) in the DSM-5. To date, no drug treatment approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)/European Medicines Agency (EMA) is available to treat women with HSDD/FSIAD. As a result, there is an unmet need for a drug treatment for HSDD/FSIAD. In our search for an adequate treatment we followed a different approach compared to other pharmaceutical companies. Based on a personalized sexual medicine approach we proposed that different mechanisms cause low sexual desire in women, namely an insensitive system for sexual cues or dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms. Subsequently we developed two new on-demand drug treatments for women with HSDD/FSIAD based on these different causal mechanisms. One treatment (testosterone combined with a phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitor) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to a relatively insensitive system for sexual cues, while the second treatment (testosterone combined with a 5-HT₁A receptor agonist) has been developed for women with HSDD/FSIAD due to dysfunctional activation of sexual inhibitory mechanisms.	\N	\N
24547790	Mental arithmetic shows systematic spatial biases. The association between numbers and space is well documented, but it is unknown whether arithmetic operation signs also have spatial associations and whether or not they contribute to spatial biases found in arithmetic. Adult participants classified plus and minus signs with left and right button presses under two counterbalanced response rules. Results from two experiments showed that spatially congruent responses (i.e., right-side responses for the plus sign and left-side responses for the minus sign) were responded to faster than spatially incongruent ones (i.e., left-side responses for the plus sign and right-side responses for the minus sign). We also report correlations between this novel operation sign spatial association (OSSA) effect and other spatial biases in number processing. In a control experiment with no explicit processing requirements for the operation signs there were no sign-related spatial biases. Overall, the results suggest that (a) arithmetic operation signs can evoke spatial associations (OSSA), (b) experience with arithmetic operations probably underlies the OSSA, and (c) the OSSA only partially contributes to spatial biases in arithmetic.	\N	\N
24551458	The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, "short-term plasticity", might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50 ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100 ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300 ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance.	\N	\N
24553279	The purpose of this study was to identify factors influencing behavior guidance technique utilization among practicing pediatric dentists and explore potential barriers to the incorporation of previously unused techniques. The data for this study were obtained from a web-based survey containing 15 multiple choice questions concerning the practitioners' past, current, and anticipated future behavior guidance technique utilization. Most respondents received hands-on training in 10 of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry behavior guidance techniques. The type of training was associated with the practitioners' level of comfort using a given technique upon graduation and with the current frequency of technique utilization. Residency type impacted hands-on behavior guidance training, with 39 percent of respondents reporting no intravenous sedation training. The type of practice was associated with the frequency of behavior guidance technique utilization, as was graduation decade. Currently practicing dentists cited legal concerns, parental acceptance to change, and limited resources as perceived obstacles in the incorporation of new techniques. Behavior guidance technique selection and utilization among practicing pediatric dentists was influenced by multiple factors, including advanced education training, residency type, graduation decade, and practice type. Obstacles to the incorporation of previously unused techniques appear to be multifactorial.	\N	\N
24561999	Object-based theories of attention propose that the selection of an object's feature leads to the rapid selection of all other constituent features, even those that are task irrelevant. We used magnetoencephalographic recordings to examine the timing and sequencing of neural activity patterns in feature-specific cortical areas as human subjects performed an object-based attention task. Subjects attended to one of two superimposed moving dot arrays that were perceived as transparent surfaces on the basis either of color or speed of motion. When surface motion was attended, the magnetoencephalographic waveforms showed enhanced activity in the motion-specific cortical area starting at ∼ 150 ms after motion onset, followed after ∼ 60 ms by enhanced activity in the color-specific area. When surface color was attended, this temporal sequence was reversed. This rapid sequential activation of the relevant and irrelevant feature modules provides a neural basis for the binding of an object's features into a unitary perceptual experience.	\N	\N
24563397	The electroencephalogram (EEG) of wakefulness, sleep, and anaesthesia changes during childhood. Especially marked are the changes during the first year of life. In the second half of the first year, in most children EEG stages can be classified visually and automatically during anaesthesia which are similar to those observed in older children. In the first months of life, the EEG of anaesthesia is less differentiated, but it is still useful in patient monitoring during anaesthesia.	\N	\N
24571815	The last few years have seen much research on girls with conduct disorder (CD). This article summarizes the gender-specific data regarding prevalence, differences with respect to symptomatology (e.g., subtypes of aggression, callous-unemotional (cu)-traits), and it presents data on the autonomic and neuroendocrine stress system as well as genetic, neurocognitive, and neuroimaging data. Differences in the impact of environmental factors on boys and girls for the development of CD are discussed. Taken together, the data indicate that there is great overlap in symptomatology, personality traits, and neurobiological aberrations in girls and boys with CD. Since fewer girls than boys exhibit CD symptomatology, further investigations on CD in girls might help to identify resilience factors that could improve future therapeutic interventions.	\N	\N
24577097	The present study is an open-label extension (OLE) aimed at evaluating the effect of 100 mg/day of phosphatidylserine enriched with docosahexaenoic acid (PS-DHA) on cognitive performance in nondemented elderly individuals with memory complaints. From the participants who completed the core study, 122 continued with a 15-week OLE. Efficacy was assessed using a computerized tool and the Clinical Global Impression of Change (CGI-C) rating scale. A significant improvement in sustained attention and memory recognition was observed in the PS-DHA naïve group, while the PS-DHA continuers maintained their cognitive status. Additionally, a significant improvement in CGI-C was observed in the naïve group. The results demonstrate that consumption of 100 mg/day of PS-DHA might be associated with improving or maintaining cognitive status in elderly subjects with memory complaints.	\N	\N
24578016	Anxious youth have shown altered behavioral performance on the dot-probe task, but neural activation patterns provoked by the task remain poorly understood. In particular, neural mechanisms of threat disengagement, a clinically relevant construct, have been inadequately explored. During fMRI acquisition, 121 youth (ages 9-13; 90 with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, and/or Social Phobia; 31 nonanxious controls) completed a dot-probe task, which required participants to identify the location of a dot replacing either a neutral or fearful face in a pair containing both faces. We assessed neural substrates of threat disengagement by comparing congruent trials (in which the dot replaces the fearful face) to incongruent trials (in which the dot replaces the neutral face). Across subjects, decreased rostrodorsal anterior cingulate cortex (rdACC) activity was observed specifically during incongruent trials. Nonanxious youth showed a convergent pattern in bilateral parahippocampal and hippocampal regions, whereas anxious youth showed an opposing pattern in these limbic areas, suggesting less integration of response across cortical and limbic areas relevant to threat appraisal. Reduced functional connectivity between rdACC and left parahippocampus/hippocampus was associated with greater anxiety. In the largest dot-probe fMRI sample to date, both anxious and nonanxious youth showed a neural pattern consistent with successful disengagement of threat reactivity in the rdACC. However, anxious youth showed evidence of abnormal disengagement in bilateral parahippocampal/hippocampal clusters when attention was directed away from threat. Early interventions targeting neural mechanisms of threat disengagement may be beneficial, for example, by increasing integration across rdACC and limbic regions.	\N	\N
24578091	It is often the case that stimuli (or aspects of a stimulus) are referred to as being "task-irrelevant." Here, we recount where this label originated and argue that the use of this label is at odds with the concept of "relevance" that has arisen in the contingent-capture literature. This is not merely a matter of labels, but a matter of inference: When people describe a flanker stimulus as being "task-irrelevant," they may be (and sometimes are) tempted to infer that the conditions that were studied in the flanker task generalize to other tasks and other types of stimuli. Here, we show that this generalization is not warranted. The flanker effect exists not because attention has failed at selecting only the target from the display, but rather, the effect arises precisely because attention succeeded at selecting target-like (i.e., attentionally relevant) stimuli from the display. As a result, the flanker effect should not be used to infer how stimuli that are entirely unrelated to a participant's main task would be processed. We propose the use of a new terminology to replace this potentially misleading label.	\N	\N
24587578	To compare sleep microstructure (cyclic alternating pattern, CAP) characteristics in otherwise healthy overweight (OW) and normal weight (NW) children. Polysomnographic cross-sectional study. Sleep laboratory. Fifty-eight (26 NW and 32 OW) 10-year-old children. N/A. Participants were part of a longitudinal study beginning in infancy and free of sleep disorders. Groups were based on body-mass index (BMI) z-score. From polysomnographic overnight recordings, sleep-waking states were scored according to international criteria. CAP analysis was performed visually during NREM sleep. Conventional sleep parameters were similar between groups. BMI was positively related to CAP rate and CAP sequences but inversely related to CAP B phase duration. Differences between groups were confined to slow-wave sleep (SWS), with OW children showing higher CAP rate, CAP cycles, and CAP A1 number and index and shorter CAP cycles and B phase duration. They also showed more CAP class intervals shorter than 30 s, and a suggestive trend for fewer intervals longer than 30 s. Cyclic alternating pattern characteristics in children related to nutritional status and were altered in overweight subjects during slow-wave sleep. We suggest that the more frequent oscillatory pattern of electroencephalographic slow activity in overweight subjects might reflect less stable slow-wave sleep episodes.	\N	\N
24595540	Awake craniotomy is a valuable procedure since it allows brain mapping and live monitoring of eloquent brain functions. The advantage of minimizing resource utilization is also emphasized by some physicians in North America. Data on how well an awake craniotomy is tolerated by patients and how much stress it creates is available from different studies, but this topic has not consequently been summarized in a review of the available literature. Therefore, it is the purpose of this review to shed more light on the still controversially discussed aspect of an awake craniotomy. We reviewed the available English literature published until December 2013 searching for studies that investigated patients' responses to awake craniotomies. Twelve studies, published between 1998 and 2013, including 396 patients with awake surgery were identified. Eleven of these 12 studies set the focus on the perioperative time, one study focused on the later postoperative time. The vast majority of patients felt well prepared and overall satisfaction with the procedure was high. In the majority of studies up to 30 % of the patients recalled considerable pain and 10-14 % experienced strong anxiety during the procedure. The majority of patients reported that they would undergo an awake craniotomy again. A post traumatic stress disorder was present neither shortly nor years after surgery. However, a normal human response to such an exceptional situation can for instance be the delayed appearance of unintentional distressing recollections of the event despite the patients' satisfaction concerning the procedure. For selected patients, an awake craniotomy presents the best possible way to reduce the risk of surgery related neurological deficits. However, benefits and burdens of this type of procedure should be carefully considered when planning an awake craniotomy and the decision should serve the interests of the patient.	\N	\N
24597272	Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing. One prediction that can be derived from these models is that there may be differences among individuals in the size of these similarity effects as a function of working memory abilities. This study investigates how item-individual characteristics of nonwords (both phonotactic probability and neighborhood density) interact with listener-individual characteristics (such as cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity) in the perceptual identification of nonwords. A set of nonwords was used in which neighborhood density and phonotactic probability were not correlated. In our data, neighborhood density affected identification more reliably than did phonotactic probability. The first study, with young adults, showed that higher neighborhood density particularly benefits nonword identification for those with poorer attention-switching control. This suggests that it may be easier to focus attention on a novel item if it activates and receives support from more similar-sounding neighbors. A similar study on nonword identification with older adults showed increased neighborhood density effects for those with poorer hearing, suggesting that activation of long-term linguistic knowledge is particularly important to back up auditory representations that are degraded as a result of hearing loss.	\N	\N
24604626	In typical daily life, adults routinely adapt posture so that balance can be maintained while other goal-directed activities are performed. Interestingly, newly standing infants also control posture based on the demands of a task. It is unknown if the ability to properly adapt postural movements as a goal-directed task is performed emerges soon after the acquisition of independent stance or if it is present at earlier key postural milestones, such as independent sitting. In this study, the postural sway patterns of independently sitting infants were compared while either holding or not holding a toy. Infants exhibited less postural sway when holding the toy. This reduction in sway allowed infants to look at and stabilize the toy in their hand. Thus, the ability to adjust postural movements while performing a concurrent goal-directed task emerges long before the acquisition of independent stance.	\N	\N
24617096	A scheme aimed at distracting children in the waiting room of the paediatric ophthalmology department of Bordeaux university hospital was developed and assessed at the end of the first year. Positive results were identified by those involved, benefiting both the children and the caregivers.	\N	\N
24623783	The earliest stages of cortical processing of speech sounds take place in the auditory cortex. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have provided evidence that the human articulatory motor cortex contributes also to speech processing. For example, stimulation of the motor lip representation influences specifically discrimination of lip-articulated speech sounds. However, the timing of the neural mechanisms underlying these articulator-specific motor contributions to speech processing is unknown. Furthermore, it is unclear whether they depend on attention. Here, we used magnetoencephalography and TMS to investigate the effect of attention on specificity and timing of interactions between the auditory and motor cortex during processing of speech sounds. We found that TMS-induced disruption of the motor lip representation modulated specifically the early auditory-cortex responses to lip-articulated speech sounds when they were attended. These articulator-specific modulations were left-lateralized and remarkably early, occurring 60-100 ms after sound onset. When speech sounds were ignored, the effect of this motor disruption on auditory-cortex responses was nonspecific and bilateral, and it started later, 170 ms after sound onset. The findings indicate that articulatory motor cortex can contribute to auditory processing of speech sounds even in the absence of behavioral tasks and when the sounds are not in the focus of attention. Importantly, the findings also show that attention can selectively facilitate the interaction of the auditory cortex with specific articulator representations during speech processing.	\N	\N
24630049	Recent studies have correlated neurocognitive function and regional brain volumes in children with epilepsy. We tested whether brain volume differences between children with and without epilepsy explained differences in neurocognitive function. The study sample included 108 individuals with uncomplicated non-syndromic epilepsy (NSE) and 36 healthy age- and gender-matched controls. Participants received a standardized cognitive battery. Whole brain T1-weighted MRI was obtained and volumes analyzed with FreeSurfer (TM). Total brain volume (TBV) was significantly smaller in cases. After adjustment for TBV, cases had significantly larger regional grey matter volumes for total, frontal, parietal, and precentral cortex. Cases had poorer performance on neurocognitive indices of intelligence and variability of sustained attention. In cases, TBV showed small associations with intellectual indices of verbal and perceptual ability, working memory, and overall IQ. In controls, TBV showed medium associations with working memory and variability of sustained attention. In both groups, small associations were seen between some TBV-adjusted regional brain volumes and neurocognitive indices, but not in a consistent pattern. Brain volume differences did not account for cognitive differences between the groups. Patients with uncomplicated NSE have smaller brains than controls but areas of relative grey matter enlargement. That this relative regional enlargement occurs in the context of poorer overall neurocognitive functioning suggests that it is not adaptive. However, the lack of consistent associations between case-control differences in brain volumes and cognitive functioning suggests that brain volumes have limited explanatory value for cognitive functioning in childhood epilepsy.	\N	\N
24631246	The human motor system is remarkably proficient in the online control of visually guided movements, adjusting to changes in the visual scene within 100 ms [1-3]. This is achieved through a set of highly automatic processes [4] translating visual information into representations suitable for motor control [5, 6]. For this to be accomplished, visual information pertaining to target and hand need to be identified and linked to the appropriate internal representations during the movement. Meanwhile, other visual information must be filtered out, which is especially demanding in visually cluttered natural environments. If selection of relevant sensory information for online control was achieved by visual attention, its limited capacity [7] would substantially constrain the efficiency of visuomotor feedback control. Here we demonstrate that both exogenously and endogenously cued attention facilitate the processing of visual target information [8], but not of visual hand information. Moreover, distracting visual information is more efficiently filtered out during the extraction of hand compared to target information. Our results therefore suggest the existence of a dedicated visuomotor binding mechanism that links the hand representation in visual and motor systems.	\N	\N
24632819	Given the critical risks to public health and safety that can involve lapses in attention (e.g., through implication in workplace accidents), researchers have sought to develop cognitive-state tracking technologies, capable of alerting individuals engaged in cognitively demanding tasks of potentially dangerous decrements in their levels of attention. The purpose of the present study was to address this issue through an investigation of the reliability of optical measures of cortical correlates of attention in conjunction with machine learning techniques to distinguish between states of full attention and states characterized by reduced attention capacity during a sustained attention task. Seven subjects engaged in a 30 minutes duration sustained attention reaction time task with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) monitoring over the prefrontal and the right parietal areas. NIRS signals from the first 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'full attention' class, while the NIRS signals from the last 10 minutes of the task were considered as characterizing the 'attention decrement' class. A two-class support vector machine algorithm was exploited to distinguish between the two levels of attention using appropriate NIRS-derived signal features. Attention decrement occurred during the task as revealed by the significant increase in reaction time in the last 10 compared to the first 10 minutes of the task (p<.05). The results demonstrate relatively good classification accuracy, ranging from 65 to 90%. The highest classification accuracy results were obtained when exploiting the oxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 77 to 89%, depending on the cortical area considered) rather than the deoxyhemoglobin signals (i.e., from 65 to 66%). Moreover, the classification accuracy increased to 90% when using signals from the right parietal area rather than from the prefrontal cortex. The results support the feasibility of developing cognitive tracking technologies using NIRS and machine learning techniques.	\N	\N
24636071	Although pedophilia is defined by a recurrent sexual interest in prepubescent children, little attention has been paid to the stability or fluidity of this sexual interest over time. The aim of the current study was to investigate if patterns of penile tumescence (as a proxy for sexual interest) measured by penile plethysmography testing (PPT) can change. In this retrospective chart review study, PPT results of 43 men diagnosed with pedophilia were collected and analyzed. All participants displayed a pedophilic sexual arousal pattern at the time of their first PPT. To test for change, we compared initial PPT results with subsequent PPT results measured at least 6 months later. Sexual arousal was assessed using PPT by measuring change in penile circumference induced by the presentation of standardized sexual audio stimuli. Approximately half of the sample (n = 21) displayed a change in PPT results. This change was characterized by a significant decrease of sexual arousal in response to pedophilic (child) stimuli and a significant increase of sexual arousal in response to nonpedophilic (adult) stimuli. No differences between sexual interest changers (ICs) and nonchangers (NC) were found for demographic data or for length of time between assessments. However, between-group comparisons revealed that ICs had significantly lower pedophilic indices at the initial assessment than NCs. Results from the current study indicate that relative pedophilic interest, as defined by increase in penile circumference in response to nonpedophilic stimuli as measured by PPT, changed in about 50% of men diagnosed with pedophilia who also had initial pedophilic PPT sexual responses. This represents a significant challenge to the hypothesis that sexual interest in men with pedophilia is unchangeable and should be the focus of future studies.	\N	\N
24636501	A growing body of research has revealed that social evaluative stressors trigger biological and psychological responses that in chronic forms have been linked to aging and disease. Recent research suggests that self-compassion may protect the self from typical defensive responses to evaluation. We investigated whether brief training in self-compassion moderated biopsychological responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in women. Compared to attention (placebo) and no-training control conditions, brief self-compassion training diminished sympathetic (salivary alpha-amylase), cardiac parasympathetic, and subjective anxiety responses, though not HPA-axis (salivary cortisol) responses to the TSST. Self-compassion training also led to greater self-compassion under threat relative to the control groups. In that social stress pervades modern life, self-compassion represents a promising approach to diminishing its potentially negative psychological and biological effects.	\N	\N
24642806	The most common explanation for joint-action effects has been the action co-representation account in which observation of another's action is represented within one's own action system. However, recent evidence has shown that the most prominent of these joint-action effects (i.e., the Social Simon effect), can occur when no co-actor is present. In the current work we examined whether another joint-action phenomenon (a movement congruency effect) can be induced when a participant performs their part of the task with a different effector to that of their co-actor and when a co-actor's action is replaced by an attention-capturing luminance signal. Contrary to what is predicted by the action co-representation account, results show that the basic movement congruency effect occurred in both situations. These findings challenge the action co-representation account of this particular effect and suggest instead that it is driven by bottom-up mechanisms.	\N	\N
24645871	One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Forty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively. As predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation.	\N	\N
24647227	Loss of consciousness in anesthetized healthy participants and in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) is associated with substantial alterations of functional connectivity across large-scale brain networks. Yet, a prominent distinction between the two cases is that after anesthesia, brain connectivity and consciousness are spontaneously restored, whereas in patients with UWS this restoration fails to occur, but why? A possible explanation is that the self-organizing capability of the brain is compromised in patients with UWS but not in healthy participants undergoing anesthesia. According to the theory of self-organized criticality, many natural complex systems, including the brain, evolve spontaneously to a critical state wherein system behaviors display spatial and/or temporal scale-invariant characteristics. Here we tested the hypothesis that the scale-free property of brain network organization is in fact fundamentally different between anesthetized healthy participants and UWS patients. We introduced a novel, computationally efficient approach to determine anatomical-functional parcellation of the whole-brain network at increasingly finer spatial scales. We found that in healthy participants, scale-free distributions of node size and node degree were present across wakefulness, propofol sedation, and recovery, despite significant propofol-induced functional connectivity changes. In patients with UWS, the scale-free distribution of node degree was absent, reflecting a fundamental difference between the two groups in adaptive reconfiguration of functional interaction between network components. The maintenance of scale-invariance across propofol sedation in healthy participants suggests the presence of persistent, on-going self-organizing processes to a critical state--a capacity that is compromised in patients with UWS.	\N	\N
24650282	Neuropsychological tests are increasingly applied in research studies and clinical practice in psychiatry. In this context, the detection of poor effort is crucial to adequately interpret data. We measured schizophrenia patients' performance on a memory test designed to detect excessive malingering (the "21-Item Test"), before examining whether a second group of schizophrenia patients would excessively malinger on this test when given an incentive to feign memory impairment. Two independent studies including respectively 49 schizophrenia patients and 100 controls (study 1) and 25 schizophrenia patients and 25 controls (study 2) were conducted. In study 1, participants were asked to complete the 21-Item Test to the best of their ability. In study 2, participants were given a hypothetical scenario in which having a memory impairment would be financially advantageous for them, before completing the 21-Item Test. In study 1, no participant scored at levels indicative of excessive malingering. In study 2, 84% of controls but only 36% of patients scored at excessive levels of malingering, and these patients had higher executive functioning than patients who did not excessively malinger, although it should be noted that a significantly greater proportion of patients excessively malingered in study 2 compared to study 1. These results indicate that schizophrenia patients do not normally feign excessive memory impairment during psychological testing. Furthermore, they are less able and/or less inclined to excessively malinger than controls in situations where a memory impairment would be advantageous, perhaps indicating a better ability to malinger without detection. Potential clinical implications are discussed.	\N	\N
24652341	While inattentional blindness is a modern classic in attention and perception research, analogous phenomena of inattentional deafness have been widely neglected. We here present the first investigation of inattentional deafness in and with music under controlled experimental conditions. Inattentional deafness in music is defined as the inability to consciously perceive an unexpected musical stimulus when attention is focused on a certain facet of the piece. Participants listened to a modification of the first 1'50″ of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra; while the control group just listened, the experimental group had to count the number of timpani beats. An e-guitar solo served as the unexpected event. In Study 1, experimental data from n = 115 participants were analyzed. Non-musicians were compared with musicians to investigate the impact of expertise. In Study 2 (n = 47), the scope of the inattentional deafness effect was investigated with a more salient unexpected stimulus. Results demonstrate an inattentional deafness effect under dynamic musical conditions. Quite unexpectedly, the effect was structurally equivalent even for musicians. Our findings clearly show that sustained inattentional deafness exists in the musical realm, in close correspondence to inattentional blindness with dynamic visual stimuli.	\N	\N
24655152	Flexible and appropriate allocation of attention resources is important during dual-tasking to achieve task goals while maintaining postural safety. This pilot study aimed to examine the influence of explicit prioritization of attention on the dual-task paradigm by employing two levels of difficulty for the postural tasks and reaction time (RT) tasks in healthy young adults. The task entailed standing on a force platform on two feet or on one foot, attending to posture or RT, and completing a simple or choice RT task. Participants verbally responded "top" as soon as the light cue illuminated. In general, attending to RT produced faster RTs (F(1,19) = 30.9, p < 0.001) and improved center of pressure (COP) Displacement (F(1,19) = 5.1, p < 0.05) and 95% Area Ellipse (F(1,19) = 7.1, p < 0.05). These findings suggest that prioritizing attention away from posture may be beneficial for postural performance when completing a second task.	\N	\N
24660887	Higher wake promotion against sleep drive boosts cognitive processing, but it also seems to increase the risk of insomnia by reinforcing an obsession with sleep in neurotic patients. To explore whether a personality trait of neuroticism simultaneously facilitates wake-promoting ability and sleep devaluation via a common regional prefrontal function under a sleep-restricted condition, working memory tasks were administered to 49 healthy humans after a 2-h sleep restriction. Higher wake-promoting ability demonstrated in a high-load task was correlated with lower bilateral prefrontal activation, as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Structural equation modeling revealed that neuroticism predicts sleep devaluation and wake-promoting ability via left and right regional prefrontal efficiency, respectively. Our results indicate that neuroticism-related neural efficiency increases resilience to sleepiness, but decreases sleep satisfaction.	\N	\N
24661175	Visual attention and visual working memory exert severe capacity limitations on cognitive processing. Impairments in both functions may exacerbate the social and communication deficits seen in children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study characterizes spatial working memory and visual attention in school-age children with high-functioning autism. Children with ASD, and age, gender, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children performed 2 tasks: a spatial working memory task and an attentive tracking task. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed a more pronounced deficit in the spatial working memory task than the attentive tracking task, even though the latter placed significant demands on sustained attention, location updating, and distractor inhibition. Because both groups of children were sensitive to configuration mismatches between the sample and test arrays, the spatial working memory deficit was not because of atypical organization of spatial working memory. These findings show that attention and working memory are dissociable, and that children with ASD show a specific deficit in buffering visual information across temporal discontinuity.	\N	\N
24661700	All available studies addressing the clinical and legal aspects of child pornography have systematically concerned male abusers. The social lens through which women are viewed tends to play down their responsibility in the sexual abuse of children. Unlike men, women rarely abuse children outside the close or family circle. Furthermore, they have frequently been abused themselves in their childhood. To our knowledge, no cases of women charged with sex-related offences, including child pornography, have been described in the literature. The psychopathological characteristics of female sexual abusers and of the two women in our cases tend to suggest that the deliberate downloading of child pornography images by women is unusual, as their deviant behaviour is not related to paedophile sexual arousal It is hypothesized that the act enables women perpetrators to satisfy the sexual urges of their spouse. Sexual abuse by women exists, but the nature of the abuse appears to be specific to the gender of the perpetrator. We present two cases of women charged with sexual offences concerning minors, including the production of child pornography material.	\N	\N
24672782	Attention allows us to selectively process the vast amount of information with which we are confronted, prioritizing some aspects of information and ignoring others by focusing on a certain location or aspect of the visual scene. Selective attention is guided by two cognitive mechanisms: saliency of the image (bottom up) and endogenous mechanisms (top down). These two mechanisms interact to direct attention and plan eye movements; then, the movement profile is sent to the motor system, which must constantly update the command needed to produce the desired eye movement. A new approach is described here to study how the eye motor control could influence this selection mechanism in clinical behavior: two groups of patients (SCA2 and late onset cerebellar ataxia LOCA) with well-known problems of motor control were studied; patients performed a cognitively demanding task; the results were compared to a stochastic model based on Monte Carlo simulations and a group of healthy subjects. The analytical procedure evaluated some energy functions for understanding the process. The implemented model suggested that patients performed an optimal visual search, reducing intrinsic noise sources. Our findings theorize a strict correlation between the "optimal motor system" and the "optimal stimulus encoders."	\N	\N
24684315	Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms.	\N	\N
24687588	The underlying nature of verbal fluency deficits in Alzheimer's disease (AD) was investigated in this study. Participants were 48 individuals with AD and 48 cognitively healthy older adults. Fluency performance on letter and category tasks was analyzed across two 30-s intervals for total words produced, mean cluster size, and total switches. Compared with the control group, AD participants produced fewer words and switches on both fluency tasks and had a reduced category cluster size. The AD group was differentially impaired on category compared with letter fluency and produced more repetitive responses but fewer category exemplars than controls on the category task. A multidimensional scaling approach revealed that AD participants' semantic maps were similar to controls. Overall, the data suggest that executive abilities involving search and retrieval processes and a reduced availability of semantically related words contributed to the AD group's poorer performance despite similar temporal recall and organizational patterns.	\N	\N
24692319	Attentional effort relates to the allocation of limited-capacity attentional resources to meet current task demands and involves the activation of top-down attentional systems in the brain. Pupillometry is a sensitive measure of this intensity aspect of top-down attentional control. Studies relate pupillary changes in response to cognitive processing to activity in the locus coeruleus (LC), which is the main hub of the brain's noradrenergic system and it is thought to modulate the operations of the brain's attentional systems. In the present study, participants performed a visual divided attention task known as multiple object tracking (MOT) while their pupil sizes were recorded by use of an infrared eye tracker and then were tested again with the same paradigm while brain activity was recorded using fMRI. We hypothesized that the individual pupil dilations, as an index of individual differences in mental effort, as originally proposed by Kahneman (1973), would be a better predictor of LC activity than the number of tracked objects during MOT. The current results support our hypothesis, since we observed pupil-related activity in the LC. Moreover, the changes in the pupil correlated with activity in the superior colliculus and the right thalamus, as well as cortical activity in the dorsal attention network, which previous studies have shown to be strongly activated during visual tracking of multiple targets. Follow-up pupillometric analyses of the MOT task in the same individuals also revealed that individual differences to cognitive load can be remarkably stable over a lag of several years. To our knowledge this is the first study using pupil dilations as an index of attentional effort in the MOT task and also relating these to functional changes in the brain that directly implicate the LC-NE system in the allocation of processing resources.	\N	\N
24700789	Lack of insight into illness is a multidimensional phenomenon that has relevant implications on clinical course and therapy compliance. Here, we focused on metacognitive insight in schizophrenia, that is, the ability to monitor one's changes in state of mind and sensations, with the aim of investigating its neuroanatomical, psychopathological, and neuropsychological correlates. Fifty-seven consecutive patients with Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition, Text Revision) diagnosis of schizophrenia were administered the Insight Scale, and comprehensive psychopathological and neuropsychological batteries. They underwent a high-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) volumes were analyzed on a voxel-by-voxel basis using Statistical Parametric Mapping 8. Reduced metacognitive insight was related to reduced GM volumes in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and insula, and bilateral premotor area and putamen. Further, it was related to reduced WM volumes of the right superior longitudinal fasciculum, left corona radiata, left forceps minor, and bilateral cingulum. Increased metacognitive insight was related to increased depression severity and attentional control impairment, while the latter was related to increased GM volumes in brain areas linked to metacognitive insight. Results of this study suggest that prefrontal GM and WM bundles, all implied in cognitive control and self-reflection, may be the neuroanatomical correlates of metacognitive insight in schizophrenia. Further, higher metacognitive insight is hypothesized to be a risk factor for depression which may subsequently impair attention. This line of research may provide the basis for the development of cognitive interventions aimed at improving self-monitoring and compliance to treatment.	\N	\N
24701725	To study the prevalence and associating factors of sexual dysfunction in Thai women using contraception with intrauterine device (IUD). A cross-sectional study was conducted in IUD users at the Family Planning Unit, Siriraj Hospital. Data were recruited between October 2012 and June 2013. The participants answered the questionnaires to collect demographic, obstetric-gynecological data, and female sexual function index (FSFI) score. Two hundred seventy one IUD users participated in this study. The mean age was 32.1 +/- 7.1 years old, mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.1 +/- 5.3 kg/m2. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction in IUD users was 50.9%. The associating factor that affected the sexual dysfunction significantly was observed in BMI group (p-value 0.033). Subgroup analysis illustrated that the underweight group had more sexual dysfunction. The lowest FSFI score was observed in the underweight group. The score was 23.50 +/- 4.52. The significant domains were found to be desirable and arousal domains. The prevalence of female sexual dysfunction in the period after IUD using was 50.9%. The BMI was a significant associating factor Underweight women showed higher trend of sexual dysfunction than other group, especially in the desire and arousal domain.	\N	\N
24702791	Younger brains are noisier information processing systems; this means that information for younger individuals has to allow clearer differentiation between those aspects that are required for the processing task in hand (the 'signal') and those that are not (the 'noise'). We compared toddler-directed and adult-directed TV programmes (TotTV/ATV). We examined how low-level visual features (that previous research has suggested influence gaze allocation) relate to semantic information, namely the location of the character speaking in each frame. We show that this relationship differs between TotTV and ATV. First, we conducted Receiver Operator Characteristics analyses and found that feature congestion predicted speaking character location in TotTV but not ATV. Second, we used multiple analytical strategies to show that luminance differentials (flicker) predict face location more strongly in TotTV than ATV. Our results suggest that TotTV designers have intuited techniques for controlling toddler attention using low-level visual cues. The implications of these findings for structuring childhood learning experiences away from a screen are discussed.	\N	\N
24705203	The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) plays critical roles in healthy motivation and learning, as well as in psychiatric disorders (including schizophrenia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Thus, techniques that confer control of NAcc activity might inspire new therapeutic interventions. By providing second-to-second temporal resolution of activity in small subcortical regions, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can resolve online changes in NAcc activity, which can then be presented as "neurofeedback." In an fMRI-based neurofeedback experiment designed to elicit NAcc activity, we found that subjects could increase their own NAcc activity, and that display of neurofeedback significantly enhanced their ability to do so. Subjects were not as capable of decreasing their NAcc activity, however, and enhanced control did not persist after subsequent removal of neurofeedback. Further analyses suggested that individuals who recruited positive aroused affect were better able to increase NAcc activity in response to neurofeedback, and that NAcc neurofeedback also elicited functionally correlated activity in the medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these findings suggest that humans can modulate their own NAcc activity and that fMRI-based neurofeedback may augment their efforts. The observed association between positive arousal and effective NAcc control further supports an anticipatory affect account of NAcc function.	\N	\N
24705681	The existence of a network of brain regions which are activated when one undertakes a difficult visual search task is well established. Two primary nodes on this network are right posterior parietal cortex (rPPC) and right frontal eye fields. Both have been shown to be involved in the orientation of attention, but the contingency that the activity of one of these areas has on the other is less clear. We sought to investigate this question by using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to selectively decrease activity in rPPC and then asking participants to perform a visual search task whilst undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Comparison with a condition in which sham tDCS was applied revealed that cathodal tDCS over rPPC causes a selective bilateral decrease in frontal activity when performing a visual search task. This result demonstrates for the first time that premotor regions within the frontal lobe and rPPC are not only necessary to carry out a visual search task, but that they work together to bring about normal function.	\N	\N
24721302	To explore whether cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients after the completion of chemotherapy treatment in comparisons with breast cancer patients without chemotherapy treatment and matched healthy controls. A neuropsychology battery was applied in all breast cancer patients at our hospital from January 2012 to February 2013. Forty-two breast cancer patients with chemotherapy treatment (CT) underwent neuropsychologic testing before the start of chemotherapy (T1) and after treatment (T2). And 37 patients without chemotherapy treatment (non-CT) and matched healthy controls (HC) underwent the same assessment at matched intervals. The CT group performed significantly worse on attention, memory and executive function tests at T2 versus T1 (P < 0.05). As compared with HC and non-CT groups, the correct numbers of backward, digit symbol, delayed recall and recognition were lower in the CT group (P < 0.05). The reacting time of TMT test B, Stroop test B and Stroop test C were longer in the CT group (P < 0.05). There was significant time interaction in three groups (P < 0.05). There are longitudinal changes in cognitive functioning of memory, attention and executive functions in breast cancer patients on Chemotherapy.	\N	\N
24728130	To date, tactile distractor processing has primarily been investigated by focusing on the spatial characteristics of distractors and the impact of their presentation on the orienting of attention. In two experiments, we examined the influence of tactile distractors when the location of stimulus presentation was kept constant, thus controlling for the effects of spatial attention. A response priming paradigm was used in which two stimuli were sequentially presented from the same (fixated) direction. Typically, target responses are facilitated when the previously presented distractor (i.e., the prime) happens to map on to the same response as compared to the distractor maps on to the opposite response. Similar response priming effects were observed for tactile and visual distractors within a unimodal experimental setting (Experiments 1a and 1b). Interestingly, however, when the targets and distractors were presented in different sensory modalities, only the visual distractors exerted a crossmodal effect on the subsequent processing of vibrotactile targets (Experiment 2). These results therefore indicate that visual stimuli automatically trigger their corresponding response even when the task at hand is not visual, whereas tactile stimuli are only processed up to the level of response generation when the participants' task is tactile.	\N	\N
24729533	Cancer survivors often experience cognitive difficulties after treatment completion. Although chemotherapy enhances risk for cognitive problems, it is likely only one piece of a complex puzzle that explains survivors' cognitive functioning. Loneliness may be one psychosocial risk factor. The current studies included both subjective and objective cognitive measures and tested whether lonelier breast cancer survivors would have more concentration and memory complaints and experience more concentration difficulties than their less lonely counterparts. The relationship between loneliness and cognitive function was tested among three samples of breast cancer survivors. Study 1 was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 200) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2a was a sample of breast cancer survivors (n = 185) and noncancer controls (n = 93) who reported their concentration and memory problems. Study 2b was a subsample of Study 2a breast cancer survivors (n = 22) and noncancer controls (n = 21) who completed a standardized neuropsychological test assessing concentration. Studies 1 and 2a revealed that lonelier women reported more concentration and memory problems than less lonely women. Study 2b utilized a standardized neuropsychological continuous performance test and demonstrated that lonelier women experienced more concentration problems than their less lonely counterparts. These studies demonstrated that loneliness is linked to concentration and memory complaints and the experience of concentration problems among breast cancer survivors. The results were also highly consistent across three samples of breast cancer survivors. These data suggest that loneliness may be a risk factor for cognitive difficulties among cancer survivors.	\N	\N
24730739	Recent studies have demonstrated that the contents of working memory capture attention when performing a visual search task. However, it remains an intriguing and unresolved question whether all kinds of items stored in working memory capture attention. The present study investigated this issue by manipulating the attentional tags (target or distractor) associated with information maintained in working memory. The results showed that working memory-driven attentional capture is a flexible process, and that attentional tags associated with items stored in working memory do modulate attentional capture. When items were tagged as a target, they automatically captured attention; however, when items were tagged as a distractor, attentional capture was reduced.	\N	\N
24745467	The anhedonia paradox has been a topic of ongoing study in schizophrenia. Previous research has found that schizophrenia patients report less enjoyment from various activities when compared to their healthy counterparts; however, the two groups appear to have similar in-the-moment emotional ratings of these events (Gard et al., 2007; Herbener et al., 2007; Horan et al., 2006). This study examined these in-the-moment experiences further, by assessing whether they differed between social and non-social experiences. The data were collected from 38 individuals with schizophrenia and 53 matched healthy controls in the greater Chicago area. In-the-moment emotional experience was measured by self-reported arousal and valence ratings for social and non-social stimuli taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Clinical ratings for patients were gathered by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A series of ANOVAs revealed that controls were more aroused by the social than nonsocial unpleasant stimuli, whereas patients did not show this distinction. Further, regression analyses revealed that negative symptom severity uniquely predicted lower arousal responses to unpleasant social, but not nonsocial, stimuli. Our results indicate that both subject and stimulus factors appear to contribute to differences in emotional responses in individuals with schizophrenia.	\N	\N
24747873	Responses in the second of two subsequently performed tasks can speed up compatible responses in the temporally preceding first task. Such backward crosstalk effects (BCEs) represent a challenge to the assumption of serial processing in stage models of human information processing, because they indicate that certain features of the second response have to be represented before the first response is emitted. Which of these features are actually relevant for BCEs is an open question, even though identifying these features is important for understanding the nature of parallel and serial response selection processes in dual-task performance. Motivated by effect-based models of action control, we show in three experiments that the BCE to a considerable degree reflects features of intended action effects, although features of the response proper (or response-associated kinesthetic feedback) also seem to play a role. These findings suggest that the codes of action effects (or action goals) can become activated simultaneously rather than serially, thereby creating BCEs.	\N	\N
24750256	Studies of infant looking times over the past 50 years have provided profound insights about cognitive development, but their dependent measures and analytic techniques are quite limited. In the context of infants' attention to discrete sequential events, we show how a Bayesian data analysis approach can be combined with a rational cognitive model to create a rich data analysis framework for infant looking times. We formalize (i) a statistical learning model, (ii) a parametric linking between the learning model's beliefs and infants' looking behavior, and (iii) a data analysis approach and model that infers parameters of the cognitive model and linking function for groups and individuals. Using this approach, we show that recent findings from Kidd, Piantadosi and Aslin (iv) of a U-shaped relationship between look-away probability and stimulus complexity even holds within infants and is not due to averaging subjects with different types of behavior. Our results indicate that individual infants prefer stimuli of intermediate complexity, reserving attention for events that are moderately predictable given their probabilistic expectations about the world.	\N	\N
24754400	Executive functions (EFs) are interrelated cognitive processes that have been studied in relation to behavior, attention, academic achievement, and developmental disorders. Studies of EF skills assessed through parent report and performance-based measures show correlations between them ranging from none to modest. Few studies have examined the relationship between EF skills measured through parent report and performance-based measures in relation to adaptive function. The present study included preschool children born preterm as a population at high risk for EF impairments. Preschool children (N = 149) completed a battery of EF tasks that assess working memory, response inhibition, idea generation, and attention shifting or cognitive flexibility. Parents reported on children's EF and adaptive skills. Preterm children showed more parent-rated and performance-based EF impairments than did full-term children. The combined use of either parent report or performance-based measures resulted in the identification of a large number of children at risk for EF impairment, especially in the preterm group. Both parent report and performance-based EF measures were associated with children's adaptive function. EF skills are measurable in young child'ren, and we suggest that EF skills may serve as targets for intervention to improve functional outcomes. We recommend the use of both parent report and performance-based measures to characterize children's EF profiles and to customize treatment.	\N	\N
24759441	The proliferation of new communication technologies and capabilities has prompted concern about driving safety. This concern is particularly acute for inexperienced adolescent drivers. In addition to being early adopters of technology, many adolescents have not achieved the degree of automaticity in driving that characterizes experienced adults. Consequently, distractions may be more problematic in this group. Yet little is known about the nature or prevalence of distracted driving behaviors or distracting conditions among adolescent drivers. Vehicles of 52 high-school age drivers (N=38 beginners and N=14 more experienced) were equipped for 6 months with unobtrusive event-triggered data recorders that obtain 20-second clips of video, audio, and vehicle kinematic information when triggered. A low recording trigger threshold was set to obtain a sample of essentially random driving segments along with those indicating rough driving behaviors. Electronic device use (6.7%) was the most common single type of distracted behavior, followed by adjusting vehicle controls (6.2%) and grooming (3.8%). Most distracted driver behaviors were less frequent when passengers were present. However, loud conversation and horseplay were quite common in the presence of multiple peer passengers. These conditions were associated with looking away from the road, the occurrence of serious events, and, to a lesser extent, rough driving (high g-force events). Common assumptions about adolescent driver distraction are only partially borne out by in-vehicle measurement. The association of passengers with distraction appears more complex than previously realized. The relationship between distractions and serious events differed from the association with rough driving.	\N	\N
24763127	Successful achievement of task goals depends critically on the ability to adjust ongoing actions in response to environmental changes. The neural substrates underlying action modification have been a topic of great controversy: both, posterior parietal cortex and frontal regions, particularly prefrontal cortex have been previously identified as crucial in this regard, with most studies arguing in favor of one or the other. We aimed to address this controversy and understand whether frontal and parietal regions might play distinct roles during action modification. We tested ipsilesional arm performance of 27 stroke patients with focal lesions to frontal or parietal regions of the left or right cerebral hemisphere, and left or right arm performance of 18 healthy subjects on the classic double-step task in which a target is unpredictably displaced to a new location, requiring modification of the ongoing action. Only right hemisphere frontal lesions adversely impacted the timing of initiation of the modified response, while only left hemisphere parietal lesions impaired the accuracy of the modified action. Patients with right frontal lesions tended to complete the ongoing action to the initially displayed baseline target and initiated the new movement after a significant delay. In contrast, patients with left parietal damage did not accurately reach the new target location, but compared to the other groups, initiated the new action during an earlier phase of motion, before their baseline action was complete. Our findings thus suggest distinct, hemisphere specific contributions of frontal and parietal regions to action modification, and bring together, for the first time, disparate sets of prior findings about its underlying neural substrates.	\N	\N
24764261	We investigated the relative effects of simple and complex auditory-visual discrimination training using an adapted alternating treatments design to establish derived stimulus relations in 2 children who had been diagnosed with autism and 1 typically developing peer. Emergence of untrained conditional relations was observed after training in both conditions, with a possible advantage of simple-sample training for 1 participant. Results of generalization and follow-up probes were mixed.	\N	\N
24766521	This study examined the performance of 198 Veteran research participants deployed during Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and/or Operation New Dawn (OEF/OIF/OND) on four measures of performance validity: the Medical Symptom Validity Test (MSVT), California Verbal Learning Test: Forced Choice Recognition (FCR), Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and TOVA Symptom Exaggeration Index (SEI). Failure on these performance validity tests (PVTs) ranged from 4% to 9%. The overall base rate of poor performance validity, as measured by failure of the MSVT in conjunction with an embedded PVT (FCR, RDS, SEI), was 5.6%. Regression analyses revealed that poor performance validity predicted cognitive test performance and self-reported psychological symptom severity. Furthermore, a greater prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), co-morbid TBI/PTSD, and other Axis I diagnoses, was observed among participants with poor effort. Although poor performance validity is relatively uncommon in a research setting, these findings demonstrate that clinicians should be cautious when interpreting psychological symptoms and neuropsychological test performance of Veteran participants who fail effort measures.	\N	\N
24773193	Speakers modulate their prosody to express not only emotional information but also semantic information (e.g., raising pitch for upward motion). Moreover, this information can help listeners infer meaning. Work investigating the communicative role of prosodically conveyed meaning has focused on reference resolution, and potential mnemonic benefits remain unexplored. We investigated the effect of prosody on memory for the meaning of novel words, even when it conveys superfluous information. Participants heard novel words, produced with congruent or incongruent prosody, and viewed image pairs representing the intended meaning and its antonym (e.g., a small and a large dog). Importantly, an arrow indicated the image representing the intended meaning, resolving the ambiguity. Participants then completed 2 memory tests, either immediately after learning or after a 24-hr delay, on which they chose an image (out of a new image pair) and a definition that best represented the word. On the image test, memory was similar on the immediate test, but incongruent prosody led to greater loss over time. On the definition test, memory was better for congruent prosody at both times. Results suggest that listeners extract semantic information from prosody even when it is redundant and that prosody can enhance memory, beyond its role in comprehension.	\N	\N
24773417	The transition from childhood to adulthood is characterized by improved motor and cognitive performance in many domains. Developmental studies focus on average performance in single domains but ignore consistency of performance across domains. Within-individual variability (WIV) provides an index of that evenness and is a potential marker of development. We gave a computerized battery of 14 neurocognitive tests to 9138 youths ages 8-21 from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort. As expected, performance improved with age, with both accuracy and speed peaking in adulthood. WIV, however, showed a U-shaped course: highest in childhood, declining yearly into mid-adolescence, and increasing again into adulthood. Young females outperformed and were less variable than males, but by early adulthood male performance matched that of females despite being more variable. We conclude that WIV declines from childhood to adolescence as developmental lags are overcome, and then increases into adulthood reflecting the emergence of cognitive specializations related to skill-honing and brain maturation.	\N	\N
24785592	BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The present study examined the effect of training on age differences in performing a highly practiced task using the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm (Pashler, 1984, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 10, 358-377). Earlier training studies have concentrated on tasks that are not already overlearned. The present question of interest is whether task dual-task integration will be more efficient when single-task performance is approaching asymptotic levels. Task 1 was red/green signal discrimination (green = "go" and red = "wait"; analogous to pedestrian signals) and Task 2 was tone discrimination (white noise vs. a horn "honk"; analogous to traffic sound). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between Task 1 and Task 2 was varied (50, 150, 600, and 1000 ms). All individuals participated in eight sessions spread over 8 weeks (one session per week). Participants completed a dual-task pretest (Week 1), followed by 6 weeks of single-task testing (Weeks 2-7), followed by a dual-task posttest (Week 8). Although older adults showed larger overall dual-task costs (i.e., PRP effects), they were able to reduce the costs with practice as much as younger adults. However, even when training on Task 1 results in asymptotic performance, this still did not lead to an appreciable reduction in dual-task costs. Also, older adults, but not younger adults, responded more rapidly to green stimuli than to red stimuli in the Task 1 training latency data. The authors confirmed this green/go bias using diffusion modeling, which takes into account response time and error rates at the same time. This green/go bias is potentially dangerous at crosswalks, especially when combined with large dual-task interference, and might contribute to the high rate of crosswalk accidents in the elderly.	\N	\N
24794051	A variety of causes of boredom have been proposed including environmental, motivational, emotional, and cognitive factors. Here, we explore four potential cognitive causes of boredom: inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and executive dysfunction. Specifically, we examine the unique and common associations between these factors and boredom propensity. Recent research has established that the two most commonly used measures of boredom propensity (BPS and BSS) are not measuring the same underlying construct. Thus, a second goal of the present project is to determine the unique and common roles of inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity and poor executive system functioning in predicting the BPS and BSS specifically. The findings reveal that inattention, hyperactivity and executive dysfunction predict boredom propensity, with shared variance accounting for the greater part of this effect. Further, executive dysfunction and hyperactivity uniquely predict boredom propensity as measured by the BPS and BSS, respectively.	\N	\N
24800896	Evidence from a growing body of literature suggests that alcohol, even at moderate-dose levels, disrupts the ability to ignore distractors. However, little work has been done to elucidate the neural processes underlying this deficit. The present study was conducted to determine if low-to-moderate alcohol doses affect sensory gating, an electrophysiological phenomenon believed to reflect the pre-attentive filtering of irrelevant sensory information. Sixty social drinkers were administered one of three doses intended to produce breath alcohol concentrations of 0.0% (placebo), 0.04% (i.e., low dose), and 0.065% (i.e., moderate dose). A paired-click paradigm consisting of 100 pairs of identical tones (S1 and S2) was used to assess sensory gating. Amplitudes of P50, N100, and P200 auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) were used to calculate gating difference (S1-S2) and ratio (S2/S1) scores. The moderate alcohol dose significantly decreased P50 and N100 gating relative to placebo. Comparisons between the difference and ratio scores helped characterize the gating mechanisms affected at these stages of information processing. Alcohol did not alter P200 sensory gating. These data suggest that alcohol disrupts pre-attentional sensory-filtering processes at breath alcohol concentrations (BrACs) below the current 0.08% legal limit. Future studies should perform a combined assessment of sensory gating and selective attention to better understand the relationship between these two alcohol-induced deficits.	\N	\N
24806689	The magnitude of repetition suppression (RS) in the Fusiform Face Area is influenced by the probability of repetitions of faces (Summerfield et al., 2008), implying that perceptual expectations affect repetition-related processes. Surprisingly, however, macaque single-cell (Kaliukhovich and Vogels, 2011) and human fMRI (Kovács et al., 2013) studies have failed to find repetition probability [P(rep)] modulations of RS with nonface stimuli in the occipitotemporal cortex, suggesting that the effect is face specific. One possible explanation of this category selectivity is that the extensive experience humans have with faces affects the neural mechanisms of RS specifically, creating P(rep) modulatory effects. To address this question, we used fMRI to test the P(rep) effects for another well trained stimulus category, upright letters of the roman alphabet as well as for unfamiliar false fonts. We observed significant RS for both stimulus sets in the Letter Form Area as well as in the caudodorsal part of the lateral occipital complex. Interestingly, the influence of P(rep) on RS was dependent on the stimulus: while we observed P(rep) modulations for the roman letters, no such effects were found for the unfamiliar false fonts in either area. Our findings suggest that P(rep) effects on RS are manifest for nonface stimuli as well, but that they depend on the experience of the subjects with the stimulus category. This shows, for the first time, that prior experience affects the influence of contextual predictive information on RS in the human occipitotemporal cortex.	\N	\N
24820669	Research has shown that integer comparison is quick and efficient. This efficiency may be a function of the structure of the integer comparison system. The present study tests whether integers are compared with an unlimited capacity system or a limited capacity system. We tested these models using a visual search task with time delimitation. The data from Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that integers are encoded, identified, and compared within an unlimited capacity system. The data from Experiment 3 indicate that 2nd-order magnitude comparisons are processed with a highly efficient limited capacity system.	\N	\N
24826505	This study examines neuropsychological impairments associated with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and explores their association with related clinical factors. Sixty-eight women with CFS were assessed with a neuropsychological battery. Raw scores were adjusted for age and gender and were converted to T scores according to normative data extracted from a local sample of 250 healthy subjects. Neuropsychological dysfunction was calculated using summary impairment indexes (proportion of test scores outside normal limits-T score <40-for each cognitive domain). Finally, a linear regression was calculated to identify predictors of cognitive deficit, including intrinsic factors of the disease (level of fatigue and length of illness) and extrinsic factors (emotional factors, age, and education). Approximately 50% of scores showed impairment in attention and motor functioning, and nearly 40% showed impairment in speed information processing and executive functioning. Fatigue predicted attention and executive functioning impairment, and emotional factors predicted verbal memory dysfunction. According to our findings, cognitive dysfunction in CFS could be explained by pathophysiological processes of the disease. One implication of this would be the need to identify homogeneous subgroups of patients with CFS by taking into account common factors, which, in turn, would help to identify more specific cognitive profiles, which could then serve to implement appropriate therapeutic measures accordingly.	\N	\N
24831114	The serotonin and circadian systems are two important interactive regulatory networks in the mammalian brain that regulate behavior and physiology in ways that are known to impact human mental health. Previous work on the interaction between these two systems suggests that serotonin modulates photic input to the central circadian clock (the suprachiasmatic nuclei; SCN) from the retina and serves as a signal for locomotor activity, novelty, and arousal to shift the SCN clock, but effects of disruption of serotonergic signaling from the raphe nuclei on circadian behavior and on SCN function are not fully characterized. In this study, we examined the effects on diurnal and circadian behavior, and on ex vivo molecular rhythms of the SCN, of genetic deficiency in Pet-1, an ETS transcription factor that is necessary to establish and maintain the serotonergic phenotype of raphe neurons. Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit loss of rhythmic behavioral coherence and an extended daily activity duration, as well as changes in the molecular rhythms expressed by the clock, such that ex vivo SCN from Pet-1⁻/⁻ mice exhibit period lengthening and sex-dependent changes in rhythmic amplitude. Together, our results indicate that Pet-1 regulation of raphe neuron serotonin phenotype contributes to the period, precision and light/dark partitioning of locomotor behavioral rhythms by the circadian clock through direct actions on the SCN clock itself, as well as through non-clock effects.	\N	\N
24838871	Anxious people show an attentional bias towards threatening information. It was investigated whether an attentional bias exists for cancer-related stimuli in breast cancer survivors and if different levels of fear of cancer recurrence would lead to different patterns of selective attention. Breast cancer survivors with high (n = 35) and low (n = 32) fear of cancer recurrence were compared to 40 healthy female hospital employees. Specificity of attentional biases was investigated using a modified Emotional Stroop Task. Self-report measures were used to assess depression and anxiety, feelings of fatigue, and experienced traumas. Compared to control participants, breast cancer survivors with both high and low levels of fear of cancer recurrence showed increased interference for cancer-related words, but not for other word types. The findings suggest a specific attentional bias for cancer-related words in breast cancer survivors that is independent of level of fear of cancer recurrence.	\N	\N
24839251	To investigate whether acute total sleep deprivation (TSD) leads to decreased cognitive control when food cues are presented during a task requiring active attention, by assessing the ability to cognitively inhibit prepotent responses. Fourteen males participated in the study on two separate occasions in a randomized, crossover within-subject design: one night of TSD versus normal sleep (8.5 hours). Following each nighttime intervention, hunger ratings and morning fasting plasma glucose concentrations were assessed before performing a go/no-go task. Following TSD, participants made significantly more commission errors when they were presented "no-go" food words in the go/no-go task, as compared with their performance following sleep (+56%; P<0.05). In contrast, response time and omission errors to "go" non-food words did not differ between the conditions. Self-reported hunger after TSD was increased without changes in fasting plasma glucose. The increase in hunger did not correlate with the TSD-induced commission errors. Our results suggest that TSD impairs cognitive control also in response to food stimuli in healthy young men. Whether such loss of inhibition or impulsiveness is food cue-specific as seen in obesity-thus providing a mechanism through which sleep disturbances may promote obesity development-warrants further investigation.	\N	\N
24842070	Performance in response inhibition paradigms is typically attributed to inhibitory control. Here we examined the idea that stopping may largely depend on the outcome of a sensory detection process. Subjects performed a speeded go task, but they were instructed to withhold their response when a visual stop signal was presented. The stop signal could occur in the center of the screen or in the periphery. On half of the trials, perceptual distractors were presented throughout the trial. We found that these perceptual distractors impaired stopping, especially when stop signals could occur in the periphery. Furthermore, the effect of the distractors on going was smallest in the central stop-signal condition, medium in a condition in which no signals could occur, and largest in the condition in which stop signals could occur in the periphery. The results show that an important component of stopping is finding a balance between ignoring irrelevant information in the environment and monitoring for the occurrence of occasional stop signals. These findings highlight the importance of sensory detection processes when stopping and could shed new light on a range of phenomena and findings in the response inhibition literature.	\N	\N
24845743	We examine how haptic feedback could enable an implicit human-computer interaction, in the context of an audio stream listening use case where a device monitors a user's electrodermal activity for orienting responses to external interruptions. When such a response is detected, our previously developed system automatically places a bookmark in the audio stream for later resumption of listening. Here, we investigate two uses of haptic feedback to support this implicit interaction and mitigate effects of noisy (false-positive) bookmarking: (a) low-attention notification when a bookmark is placed, and (b) focused-attention display of bookmarks during resumptive navigation. Results show that haptic notification of bookmark placement, when paired with visual display of bookmark location, significant improves navigation time. Solely visual or haptic display of bookmarks elicited equivalent navigation time; however, only the inclusion of haptic display significantly increased accuracy. Participants preferred haptic notification over no notification at interruption time, and combined haptic and visual display of bookmarks to support navigation to their interrupted location at resumption time. Our contributions include an approach to handling noisy data in implicit HCI, an implementation of haptic notifications that signal implicit system behavior, and discussion of user mental models that may be active in this context.	\N	\N
24857238	Schizophrenia is associated with poor Theory of Mind (ToM), particularly in goal and belief attribution to others. It is also associated with abnormal gaze behaviors toward others: individuals with schizophrenia usually look less to others' face and gaze, which are crucial epistemic cues that contribute to correct mental states inferences. This study tests the hypothesis that impaired ToM in schizophrenia might be related to a deficit in visual attention toward gaze orientation. We adapted a previous non-verbal ToM paradigm consisting of animated cartoons allowing the assessment of goal and belief attribution. In the true and false belief conditions, an object was displaced while an agent was either looking at it or away, respectively. Eye movements were recorded to quantify visual attention to gaze orientation (proportion of time participants spent looking at the head of the agent while the target object changed locations). 29 patients with schizophrenia and 29 matched controls were tested. Compared to controls, patients looked significantly less at the agent's head and had lower performance in belief and goal attribution. Performance in belief and goal attribution significantly increased with the head looking percentage. When the head looking percentage was entered as a covariate, the group effect on belief and goal attribution performance was not significant anymore. Patients' deficit on this visual ToM paradigm is thus entirely explained by a decreased visual attention toward gaze.	\N	\N
24859426	Caffeine is the most widely consumed stimulant to counter sleep-loss effects. While the pharmacokinetics of caffeine in the body is well-understood, its alertness-restoring effects are still not well characterized. In fact, mathematical models capable of predicting the effects of varying doses of caffeine on objective measures of vigilance are not available. In this paper, we describe a phenomenological model of the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) performance of sleep-deprived subjects. We used the two-process model of sleep regulation to quantify performance during sleep loss in the absence of caffeine and a dose-dependent multiplier factor derived from the Hill equation to model the effects of single and repeated caffeine doses. We developed and validated the model fits and predictions on PVT lapse (number of reaction times exceeding 500 ms) data from two separate laboratory studies. At the population-average level, the model captured the effects of a range of caffeine doses (50-300 mg), yielding up to a 90% improvement over the two-process model. Individual-specific caffeine models, on average, predicted the effects up to 23% better than population-average caffeine models. The proposed model serves as a useful tool for predicting the dose-dependent effects of caffeine on the PVT performance of sleep-deprived subjects and, therefore, can be used for determining caffeine doses that optimize the timing and duration of peak performance.	\N	\N
24866977	Previous research has shown that loading information on working memory affects selective attention. However, whether the load effect on selective attention is domain-general or domain-specific remains unresolved. The domain-general effect refers to the findings that load in one content (e.g. phonological) domain in working memory influences processing in another content (e.g., visuospatial) domain. Attentional control supervises selection regardless of information domain. The domain-specific effect refers to the constraint of influence only when maintenance and processing operate in the same domain. Selective attention operates in a specific content domain. This study is designed to resolve this controversy. Across three experiments, we manipulated the type of representation maintained in working memory and the type of representation upon which the participants must exert control to resolve conflict and select a target into the focus of attention. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants maintained digits and nonverbalized objects, respectively, in working memory while selecting a target in a letter array. In Experiment 2, we presented auditory digits with a letter flanker task to exclude the involvement of resource competition within the same input modality. In Experiments 3a and 3b, we replaced the letter flanker task with an object flanker task while manipulating the memory load on object and digit representation, respectively. The results consistently showed that memory load modulated distractibility only when the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in the same domain. The magnitude of distractor interference was larger under high load than under low load, reflecting a lower efficacy of information prioritization. When the stimuli of the two tasks were represented in different domains, memory load did not modulate distractibility. Control of processing priority in selective attention demands domain-specific resources.	\N	\N
24874173	Sex differences in attentional selection of global and local components of stimuli have been hypothesized to underlie sex differences in cognitive strategy choice. A Navon figure paradigm was employed in 32 men, 41 naturally cycling women (22 follicular, 19 luteal) and 19 users of oral contraceptives (OCs) containing first to third generation progestins in their active pill phase. Participants were first asked to detect targets at any level (divided attention) and then at either the global or the local level only (focused attention). In the focused attention condition, luteal women showed reduced global advantage (i.e. faster responses to global vs. local targets) compared to men, follicular women and OC users. Accordingly, global advantage during the focused attention condition related significantly positively to testosterone levels and significantly negatively to progesterone, but not estradiol levels in a multiple regression model including all naturally cycling women and men. Interference (i.e. delayed rejection of stimuli displaying targets at the non-attended level) was significantly enhanced in OC users as compared to naturally cycling women and related positively to testosterone levels in all naturally cycling women and men. Remarkably, when analyzed separately for each group, the relationship of testosterone to global advantage and interference was reversed in women during their luteal phase as opposed to men and women during their follicular phase. As global processing is lateralized to the right and local processing to the left hemisphere, we speculate that these effects stem from a testosterone-mediated enhancement of right-hemisphere functioning as well as progesterone-mediated inter-hemispheric decoupling.	\N	\N
24875233	Hypoxia has been postulated as a key mechanism for neurocognitive impairment in sleep-disordered breathing. However, the effect of hypoxia on the electroencephalogram (EEG) is not clear. We examined quantitative EEG recordings from 20 normal volunteers under three 5-min ventilatory control protocols: progressive hypercapnia with iso-hyperoxia (pO2=150mmHg) (Protocol 1), progressive hypercapnia with iso-hypoxia (pO2=50mmHg) (Protocol 2), and progressive hypoxia with a CO2 scrubber in the circuit (Protocol 3). Each protocol started with a 5-min session of breathing room air as baseline. In Protocol 1, compared to its baseline, iso-hyperoxia hypercapnia led to a lower Alpha% and higher Delta/Alpha (D/A) ratio. Similarly, in Protocol 2, the iso-hypoxia hypercapnia induced a higher Delta%, a lower Alpha% and higher D/A ratio. No difference was found in any EEG spectral band including the D/A ratio when Protocols 1 & 2 were compared. In Protocol 3, the Delta%, Alpha% and D/A ratio recorded during hypoxia were not significantly different from baseline. We found that hypercapnia, but not hypoxia, may play a key role in slowing of the EEG in healthy humans. Hypercapnia may be a greater influence than hypoxia on brain neuroelectrical activities.	\N	\N
24878318	The traditional sleep scoring approach has been invented long before the recognition of strictly local nature of the sleep process. It considers sleep as a whole-organism behavior state, and, thus, it cannot be used for identification of sleep onset in a separate brain region. Therefore, this paper was aimed on testing whether the practically useful, simple and reliable yes-or-no criterion of sleep onset in a particular cortical region might be developed through applying principal component analysis to the electroencephalographic (EEG) spectra. The resting EEG was recorded with 2-hour intervals throughout 43-61-hour prolongation of wakefulness, and during 12 20-minute attempts to nap in the course of 24-hour wakefulness (15 and 18 adults, respectively). The EEG power spectra were averaged on 1-min intervals of each resting EEG record and on 1-min intervals of each napping attempt, respectively. Since we earlier demonstrated that scores on the first and second principal components of the EEG spectrum exhibit dramatic changes during the sleep onset period, a zero-crossing buildup of the first score and a zero-crossing decline of the second score were examined as possible yes-or-no markers of regional sleep onsets. The results suggest that, irrespective of electrode location, sleep onset criterion and duration of preceding wakefulness, a highly significant zero-crossing decline of the second principal component score always occurred within 1-minute interval of transition from wakefulness to sleep. Therefore, it was concluded that such zero-crossing decline can serve as a reliable, simple, and practically useful yes-or-no marker of drop off event in a given cortical area.	\N	\N
24880095	Visual attention has been shown to progress from the most to the least salient item in a given scene. Cognitive and physiological models assume that this orienting of covert attention relies on the collicular pathway, involving the superior colliculus and the pulvinar. Recent studies questioned this statement as they described attentional capture by visual items invisible to the superior colliculus. Electrophysiological studies shown that there is no direct projections from short-wave receptors to the superior colliculus. S-cone stimuli can thus be employed to assess visual processing without the involvement of the collicular pathway. We have attempted to investigate whether this pathway is involved in the salience-based orientation of attention by presenting S-cone stimuli. Volunteers were asked to make a judgment regarding a target among two distractors (all items of unequal sizes). Items' location and size varied randomly, as well as color, randomly black or calibrated for each subject to activate exclusively S-cones. The hierarchical pattern testifying of the salience-based orientation of attention was only found with black stimuli, arguing in favor of an implication of the collicular pathway in salience. In a second experiment, one item was presented at a time in order to test the item-multiplicity effect by comparing experiments. Performance was the most penalized when presenting multiple stimuli in the black condition. Results were interpreted in terms of distinct modes of processing by the collicular and geniculate pathways. The establishment of salience that determines attentional progression appeared to be only possible when the collicular pathway was solicited.	\N	\N
24887007	Sex differences in pain perception are still poorly understood, but they may be related to the way the brains of men and women respond to the affective dimensions of pain. Using a matched pain intensity paradigm, where pain intensity was kept constant across participants but pain unpleasantness was left free to vary among participants, we studied the relationship between pain unpleasantness and pain-evoked brain activity in healthy men and women separately. Experimental pain was provoked using transcutaneous electrical stimulation of the sural nerve while pain-related brain activity was measured using somatosensory-evoked brain potentials with source localization. Cardiac responses to pain were also measured using electrocardiac recordings. Results revealed that subjective pain unpleasantness was strongly associated with increased perigenual anterior cingulate cortex activity in women, whereas it was strongly associated with decreased ventromedial prefrontal cortex activity in men. Only ventromedial prefrontal cortex deactivations in men were additionally associated with increased autonomic cardiac arousal. These results suggest that in order to deal with pain's objectionable properties, men preferentially deactivate prefrontal suppression regions, leading to the mobilization of threat-control circuits, whereas women recruit well-known emotion-processing areas of the brain. This article presents neuroimaging findings demonstrating that subjective pain unpleasantness ratings are associated with different pain-evoked brain responses in men and women, which has potentially important implications regarding sex differences in the risk of developing chronic pain.	\N	\N
24906032	To examine the trajectories of sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings in infants from 6 to 18 months of age and to identify predictors of short sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings. Data for this study come from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study conducted at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. A total of 55,831 mother reports of child sleep were used to estimate the stability and predictors of awakenings and short sleep. Nocturnal awakenings were frequent among 6-month-old children. Although there was an overall reduction in both sleep duration and nocturnal awakenings from 6 to 18 months, the chronicity of sleep problems was high and impacted by prior sleep behavior and sleeping arrangements. Bedsharing was an independent and graded predictor of nocturnal awakenings and short sleep duration, also after controlling for prior sleep. Breastfeeding was related to concurrent nocturnal awakening but was not negatively related to later nocturnal awakenings. Considering the chronicity of nocturnal awakening and its association with bedsharing, our findings support current recommendations of reducing bedsharing to improve sleep among infants.	\N	\N
24912070	Dopaminergic medication in Parkinson's disease has been proposed to improve cognitive processing by modulating the severely depleted dorsal striatum, while impairing reward processing by modulating the relatively intact ventral striatum. However, there is no direct (neural) evidence for this hypothesis. Here we fill this gap by scanning Parkinson's disease patients (n=15) ON and relatively OFF their dopaminergic medication using functional magnetic resonance imaging. During scanning, patients performed a task that enabled the simultaneous measurement of task-switching and reward-related processing. Brain-behavior correlations revealed that medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in switch-related BOLD signal (switch-repeat) in the dorsomedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with improvements in task-switching (i.e. a decreased switch cost). Conversely, medication-related increases (ON-OFF) in reward-related BOLD signal (high-low) in the ventromedial striatum were associated, on an individual basis, with impairments in performance in anticipation of reward (i.e. an increased reward cost). Linear regression analyses demonstrated that the positive relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the reward cost was unique to the ventromedial striatum, whereas the negative relationship between medication-related changes in BOLD and the switch cost was not unique to the dorsomedial striatum. These findings extend the dopamine overdose hypothesis, according to which dopamine-induced changes in dorsal and ventral striatal processing lead to cognitive improvement and impairment respectively.	\N	\N
24912136	People differ in both their sensitivity for bitter taste and their tendency to respond to emotional stimuli with approach or avoidance. The present study investigated the relationship between these sensitivities in an affective picture paradigm with startle responding. Emotion-induced changes in arousal and attention (pupil modulation), priming of approach and avoidance behavior (startle reflex modulation), and subjective evaluations (ratings) were examined. Sensitivity for bitter taste was assessed with the 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP)-sensitivity test, which discriminated individuals who were highly sensitive to PROP compared to NaCl (PROP-tasters) and those who were less sensitive or insensitive to the bitter taste of PROP. Neither pupil responses nor picture ratings differed between the two taster groups. The startle eye blink response, however, significantly differentiated PROP-tasters from PROP-insensitive subjects. Facilitated response priming to emotional stimuli emerged in PROP-tasters but not in PROP-insensitive subjects at shorter startle lead intervals (200-300ms between picture onset and startle stimulus onset). At longer lead intervals (3-4.5s between picture onset and startle stimulus onset) affective startle modulation did not differ between the two taster groups. This implies that in PROP-sensitive individuals action tendencies of approach or avoidance are primed immediately after emotional stimulus exposure. These results suggest a link between PROP taste perception and biologically relevant patterns of emotional responding. Direct perception-action links have been proposed to underlie motivational priming effects of the startle reflex, and the present results extend these to the sensory dimension of taste.	\N	\N
24918067	Affect recognition deficits found in individuals with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) across the lifespan may bias the development of cognitive control processes implicated in the pathophysiology of the disorder. This study aimed to determine the mechanism through which facial expressions influence cognitive control in young adults diagnosed with ADHD in childhood. Fourteen probands with childhood ADHD and 14 comparison subjects with no history of ADHD were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a face emotion go/no-go task. Event-related analyses contrasted activation and functional connectivity for cognitive control collapsed over face valence and tested for variations in activation for response execution and inhibition as a function of face valence. Probands with childhood ADHD made fewer correct responses and inhibitions overall than comparison subjects, but demonstrated comparable effects of face emotion on response execution and inhibition. The two groups showed similar frontotemporal activation for cognitive control collapsed across face valence, but differed in the functional connectivity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, with fewer interactions with the subgenual cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, and putamen in probands than in comparison subjects. Further, valence-dependent activation for response execution was seen in the amygdala, ventral striatum, subgenual cingulate cortex, and orbitofrontal cortex in comparison subjects but not in probands. The findings point to functional anomalies in limbic networks for both the valence-dependent biasing of cognitive control and the valence-independent cognitive control of face emotion processing in probands with childhood ADHD. This limbic dysfunction could impact cognitive control in emotional contexts and may contribute to the social and emotional problems associated with ADHD.	\N	\N
24918502	To investigate the existence of correlations between the performance of children in auditory temporal tests (Frequency Pattern and Gaps in Noise--GIN) and IQ, attention, memory and age measurements. Fifteen typically developing individuals between the ages of 7 to 12 years and normal hearing participated in the study. Auditory temporal processing tests (GIN and Frequency Pattern), as well as a Memory test (Digit Span), Attention tests (auditory and visual modality) and intelligence tests (RAVEN test of Progressive Matrices) were applied. Significant and positive correlation between the Frequency Pattern test and age variable were found, which was considered good (p<0.01, 75.6%). There were no significant correlations between the GIN test and the variables tested. Auditory temporal skills seem to be influenced by different factors: while the performance in temporal ordering skill seems to be influenced by maturational processes, the performance in temporal resolution was not influenced by any of the aspects investigated.	\N	\N
24932753	A number of studies have shown strong relations between numbers and oriented spatial codes. For example, perceiving numbers causes spatial shifts of attention depending upon numbers' magnitude, in a way suggestive of a spatially oriented, mental representation of numbers. Here, we investigated whether this phenomenon extends to non-symbolic numbers, as well as to the processing of the continuous dimensions of size and brightness, exploring whether different quantitative dimensions are equally mapped onto space. After a numerical (symbolic Arabic digits or non-symbolic arrays of dots; Experiment 1) or a non-numerical cue (shapes of different size or brightness level; Experiment 2) was presented, participants' saccadic response to a target that could appear either on the left or the right side of the screen was registered using an automated eye-tracker system. Experiment 1 showed that, both in the case of Arabic digits and dot arrays, right targets were detected faster when preceded by large numbers, and left targets were detected faster when preceded by small numbers. Participants in Experiment 2 were faster at detecting right targets when cued by large-sized shapes and left targets when cued by small-sized shapes, whereas brightness cues did not modulate the detection of peripheral targets. These findings indicate that looking at a symbolic or a non-symbolic number induces attentional shifts to a peripheral region of space that is congruent with the numbers' relative position on a mental number line, and that a similar shift in visual attention is induced by looking at shapes of different size. More specifically, results suggest that, while the dimensions of number and size spontaneously map onto an oriented space, the dimension of brightness seems to be independent at a certain level of magnitude elaboration from the dimensions of spatial extent and number, indicating that not all continuous dimensions are equally mapped onto space.	\N	\N
24935807	Although perception is typically constrained by limits in available processing resources, these constraints can be overcome if information about environmental properties, such as the spatial location or expected onset time of an object, can be used to direct resources to particular sensory inputs. In this work, we examined these temporal expectancy effects in greater detail in the context of the attentional blink (AB), in which identification of the second of two targets is impaired when the targets are separated by less than about half a second. We replicated previous results showing that presenting information about the expected onset time of the second target can overcome the AB. Uniquely, we also showed that information about expected onset (a) reduces susceptibility to distraction, (b) can be derived from salient temporal consistencies in intertarget intervals across exposures, and (c) is more effective when presented consistently rather than intermittently, along with trials that do not contain expectancy information. These results imply that temporal expectancy can benefit object processing at perceptual and postperceptual stages, and that participants are capable of flexibly encoding consistent timing information about environmental events in order to aid perception.	\N	\N
24953882	Noise stress (NS) is detrimental to many aspects of human health and behavior. Understanding the effect of noise stressors on human cognitive function is a growing area of research and is crucial to helping clinical populations, such as those with schizophrenia, which are particularly sensitive to stressors. A review of electronic databases for studies assessing the effect of acute NS on cognitive functions in healthy adults revealed 31 relevant studies. The review revealed (1) NS exerts a clear negative effect on attention, working memory and episodic recall, and (2) personality characteristics, in particular neuroticism, and sleep influence the impact of noise stressors on performance in interaction with task complexity. Previous findings of consistent impairment in NS-relevant cognitive domains, heightened sensitivity to stressors, elevated neuroticism and sleep disturbances in schizophrenia, taken together with the findings of this review, highlight the need for empirical studies to elucidate whether NS, a common aspect of urban environments, exacerbates cognitive deficits and other symptoms in schizophrenia and related clinical populations.	\N	\N
24954442	The aim of this study was to have a linguistic validation of the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC) in Iranian children with Persian language. The study included a randomly selected sample of children, aged 6-15 years, from three primary and secondary schools located in Isfahan City, Iran. Following the forward-backward translation method, parents completed the SDSC as well as the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL). Reliability (Cronbach's α) and convergent validity (item-subscale and subscale-total correlations) were assessed. The association of SDSC scores with PedsQL scores was evaluated for construct validity. One hundred children were studied; mean age, 9.36±2.58 years, 68 girls. Scale Cronbach's α was 0.82, ranging from 0.40 for 'disorder of arousal' to 0.86 for 'sleep hyperhidrosis' subscales. Convergent validity was acceptable according to the corrected item-subscale correlations (r = 0.22-0.76) and corrected subscale-total correlations (r = 0.30-0.50). The SDSC total score as well as its subscales, except the 'disorder of arousal', were associated with the total PedsQL score and its factors (r = -0.20 to -0.64). The overall psychometric properties of the Persian version of the SDSC seem to be appropriate in Iranian children.	\N	\N
24956002	Older adults fixate less on negative parts of skin cancer videos than younger adults, leading them to feel better (Isaacowitz & Choi, 2012). We extended this paradigm to middle-aged adults (ages 35-59, n = 63), whose fixation patterns were measured as they viewed skin cancer videos; mood and behavior were also assessed. Middle-aged adults looked even less at the videos than the other age groups, especially at the negative clips. They also reported the best moods but relatively low levels of learning and positive skin cancer behavior. In some cases, middle-aged adults may show larger "age-related positivity effects" than older adults.	\N	\N
24956067	The ability to detect and use information from errors is essential during the acquisition of new skills. There is now a wealth of evidence about the brain mechanisms involved in error processing. However, the extent to which those mechanisms are engaged during the acquisition of new motor skills remains elusive. Here we examined rhythm synchronization learning across 12 blocks of practice in musically naïve individuals and tracked changes in ERP signals associated with error-monitoring and error-awareness across distinct learning stages. Synchronization performance improved with practice, and performance improvements were accompanied by dynamic changes in ERP components related to error-monitoring and error-awareness. Early in learning, when performance was poor and the internal representations of the rhythms were weaker we observed a larger error-related negativity (ERN) following errors compared to later learning. The larger ERN during early learning likely results from greater conflict between competing motor responses, leading to greater engagement of medial-frontal conflict monitoring processes and attentional control. Later in learning, when performance had improved, we observed a smaller ERN accompanied by an enhancement of a centroparietal positive component resembling the P3. This centroparietal positive component was predictive of participant's performance accuracy, suggesting a relation between error saliency, error awareness and the consolidation of internal templates of the practiced rhythms. Moreover, we showed that during rhythm learning errors led to larger auditory evoked responses related to attention orientation which were triggered automatically and which were independent of the learning stage. The present study provides crucial new information about how the electrophysiological signatures related to error-monitoring and error-awareness change during the acquisition of new skills, extending previous work on error processing and cognitive control mechanisms to a more ecologically valid context.	\N	\N
24960589	This preliminary study explored differences between adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) for speech processing accuracy, processing speed and effort in various conditions of interference. Ten adults with TBI and six adults without TBI participated. Speech processing was studied using sentence repetition in six listening conditions with different types of interference, including noise and two simultaneous talkers. Participants repeated sentences and rated effort. Participants also completed standardized tests of cognition, including working memory and processing speed measures. Sentence repetition accuracy did not differ between groups. However, the TBI group demonstrated slower processing speed than the control group and also reported significantly greater effort in the two-talker condition. Faster processing speed was also correlated with higher accuracy in the two-talker condition. RESULTS of this study show group similarities in repetition accuracy across listening conditions, but group differences in speed and effort. This preliminary finding, as well as the relationship between processing speed and repetition accuracy, suggests that it is only in the most complex listening conditions that the effects of brain injury may be detectable.	\N	\N
24964082	Predators are known to select food of the same type in non-random sequences or "runs" that are longer than would be expected by chance. If prey are conspicuous, predators will switch between available sources, interleaving runs of different prey types. However, when prey are cryptic, predators tend to focus on one food type at a time, effectively ignoring equally available sources. This latter finding is regarded as a key indicator that animal foraging is strongly constrained by attention. It is unknown whether human foraging is equally constrained. Here, using a novel iPad task, we demonstrate for the first time that it is. Participants were required to locate and touch 40 targets from 2 different categories embedded within a dense field of distractors. When individual target items "popped-out" search was organized into multiple runs, with frequent switching between target categories. In contrast, as soon as focused attention was required to identify individual targets, participants typically exhausted one entire category before beginning to search for the other. This commonality in animal and human foraging is compelling given the additional cognitive tools available to humans, and suggests that attention constrains search behavior in a similar way across a broad range of species.	\N	\N
24967719	Prior findings are mixed regarding the presence and direction of threat-related interference biases in social anxiety. The current study examined general inhibitory control (IC), measured by the classic colour-word Stroop, as a moderator of the relationship between both threat interference biases [indexed by the emotional Stroop (e-Stroop)] and several social anxiety indicators. High socially anxious undergraduate students (N = 159) completed the emotional and colour-word Stroop tasks, followed by an anxiety-inducing speech task. Participants completed measures of trait social anxiety, state anxiety before and during the speech, negative task-interfering cognitions during the speech and overall self-evaluation of speech performance. Speech duration was used to measure behavioural avoidance. In line with hypotheses, IC moderated the relationship between e-Stroop bias and every anxiety indicator (with the exception of behavioural avoidance), such that greater social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with weak IC, whereas lesser social-threat interference was associated with higher anxiety among those with strong IC. Implications for the theory and treatment of threat interference biases in socially anxious individuals are discussed.	\N	\N
24979861	We report the successful awake tracheal intubation in a patient with hypopharyngeal cancer and gastroesophageal regurgitation with the TaperGuard Evac tracheal tube (TaperGuard) and Pentax-AWS Airwayscope (AWS). A 63-year-old man with hypopharyngeal cancer with invasion to the glottis was scheduled for total laryngectomy under general anesthesia. He had undergone thoracic esophagectomy and could not maintain supine position due to severe gastroesophageal regurgitation. To avoid vomiting after induction of anesthesia, we planned awake intubation in the sitting position with the AWS. After topical anesthesia with 8% lidocaine and infusion of fentanyl and continuous dexmedetomidine, the AWS was inserted into his mouth in the sitting position from the cranial side. The AWS allowed visualizing the glottis avoiding the cancer, leading to safe placement of the tracheal tube.	\N	\N
24999612	To dissociate feature-based and object-based stages in the control of spatial attention during visual search, we employed the N2pc component as an electrophysiological marker of attentional object selection. Participants searched for a target object that was defined by a conjunction of color and shape. Some search displays contained the target or a nontarget object that matched either the target color or its shape among 3 nonmatching distractors. In other displays, the target and a partially target-matching nontarget object appeared together. N2pc results demonstrated that the initial stage of attentional object selection is controlled by local feature-specific signals. Attention is allocated in parallel and independently to objects with target-matching features during this early stage, irrespective of whether another target-matching object is simultaneously present elsewhere. From around 250 ms poststimulus, information is integrated across feature dimensions, and spatially selective attentional processing becomes object-based. These findings demonstrate that feature-based and object-based stages of attentional selectivity in visual search can be dissociated in real time.	\N	\N
25004102	Research using the diffusion model to decompose task-switching effects has contributed to a better understanding of the processes underlying the observed effect in the explicit task cueing paradigm: Previous findings could be reconciled with multiple component models of task switching or with an account on compound-cue retrieval/repetition priming. In the present study, we used two cues for each task in order to decompose task-switch and cue-switch effects. Response time data support previous findings that comparable parts of the switching effect can be attributed to cue-switching and task-switching. A diffusion model analysis of the data confirmed that non-decision time is increased and drift rates are decreased in unpredicted task-switches. Importantly, it was shown that non-decision time was selectively increased in task-switching trials but not in cue-switching trials. Results of the present study specifically support the notion of additional processes in task-switches and can be reconciled with broader multiple component accounts.	\N	\N
25012367	What defines the spatial and temporal boundaries of seizure activity in brain networks? To fully answer this question a precise and quantitative definition of seizures is needed, which unfortunately remains elusive. Nevertheless, it is possible to ask under conditions where clearly divergent patterns of activity occur in large-scale brain networks whether certain activity patterns are part of the seizure while others are not. Here we examine brain network activity during focal limbic seizures, including diverse regions such as the hippocampus, subcortical arousal systems and fronto-parietal association cortex. Based on work from patients and from animal models we describe a characteristic pattern of intense increases in neuronal firing, cerebral blood flow, cerebral blood volume, blood oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) signals and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption in the hippocampus during focal limbic seizures. Similar increases are seen in certain closely linked subcortical structures such as the lateral septal nuclei and anterior hypothalamus, which contain inhibitory neurons. In marked contrast, decreases in all of these parameters are seen in the subcortical arousal systems of the upper brainstem and intralaminar thalamus, as well as in the fronto-parietal association cortex. We propose that the seizure proper can be defined as regions showing intense increases, while those areas showing opposite changes are inhibited by the seizure network and constitute long-range network consequences beyond the seizure itself. Importantly, the fronto-parietal cortex shows sleep-like slow wave activity and depressed metabolism under these conditions, associated with impaired consciousness. Understanding which brain networks are directly involved in seizures versus which sustain secondary consequences can provide new insights into the mechanisms of brain dysfunction in epilepsy, hopefully leading to innovative treatment approaches.	\N	\N
25035439	General anaesthesia (GA) carries high risks of ventilator dependency with increased morbidity and mortality in patients with severe respiratory disease. It also presents an ethical dilemma if surgery remains the only treatment option for patients with advanced terminal chronic respiratory disease. Thoracic epidural anaesthesia for awake thoracic surgery (TEATS) in high-risk patients with dyspnoea at rest could avoid ventilator dependency and speed up recovery even in patients with severe dyspnoea. This retrospective observational study analysed indications, management and outcome of patients contraindicated to GA undergoing awake thoracic surgery with thoracic epidural anaesthesia. From 716 patients requiring thoracic surgery, nine were contraindicated to GA. Eight patients [American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) 4] had a maximum grade four of the modified Medical Research Council dyspnea scale (MMRC). Two patients (ASA 3, grade 1 MMRC and ASA 4, grade 4 MMRC) refused GA. Patients (female : male ratio 1.25 : 1, age 19-76 years) had the following chronic respiratory diseases: pulmonary fibrosis (n = 2), pulmonary metastases (n = 3), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n = 1), alveolitis (n = 1) and myopathy (n = 2). Surgical indications were: thoracotomy (n = 6) for pleurectomy to treat recurring pneumothorax (n = 3), pleurostomy (n = 1), emphysema surgery (n = 1), lung biopsy (n = 1) and thoracoscopy (n = 3) for pleural/lung biopsy (n = 2), pneumothorax (n = 1). Lidocaine 20 mg/ml or ropivacaine 7.5 mg/ml was titrated to achieve an anaesthesia level T2-T12. No patient required GA [time of surgery: 46-128 min, mean = 76 min, standard deviation (SD) = 23 min]. Seven patients had light sedation with TCI propofol, remifentanyl or both and remained responsive. Fifty percent of patients received phenylephrine or ephedrine to maintain arterial pressure. Two patients went into hypercapnia, which was reversed with assisted mask ventilation. One patient suffered acute respiratory distress 7 days postoperatively and died of intestinal bleeding on Day 25. There were no postoperative complications in other patients. Excluding Patient 9 always remaining in a medical intensive care unit (ICU), the mean postoperative ICU stay in thoracic surgery was 4.4 days (SD 5.2). Hospital discharge was between 5 and 40 days after surgery. TEATS with/without sedation was an alternative to GA for thoracotomy/thoracoscopy in severely dyspnoeic patients (MMRC grade 4, ASA 4) without postoperative sequelae.	\N	\N
25039045	To examine the association between domain-specific qualities of formal childcare at age 2-3 years and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation at age 4-5 and 6-7 years. We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (n = 1038). Three domain-specific aspects of childcare quality were assessed: provider and program characteristics of care, activities in childcare, and carer-child relationship. Two self-regulatory abilities were considered: task attentiveness and emotional regulation. Associations between domain-specific qualities of childcare and self-regulation were investigated in linear regression analyses adjusted for confounding, with imputation for missing data. There was no association between any provider or program characteristics of care and children's task attentiveness and emotional regulation. The quality of activities in childcare were associated only with higher levels of emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.24; 95% CI, 0.03-0.44) and 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.04-0.48). Higher-quality carer-child relationships were associated with higher levels of task attentiveness (β = 0.20; 95% CI, 0.05-0.36) and emotional regulation at age 4-5 years (β = 0.19; 95% CI, 0.04-0.34) that persisted to age 6-7 years (β = 0.26; 95% CI, 0.10-0.42; β = 0.31; 95% CI, 0.16-0.47). Among children using formal childcare, those who experienced higher-quality relationships were better able to regulate their attention and emotions as they started school. Higher emotional regulation was also observed for children engaged in more activities in childcare. Beneficial effects were stable over time.	\N	\N
25044928	While forgetfulness is widely reported by breast cancer survivors, studies documenting objective memory performance yield mixed, largely inconsistent, results. Failure to find consistent, objective memory issues may be due to the possibility that cancer survivors misattribute their experience of forgetfulness to primary memory issues rather than to difficulties in attention at the time of learning. To clarify potential attention issues, factor scores for Attention Span, Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, and Inaccurate Memory were analyzed for the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition (CVLT-II) in 64 clinically referred breast cancer survivors with self-reported cognitive complaints; item analysis was conducted to clarify specific contributors to observed effects, and contrasts between learning and recall trials were compared with normative data. Performance on broader cognitive domains is also reported. The Attention Span factor, but not Learning Efficiency, Delayed Memory, or Inaccurate Memory factors, was significantly affected in this clinical sample. Contrasts between trials were consistent with normative data and did not indicate greater loss of information over time than in the normative sample. Results of this analysis suggest that attentional dysfunction may contribute to subjective and objective memory complaints in breast cancer survivors. These results are discussed in the context of broader cognitive effects following treatment for clinicians who may see cancer survivors for assessment.	\N	\N
25051341	Although previous research had related structural changes and impaired cognition to chronic cigarette smoking, recent neuroimaging studies have associated nicotine, which is a main chemical substance in cigarettes, with improvements in cognitive functions (e.g. improved attention performance). However, information about the alterations of whole-brain functional connectivity after acute cigarette smoking is limited. In this study, 22 smokers underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) after abstaining from smoking for 12 hours (state of abstinence, SOA). Subsequently, the smokers were allowed to smoke two cigarettes (state of satisfaction, SOS) before they underwent a second rs-fMRI. Twenty non-smokers were also recruited to undergo rs-fMRI. In addition, high-resolution 3D T1-weighted images were acquired using the same magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)scanner for all participants. The results showed that smokers had structural changes in insula, thalamus, medial frontal cortex and several regions of the default mode network (DMN) compared with non-smokers. Voxel-wise group comparisons of newly developed global brain connectivity (GBC) showed that smokers in the SOA condition had higher GBC in the insula and superior frontal gyrus compared with non-smokers. However, smokers in the SOS condition demonstrated significantly lower GBC in several regions of the DMN, as compared with smokers in the SOA condition. These results suggest that structural integrity combined with dysfunction of the DMN might be involved in relapses after a short period of time among smokers.	\N	\N
25073453	Studies that have measured the effects of attentional training have relied on a range of training formats, which may vary in their efficacy. In particular, it is unclear whether programs that practice dual-tasking are more effective in improving divided attention than programs focusing on flexible allocation priority training. The aims of this study were as follows: (1) to compare the efficacy of different types of attentional training formats and (2) to assess transfer to distal measures. Forty-two healthy older adults were randomly assigned to one of three training groups. In the SINGLE training condition, participants practiced a visual detection and an alphanumeric equation task in isolation. In the FIXED training condition, participants practiced both tasks simultaneously with equal attention allocated to each. In the VARIABLE training condition, participants varied the attentional priority allocated to each task. After training, all participants improved their performance on the alphanumeric equation task when performed individually, including those in the SINGLE training condition. Participants in the FIXED training condition improved their divided attention, but only the participants in the VARIABLE training condition showed a greater capacity to vary their attentional priorities according to the instructions. Regarding transfer, all groups improved their performance on the 2-back condition, but only the VARIABLE and FIXED conditions resulted in better performance on the 1-back condition. Overall, the study supports the notion that attentional control capacities in older adults are plastic and can be improved with appropriate training and that the type of training determines its impact on divided attention.	\N	\N
25083012	To determine relationships of polysomnographic (PSG) measures with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a young adult, urban African American population. Cross-sectional, clinical and laboratory evaluation. Community recruitment, evaluation in the clinical research unit of an urban University hospital. Participants (n = 145) were Black, 59.3% female, with a mean age of 23.1 y (SD = 4.8). One hundred twenty-one participants (83.4%) met criteria for trauma exposure, the most common being nonsexual violence. Thirty-nine participants (26.9%) met full (n = 19) or subthreshold criteria (n = 20) for current PTSD, 41 (28.3%) had met lifetime PTSD criteria and were recovered, and 65 (45%) were negative for PTSD. Evaluations included the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) and 2 consecutive nights of overnight PSG. Analysis of variance did not reveal differences in measures of sleep duration and maintenance, percentage of sleep stages, and the latency to and duration of uninterrupted segments of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep by study group. There were significant relationships between the duration of PTSD and REM sleep percentage (r = 0.53, P = 0.001), REM segment length (r = 0.43, P = 0.006), and REM sleep latency (r = -0.34, P < 0.03) among those with current PTSD that persisted when removing cases with, or controlling for, depression. The findings are consistent with observations in the literature of fragmented and reduced REM sleep with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relatively proximate to trauma exposure and nondisrupted or increased REM sleep with chronic PTSD. Mellman TA, Kobayashi I, Lavela J, Wilson B, Hall Brown TS. A relationship between REM sleep measures and the duration of posttraumatic stress disorder in a young adult urban minority population.	\N	\N
25102420	Activation of frontal and parietal brain regions is associated with attentional control during visual search. We used fMRI to characterize age-related differences in frontoparietal activation in a highly efficient feature search task, detection of a shape singleton. On half of the trials, a salient distractor (a color singleton) was present in the display. The hypothesis was that frontoparietal activation mediated the relation between age and attentional capture by the salient distractor. Participants were healthy, community-dwelling individuals, 21 younger adults (19-29 years of age) and 21 older adults (60-87 years of age). Top-down attention, in the form of target predictability, was associated with an improvement in search performance that was comparable for younger and older adults. The increase in search reaction time (RT) associated with the salient distractor (attentional capture), standardized to correct for generalized age-related slowing, was greater for older adults than for younger adults. On trials with a color singleton distractor, search RT increased as a function of increasing activation in frontal regions, for both age groups combined, suggesting increased task difficulty. Mediational analyses disconfirmed the hypothesized model, in which frontal activation mediated the age-related increase in attentional capture, but supported an alternative model in which age was a mediator of the relation between frontal activation and capture.	\N	\N
25109005	Depth of field (DOF) is defined as the distance range within which objects are perceived as sharp. Previous research has focused on blur discrimination in artificial stimuli and natural photographs. The discrimination of DOF, however, has received less attention. Since DOF introduces blur which is related to distance in depth, many levels of blur are simultaneously present. As a consequence, it is unclear whether discrimination thresholds for blur are appropriate for predicting discrimination thresholds for DOF. We therefore measured discrimination thresholds for DOF using a two-alternative forced-choice task. Ten participants were asked to observe two images and to select the one with the larger DOF. We manipulated the scale of the scene--that is, the actual depth in the scene. We conducted the experiment under stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic viewing conditions. We found that the threshold for a large DOF (39.1 mm) was higher than for a small DOF (10.1 mm), and the thresholds decreased when scale of scene increased. We also found that there was no significant difference between stereoscopic and nonstereoscopic conditions. We compared our results with thresholds predicted from the literature. We concluded that using blur discrimination thresholds to discriminate DOF may lead to erroneous conclusions because the depth in the scene significantly affects people's DOF discrimination ability.	\N	\N
25116758	A phasic change in alertness is produced every time that a warning stimulus precedes a target, and it enhances and maintains the response readiness to an impending stimulus. In the present study, we investigated the Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) phenomenon, as index of phasic alertness, during a S1-S2 paradigm in which the imperative stimulus was represented by a double-choice reaction time task, designed to increase the executive requests at S2. Subjects performed the task at three consecutive time points in order to explore the CNV activity over time. The repetition of a cued double-choice reaction time task reduced the reaction times (RTs), while CNV amplitude remained steady along the sessions. Our data suggest that the continuous recruitment of attentional resources does not undergo habituation when it is related to the brain activity required in the maintenance of working memory when the mental model of the stimulus environment is updated.	\N	\N
25117780	Studies investigating the association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] and cognition in the very old (85+) are lacking. Cross-sectional (baseline) and prospective data (up to 3 years follow-up) from 775 participants in the Newcastle 85+ Study were analysed for global (measured by the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination) and attention-specific (measured by the attention battery of the Cognitive Drug Research test) cognitive performance in relation to season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles. Those in the lowest and highest season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles had an increased risk of impaired prevalent (1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.06-2.60, P = 0.03; 1.62, 95% confidence interval 1.02-2.59, P = 0.04, respectively) but not incident global cognitive functioning or decline in functioning compared with those in the middle quartiles adjusted for sociodemographic, health and lifestyle confounders. Random effects models showed that participants belonging to the lowest and highest 25(OH)D quartiles, compared with those in the middle quartiles, had overall slower (log-transformed) attention reaction times for Choice Reaction Time (lowest, β = 0.023, P = 0.01; highest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02), Digit Vigilance Task (lowest, β = 0.009, P = 0.05; highest, β = 0.01, P = 0.02) and Power of Attention (lowest, β = 0.017, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.022, P = 0.002) and greater Reaction Time Variability (lowest, β = 0.021, P = 0.02; highest, β = 0.02, P = 0.03). The increased risk of worse global cognition and attention amongst those in the highest quartile was not observed in non-users of vitamin D supplements/medication. Low and high season-specific 25(OH)D quartiles were associated with prevalent cognitive impairment and poorer overall performance in attention-specific tasks over 3 years in the very old, but not with global cognitive decline or incident impairment.	\N	\N
25119128	Bilateral lung transplantation (BLTx) is an established treatment for end-stage pulmonary hypertension (PH). Ventilator weaning failure and death are more common as in BLTx for other indications. We hypothesized that left ventricular (LV) dysfunction is the main cause of early postoperative morbidity or mortality and investigated a weaning strategy using awake venoarterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). In 23 BLTx for severe PH, ECMO used during BLTx was continued for a minimum of 5 days (BLTx-ECMO group). Echocardiography, left atrial (LA) and Swan-Ganz catheters were used for monitoring. Early extubation after transplantation was attempted under continued ECMO. Preoperatively, all patients had severely reduced cardiac index (mean, 2.1 L/min/m2). On postoperative day 2, reduction of ECMO flow resulted in increasing LA and decreasing systemic blood pressures. On the day of ECMO explantation (median, postoperative day 8), LV diameter had increased; LA and blood pressures remained stable. Survival rates at 3 and 12 months were 100% and 96%, respectively. Data were compared to two historic control groups of BLTx without ECMO (BLTx ventilation) or combined heart-lung transplantation for severe PH. Early after BLTx for severe PH, the LV may be unable to handle normalized LV preload. This can be effectively bridged with awake venoarterial ECMO.	\N	\N
25119464	There is enormous interest in designing training methods for reducing cognitive decline in healthy older adults. Because it is impaired with aging, multitasking has often been targeted and has been shown to be malleable with appropriate training. Investigating the effects of cognitive training on functional brain activation might provide critical indication regarding the mechanisms that underlie those positive effects, as well as provide models for selecting appropriate training methods. The few studies that have looked at brain correlates of cognitive training indicate a variable pattern and location of brain changes--a result that might relate to differences in training formats. The goal of this study was to measure the neural substrates as a function of whether divided attentional training programs induced the use of alternative processes or whether it relied on repeated practice. Forty-eight older adults were randomly allocated to one of three training programs. In the single repeated training, participants practiced an alphanumeric equation and a visual detection task, each under focused attention. In the divided fixed training, participants practiced combining verification and detection by divided attention, with equal attention allocated to both tasks. In the divided variable training, participants completed the task by divided attention, but were taught to vary the attentional priority allocated to each task. Brain activation was measured with fMRI pre- and post-training while completing each task individually and the two tasks combined. The three training programs resulted in markedly different brain changes. Practice on individual tasks in the single repeated training resulted in reduced brain activation whereas divided variable training resulted in a larger recruitment of the right superior and middle frontal gyrus, a region that has been involved in multitasking. The type of training is a critical factor in determining the pattern of brain activation.	\N	\N
25122911	The mental chronometry of the human brain's processing of sounds to be categorized as targets has intensively been studied in cognitive neuroscience. According to current theories, a series of successive stages consisting of the registration, identification, and categorization of the sound has to be completed before participants are able to report the sound as a target by button press after ∼300-500 ms. Here we use miniature eye movements as a tool to study the categorization of a sound as a target or nontarget, indicating that an initial categorization is present already after 80-100 ms. During visual fixation, the rate of microsaccades, the fastest components of miniature eye movements, is transiently modulated after auditory stimulation. In two experiments, we measured microsaccade rates in human participants in an auditory three-tone oddball paradigm (including rare nontarget sounds) and observed a difference in the microsaccade rates between targets and nontargets as early as 142 ms after sound onset. This finding was replicated in a third experiment with directed saccades measured in a paradigm in which tones had to be matched to score-like visual symbols. Considering the delays introduced by (motor) signal transmission and data analysis constraints, the brain must have differentiated target from nontarget sounds as fast as 80-100 ms after sound onset in both paradigms. We suggest that predictive information processing for expected input makes higher cognitive attributes, such as a sound's identity and category, available already during early sensory processing. The measurement of eye movements is thus a promising approach to investigate hearing.	\N	\N
25124118	The specific cognitive-affective mechanisms involved in the activation and regulation of the subjective and genital components of sexual arousal are not fully understood yet. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contribution of self-reported thoughts and affect to the prediction of women's subjective and genital responses to erotica. Twenty-eight sexually functional women (mean age = 32, SD = 6.29) were presented with sexually explicit and nonexplicit romantic films. Genital responses, subjective sexual arousal, state affect, and self-reported thoughts were assessed. Vaginal pulse amplitude was measured using a vaginal photoplethysmograph. Subjective sexual arousal, thoughts, and affective responses were assessed through self-report scales. Correlations between subjective and physiological sexual arousal were low (r = -0.05, P > 0.05). Self-reported thoughts and affect were significant predictors of subjective sexual arousal. The strongest single predictor of subjective arousal was sexual arousal thoughts (e.g., "I'm getting excited") (β = 0.63, P < 0.01). None of the cognitive or affective variables predicted women's genital responses. Overall, results support the role of cognitive (self-reported thoughts) and affective dimensions in women's subjective sexual arousal to erotica and, consistent with previous findings, suggest that subjective and physiological sexual arousal may be impacted by different processes.	\N	\N
25142042	There is a paucity of work addressing the distractive, affect-enhancing, and motivational influences of music and video in combination during exercise. We examined the effects of music and music-and-video on a range of psychological and psychophysical variables during treadmill running at intensities above and below ventilatory threshold (VT). Participants (N = 24) exercised at 10 % of maximal capacity below VT and 10 % above under music-only, music-and-video, and control conditions. There was a condition × intensity × time interaction for perceived activation and state motivation, and an intensity × time interaction for state attention, perceived exertion (RPE), and affective valence. The music-and-video condition elicited the highest levels of dissociation, lowest RPE, and most positive affective responses regardless of exercise intensity. Attentional manipulations influence psychological and psychophysical variables at exercise intensities above and below VT, and this effect is enhanced by the combined presentation of auditory and visual stimuli.	\N	\N
25148787	We examined ERP indices of proactive and reactive cognitive control processes in younger and older adults performing a sustained attention Go/No-Go task. Behavioral results showed that older adults were able to maintain a stable level of performance over time, while younger adults exhibited a vigilance decrement. The main ERP findings showed that in older adults, the amplitude of the pre-stimulus slow wave, a marker of proactive control, remained stable with time on task, and that the amplitude of the sustained potential, a marker of reactive control, increased with time on task. On the other hand, in younger adults, the amplitudes of both components decreased over time. Overall, older participants also exhibited larger amplitudes of the error negativity than their younger counterparts. These results suggest that age-related differences in the recruitment of proactive and reactive control over the course of the task can explain age differences in sustained attention performance.	\N	\N
25151518	The current study aimed to explore whether self-reported attentional control (AC) and the attentional network functioning would predict spontaneous emotion downregulation after emotional induction. A total of 117 healthy volunteers were asked to continuously rate their discomfort while looking at affective pictures, as well as for a period of time after exposure. After controlling for trait anxiety, higher self-reported AC significantly predicted a greater spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to aversive pictures. Both higher self-reported AC and lower executive control network functioning (i.e., greater interference) predicted a faster spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to affectively neutral pictures. Results are discussed focusing on the relationship between AC and emotion regulation difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record	\N	\N
25153776	Slow oscillations (<1 Hz) during slow wave sleep (SWS) promote the consolidation of declarative memory. Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been shown to display deficits in sleep-dependent consolidation of declarative memory supposedly due to dysfunctional slow brain rhythms during SWS. Using transcranial oscillating direct current stimulation (toDCS) at 0.75 Hz, we investigated whether an externally triggered increase in slow oscillations during early SWS elevates memory performance in children with ADHD. 12 children with ADHD underwent a toDCS and a sham condition in a double-blind crossover study design conducted in a sleep laboratory. Memory was tested using a 2D object-location task. In addition, 12 healthy children performed the same memory task in their home environment. Stimulation enhanced slow oscillation power in children with ADHD and boosted memory performance to the same level as in healthy children. These data indicate that increasing slow oscillation power during sleep by toDCS can alleviate declarative memory deficits in children with ADHD.	\N	\N
25154283	When observers are asked to match the depth of an object according to its height, they often report systematic errors depending on viewing distance. Systematic biases can also arise while vergence distances are induced by binocular disparities. Observers of stereoscopic images tend to overestimate the depth of objects displayed in front of the screen, while the depth of objects displayed behind the screen plane is underestimated. This phenomenon creates a serious problem in that veridicality in depth perception appears distorted when one attempts to render the metrics of a captured 3-D world. These distortions could also subsist with structure-from-motion information and during motion-in-depth. Observers judged the circularity of transparent rotating cylinders that were either static or moving in depth. Crossed results show that participants could precisely retrieve the best modulation between presented depth and width. As this effect could be amplified with stimuli containing stronger perspective cues (ie contour perspective), participants judged the rigidity of spinning cubes, moving along the line of sight, which were either edges-defined or defined by randomly textured surfaces (dots). The results showed that, although depth constancy was not improved by contour perspective, perceived rigidity was increased by perspective when the best scaling estimate was displayed. This finding suggests that appropriate binocular disparity information in combination to monocular signal is necessary for stereoscopic depth perception.	\N	\N
25159702	The implications of sleep for morality are only starting to be explored. Extending the ethics literature, we contend that because bringing morality to conscious attention requires effort, a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. We test this prediction with three studies. A laboratory study with a manipulation of sleep across 90 participants judging a scenario for moral content indicates that a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. An archival study of Google Trends data across 6 years highlights a national dip in Web searches for moral topics (but not other topics) on the Monday after the Spring time change, which tends to deprive people of sleep. Finally, a diary study of 127 participants indicates that (within participants) nights with a lack of sleep are associated with low moral awareness the next day. Together, these three studies suggest that a lack of sleep leaves people less morally aware, with important implications for the recognition of morality in others.	\N	\N
25173177	Visual cognitive integrative functions need to be evaluated by a behavioral assessment, which requires an experienced evaluator. The Preverbal Visual Assessment (PreViAs) questionnaire was designed to evaluate these functions, both in general pediatric population or in children with high risk of visual cognitive problems, through primary caregivers' answers. We aimed to validate the PreViAs questionnaire by comparing caregiver reports with results from a comprehensive clinical protocol. A total of 220 infants (<2 years old) were divided into two groups according to visual development, as determined by the clinical protocol. Their primary caregivers completed the PreViAs questionnaire, which consists of 30 questions related to one or more visual domains: visual attention, visual communication, visual-motor coordination, and visual processing. Questionnaire answers were compared with results of behavioral assessments performed by three pediatric ophthalmologists. Results of the clinical protocol classified 128 infants as having normal visual maturation, and 92 as having abnormal visual maturation. The specificity of PreViAs questionnaire was >80%, and sensitivity was 64%-79%. More than 80% of the infants were correctly classified, and test-retest reliability exceeded 0.9 for all domains. The PreViAs questionnaire is useful to detect abnormal visual maturation in infants from birth to 24months of age. It improves the anamnesis process in infants at risk of visual dysfunctions.	\N	\N
25173722	Expecting a particular stimulus can facilitate processing of that stimulus over others, but what is the fate of other stimuli that are known to co-occur with the expected stimulus? This study examined the impact of learned association on feature-based attention. The findings show that the effectiveness of an uninformative color transient in orienting attention can change by learned associations between colors and the expected target shape. In an initial acquisition phase, participants learned two distinct sequences of stimulus-response-outcome, where stimuli were defined by shape ('S' vs. 'H'), responses were localized key-presses (left vs. right), and outcomes were colors (red vs. green). Next, in a test phase, while expecting a target shape (80% probable), participants showed reliable attentional orienting to the color transient associated with the target shape, and showed no attentional orienting with the color associated with the alternative target shape. This bias seemed to be driven by learned association between shapes and colors, and not modulated by the response. In addition, the bias seemed to depend on observing target-color conjunctions, since encountering the two features disjunctively (without spatiotemporal overlap) did not replicate the findings. We conclude that associative learning - likely mediated by mechanisms underlying visual object representation - can extend the impact of goal-driven attention to features associated with a target stimulus.	\N	\N
25174852	The lifetime risk of suicide in patients with schizophrenia is estimated to be 4.9-13%. While there are many known risk factors for suicide in schizophrenia, the relationship between cognitive function and suicide risk is unclear, particularly in non-Caucasian populations. In our cross-sectional study, we administered the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) to 316 Han Chinese chronic inpatients with schizophrenia and compared the performance of those who had attempted suicide (n=25) to non-attempters (n=291). The lifetime suicide attempt data were collected from medical records and interviews with patients and their family members. We found a lifetime suicide attempt rate of 7.9%. Suicide attempters were more likely to be single, but showed no significant differences in other demographic factors such as age, gender, or living arrangements. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no significant relationship between performance on the RBANS test and lifetime risk of suicide attempts in Han Chinese inpatients with schizophrenia. The literature remains mixed on this topic. Culturally influenced differences in suicidal behavior may have affected the outcome of this study and further investigation of this topic is necessary.	\N	\N
25175914	Cannabis-induced psychotic disorder (CIPD) refers to psychotic symptoms that arise in the context of cannabis intoxication. Prepulse inhibition (PPI) deficits have been extensively identified in schizophrenia and in cannabis abusers. We aimed to characterize PPI in CIPD patients. We used a sample of 48 CIPD patients, 54 schizophrenia patients and cannabis abuse (SCHZ), 44 cannabis dependents (CD), and 44 controls. CIPD, SCHZ and CD were abstinent of cannabis consumption for 9 months. Participants were assessed with PPI at 30, 60, and 120 ms. At 30 ms, CIPD showed lower PPI levels than controls, and SCHZ obtained worse functioning than controls and CD. At 60 ms, only SCHZ exhibited worse PPI percentages (of object) than controls. Finally, at 120 ms, CIPD showed higher PPI levels than SCHZ, and SCHZ obtained lower percentages than controls. We found that CIPD and SCHZ patients showed deficits at the most pre-attentional levels, whereas CIPD patients performed better than SCHZ at higher attentional levels. These results suggest that CIPD constitutes a different group of patients than that of SCHZ. Deficits in PPI functioning at 30 ms could be a useful psychophysiological measure to detect CIPD patients, who are frequently confused with cannabis abusers whose symptoms may mimic that of schizophrenia.	\N	\N
25184299	Previous research has shown that adults with dyslexia (AwD) are disproportionately impacted by close spacing of stimuli and increased numbers of distractors in a visual search task compared to controls [1]. Using an orientation discrimination task, the present study extended these findings to show that even in conditions where target search was not required: (i) AwD had detrimental effects of both crowding and increased numbers of distractors; (ii) AwD had more pronounced difficulty with distractor exclusion in the left visual field and (iii) measures of crowding and distractor exclusion correlated significantly with literacy measures. Furthermore, such difficulties were not accounted for by the presence of covarying symptoms of ADHD in the participant groups. These findings provide further evidence to suggest that the ability to exclude distracting stimuli likely contributes to the reported visual attention difficulties in AwD and to the aetiology of literacy difficulties. The pattern of results is consistent with weaker and asymmetric attention in AwD.	\N	\N
25188718	The relevance of sleep instability is poorly appreciated among the metrics of sleep physiology. The cyclic alternating pattern (CAP) is a periodic electroencephalogram activity of non-REM sleep, characterized by sequences of transient electrocortical events that are distinct from the tonic background and recur at up to 1-min intervals. In the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP expresses a condition of instability that reflects the brain's effort in preserving and regulating the physiological structure of sleep. CAP quantification is a topical feature in the evaluation of sleep quality. In addition to duration, depth, and continuity, sleep restorative properties depend on the brain's capacity to determine the periods of sustained stable sleep. This issue is not confined only to the electroencephalogram activities but reverberates upon the ongoing autonomic and behavioral functions, which are mutually entrained in a synchronized oscillation. As a master clock involved in the dynamic organization of sleep, CAP plays a crucial role in numerous sleep disorders and is powerfully influenced by medication and appropriate treatment. This article reviews the scoring, significance, and clinical applications of CAP.	\N	\N
25192605	We aimed to measure the diurnal changes of critical flicker frequency in healthy subjects and cirrhotic patients and to investigate their relationship with sleep disturbance. Cirrhotic patients and healthy volunteers were included. All groups completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and a simple sleep questionnaire. Sleep disturbance was defined as a Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index score of >5. Critical flicker frequency was measured twice a day to detect diurnal abnormalities. Overall, 59 cirrhotic patients (54.2% males, Mean Age 59 ± 11 years) and 18 controls (39.9% males, Mean Age 58 ± 9 years) were included. Sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics (66.1%) than controls (38.9%, p<0.05). In cirrhotics, the critical flicker frequency was not related to decompensation. The nocturnal values were higher than the morning values in cirrhotics (64.4%), but not in controls (p<0.0001). Additionally, sleep disturbances were more common in cirrhotics who had higher nocturnal values (p<0.05). Changes in the diurnal critical flicker frequency were observed in cirrhotics but not in controls. Sleep disturbances in cirrhotics appear to be associated with deviations of the diurnal rhythm of critical flicker frequency rather than with clinical parameters such as the clinical stages of cirrhosis and the Model For End-Stage Liver Disease and Child-Pugh scores.	\N	\N
25203170	The subthalamic nucleus (STN) has been shown to be implicated in the control of voluntary action, especially during tasks involving conflicting choice alternatives or rapid response suppression. However, the precise role of the STN during nonmotor functions remains controversial. First, we tested whether functionally distinct neuronal populations support different executive control functions (such as inhibitory control or error monitoring) even within a single subterritory of the STN. We used microelectrode recordings during deep brain stimulation surgery to study extracellular activity of the putative associative-limbic part of the STN while patients with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder performed a stop-signal task. Second, 2-4 days after the surgery, local field potential recordings of STN were used to test the hypothesis that STN oscillations may also reflect executive control signals. Extracellular recordings revealed three functionally distinct neuronal populations: the first one fired selectively before and during motor responses, the second one selectively increased their firing rate during successful inhibitory control, and the last one fired selectively during error monitoring. Furthermore, we found that beta band activity (15-35 Hz) rapidly increased during correct and incorrect behavioral stopping. Taken together, our results provide critical electrophysiological support for the hypothesized role of the STN in the integration of motor and cognitive-executive control functions.	\N	\N
25210709	The underlying processes responsible for the differences between morning and afternoon measurements of postural control have not yet been clearly identified. This study was conducted to specify the role played by vestibular, visual, and somatosensory inputs in postural balance and their link with the diurnal fluctuations of body temperature and vigilance level. Nineteen healthy male subjects (mean age: 20.5 ± 1.3 years) participated in test sessions at 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. after a normal night's sleep. Temperature was measured before the subjects completed a sign cancellation test and a postural control evaluation with eyes both open and closed. Our results confirmed that postural control improved throughout the day according to the circadian rhythm of body temperature and sleepiness/vigilance. The path length as a function of surface ratio increased between 6:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. This is due to a decrease in the centre-of-pressure surface area, which is associated with an increase in path length. Romberg's index did not change throughout the day; however, the spectral analysis (fast Fourier transform) of the centre-of-pressure excursions (in anteroposterior and mediolateral directions) indicated that diurnal fluctuations in postural control may occur via changes in the different processes responsible for readjustment via muscle contractions.	\N	\N
25215475	Previous studies have established that obese adolescents possess a stronger tendency to behave more impulsively and be more inattentive than healthy-weight children. Additionally, gender difference in inattention and impulsivity has also been substantiated by previous researchers. The current study examined the relationship between gender, body weight, and inattention and impulsivity in adolescents. It was hypothesized that obese males and females would have more inattentive and impulsive responses than their healthy-weight peers. Participants were 113 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19; all participants completed the CPT-II, a measure of inattentive and impulsive response styles. Findings indicated that males who were classified as overweight or obese scored higher on inattention than did obese females, healthy-weight males, and healthy-weight females. Additionally, females committed a greater number of commission errors and were less able to distinguish the target stimuli, suggestive of impulsive responding. These findings indicate a gender difference in regard to impulsive responding, and also reveal an interaction of weight status and gender on inattention. Implications for prevention and treatment are discussed.	\N	\N
25224180	Changes of EEG alpha asymmetry in terms of increased right versus left sided activity in prefrontal cortex are considered to index activation of the withdrawal/avoidance motivational system. The present study aimed to add evidence of the validity of individual differences in the EEG alpha asymmetry response and their relevance regarding the impact of emotional events. The magnitude of the EEG alpha asymmetry response while watching a film consisting of scenes of real injury and death correlated with components of transient cardiac responses to sudden horrifying events happening to persons in the film which index withdrawal/avoidance motivation and heightened attention and perceptual intake. Additionally, it predicted greater mood deterioration following the film and film-related intrusive memories and avoidance over the following week. The study provides further evidence for prefrontal EEG alpha asymmetry changes in response to relevant stimuli reflecting an individual's sensitivity to negative social-emotional cues encountered in everyday life.	\N	\N
25226214	The emotional connotation of a word is known to shift the process of word recognition. Using the electroencephalographic event-related potentials (ERPs) approach it has been documented that early attentional processing of high-arousing negative words is shifted at a stage of processing where a presented word cannot have been fully identified. Contextual learning has been discussed to contribute to these effects. The present study shows that a manipulation of the familiarity with a word's shape interferes with these earliest emotional ERP effects. Presenting high-arousing negative and neutral words in a familiar or an unfamiliar font results in very early emotion differences only in case of familiar shapes, whereas later processing stages reveal similar emotional effects in both font conditions. Because these early emotion-related differences predict later behavioral differences, it is suggested that contextual learning of emotional valence comprises more visual features than previously expected to guide early visual-sensory processing.	\N	\N
25227004	This study investigated neuronal activation differences under two conditions: driving only and distracted driving. Driving and distraction tasks were performed using a Magnetic Resonance (MR)-compatible driving simulator with a driving wheel and pedal. The experiment consisted of three blocks, and each block had both a Rest phase (1 min) and a Driving phase (2 min). During the Rest phase, drivers were instructed to simply look at the stop screen without performing any driving tasks. During the Driving phase, each driver was required to drive at 110 km/h under two conditions: driving only and driving while performing additional distraction tasks. The results show that the precuneus, inferior parietal lobule, supramarginal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, cuneus, and declive are less activated in distracted driving than in driving only. These regions are responsible for spatial perception, spatial attention, visual processing and motor control. However, the cingulate gyrus and sub-lobar regions (lentiform nucleus and caudate), which are responsible for error monitoring and control of unnecessary movement, show increased activation during distracted driving compared with driving only.	\N	\N
25236921	Comparative judgment is a crucial task in ecological settings, as well as in many experimental studies about basic aspects of perceptual processes. It has long been known that sequential comparison is prone to order effects. This phenomenon has received little attention and has often been discounted as a type of response bias. In the present study, we investigated brightness discrimination of two brief (100 ms) spatially disjoint luminance stimuli. In the first and second experiments, stimuli were presented against a dark background with a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) from 0 to 200 ms, in a paradigm controlling for response bias. In the third experiment, stimuli were presented against a bright background. We demonstrate that the time interval between stimuli modulates and even inverts their perceived brightness difference, enhancing the second stimulus relative to the first. When the background is brighter than the target stimuli, the sign of the effect is inverted, suggesting that the underlying mechanism operates on contrast rather than brightness. The magnitude of this effect is shown to depend on SOA and average luminance level of the target stimuli. Hypotheses in terms of neural and attentional dynamics are proposed.	\N	\N
25241396	Right brain damage often provokes deficits of visuospatial attention. Although the spatial attention networks have been widely investigated in stroke patients as well as in the healthy brain, little is known about the impact of slow growing lesions in the right hemisphere. We here present a longitudinal study of 20 patients who have been undergoing awake brain surgery with per-operative line bisection testing. Our aim was to investigate the impact of tumour presence and of tumour resection on the functional (re)organization of the attention networks. We assessed patients' performance on lateralized target detection, visual exploration and line bisection before surgery, and in the acute and post-acute operative phases after surgery. Clear evidence for transient neglect signs was observed in the acute post-operative phase, although full recovery had invariably occurred in all patients. The resection of the right angular gyrus was associated with transient neglect-like symptoms in all tasks, whereas resection of more anterior regions correlated with transient deficits only in visual exploration or detection (but not in line bisection). The attentional networks showed substantial functional recovery. This impressive pattern of recovery is discussed in terms of involvement of the contralateral left hemisphere and of preservation of long-range white matter pathways within the right hemisphere.	\N	\N
25244118	Working memory (WM) is strongly influenced by attention. In visual WM tasks, recall performance can be improved by an attention-guiding cue presented before encoding (precue) or during maintenance (retrocue). Although precues and retrocues recruit a similar frontoparietal control network, the two are likely to exhibit some processing differences, because precues invite anticipation of upcoming information whereas retrocues may guide prioritization, protection, and selection of information already in mind. Here we explored the behavioral and electrophysiological differences between precueing and retrocueing in a new visual WM task designed to permit a direct comparison between cueing conditions. We found marked differences in ERP profiles between the precue and retrocue conditions. In line with precues primarily generating an anticipatory shift of attention toward the location of an upcoming item, we found a robust lateralization in late cue-evoked potentials associated with target anticipation. Retrocues elicited a different pattern of ERPs that was compatible with an early selection mechanism, but not with stimulus anticipation. In contrast to the distinct ERP patterns, alpha-band (8-14 Hz) lateralization was indistinguishable between cue types (reflecting, in both conditions, the location of the cued item). We speculate that, whereas alpha-band lateralization after a precue is likely to enable anticipatory attention, lateralization after a retrocue may instead enable the controlled spatiotopic access to recently encoded visual information.	\N	\N
25248557	The aim of this study was to elucidate the dimensional structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and potential moderators and functional correlates of this structure in disaster-affected adolescents. A population-based sample of 2000 adolescents aged 12-17 years (M = 14.5 years; 51% female) completed interviews on post-tornado PTSD symptoms, substance use, and parent-adolescent conflict between 4 and 13 months (M = 8.8, SD = 2.6) after tornado exposure. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that all models fit well but a 5-factor dysphoric arousal model provided a statistically significantly better representation of adolescent PTSD symptoms compared to 4-factor dysphoria and emotional numbing models. There was evidence of measurement invariance of the dysphoric arousal model across gender and age, although girls and older adolescents aged 15-17 years had higher mean scores than boys and younger adolescents aged 12-14 years, respectively, on some PTSD dimensions. Differential magnitudes of association between PTSD symptom dimensions and functional correlates were observed, with emotional numbing symptoms most strongly positively associated with problematic substance use since the tornado, and dysphoric arousal symptoms most strongly positively associated with parent-adolescent conflict; both correlations were significantly larger than the corresponding correlations with anxious arousal. Taken together, these results suggest that the dimensional structure of tornado-related PTSD symptomatology in adolescents is optimally characterized by five separate clusters of re-experiencing, avoidance, numbing, dysphoric arousal, and anxious arousal symptoms, which showed unique associations with functional correlates. Findings emphasize that PTSD in disaster-exposed adolescents is not best conceptualized as a homogenous construct and highlight potential differential targets for post-disaster assessment and intervention.	\N	\N
25253260	Along with urbanization of the living environment, the number of patients with circadian rhythm sleep disorder (CRSD) has been increasing. There are several treatment candidates for CRSD, such as light therapy, drugs (melatonin and vitamin B12), and sleep hygiene education. However, successful treatment method has not been established. In free-running type (FRT) CRSD, the endogenous circadian rhythm cannot be entrained to the 24-h light-dark cycle, resulting in free running on a cycle 0.5-2.5 h longer than the 24-h period. This condition is relatively common in blind individuals and is unusual in sighted individuals. Here we report two sighted patients with FRT, successfully treated with a melatonin receptor agonist, ramelteon. Patient 1 (36-year-old female) had suffered from FRT for nearly 4 months after resigning her job. She was given sleep hygiene education together with ramelteon at first and the free-running cycle stopped after treatment day 15. Triazolam was added from the day 25 to promote earlier sleep onset. And the sleep-wake schedule was normalized by the day 34. Patient 2 (33-year-old male) had suffered from FRT for nearly 8 months after starting to take a leave of absence from his job. He was given sleep hygiene education and was treated with ramelteon and methylcobalamin. His sleep-wake schedule was normalized from the first treatment day. By the combined treatment with ramelteon, both patients have maintained favorable sleep-wake schedules. The agonist action of ramelteon at the melatonin 2 receptor may have primarily contributed to the cessation of the free-running cycle in these patients.	\N	\N
25254067	This study investigates the effect of tone inventories on brain activities underlying pitch without focal attention. We find that the electrophysiological responses to across-category stimuli are larger than those to within-category stimuli when the pitch contours are superimposed on nonspeech stimuli; however, there is no electrophysiological response difference associated with category status in speech stimuli. Moreover, this category effect in nonspeech stimuli is stronger for Cantonese speakers. Results of previous and present studies lead us to conclude that brain activities to the same native lexical tone contrasts are modulated by speakers' language experiences not only in active phonological processing but also in automatic feature detection without focal attention. In contrast to the condition with focal attention, where phonological processing is stronger for speech stimuli, the feature detection (pitch contours in this study) without focal attention as shaped by language background is superior in relatively regular stimuli, that is, the nonspeech stimuli. The results suggest that Cantonese listeners outperform Mandarin listeners in automatic detection of pitch features because of the denser Cantonese tone system.	\N	\N
25260191	This study tested the effects of a parent-mediated intervention on parental responsiveness with their toddlers at high risk for an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Participants included caregivers and their 66 toddlers at high risk for ASD. Caregivers were randomized to 12 sessions of an individualized parent education intervention aimed at improving parental responsiveness or to a monitoring control group involving 4 sessions of behavioral support. Parental responsiveness and child outcomes were measured at three time points: at beginning and end of the 3-month treatment and at 12-months post-study entry. Parental responsiveness improved significantly in the treatment group but not the control group. However, parental responsiveness was not fully maintained at follow up. There were no treatment effects on child outcomes of joint attention or language. Children in both groups made significant developmental gains in cognition and language skills over one year. These results support parental responsiveness as an important intervention target given its general association with child outcomes in the extant literature; however, additional supports are likely needed to fully maintain the treatment effect and to affect child outcomes.	\N	\N
25273924	The study used a dual-task (DT) postural paradigm (two tasks performed at once) that included electroencephalography (EEG) to examine cortical interference when a visual working memory (VWM) task was paired with a postural task. The change detection task was used, as it requires storage of information without updating or manipulation and predicts VWM capacity. Ground reaction forces (GRFs) (horizontal and vertical), EMG, and EEG elements, time locked to support surface perturbations, were used to infer the active neural processes underlying the automatic control of balance in 14 young adults. A significant reduction was seen between single task (ST) and DT conditions in VWM capacity (F(1,13) = 6.175, p < 0.05, r = 06) and event-related potential (ERP) N1 component amplitude over the L motor (p < 0.001) and R sensory (p < 0.05) cortical areas. In addition, a significant increase in the COP trajectory peak (pkcopx) was seen in the DT versus ST condition. Modulation of VWM capacity as well as ERP amplitude and pkcopx in DT conditions provided evidence of an interference pattern, suggesting that the two modalities shared a similar set of attentional resources. The results provide direct evidence of the competition for central processing attentional resources between the two modalities, through the reduction in amplitude of the ERP evoked by the postural perturbation.	\N	\N
25294128	The differentiation of the vegetative or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS) from the minimally conscious state (MCS) is an important clinical issue. The cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (CMRglc) declines when consciousness is lost, and may reveal the residual cognitive function of these patients. However, no quantitative comparisons of cerebral glucose metabolism in VS/UWS and MCS have yet been reported. We calculated the regional and whole-brain CMRglc of 41 patients in the states of VS/UWS (n=14), MCS (n=21) or emergence from MCS (EMCS, n=6), and healthy volunteers (n=29). Global cortical CMRglc in VS/UWS and MCS averaged 42% and 55% of normal, respectively. Differences between VS/UWS and MCS were most pronounced in the frontoparietal cortex, at 42% and 60% of normal. In brainstem and thalamus, metabolism declined equally in the two conditions. In EMCS, metabolic rates were indistinguishable from those of MCS. Ordinal logistic regression predicted that patients are likely to emerge into MCS at CMRglc above 45% of normal. Receiver-operating characteristics showed that patients in MCS and VS/UWS can be differentiated with 82% accuracy, based on cortical metabolism. Together these results reveal a significant correlation between whole-brain energy metabolism and level of consciousness, suggesting that quantitative values of CMRglc reveal consciousness in severely brain-injured patients.	\N	\N
25295649	Diagnosis and management of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adults is complex and challenging because of the frequent comorbidity of other psychiatric disorders that have symptoms overlapping with those of ADHD. The presence of comorbidities can create challenges to making an accurate diagnosis and also impact treatment options and outcomes. This review discusses disorders that may be comorbid with ADHD in adults, including anxiety, mood, substance use disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Suggestions for recognizing these comorbidities and distinguishing them from ADHD and perspectives on their possible impact on ADHD treatment are included. Adjunctive nonpharmacologic modalities may be especially helpful in the case of comorbid mood, anxiety, substance abuse, or personality disorders.	\N	\N
25311333	Women at high risk for ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation or family history are recommended to undergo risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) after age 35 or completion of childbearing. This potentially life-saving surgery leads to premature menopause, frequently resulting in distressing and unaddressed sexual dysfunction. To pilot a novel sexual health intervention for women with BRCA1/2 mutations who previously underwent RRSO a using a single-arm trial. Feasibility and primary outcomes including sexual dysfunction and psychological distress were assessed. This single-arm trial included a one-time, half-day educational session comprised of targeted sexual health education, body awareness and relaxation training, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy strategies, followed by two sessions of tailored telephone counseling. Assessments were completed at baseline and 2 months postintervention. Study end points include feasibility and effectiveness as reported by the participant. Thirty-seven women completed baseline and postintervention assessments. At baseline, participants had a mean age of 44.4 (standard deviation [SD] = 3.9) years and mean duration of 3.8 (SD = 2.7) years since RRSO. Overall sexual functioning (P = 0.018), as well as desire (P = 0.003), arousal (P = 0.003), satisfaction (P = 0.028), and pain (P = 0.018), improved significantly. There were significant reductions in somatization (P = 0.029) and anxiety scores (P < 0.001), and, overall, for the Global Severity Index (P < 0.001) of the Brief Symptom Inventory. Sexual self-efficacy and sexual knowledge also improved significantly from baseline to postintervention (both P < 0.001). Women were highly satisfied with the intervention content and reported utilizing new skills to manage sexual dysfunction. This intervention integrates elements of cognitive behavioral therapy with sexual health education to address a much-neglected problem after RRSO. Results from this promising single-arm study provide preliminary data to move toward conducting a randomized, controlled trial.	\N	\N
25314961	To estimate the heritability of child behaviour problems and investigate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight and child behaviour problems in a genetically sensitive design. Observational cross-sectional study. The Twins and Multiple Births Association Heritability Study (TAMBAHS) is an online UK-wide volunteer-based study investigating the development of twins from birth until 5 years of age. A total of 443 (16% of the initial registered members) mothers answered questions on pre-pregnancy weight and their twins' internalising and externalising problems using the Child Behavior Checklist and correcting for important covariates including gestational age, twins' birth weight, age and sex, mother's educational level and smoking (before, during and after pregnancy). The heritability of behaviour problems and their association with maternal pre-pregnancy weight. The genetic analysis suggested that genetic and common environmental factors account for most of the variation in externalising disorders (an ACE model was the most parsimonious with genetic factors (A) explaining 46% (95% CI 33% to 60%) of the variance, common environment (C) explaining 42% (95% CI 27% to 54%) and non-shared environmental factors (E) explaining 13% (95% CI 10% to 16%) of the variance. For internalising problems, a CE model was the most parsimonious model with the common environment explaining 51% (95% CI 44% to 58%) of the variance and non-shared environment explaining 49% (95% CI 42% to 56%) of the variance. Moreover, the regression analysis results suggested that children of overweight mothers showed a trend (OR=1.10, 95% CI 0.58% to 2.06) towards being more aggressive and exhibit externalising behaviours compared to children of normal weight mothers. Maternal pre-pregnancy weight may play a role in children's aggressive behaviour.	\N	\N
25322890	Physiological hyperarousal is manifested acutely by increased heart rate, decreased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and increased skin conductance level and variability. Yet it is uncertain to what extent such activation occurs with the symptomatic hyperarousal of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We compared 56 male veterans with current PTSD to 54 males who never had PTSD. Subjects wore ambulatory devices that recorded electrocardiograms, finger skin conductance, and wrist movement while in their normal environments. Wrist movement was monitored to estimate sleep and waking periods. Heart rate, but not the other variables, was elevated in subjects with PTSD equally during waking and during actigraphic sleep (effect sizes, Cohen's d, ranged from 0.63 to 0.89). The length of the sleep periods and estimated sleep fragmentation did not differ between groups. Group heart rate differences could not be explained by differences in body activity, PTSD hyperarousal symptom scores, depression, physical fitness, or antidepressant use.	\N	\N
25325493	Alterations in emotional reactivity may play a key role in the pathophysiology of insomnia disorder (ID). However, only few supporting experimental data are currently available. We evaluated in a hypothesis-driven design whether patients with ID present altered amygdale responses to emotional stimuli related and unrelated to the experience of insomnia and, because of chronic hyperarousal, less habituation of amygdala responses. Case-control study. Departments of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and of Radiology of the University of Freiburg Medical Center. There were 22 patients with ID (15 females; 7 males; age 40.7 ± 12.6 y) and 38 healthy good sleepers (HGS, 21 females; 17 males; age 39.6 ± 8.9 y). N/A. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging session, five different blocks of pictures with varying emotional arousal, valence, and content (insomnia-relatedness) were presented. Pictures were presented twice to test for habituation processes. Results showed that patients with ID, compared to HGS, presented heightened amygdala responses to insomnia-related stimuli. Moreover, habituation of amygdale responses was observed only in HGS, but not in patients with ID who showed a mixed pattern of amygdala responses to the second presentation of the stimuli. The results provide evidence for an insomnia-related emotional bias in patients with ID. Cognitive behavior treatment for ID could benefit from strategies dealing with the emotional charge associated with the disorder. Further studies should clarify the role of ID with respect to habituation of amygdala responses.	\N	\N
25328996	Intermodal integration required for perceptual learning tasks is rife with individual differences. Participants vary in how they use perceptual information to one modality. One participant alone might change her own response over time. Participants vary further in their use of feedback through one modality to inform another modality. Two experiments test the general hypothesis that perceptual-motor fluctuations reveal both information use within modality and coordination among modalities. Experiment 1 focuses on perceptual learning in dynamic touch, in which participants use exploratory hand-wielding of unseen objects to make visually guided length judgments and use visual feedback to rescale their judgments of the same mechanical information. Previous research found that the degree of fractal temporal scaling (i.e., "fractality") in hand-wielding moderates the use of mechanical information. Experiment 1 shows that head-sway fractality moderates the use of visual information. Further, experience with feedback increases head-sway fractality and prolongs its effect on later hand-wielding fractality. Experiment 2 replicates effects of head-sway fractality moderating use of visual information in a purely visual-judgment task. Together, these findings suggest that fractal fluctuations may provide a modal-general window onto not just how participants use perceptual information but also how well they may integrate information among different modalities.	\N	\N
25330316	It has been well known that pediatric allergic rhinitis was associated with poor performance at school due to attention deficit. However, there were no cohort studies for the effect of treatment of allergic rhinitis on attention performance in pediatric population. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate whether attention performance was improved after treatment in children with allergic rhinitis. In this ARCO-Kids (Allergic Rhinitis Cohort Study for Kids), consecutive pediatric patients with rhinitis symptoms underwent a skin prick test and computerized comprehensive attention test. According to the skin prick test results, the children were diagnosed as allergic rhinitis or non- allergic rhinitis. All of the patients were regularly followed up and treated with oral medication or intranasal corticosteroid sprays. The comprehensive attention tests consisted of sustained and divided attention tasks. Each of the tasks was assessed by the attention score which was calculated by the number of omission and commission errors. The comprehension attention test was repeated after 1 year. A total of 797 children with allergic rhinitis and 239 children with non-allergic rhinitis were included. Initially, the attention scores of omission and commission errors on divided attention task were significantly lower in children with allergic rhinitis than in children with non-allergic rhinitis. After 1 year of treatment, children with allergic rhinitis showed improvement in attention: commission error of sustained (95.6±17.0 vs 97.0±16.6) and divided attention task (99.1±15.8 vs 91.8±23.5). Meanwhile, there was no significant difference of attention scores in children with non-allergic rhinitis. Our study showed that management of allergic rhinitis might be associated with improvement of attention.	\N	\N
25338537	In the present study, we investigated how feature- and location-based selection influences visual working memory (VWM) encoding and maintenance. In Experiment 1, cue type (color, location) and cue timing (precue, retro-cue) were manipulated in a change detection task. The stimuli were color-location conjunction objects, and binding memory was tested. We found a significantly greater effect for color precues than for either color retro-cues or location precues, but no difference between location pre- and retro-cues, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Griffin & Nobre in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1176-1194, 2003). We also found no difference between location and color retro-cues. Experiment 2 replicated the color precue advantage with more complex color-shape-location conjunction objects. Only one retro-cue effect was different from that in Experiment 1: Color retro-cues were significantly less effective than location retro-cues in Experiment 2, which may relate to a structural property of multidimensional VWM representations. In Experiment 3, a visual search task was used, and the result of a greater location than color precue effect suggests that the color precue advantage in a memory task is related to the modulation of VWM encoding rather than of sensation and perception. Experiment 4, using a task that required only memory for individual features but not for feature bindings, further confirmed that the color precue advantage is specific to binding memory. Together, these findings reveal new aspects of the interaction between attention and VWM and provide potentially important implications for the structural properties of VWM representations.	\N	\N
25348131	To evaluate the frequency, determinants and sleep characteristics of lucid dreaming in narcolepsy. University hospital sleep disorder unit. Case-control study. Consecutive patients with narcolepsy and healthy controls. Participants were interviewed regarding the frequency and determinants of lucid dreaming. Twelve narcolepsy patients and 5 controls who self-identified as frequent lucid dreamers underwent nighttime and daytime sleep monitoring after being given instructions regarding how to give an eye signal when lucid. Compared to 53 healthy controls, the 53 narcolepsy patients reported more frequent dream recall, nightmares and recurrent dreams. Lucid dreaming was achieved by 77.4% of narcoleptic patients and 49.1% of controls (P < 0.05), with an average of 7.6±11 vs. 0.3±0.8 lucid dreams/ month (P < 0.0001). The frequency of cataplexy, hallucinations, sleep paralysis, dyssomnia, HLA positivity, and the severity of sleepiness were similar in narcolepsy with and without lucid dreaming. Seven of 12 narcoleptic (and 0 non-narcoleptic) lucid dreamers achieved lucid REM sleep across a total of 33 naps, including 14 episodes with eye signal. The delta power in the electrode average, in delta, theta, and alpha powers in C4, and coherences between frontal electrodes were lower in lucid than non-lucid REM sleep in spectral EEG analysis. The duration of REM sleep was longer, the REM sleep onset latency tended to be shorter, and the percentage of atonia tended to be higher in lucid vs. non-lucid REM sleep; the arousal index and REM density and amplitude were unchanged. Narcolepsy is a novel, easy model for studying lucid dreaming.	\N	\N
25351450	To evaluate sexual function in women undergoing assisted reproductive techniques. This is a case-control study including 278 women assisted in Human Reproduction services and at the Gynecology Clinic of the University Hospital, Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. The women were divided into a study group (168 infertile women) and a control group (110 fertile women), and they answered the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire used the assess the sexual function. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) for the chance of sexual dysfunction in infertile women (p<0.05). Out of the analyzed women, 33.09% reported sexual dysfunction, with no difference in the FSFI score between groups (p=0.29). The prevalence of sexual dysfunction was of 36.30% among infertile women and 28.18% among fertile women; however, there was no difference between FSFI scores (p=0.36). The desire and arousal domains were significantly different among infertile women (p=0.01). Infertile women had the same chances of having sexual dysfunction as fertile women (OR=1.4, 95%CI 0.8-2.4; p=0.2). There were no differences between infertile and fertile women. Infertile women undergoing assisted reproduction techniques require professional approach to sexual health regarding desire and arousal.	\N	\N
25352218	Coordinated attention to information from multiple senses is fundamental to our ability to respond to salient environmental events, yet little is known about brain network mechanisms that guide integration of information from multiple senses. Here we investigate dynamic causal mechanisms underlying multisensory auditory-visual attention, focusing on a network of right-hemisphere frontal-cingulate-parietal regions implicated in a wide range of tasks involving attention and cognitive control. Participants performed three 'oddball' attention tasks involving auditory, visual and multisensory auditory-visual stimuli during fMRI scanning. We found that the right anterior insula (rAI) demonstrated the most significant causal influences on all other frontal-cingulate-parietal regions, serving as a major causal control hub during multisensory attention. Crucially, we then tested two competing models of the role of the rAI in multisensory attention: an 'integrated' signaling model in which the rAI generates a common multisensory control signal associated with simultaneous attention to auditory and visual oddball stimuli versus a 'segregated' signaling model in which the rAI generates two segregated and independent signals in each sensory modality. We found strong support for the integrated, rather than the segregated, signaling model. Furthermore, the strength of the integrated control signal from the rAI was most pronounced on the dorsal anterior cingulate and posterior parietal cortices, two key nodes of saliency and central executive networks respectively. These results were preserved with the addition of a superior temporal sulcus region involved in multisensory processing. Our study provides new insights into the dynamic causal mechanisms by which the AI facilitates multisensory attention.	\N	\N
25366823	This investigation brings together a response-time system identification methodology (e.g., Townsend & Wenger Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 11, 391-418, 2004a) and an accuracy methodology, intended to assess models of integration across stimulus dimensions (features, modalities, etc.) that were proposed by Shaw and colleagues (e.g., Mulligan & Shaw Perception & Psychophysics 28, 471-478, 1980). The goal was to theoretically examine these separate strategies and to apply them conjointly to the same set of participants. The empirical phases were carried out within an extension of an established experimental design called the double factorial paradigm (e.g., Townsend & Nozawa Journal of Mathematical Psychology 39, 321-359, 1995). That paradigm, based on response times, permits assessments of architecture (parallel vs. serial processing), stopping rule (exhaustive vs. minimum time), and workload capacity, all within the same blocks of trials. The paradigm introduced by Shaw and colleagues uses a statistic formally analogous to that of the double factorial paradigm, but based on accuracy rather than response times. We demonstrate that the accuracy measure cannot discriminate between parallel and serial processing. Nonetheless, the class of models supported by the accuracy data possesses a suitable interpretation within the same set of models supported by the response-time data. The supported model, consistent across individuals, is parallel and has limited capacity, with the participants employing the appropriate stopping rule for the experimental setting.	\N	\N
25376192	Evidence from perceptually based implicit memory tasks demonstrates greater priming from distracting information among older compared with younger adults. We examined whether older adults also show greater conceptually based implicit priming from distracting information. We measured priming using a general-knowledge test that was preceded by an incidental-encoding task (a color-naming Stroop task in one experiment and a 1-back task involving pictures with irrelevant words superimposed in a second experiment). Younger adults showed no priming from the distracting information in either experiment, whereas older adults showed reliable priming in both experiments. Thus, unlike young adults, older adults process irrelevant information conceptually and then can use that information to boost their performance on a subsequent task.	\N	\N
25379451	Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been characterized by atypical socio-communicative behavior, sensorimotor impairment and abnormal neurodevelopmental trajectories. DTI has been used to determine the presence and nature of abnormality in white matter integrity that may contribute to the behavioral phenomena that characterize ASD. Although atypical patterns of sensory responding in ASD are well documented in the behavioral literature, much less is known about the neural networks associated with aberrant sensory processing. To address the roles of basic sensory, sensory association and early attentional processes in sensory responsiveness in ASD, our investigation focused on five white matter fiber tracts known to be involved in these various stages of sensory processing: superior corona radiata, centrum semiovale, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, posterior limb of the internal capsule, and splenium. We acquired high angular resolution diffusion images from 32 children with ASD and 26 typically developing children between the ages of 5 and 8. We also administered sensory assessments to examine brain-behavior relationships between white matter integrity and sensory variables. Our findings suggest a modulatory role of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus and splenium in atypical sensorimotor and early attention processes in ASD. Increased tactile defensiveness was found to be related to reduced fractional anisotropy in the inferior longitudinal fasciculus, which may reflect an aberrant connection between limbic structures in the temporal lobe and the inferior parietal cortex. Our findings also corroborate the modulatory role of the splenium in attentional orienting, but suggest the possibility of a more diffuse or separable network for social orienting in ASD. Future investigation should consider the use of whole brain analyses for a more robust assessment of white matter microstructure.	\N	\N
25384235	During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.	\N	\N
25384520	The aim of this study was to assess sexual function in female patients with myocardial infarction (MI). As research instruments, an interview form of 20 questions that questioned personal characteristics was developed by researchers, Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) that evaluated sexual dysfunction was used. The Beck Depression Inventory was used to evaluate depression. In the course of this study, 45 female patients (62.73 ± 8.55 years) with MI and 50 control women were interviewed. The total FSFI score was 16.41 ± 8.04 in the MI group versus 23.13 ± 3.95 (P < 0.001) in the control group. The prevalence of sexual dysfunction is significantly higher and the mean FSFI score was significantly lower in MI group women in comparison with the control group. Subscale scores of desire, arousal, lubrication and orgasm domains were lower than the other subscale scores in the MI group. Besides, 75.6% of the women in the MI group and 48.2% of women in the control group had a female sexual dysfunction. The frequency of intercourse was significantly lower in women with MI (1.55 ± 0.50 times last month) compared to the control group (2.14 ± 1.04 times last month). No significant differences were detected between the mean total BDI scores. But the correlation between FSFI and BDI total scores indicates that the increasing BDI scores in MI and control groups affected the total FSFI scores negatively. Sexual problems are frequent in women with MI. Sexuality should be evaluated after MI and patients' education and counseling may contribute to a better sexual function.	\N	\N
25428212	Attention orienting is a cognitive process that facilitates the movement of attention focus from one location to another: this may be impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Dorsal and ventral attention networks (DAN and VAN) sub-serve the process of attention orienting. This study investigated the functional connectivity of attention orienting in these networks in ASD using the Posner Cueing Task. Twenty-one adolescents with ASD and 21 age and IQ matched controls underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging. A psychophysical interaction (PPI) analysis was implemented to investigate task-dependent functional connectivity, measuring synchronicity of brain regions during the task. Regions of interest (ROI) were selected to explore functional connectivity in the DAN during cue-only conditions and in the VAN during invalid and valid trials. Behaviourally, the ASD and control groups performed the task in a similar manner. Functional MRI results indicated that the ASD and control groups activated similar brain regions. During invalid trials (VAN), the ASD group showed significant positive functional connectivity to multiple brain regions, whilst the control group demonstrated negative connectivity. During valid trials (VAN), the two groups also showed contrasting patterns of connectivity. In the cue-only conditions (DAN), the ASD group showed weaker functional connectivity. The DAN analysis suggests that the ASD group has weaker coherence between brain areas involved in goal-driven, endogenous attention control. The strong positive functional connectivity exhibited by the ASD group in the VAN during the invalid trials suggests that individuals with ASD may generate compensatory mechanisms to achieve neurotypical behaviour. These results support the theory of abnormal cortical connectivity in autism.	\N	\N
25443228	The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an internal and external attentional focus on single leg hop jump distance and knee kinematics in patients after ACL reconstruction (ACLR). Experimental. Outpatient physical therapy facility. Sixteen patients after ACLR. Patients received either an instruction with an internal focus or an external focus before performing a single leg hop jump. The jump distance, knee valgus angle at initial contact, peak knee valgus angle, knee flexion angle at initial contact, peak knee flexion angle, total ROM and time to peak angles for the injured and non-injured legs were recorded. A repeated measures MANOVA was used to determine significance between the experimental conditions with the primary outcome measures as dependent variables. The external focus group had significant larger knee flexion angles at initial contact, peak knee flexion, total ROM and time to peak knee flexion for the injured legs. This study demonstrates the applicability of using an external focus during rehabilitation of patients after ACLR to enhance safer movement patterns compared to an internal focus of attention and subsequently may help to reduce second ACL injury risk.	\N	\N
25445180	Efforts to determine and understand the causes of autism are currently hampered by a large disconnect between recent molecular genetics findings that are associated with the condition and the core behavioral symptoms that define the condition. In this perspective piece, we propose a systems biology framework to bridge that gap between genes and symptoms. The framework focuses on basic mechanisms of socialization that are highly-conserved in evolution and are early-emerging in development. By conceiving of these basic mechanisms of socialization as quantitative endophenotypes, we hope to connect genes and behavior in autism through integrative studies of neurodevelopmental, behavioral, and epigenetic changes. These changes both lead to and are led by the accomplishment of specific social adaptive tasks in a typical infant's life. However, based on recent research that indicates that infants later diagnosed with autism fail to accomplish at least some of these tasks, we suggest that a narrow developmental period, spanning critical transitions from reflexive, subcortically-controlled visual behavior to interactional, cortically-controlled and social visual behavior be prioritized for future study. Mapping epigenetic, neural, and behavioral changes that both drive and are driven by these early transitions may shed a bright light on the pathogenesis of autism.	\N	\N
25446944	We review reports of brain activations that occur immediately prior to the onset or following the offset of to-be-remembered information and can predict subsequent mnemonic success. Memory-predictive pre-encoding processes, occurring from fractions of a second to minutes prior to event onset, are mainly associated with activations in the medial temporal lobe (MTL), amygdala and midbrain, and with enhanced theta oscillations. These activations may be considered as the neural correlates of one or more cognitive operations, including contextual processing, attention, and the engagement of distinct computational modes associated with prior encoding or retrieval. Post-encoding activations that correlate with subsequent memory performance are mainly observed in the MTL, sensory cortices and frontal regions. These activations may reflect binding of elements of the encoded information and initiation of memory consolidation. In all, the findings reviewed here illustrate the importance of brain states in the immediate peri-encoding time windows in determining encoding success. Understanding these brain states and their specific effects on memory may lead to optimization of the encoding of desired memories and mitigation of undesired ones.	\N	\N
25448628	The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) state that young people need to have access to the best evidence-based care to improve outcome. The current 'gold standard' ADHD diagnostic assessment combines clinical observation with subjective parent, teacher and self-reports. In routine practice, reports from multiple informants may be unavailable or contradictory, leading to diagnostic uncertainty and delay. The addition of objective tests of attention and activity may help reduce diagnostic uncertainty and delays in initiating treatment leading to improved outcomes. This trial investigates whether providing clinicians with an objective report of levels of attention, impulsivity and activity can lead to an earlier, and more accurate, clinical diagnosis and improved patient outcome. This multisite randomised controlled trial will recruit young people (aged 6-17 years old) who have been referred for an ADHD diagnostic assessment at Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and Community Paediatric clinics across England. Routine clinical assessment will be augmented by the QbTest, incorporating a continuous performance test (CPT) and infrared motion tracking of activity. The participant will be randomised into one of two study arms: QbOpen (clinician has immediate access to a QbTest report): QbBlind (report is withheld until the study end). Primary outcomes are time to diagnosis and diagnostic accuracy. Secondary outcomes include clinician's diagnostic confidence and routine clinical outcome measures. Cost-effective analysis will be conducted, alongside a qualitative assessment of the feasibility and acceptability of incorporating QbTest in routine practice. The findings from the study will inform commissioners, clinicians and managers about the feasibility, acceptability, clinical utility and cost-effectiveness of incorporating QbTest into routine diagnostic assessment of young people with ADHD. The results will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals. The study has received ethical approval. NCT02209116.	\N	\N
25460674	Mounting research shows that the tendency to co-ruminate with peers regarding ongoing problems increases adolescents' depression risk; however, the means by which this interpersonal process fosters risk has not been identified. This said, theorists have proposed that co-rumination increases depression risk, in part, by increasing one's tendency to ruminate when alone. We tested this hypothesis in a study of 201 high-school freshmen who completed two assessments, six months apart. Supporting the proposed model, co-rumination predicted prospective increases in rumination and rumination predicted increases in depressive symptoms. The direct effect of co-rumination on depressive symptom change was not significant. Results indicate that co-rumination with friends may serve to increase rumination, which in turn increases depression risk.	\N	\N
25461224	The present proof-of-concept study investigated the feasibility of skin conductance biofeedback training in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), whose seizures are triggered by stress. Skin conductance biofeedback aims to increase levels of peripheral sympathetic arousal in order to reduce cortical excitability. This might seem somewhat counterintuitive, since such autonomic arousal may also be associated with increased stress and anxiety. Thus, this sought to verify that patients with TLE and stress-triggered seizures are not worsened in terms of stress, anxiety, and negative emotional response to this nonpharmacological treatment. Eleven patients with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress were treated with 12 sessions of biofeedback. Patients did not worsen on cognitive evaluation of attentional biases towards negative emotional stimuli (P>.05) or on psychometric evaluation with state anxiety inventory (P = .059); in addition, a significant improvement was found in the Negative Affect Schedule (P = .014) and in the Beck Depression Inventory (P = .009). Biofeedback training significantly reduced seizure frequency with a mean reduction of -48.61% (SD = 27.79) (P = .005). There was a correlation between the mean change in skin conductance activity over the biofeedback treatment and the reduction of seizure frequency (r(11) = .62, P = .042). Thus, the skin conductance biofeedback used in the present study, which teaches patients to achieve an increased level of peripheral sympathetic arousal, was a well-tolerated nonpharmacological treatment. Further, well-controlled studies are needed to confirm the therapeutic value of this nonpharmacological treatment in reducing seizures in adults with drug-resistant TLE with seizures triggered by stress.	\N	\N
25462041	During early childhood, girls outperform boys on key dimensions of cognitive functions, including inhibitory control, sustained attention, and working memory. The role of parenting in these sex differences is unknown despite evidence that boys are more sensitive to the effects of the early environment. In this study, we measured parental sensitivity at 14 and 36 months of age, and children's cognitive and executive functions (sustained attention, inhibitory control, and forward/backward memory) at 52 months of age, in a longitudinal cohort (N=752). Boys scored significantly lower than girls on inhibitory control (more Go/NoGo "commission errors") and short-term memory (forward color recall task), but boys did not differ from girls on attention (Go/NoGo "omission errors") or working memory (backward color recall task). In stratified analyses, parental sensitivity at 36 months of age was negatively associated with number of errors of commission (p=.05) and omission (p=.02) in boys, whereas child's age was the only significant predictor of commission and omission errors in girls. A combined analysis of both sexes confirmed an interaction between sex and parenting for omission errors (p=.03). The results indicate that sex differences in cognitive functions are evident in preschoolers, although not across all dimensions we assessed. Boys appear to be more vulnerable to early parenting effects, but only in association with omission errors (attention) and not with the other cognitive function dimensions.	\N	\N
25463351	Much research evidences a system in adults and young children for approximately representing quantity. Here we provide evidence that the bias to attend to discrete quantity versus other dimensions may be mediated by set size and culture. Preschool-age English-speaking children in the United States and Japanese-speaking children in Japan were tested in a match-to-sample task where number was pitted against cumulative surface area in both large and small numerical set comparisons. Results showed that children from both cultures were biased to attend to the number of items for small sets. Large set responses also showed a general attention to number when ratio difficulty was easy. However, relative to the responses for small sets, attention to number decreased for both groups; moreover, both U.S. and Japanese children showed a significant bias to attend to total amount for difficult numerical ratio distances, although Japanese children shifted attention to total area at relatively smaller set sizes than U.S. children. These results add to our growing understanding of how quantity is represented and how such representation is influenced by context--both cultural and perceptual.	\N	\N
25463457	EEG studies of cue-induced visual alpha power (8-13 Hz) lateralization have been conducted on young adults without examining differences that may develop as a consequence of normal aging. Here, we examined age-related differences in spatial attention by comparing healthy older and younger adults. Our key finding is that cue-induced alpha power lateralization was observed in younger, but not older adults, even though both groups exhibited classic event-related potential signatures of spatial orienting. Specifically, both younger and older adults showed significant early directing-attention negativity (EDAN), anterior directing-attention negativity (ADAN), late directing-attention positivity (LDAP) and contingent negative variation (CNV). Furthermore, target-evoked sensory components were enhanced for attended relative to unattended targets in both younger and older groups. This pattern of results suggests that although older adults can successfully allocate spatial attention, they do so without the lateralization of alpha power that is commonly observed in younger adults. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that younger and older adults might engage different neural mechanisms for attentional orienting, and that alpha power lateralization during visual spatial attention is a phenomenon that diminishes during normal aging.	\N	\N
25464934	Some components of generalized anxiety disorder, such as physical symptoms, are thought to reflect autonomic nervous system arousal. This study primarily assessed the relationships between psychophysiological and clinical measures using venlafaxine extended release or applied relaxation, and secondarily, the impact of combination treatment in patients not remitting after 8 weeks. Fifty-eight patients were randomly assigned to 8 weeks of treatment with either venlafaxine or applied relaxation (Phase I). Non-remitted patients received combination treatment for an additional 8 weeks (Phase II). Assessments included the Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAM-A), Beck Depression Inventory, Penn State Worry Questionnaire and the Stroop Color-Word Task coupled with electrophysiological measures (skin conductance and frontalis electromyography (EMG)). In Phase 1, a time effect was found for the clinical and skin conductance measures. Thirteen patients from each group were in remission. In Phase 2, seven additional patients remitted. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not associated with baseline clinical variables or with clinical outcomes. Independently of treatment allocation, a reduction in frontal EMG values at week 4 was significantly associated with a decrease in HAM-A scores at week 8. At week 4, responders from the applied relaxation group had lower electrophysiological activity than the venlafaxine group. Baseline psychophysiological measures were not linked with clinical measures at study inclusion or with treatment response. Frontal EMG response at week 4 is a possible predictor of treatment response. Treatment combination enhances treatment response after initial failure.	\N	\N
25466695	Hallucinations and delusions that complicate Parkinson's disease (PD) could lead to nursing home placement and are linked to increased mortality. Cognitive impairments are typically associated with the presence of hallucinations but there are no data regarding whether such a relationship exists with delusions. We hypothesized that hallucinations would be associated with executive and visuospatial disturbance. An exploratory examination of cognitive correlates of delusions was also completed to address the question of whether they differ from hallucinations. 144 PD subjects completed a neuropsychological battery to assess cognition and the SAPS to examine psychosis. Correlational analyses assessed associations between hallucinations and delusions with cognitive domains. 48 subjects (33%) reported psychotic symptoms: 25 (17%) experienced hallucinations without delusions, 23 (16%) had symptoms dominated by delusions. Severity and/or number of hallucination subtypes were significantly correlated with lower scores in language, memory, attention, executive functioning, and visuospatial ability. Correlations with delusions were non-significant. Tests of differences in the size of the correlations between groups revealed a significant relationship between language and visuospatial performance with hallucinations. Cognitive correlates of hallucinations and delusions appear to be different in PD, suggesting distinct pathogenic mechanisms and possibly anatomical substrates. Hence, delusions may not share the same associations with dementia as hallucinations. Since this is a new finding, further studies will be needed to confirm our results.	\N	\N
25487871	The physiological effects of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in hibernating bats and ultimate causes of mortality from infection with Pseudogymnoascus (formerly Geomyces) destructans are not fully understood. Increased frequency of arousal from torpor described among hibernating bats with late-stage WNS is thought to accelerate depletion of fat reserves, but the physiological mechanisms that lead to these alterations in hibernation behavior have not been elucidated. We used the doubly labeled water (DLW) method and clinical chemistry to evaluate energy use, body composition changes, and blood chemistry perturbations in hibernating little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) experimentally infected with P. destructans to better understand the physiological processes that underlie mortality from WNS. These data indicated that fat energy utilization, as demonstrated by changes in body composition, was two-fold higher for bats with WNS compared to negative controls. These differences were apparent in early stages of infection when torpor-arousal patterns were equivalent between infected and non-infected animals, suggesting that P. destructans has complex physiological impacts on its host prior to onset of clinical signs indicative of late-stage infections. Additionally, bats with mild to moderate skin lesions associated with early-stage WNS demonstrated a chronic respiratory acidosis characterized by significantly elevated dissolved carbon dioxide, acidemia, and elevated bicarbonate. Potassium concentrations were also significantly higher among infected bats, but sodium, chloride, and other hydration parameters were equivalent to controls. Integrating these novel findings on the physiological changes that occur in early-stage WNS with those previously documented in late-stage infections, we propose a multi-stage disease progression model that mechanistically describes the pathologic and physiologic effects underlying mortality of WNS in hibernating bats. This model identifies testable hypotheses for better understanding this disease, knowledge that will be critical for defining effective disease mitigation strategies aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality that results from WNS.	\N	\N
25490078	This paper attempts to integrate child developmental research and early childhood neural-cognitive development within the complexities of the early infant-mother relationship as described by psychoanalytic theory. Accumulating research evidence for the importance of the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze calls into question the origin and analytic significance of the alliance relationship that emerges from the primary relationship between the mother and child. This paper explores the apparently neglected relationship between the respective theories of the therapeutic alliance of Zetzel, Greenson, and Brenner, and the developmental progression from mutual gaze and joint gaze, upon which important aspects of mental and cognitive development rest. Nonblind infants and children rely heavily on the ability to see in order to learn and form representations, while trauma affects these dynamics and perception. This issue is particularly relevant given the high incidence of unresolved childhood trauma in the form of neglect, loss, and abuse in those who seek out therapy. Freud's original conception of developmental phase progression has been unsubstantiated by recent researchers in terms of chronological progression and the receptors through which the infants experience the world. In this paper the author applies specific developmental lenses to this basic conception of the dyadic relationship in psychoanalytic treatment, and will reexamine and redefine both working and therapeutic alliance in the frame of an essential developmental stage of joint visual attention. A clinical example will reveal compromised normal preverbal interactive development, exposing faults in the complex transition from mutual gaze to joint gaze.	\N	\N
25490810	We assess the driving distraction potential of texting with Google Glass (Glass), a mobile wearable platform capable of receiving and sending short-message-service and other messaging formats. A known roadway danger, texting while driving has been targeted by legislation and widely banned. Supporters of Glass claim the head-mounted wearable computer is designed to deliver information without concurrent distraction. Existing literature supports the supposition that design decisions incorporated in Glass might facilitate messaging for drivers. We asked drivers in a simulator to drive and use either Glass or a smartphone-based messaging interface, then interrupted them with an emergency brake event. Both the response event and subsequent recovery were analyzed. Glass-delivered messages served to moderate but did not eliminate distracting cognitive demands. A potential passive cost to drivers merely wearing Glass was also observed. Messaging using either device impaired driving as compared to driving without multitasking. Glass in not a panacea as some supporters claim, but it does point the way to design interventions that effect reduced load in multitasking. Discussions of these identified benefits are framed within the potential of new in-vehicle systems that bring both novel forms of distraction and tools for mitigation into the driver's seat.	\N	\N
25496437	Erectile dysfunction (ED) is frequent in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and may act as a surrogate of endothelial dysfunction. Furthermore, impairments of vigilance and sustained attention are also commonly associated with OSA. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether there is an association between ED and sustained attention deficits. A prospective cross-sectional cohort of 401 male in-patients undergoing diagnostic polysomnography for suspected OSA and a 25-minute sustained attention test was analyzed. ED was assessed using the 15-item International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF-15) questionnaire. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) served as a measure of daytime sleepiness. Severity of impaired erectile function (EF) assessed by the IIEF-15, core task parameters of the sustained attention test (i.e., CR: correct reactions; V-CR: variation of correct reactions, CE: commission errors, RT: reaction time; V-RT: variation of reaction times). Three hundred eighty-one consecutive patients presenting for in-lab polysomnography were included in the analysis. Impaired EF was diagnosed in 246 patients (65%). With increasing impairment of EF, patients scored significantly worse in all vigilance test parameters and demonstrated more severely diminished vigilance (normal EF: 11.9%, moderately impaired EF: 24.1%, and severely impaired EF: 34.9%). Multivariate regression analyses including established risk factors for ED, OSA, or sleepiness revealed a significant independent association between lower scores for EF and impairments on the following vigilance test variables: odds ratio (95% confidence interval) for V-CR: 0.52 (0.34-0.81), CE: 0.87 (0.80-0.95), and V-RT: 0.91 (0.87-0.96). The ESS was independently associated with both measures of performance instability: odds ratio for V-CR: 6.94 (2.97-16.23) and V-RT: 1.28 (1.14-1.44). In OSA patients, the severity of impaired EF was associated with impaired vigilance performance, independent of other known risk factors for ED or OSA and not mediated by sleepiness. Potentially, the findings suggest a direct relationship between vascular or endothelial dysfunction and impairments in both EF and neurobehavioral cognitive function.	\N	\N
25505324	Humans are selective information processors who efficiently prevent goal-inappropriate stimulus information to gain control over their actions. Nonetheless, stimuli, which are both unnecessary for solving a current task and liable to cue an incorrect response (i.e., "distractors"), frequently modulate task performance, even when consistently paired with a physical feature that makes them easily discernible from target stimuli. Current models of cognitive control assume adjustment of the processing of distractor information based on the overall distractor utility (e.g., predictive value regarding the appropriate response, likelihood to elicit conflict with target processing). Although studies on distractor interference have supported the notion of utility-based processing adjustment, previous evidence is inconclusive regarding the specificity of this adjustment for distractor information and the stage(s) of processing affected. To assess the processing of distractors during sensory-perceptual phases we applied EEG recording in a stimulus identification task, involving successive distractor-target presentation, and manipulated the overall distractor utility. Behavioral measures replicated previously found utility modulations of distractor interference. Crucially, distractor-evoked visual potentials (i.e., posterior N1) were more pronounced in high-utility than low-utility conditions. This effect generalized to distractors unrelated to the utility manipulation, providing evidence for item-unspecific adjustment of early distractor processing to the experienced utility of distractor information.	\N	\N
25510197	Cognitive performance in healthy persons varies widely between individuals. Sex differences in cognition are well reported, and there is an emerging body of evidence suggesting that the relationship between dopaminergic neurotransmission, implicated in many cognitive functions, is modulated by sex. Here, we examine the influence of sex and genetic variations along the dopaminergic pathway on aspects of cognitive control. A total of 415 healthy individuals, selected from an international consortium linked to Brain Research and Integrative Neuroscience Network (BRAINnet), were genotyped for two common and functional genetic variations of dopamine regulating genes: the catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT] gene (rs4680) and the dopamine receptor D2 [DRD2] gene (rs6277). Cognitive measures were selected to explore sustained attention (using a continuous performance task), switching of attention (using a Trails B adaptation) and working memory (a visual computerised adaptation of digit span). While there were no main effects for genotype across any tasks, analyses revealed significant sex by genotype interactions for the capacity to switch attention. In relation to COMT, superior performance was noted in females with the Val/Val genotype and for DRD2, superior performance was seen for TT females and CC males. These findings highlight the importance of considering genetic variation in baseline dopamine levels in addition to sex, when considering the impact of dopamine on cognition in healthy populations. These findings also have important implications for the many neuropsychiatric disorders that implicate dopamine, cognitive changes and sex differences.	\N	\N
25514652	It is solidly established that top-down (goal-driven) and bottom-up (stimulus-driven) attention mechanisms depend on distributed cortical networks, including prefrontal and frontoparietal regions. On the other hand, it is less clear whether the BG also contribute to one or the other of these mechanisms, or to both. The current study was principally undertaken to clarify this issue. Parkinson disease (PD), a neurodegenerative disorder primarily affecting the BG, has proven to be an effective model for investigating the contribution of the BG to different brain functions; therefore, we set out to investigate deficits of top-down and bottom-up attention in a selected cohort of PD patients. With this objective in mind, we compared the performance on three computerized tasks of two groups of 12 parkinsonian patients (assessed without any treatment), one otherwise pharmacologically treated and the other also surgically treated, with that of a group of controls. The main behavioral tool for our study was an attentional capture task, which enabled us to tap the competition between top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of visual attention. This task was suitably combined with a choice RT and a simple RT task to isolate any specific deficit of attention from deficits in motor response selection and initiation. In the two groups of patients, we found an equivalent increase of attentional capture but also comparable delays in target selection in the absence of any salient distractor (reflecting impaired top-down mechanisms) and movement initiation compared with controls. In contrast, motor response selection processes appeared to be prolonged only in the operated patients. Our results confirm that the BG are involved in both motor and cognitive domains. Specifically, damage to the BG, as it occurs in PD, leads to a distinct deficit of top-down control of visual attention, and this can account, albeit indirectly, for the enhancement of attentional capture, reflecting weakened ability of top-down mechanisms to antagonize bottom-up control.	\N	\N
25515099	The rat psychomotor vigilance task (rPVT) was developed as a rodent analog of the human psychomotor vigilance task (hPVT). We examined whether rPVT performance displays time-on-task effects similar to those observed on the hPVT. The rPVT requires rats to respond to a randomly presented light stimulus to obtain a water reward. Rats were water deprived for 22 h prior to each 30-min rPVT session to motivate performance. We analyzed rPVT performance over time on task and as a function of the response-stimulus interval, at baseline and after sleep deprivation. The study was conducted in an academic research vivarium. Male Long-Evans rats were trained to respond to a 0.5 sec stimulus light within 3 sec of stimulus onset. Complete data were available for n = 20 rats. Rats performed the rPVT for 30 min at baseline and after 24 h total sleep deprivation by gentle handling. Compared to baseline, sleep deprived rats displayed increased performance lapses and premature responses, similar to hPVT lapses of attention and false starts. However, in contrast to hPVT performance, the time-on-task performance decrement was not significantly enhanced by sleep deprivation. Moreover, following sleep deprivation, rPVT response times were not consistently increased after short response-stimulus intervals. The rPVT manifests similarities to the hPVT in global performance outcomes, but not in post-sleep deprivation effects of time on task and response-stimulus interval.	\N	\N
25521352	In the current study we show that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores significantly improve food choice prediction over merely liking scores. Previous research has shown that liking measures correlate with choice. However, liking is no strong predictor for food choice in real life environments. Therefore, the focus within recent studies shifted towards using emotion-profiling methods that successfully can discriminate between products that are equally liked. However, it is unclear how well scores from emotion-profiling methods predict actual food choice and/or consumption. To test this, we proposed to decompose emotion scores into valence and arousal scores using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and apply Multinomial Logit Models (MLM) to estimate food choice using liking, valence, and arousal as possible predictors. For this analysis, we used an existing data set comprised of liking and food-evoked emotions scores from 123 participants, who rated 7 unlabeled breakfast drinks. Liking scores were measured using a 100-mm visual analogue scale, while food-evoked emotions were measured using 2 existing emotion-profiling methods: a verbal and a non-verbal method (EsSense Profile and PrEmo, respectively). After 7 days, participants were asked to choose 1 breakfast drink from the experiment to consume during breakfast in a simulated restaurant environment. Cross validation showed that we were able to correctly predict individualized food choice (1 out of 7 products) for over 50% of the participants. This number increased to nearly 80% when looking at the top 2 candidates. Model comparisons showed that evoked emotions better predict food choice than perceived liking alone. However, the strongest predictive strength was achieved by the combination of evoked emotions and liking. Furthermore we showed that non-verbal food-evoked emotion scores more accurately predict food choice than verbal food-evoked emotions scores.	\N	\N
25547035	To evaluate the reliability of actigraphy to distinguish the features of estimated daytime and nighttime sleep between patients with central disorders of hypersomnolence and healthy controls. Thirty-nine drug-naïve patients with Narcolepsy Type 1, twenty-four drug-naïve patients with Idiopathic Hypersomnia, and thirty age- and sex- matched healthy controls underwent seven days of actigraphic and self-report monitoring of sleep/wake behavior. The following variables were examined: estimated time in bed (eTIB), estimated total sleep time, estimated sleep latency (eSOL), estimated sleep efficiency, estimated wake after sleep onset, number of estimated awakenings (eAwk), number of estimated awakenings longer than 5 minutes, estimated sleep motor activity (eSMA), number of estimated naps, mean duration of the longest estimated nap (eNapD), and daytime motor activity. All actigraphic parameters significantly differentiated the three groups, except eTIB and eSOL. A discriminant score computed combining actigraphic parameters from nighttime (eSMA, eAwk) and daytime (eNapD) periods showed a wide area under the curve (0.935) and a good balance between positive (95%) and negative predictive (87%) values in Narcolepsy Type 1 cases. Actigraphy provided a reliable objective measurement of sleep quality and daytime napping behavior able to distinguish central disorders of hypersomnolence and in particular Narcolepsy Type 1. The nycthemeral profile, combined with a careful clinical evaluation, may be an ecological information, useful to track disease course.	\N	\N
25549505	Boundary extension is a constructive memory error for views of scenes in which viewx tendto be remembered as more spatially expansive than they appeared. In seven experiments xwe examinedwhether local differences in boundary extension within views might exist by presenting par ticipants ith overhead views of single, elongated objects or object pairs on textured ground surfaces i:n whichobjects were oriented either vertically or horizontally. Memory for views' spatial expanse xwas testedwith either a view-recognition test or a border-adjustment test in which participants could ad just thespatial expanse of a test view using the computer's mouse. The border-adjustment test was uused tossess local boundary extension (primarily); the view-recognition test was used to assess paparticipants'emories for the overall spatial expanse of views (ie global boundary extension). Across exexperiments,n the border-adjustment tests specifically, participants showed more spatial expanse along the obobject'songer axis, in some cases restricting the view along the object's shorter axis. In addition, the rerecognition-t data revealed greater boundary extension for views with vertically oriented objects than for x.iviewsth horizontally oriented objects. Taken together, the results suggest that objects in scene x iviews canfect both local and global aspects of memory for spatial expanse of scene views.	\N	\N
25560106	The delivery suite is a high-risk environment. Transitions between low-risk and high-risk can be swift, and sentinel events can occur without warning. The prevention of accidents in this environment rests on the vigilance of the individual practitioner at the frontline. It is, therefore, important that the individual practitioner should develop and maintain the cognitive skills to anticipate, recognize, and intercept unfolding error chains. This commentary gives an overview of a nontechnical skill that is essential for safe practice in a delivery suite: situational awareness. A basic description of situational awareness is provided, using examples of loss of situational awareness in the delivery suite and examples of simple interventions that could promote situational awareness. Involuntary automaticity readily creeps in during performance of routine tasks, and cognitive overload could deplete attentional resources that are, by nature, limited. Strategies and tactics for maintaining situational awareness include proactively seeking and managing information on unfolding events, continually updating individual and team mental models, mindful use of checklists and scoreboards, and avoidance of attentional blindness. These simple interventions require minimal financial resources but could immensely enhance clinical performance and patient safety. Situational awareness should be included in the training of obstetrician-gynecologists and other staff working in a delivery suite.	\N	\N
25569948	Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common respiratory disorder among adults. Recently we have shown that sedentary lifestyle causes an increase in diurnal leg fluid volume (LFV), which can shift into the neck at night when lying down to sleep and increase OSA severity. The purpose of this work was to investigate various metrics that represent baseline fluid retention in the legs and examine their correlation with neck fluid volume (NFV) and to develop a robust model for predicting fluid accumulation in the neck. In 13 healthy awake non-obese men, LFV and NFV were recorded continuously and simultaneously while standing for 5 minutes and then lying supine for 90 minutes. Simple regression was used to examine correlations between baseline LFV, baseline neck circumference (NC) and change in LFV with the outcome variables: change in NC (ΔNC) and in NFV (ΔNFV90) after lying supine for 90 minutes. An exhaustive grid search was implemented to find combinations of input variables which best modeled outcomes. We found strong positive correlations between baseline LFV (supine and standing) and ΔNFV90. Models developed for predicting ΔNFV90 included baseline standing LFV, baseline NC combined with change in LFV after lying supine for 90 minutes. These correlations and the developed models suggest that a greater baseline LFV might contribute to increased fluid accumulation in the neck. These results give more evidence that sedentary lifestyle might play a role in the pathogenesis of OSA by increasing the baseline LFV. The best models for predicting ΔNC include baseline LFV and NC; they improved accuracies of estimating ΔNC over individual predictors, suggesting that a combination of baseline fluid metrics is a good predictor of the change in NC while lying supine. Future work is aimed at adding additional baseline demographic features to improve model accuracy and eventually use it as a screening tool to predict severity of OSA prior to sleep.	\N	\N
25583612	Selective attention is fundamental for human activity, but the details of its neural implementation remain elusive. One influential theory, the adaptive coding hypothesis (Duncan, 2001, An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2:820-829), proposes that single neurons in certain frontal and parietal regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively encode relevant information. This selective representation may in turn support selective processing in more specialized brain regions such as the visual cortices. Here, we use multi-voxel decoding of functional magnetic resonance images to demonstrate selective representation of attended--and not distractor--objects in frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. In addition, we highlight a critical role for task demands in determining which brain regions exhibit selective coding. Strikingly, representation of attended objects in frontoparietal cortex was highest under conditions of high perceptual demand, when stimuli were hard to perceive and coding in early visual cortex was weak. Coding in early visual cortex varied as a function of attention and perceptual demand, while coding in higher visual areas was sensitive to the allocation of attention but robust to changes in perceptual difficulty. Consistent with high-profile reports, peripherally presented objects could also be decoded from activity at the occipital pole, a region which corresponds to the fovea. Our results emphasize the flexibility of frontoparietal and visual systems. They support the hypothesis that attention enhances the multi-voxel representation of information in the brain, and suggest that the engagement of this attentional mechanism depends critically on current task demands.	\N	\N
25594946	Contextual cueing refers to a form of implicit spatial learning where participants incidentally learn to associate a target location with its repeated spatial context. Successful contextual learning produces an efficient visual search through familiar environments. Despite the fact that children exhibit the basic ability of implicit spatial learning, their general effectiveness in this form of learning can be compromised by other development-dependent factors. Learning to extract useful information (signal) in the presence of various amounts of irrelevant or distracting information (noise) characterizes one of the most important changes that occur with cognitive development. This research investigated whether signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) affects contextual cueing differently in children and adults. S/N was operationally defined as the ratio of repeated versus new displays encountered over time. Three ratio conditions were created: high (100%), medium (67%), and low (33%) conditions. Results suggested no difference in the acquisition of contextual learning effects in the high and medium conditions across three age groups (6- to 8-year-olds, 10- to 12-year-olds, and young adults). However, a significant developmental difference emerged in the low S/N condition. As predicted, adults exhibited significant contextual cueing effects, whereas older children showed marginally significant contextual cueing and younger children did not show cueing effects. Group differences in the ability to exhibit implicit contextual learning under low S/N conditions and the implications of this difference are discussed.	\N	\N
25614241	Cluster analysis was used to create patterns of individual differences reflecting infant behaviors during the initial interaction episode of the Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. The clusters were used as the basic unit of analysis for studying infant and maternal behavior and dyadic coordination (i.e., matching and reparation) across FFSF. Seventy-five 4-month-old infants participated with their mothers. Cluster analysis identified three patterns: a Socially Engaged cluster (33%) exhibited high levels of social engagement with their mothers; a Disengaged cluster (60%) showed a tendency to be low in social interaction and a Negatively Engaged cluster (7%) showed high negative emotionality. During the Still-Face episode, the Socially Engaged cluster reacted by reducing focus on their mother and shifting their attention elsewhere, while infants in the Disengaged cluster reduced focus on the environment. Although both the Socially Engaged and Disengaged clusters increased in negative emotionality during the Still-Face, the Socially Engaged group largely recovered during the Reunion, whereas the Disengaged group displayed more negative emotion. The Negatively Engaged cluster demonstrated high levels of negative affect throughout the entire procedure. Mothers of Negatively Engaged infants showed less positive engagement and more social monitoring than mothers in other clusters during all episodes. Dyadic interaction differed between groups, with greater levels of matching and reparations in the engaged group, less in the Disengaged group, and very little coordination in the Negatively Engaged cluster. Findings highlight the role of distinctive patterns of infants' individual differences in determining early dyadic functioning.	\N	\N
25624754	There is growing evidence that cognitive training (CT) can improve the cognitive functioning of the elderly. CT may be influenced by cultural and linguistic factors, but research examining CT programs has mostly been conducted on Western populations. We have developed an innovative electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) CT program that has shown preliminary efficacy in improving cognition in 32 healthy English-speaking elderly adults in Singapore. In this second pilot trial, we examine the acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy of our BCI CT program in healthy Chinese-speaking Singaporean elderly. Thirty-nine elderly participants were randomized into intervention (n=21) and wait-list control (n=18) arms. Intervention consisted of 24 half-hour sessions with our BCI-based CT training system to be completed in 8 weeks; the control arm received the same intervention after an initial 8-week waiting period. At the end of the training, a usability and acceptability questionnaire was administered. Efficacy was measured using the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), which was translated and culturally adapted for the Chinese-speaking local population. Users were asked about any adverse events experienced after each session as a safety measure. The training was deemed easily usable and acceptable by senior users. The median difference in the change scores pre- and post-training of the modified RBANS total score was 8.0 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.0-16.0, P=0.042) higher in the intervention arm than waitlist control, while the mean difference was 9.0 (95% CI: 1.7-16.2, P=0.017). Ten (30.3%) participants reported a total of 16 adverse events - all of which were graded "mild" except for one graded "moderate". Our BCI training system shows potential in improving cognition in both English- and Chinese-speaking elderly, and deserves further evaluation in a Phase III trial. Overall, participants responded positively on the usability and acceptability questionnaire.	\N	\N
25631970	Iron deficiency, associated with a decline in cognitive function, is the most common nutritional deficiency globally. The present study aimed to identify the impact of weekly iron supplements on the attention function of female students from a high school in North Khorasan Province, Iran. This was a blind, controlled, clinical trial study, involving 200 female students who were chosen using the stratified randomised sampling method. First, laboratory studies were performed to detect iron consumption limitations. Next, the 200 students were divided randomly and equally into case and control groups. The case group was treated with 50 mg of ferrous sulfate twice a week for 16 weeks. We compared both groups' data on attention, iron status and erythrocyte indices. Questionnaires were used to collect demographic data, while clinical data was collected using complete blood count and Toulouse-Piéron tests. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics, as well as paired and independent t-tests. The mean attention scores of the case and control groups were 104.8 ± 7.0 and 52.7 ± 9.6, respectively (p < 0.001). The mean haemoglobin levels of the two groups were 12.5 ± 0.9 and 11.2 ± 1.0, respectively (p < 0.001). Compared to the control group, the attention scores and haemoglobin concentrations of the case group were found to be improved by approximately 90% and 10%, respectively. Oral iron supplements (50 mg twice a week for 16 weeks) were able to improve the attention span and haematologic indices of female high school students.	\N	\N
25637852	Attention has been shown to affect the neural processing of pain. However, the exact mechanisms underlying this modulation remain unknown. Here, we used a new method called pain steady-state evoked potentials (PSSEPs) to investigate whether selective spatial attention affects EEG responses to tonic painful stimuli. In general, steady-state evoked potentials reflect changes in the EEG spectrum at a certain frequency that correspond to the frequency of a train of applied stimuli. In this study, high intensity transcutaneous electrical stimulation was delivered to both hands simultaneously with 31 Hz and 37 Hz, respectively. Subject׳s attention was directed to one of the two trains of stimulation in order to detect a small gap that was occasionally interspersed into the stimulus trains. Thereby, they had to ignore the stimulation applied to the other hand. Results show that PSSEPs were induced at 31 Hz and 37 Hz at frontal and central electrodes. PSSEPs occurred contralaterally to the respective hand stimulated with that frequency. Surprisingly, the magnitude of PSSEPs was not modulated by spatial attention towards one of the two stimuli. Our results indicate that attention can hardly be shifted between two simultaneously applied tonic painful stimulations.	\N	\N
25638026	Anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) abuse is prevalent not only among elite athletes, but is increasingly common in high school and collegiate sports. AAS are implicated in maladaptive behaviors such as increased aggression and risk taking, which may result from impaired cognition. Because they affect dopamine function in prefrontal cortical (PFC)-striatal circuitry, AAS may disrupt PFC-dependent processes such as behavioral flexibility. This was the focus of the present study. Adolescent male Long-Evans rats were treated chronically with high-dose testosterone (7.5mg/kg in water with 13% cyclodextrin) or vehicle sc, and tested for set-shifting and reversal-learning. For set-shifting, rats were trained on a visual cue task (VCT), then were shifted to a direction cue task (DCT), or vice-versa. For reversal learning, rats were first trained on VCT and were then required to press the opposite lever. 2-cue set-shifting introduced a novel paradigm in which rats shifted from a 1-Light Visual Task (1LVT) to a tone cue task (TCT). Testosterone-treated rats were significantly impaired on the set-shift from DCT to VCT compared to vehicle-treated controls (trials to criterion: vehicle 240.9±29.9, testosterone 388.3±59.3, p<0.05). However, on the set-shift from VCT to DCT, testosterone did not affect performance. During reversal-learning, testosterone significantly increased trials to criterion (vehicle: 495.9±91.8 trials, testosterone: 793.7±96.7 trials, p<0.05). In 2-cue set-shifting, testosterone diminished performance and the difference showed borderline significance (vehicle: 443.2±84.4 trials, testosterone: 800.4±178.2 trials, p=0.09). Our results show that testosterone impairs behavioral flexibility and have implications for understanding cognitive and behavioral changes in human AAS users.	\N	\N
25647070	The etiology of premenstrual disorders, including premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and premenstrual dysphoric disorders (PMDD), is not well understood. In the current study, the relationship between self-focused attention (SFA) and premenstrual disorders was examined to explore the hypothesis that women with premenstrual disorders tend to respond to symptoms in a maladaptive manner. Based on retrospective report, clinical interview, and 30-day prospective recording of premenstrual symptoms, women (N = 52) were categorized as meeting criteria for premenstrual disorders (PMD; n = 24) or not (controls; n = 28). Key findings indicated that women with premenstrual disorders reported greater use of SFA in response to negative affect elicited by laboratory tasks than controls, despite no significant differences in change in negative affect between the two groups. Women with premenstrual disorders also reported greater trait levels of SFA and maladaptive coping styles compared to controls. Women with premenstrual disorders may tend to respond to menstrual cycle changes using increased levels of SFA. The interaction between psychological and physiological menstrual cycle-related changes may lead to increased distress and impairment. Implications for psychological contributions to premenstrual distress and disorders are discussed.	\N	\N
25647484	This study examined the separate influence and joint influences on event-based prospective memory task performance due to the valence of cues and the valence of contexts. We manipulated the valence of cues and contexts with pictures from the International Affective Picture System. The participants, undergraduate students, showed higher performance when neutral compared to valenced pictures were used for cueing prospective memory. In addition, neutral pictures were more effective as cues when they occurred in a valenced context than in the context of neutral pictures, but the effectiveness of valenced cues did not vary across contexts that differed in valence. The finding of an interaction between cue and context valence indicates that their respective influence on event-based prospective memory task performance cannot be understood in isolation from each other. Our findings are not consistent with by the prevailing view which holds that the scope of attention is broadened and narrowed, respectively, by positively and negatively valenced stimuli. Instead, our findings are more supportive of the recent proposal that the scope of attention is determined by the motivational intensity associated with valenced stimuli. Consistent with this proposal, we speculate that the motivational intensity associated with different retrieval cues determines the scope of attention, that contexts with different valence values determine participants' task engagement, and that prospective memory task performance is determined jointly by attention scope and task engagement.	\N	\N
25665861	We set out hypotheses which are based in the technique of Brainspotting (Grand, 2013) [1] but have wider applicability within the range of psychotherapies for post-traumatic and other disorders. We have previously (Corrigan and Grand, 2013) [2] suggested mechanisms by which a Brainspot may be established during traumatic experience and later identified in therapy. Here we seek to formulate mechanisms for the healing processing which occurs during mindful attention to the Brainspot; and we generate hypotheses about what is happening during the time taken for the organic healing process to flow to completion during the therapy session and beyond it. Full orientation to the aversive memory of a traumatic experience fails to occur when a high level of physiological arousal that is threatening to become overwhelming promotes a neurochemical de-escalation of the activation: there is then no resolution. In Brainspotting, and other trauma psychotherapies, healing can occur when full orientation to the memory is made possible by the superior colliculi-pulvinar, superior colliculi-mediodorsal nucleus, and superior colliculi-intralaminar nuclei pathways being bound together electrophysiologically for coherent thalamocortical processing. The brain's response to the memory is "reset" so that the emotional response experienced in the body, and conveyed through the paleospinothalamic tract to the midbrain and thalamus and on to the basal ganglia and cortex, is no longer disturbing. Completion of the orientation "reset" ensures that the memory is reconsolidated without distress and recollection of the event subsequently is no longer dysphorically activating at a physiological level.	\N	\N
25678274	While there is growing understanding of visual selective attention in children, some aspects such as selection in the presence of distractors are not well understood. Adult studies suggest that when presented with a visual search task, an enhanced negativity is seen beginning around 200 ms (the N2pc) that reflects selection of a target item among distractors. However, it is not known if similar selective attention-related activity is seen in children during visual search. This study was designed to investigate the presence of the N2pc in children. Nineteen children (ages 9-12 years) and 21 adults (ages 18-22 years) completed a visual search task in which they were asked to attend to a fixation surrounded by both a target and a distractor stimulus. Three types of displays were analyzed at parietal electrodes P7 and P8; lateral target/lateral distractor, lateral target/midline distractor, and midline target/lateral distractor. Both adults and children showed a significant increased negativity contralateral compared to ipsilateral to the target (reflected in the N2pc) in both displays with a lateral target while no such effect was seen in displays with a midline target. This suggests that children also utilized additional resources to select a target item when distractors are present. These findings demonstrate that the N2pc can be used as a marker of attentional object selection in children.	\N	\N
25681698	Whether or not awareness entails attention is a much debated question. Since iconic memory has been generally assumed to be attention-free, it has been considered an important piece of evidence that it does not (Koch & Tsuchiya, 2007). Therefore the question of the role of attention in iconic memory matters. Recent evidence (Persuh, Genzer, & Melara, 2012), suggests that iconic memory does depend on attention. Because of the centrality of iconic memory to this debate, we looked again at the role of attention in iconic memory using a standard whole versus partial report task of letters in a 3×2 matrix. We manipulated attention to the array by coupling it with a second task that was either easy or hard and by manipulating the probability of which task was to be performed on any given trial. When attention was maximally diverted from the matrix, participants were able to report less than a single item, confirming the prior results and supporting the conclusion that iconic memory entails attention. It is not an instance of attention-free awareness.	\N	\N
25689233	Little attention has been paid to distress in sexual functioning or the sexual satisfaction of people who practice BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, Sadism and Masochism). The purpose of this study was to describe sociodemographic characteristics and BDSM practices and compare BDSM practitioners' sexual outcomes (in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts). A convenience sample of 68 respondents completed an online survey that used a participatory research framework. Cronbach's alpha and average inter-item correlations assessed scale reliability, and the Wilcoxon paired samples test compared the total scores between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts separately for men and women. Open-ended questions about BDSM sexual practices were coded using a preexisting thematic tree. We used self-reported demographic factors, including age at the onset of BDSM interest, age at first BDSM experience, and favorite and most frequent BDSM practices. The Global Measure of Sexual Satisfaction measured the amount of sexual distress, including low desire, arousal, maintaining arousal, premature orgasm, and anorgasmia. The participants had an average age of 33.15 years old and were highly educated and waited 6 years after becoming interested in BDSM to act on their interests. The practices in which the participants most frequently engaged did not coincide with the practices in which they were most interested and were overwhelmingly conducted at home. Comparisons between genders in terms of distress in sexual functioning in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts demonstrate that, with the exception of maintaining arousal, we found distress in sexual functioning to be statistically the same in BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for women. For men, we found that distress in sexual functioning, with the exception of premature orgasm and anorgasmia, was statistically significantly lower in the BDSM context. There were no differences in sexual satisfaction between BDSM and non-BDSM contexts for men or women. Our findings suggest that BDSM sexual activity should be addressed in clinical settings that account for BDSM identities, practices, relationships, preferences, sexual satisfaction, and distress in sexual function for men and women. Additional research needs are identified, such as the need to define distressful sexual functioning experiences and expand our understanding of the development of BDSM sexual identities.	\N	\N
25689289	Comparing drug-induced driving impairments with the effects of benchmark blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) is an approved approach to determine the clinical relevance of findings for traffic safety. The present study aimed to collect alcohol calibration data to validate findings of clinical trials that were derived from a representative test course in a dynamic driving simulator. The driving performance of 24 healthy volunteers under placebo and with 0.05% and 0.08% BACs was measured in a double-blind, randomized, crossover design. Trained investigators assessed the subjects' driving performance and registered their driving errors. Various driving parameters that were recorded during the simulation were also analyzed. Generally, the participants performed worse on the test course (P < 0.05 for the investigators' assessment) under the influence of alcohol. Consistent with the relevant literature, lane-keeping performance parameters were sensitive to the investigated BACs. There were significant differences between the alcohol and placebo conditions in most of the parameters analyzed. However, the total number of errors was the only parameter discriminating significantly between all three BAC conditions. In conclusion, data show that the present experimental setup is suitable for future psychopharmacological research. Thereby, for each drug to be investigated, we recommend to assess a profile of various parameters that address different levels of driving. On the basis of this performance profile, the total number of driving errors is recommended as the primary endpoint. However, this overall endpoint should be completed by a specifically sensitive parameter that is chosen depending on the effect known to be induced by the tested drug.	\N	\N
25690831	Neural responses in the auditory cortex have historically been measured from either anesthetized or awake but non-behaving animals. A growing body of work has begun to focus instead on recording from auditory cortex of animals actively engaged in behavior tasks. These studies have shown that auditory cortical responses are dependent upon the behavioral state of the animal. The longer ascending subcortical pathway of the auditory system and unique characteristics of auditory processing suggest that such dependencies may have a more profound influence on cortical processing in the auditory system compared to other sensory systems. It is important to understand the nature of these dependencies and their functional implications. In this article, we review the literature on this topic pertaining to cortical processing of sounds.	\N	\N
25701796	To better understand the contribution of the dorsal system to word reading, we explored transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) effects when adults with developmental dyslexia received active stimulation over the visual extrastriate area MT/V5, which is dominated by magnocellular input. Stimulation was administered in 5 sessions spread over two weeks, and reading speed and accuracy as well as reading fluency were assessed before, immediately after, and a week after the end of the treatment. A control group of adults with developmental dyslexia matched for age, gender, reading level, vocabulary and block-design WAIS-III sub-tests and reading level was exposed to the same protocol but with sham stimulation. The results revealed that active, but not sham stimulation, significantly improved reading speed and fluency. This finding suggests that the dorsal stream may play a role in efficient retrieval from the orthographic input lexicon in the lexical route. It also underscores the potential of tDCS as an intervention tool for improving reading speed, at least in adults with developmental dyslexia.	\N	\N
25704737	We examined longitudinal relations between adult interpartner conflict (referred to as marital conflict) and children's subsequent sleep minutes and quality assessed objectively via actigraphy, and tested parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity indexed through respiratory sinus arrhythmia reactivity (RSA-R) and initial sleep as moderators of predictive associations. At Wave 1 (W1), children (85 boys, 75 girls) with a mean age of 9.43 years (SD=.69) reported on marital conflict, and their sleep was assessed with actigraphs for seven nights. Sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, sleep activity, and number of long wake episodes were derived. RSA-R was measured in response to a lab challenge. Sleep parameters were assessed again 1 year later at Wave 2 (W2; mean age=10.39; SD=.64). Analyses consistently revealed 3-way interactions among W1 marital conflict, sleep, and RSA-R as predictors of W2 sleep parameters. Sleep was stable among children with more sleep minutes and better sleep quality at W1 or low exposure to marital conflict at W1. Illustrating conditional risk, marital conflict predicted increased sleep problems (reduced sleep minutes, worse sleep quality) at W2 among children with poorer sleep at W1 in conjunction with less apt physiological regulation (i.e., lower levels of RSA-R or less vagal withdrawal) at W1. Findings build on the scant literature and underscore the importance of simultaneous consideration of bioregulatory systems (PNS and initial sleep in this study) in conjunction with family processes in the prediction of children's later sleep parameters.	\N	\N
25705797	Patients with primary adrenal insufficiency (AI) need to replace glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids that act on glucocorticoid (GR) and mineralocorticoid receptors (MR). Both receptors are highly expressed in the hippocampus and are closely associated with cognitive function, which might be impaired by insufficient or increased GR and MR stimulation. However, little is known about cognitive function in patients with AI. It was examined whether patients with AI exhibit worse cognitive function compared to sex-, age-, and education-matched controls. Cognitive function (executive function, concentration, verbal memory, visual memory, working memory, and autobiographical memory) was assessed in 30 patients with AI (mean age 52.4 yrs. ±14.4, n=21 women, mean duration of illness 18.2 yrs. ±11.1) and 30 matched controls. We also measured depressive symptoms, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure. Patients with AI showed more depressive symptoms, had a greater BMI and lower systolic blood pressure compared to controls. Adjusted analyses controlling for these variables revealed that patients with AI performed significantly worse in verbal learning (F=7.8, p=.007). Executive function, concentration, working memory, verbal memory, visuospatial memory, and autobiographical memory did not differ between groups. No clinically relevant cognitive impairment was found in patients with AI compared to matched controls. Even long-term glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid substitution over almost two decades appears to have only subtle effects on cognition in patients with AI.	\N	\N
25717168	Motor system excitability is transiently suppressed during the preparation of movement. This preparatory inhibition is hypothesized to facilitate response selection and initiation. Given that demands on selection and initiation processes increase with movement complexity, we hypothesized that complexity would influence preparatory inhibition. To test this hypothesis, we probed corticospinal excitability during a delayed-response task in which participants were cued to prepare right- or left-hand movements of varying complexity. Single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over right primary motor cortex to elicit motor evoked potentials (MEPs) from the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) of the left hand. MEP suppression was greater during the preparation of responses involving coordination of the FDI and adductor digiti minimi relative to easier responses involving only the FDI, independent of which hand was cued to respond. In contrast, this increased inhibition was absent when the complex responses required sequential movements of the two muscles. Moreover, complexity did not influence the level of inhibition when the response hand was fixed for the trial block, regardless of whether the complex responses were performed simultaneously or sequentially. These results suggest that preparatory inhibition contributes to response selection, possibly by suppressing extraneous movements when responses involve the simultaneous coordination of multiple effectors.	\N	\N
25723014	We studied influence of the anxiety-related trait Harm Avoidance and the COMT gene, which is an important modulator of prefrontal functioning, on event-related potentials in oddball paradigm and performance effectiveness of selective attention. For 50 individuals accuracy and time of searching words among letters at any desired rate and then under an instruction to perform the task as quickly and accurate as possible were measured. Scores on the Harm Avoidance scale from Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory, N100 and P300 parameters, and COMTVa1158Met genotypes were obtained for them as well. Searching accuracy and time were mainly related to N100 amplitude. The COMT genotype and Harm Avoidance did not affect N100 amplitude; however, the N100 amplitude modulated their effects on accuracy and time dynamics. Harm Avoidance was positively correlated with P300 latency. The results suggest that anxiety and the COMT gene effects on performance effectiveness of selective attention depend on cognitive processes reflected in N100 parameters.	\N	\N
25723016	In order to study spontaneous attentional lapses the experimental task was used that created a moderately high attentional load and involved response choice based on stimulus feature conjunction. The participant's average correct response rate was 85.1%; they made errors in 9.6% trials and response omissions in 5.4% trials. Peak N1 of the evoked potential was consistent across all behavioral outcomes, while peak P2 amplitude was significantly greater before errors and response omissions compared to correct responses. The analysis of polygraphic indexes (ECG, EMG, SGR) did not reveal any arousal level reduction before attentional lapses. The proposed interpretation of the results obtained is based on the assumption that attentional lapses are mediated by the suppression of external stimuli information processing caused by the state of mind-wandering.	\N	\N
25726855	Several organisms irrespective of their complexity in structure and function have an inbuilt circadian rhythm. Zebrafish could be used as an alternate model animal in sleep research as it exhibits similar sleep-wake dynamics as mammals and Drosophila. In this study, we have analysed the adult zebrafish brain for its differential proteome and gene expression during perturbed light/dark cycle. A total of 53 and 25 proteins including sncb, peroxiredoxins and TCR alpha were identified based on two-dimensional gel electrophoresis Fourier transform mass spectrometer/ion trap tandem mass spectrometer and differential in-gel electrophoresis MALDI TOF MS/MS analysis, respectively, with at least 1.5-fold changes between the control and experimental brains. Real time-polymerase chain reaction revealed that many circadian pathway-associated genes, such as per1b, bmal1b, cry1b, bmal2 and nr1d2, were differentially regulated during continuous light/dark exposures. It is hypothesized that the differential regulation of these genes might lead to the discovery of potential diagnostic markers for gaining insight into the light/dark-associated stress in humans.	\N	\N
25737257	The contents of working memory (WM) have been repeatedly found to guide the allocation of visual attention; in a dual-task paradigm that combines WM and visual search, actively holding an item in WM biases visual attention towards memory-matching items during search (e.g., Soto et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 31(2), 248-261, 2005). A key debate is whether such memory-based attentional guidance is automatic or under strategic control. Generally, two distinct task paradigms have been employed to assess memory-based guidance, one demonstrating that attention is involuntarily captured by memory-matching stimuli even at a cost to search performance (Soto et al., 2005), and one demonstrating that participants can strategically avoid memory-matching distractors to facilitate search performance (Woodman & Luck, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33(2), 363-377, 2007). The current study utilized an individual-differences approach to examine why the different paradigms--which presumably tap into the same attentional construct--might support contrasting interpretations. Participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks, including two types of attentional guidance paradigms (see Soto et al., 2005; Woodman & Luck, 2007), a visual WM task, and an operation span task, as well as attention-related self-report assessments. Performance on the two attentional guidance paradigms did not correlate. Subsequent exploratory regression analyses revealed that memory-based guidance in each task was differentially predicted by visual WM capacity for one paradigm, and by attention-related assessment scores for the other paradigm. The current results suggest that these two paradigms--which have previously produced contrasting patterns of performance--may probe distinct aspects of attentional guidance.	\N	\N
25752211	To determine the effect of mode of delivery and perineal injury on sexual function at 6 and 12 months postpartum. Prospective cohort study. Tertiary women's hospital in Melbourne, Australia. A cohort of 440 primigravid women. The Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) was completed at first visit (7-19 weeks of gestation), and at 6 and 12 months postpartum. A statistically significant difference in total FSFI or domain scores over time according to mode of delivery or perineal injury. In this cohort 54% of women had a normal vaginal delivery, 21% had an instrumental delivery, and 25% gave birth by caesarean section. No difference was found in total FSFI or domain scores according to mode of delivery over time between antenatal assessment and 12 months postpartum. Pain was decreased in the caesarean group only at 6 months postpartum. All groups showed pain scores at 12 months that were comparable with antenatal levels. For those who gave birth vaginally, 27% had an intact perineum, 50% had an episiotomy, and 6%, 14%, and 3% had first, second, and third-degree tears, respectively. The only differences between groups were found over time according to perineal injury at 6 months in the arousal domain. At 12 months, total FSFI and domain scores were no different to initial scores. At 12 months postpartum sexual function has returned to early pregnancy levels, irrespective of mode of delivery or perineal injury.	\N	\N
25761284	Here we show that the pupillary light response reflects exogenous (involuntary) shifts of attention and inhibition of return. Participants fixated in the center of a display that was divided into a bright and a dark half. An exogenous cue attracted attention to the bright or dark side of the display. Initially, the pupil constricted when the bright, as compared to the dark, side of the display was cued, reflecting a shift of attention toward the exogenous cue. Crucially, this pattern reversed about 1 s after cue presentation. This later-occurring, relative dilation (when the bright side was cued) reflected disengagement from the previously attended location, analogous to the behavioral phenomenon of inhibition of return. Indeed, we observed a reliable correlation between "pupillary inhibition" and behavioral inhibition of return. Our results support the view that inhibition of return results from habituation to (or short-term depression of) visual input. We conclude that the pupillary light response is a complex eye movement that reflects how we selectively parse and interpret visual input.	\N	\N
25768854	Methylphenidate (MPH) is a stimulant that is commonly used in the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in children and adults. Several reports are available regarding the relationship of MPH use and sleep bruxism. We report the case of a 9-year-old boy who presented with severe awake bruxism after his second dose of sustained release form of MPH treatment, which was confirmed on rechallenge. This is the first report of its kind showing such relationship in the literature.	\N	\N
25772915	Available evidences seem to suggest increasing trend in sleep deficit among teenagers worldwide, and there is limited information on this among Nigerian teenagers. This study was carried out to determine the basic sleep schedule and sleep duration among schooling teenagers in Ilorin, Nigeria. This is a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted among 20 selected public secondary schools in Ilorin, Nigeria. A multistage sampling technique was used to randomly select participating schools. A total of 1033 students participated in the study; of these 47.3% were males and 51.7% females. Students mean age (standard deviation) was 15.3 ± 1.6 years with a range of 12-19 years. Majority (76.2%) of participants co-share bed with at least one person and some (23.8%) slept alone in bed. The three leading reasons given for going to bed were: Tiredness - 31.1%, completion of house assignment - 20.5%, and parental directive - 12.4%. 10% of teenagers do make regular phone calls at night and 5.5% surf internet and use computers at night. Regular habits of daytime sleepiness were reported by 8.2% of study participants. Students' mean sleep duration during school days was 9.33 ± 2.29 h compared to 10.09 ± 1.32 h at weekend (P < 0.05). The duration of night time sleep was adequate (>9 h) in 41% of students; borderline (8-9 h) in 44.3% while 13.3% of the students had insufficient nighttime sleep duration (<8 h) P < 0.05. A substantial number of students had borderline nighttime sleep duration and so had potentials to transit into the problematic insufficient range. To prevent this, there is a need to educate schooling teenagers on the dangers associated with prolonged sleep insufficiency.	\N	\N
25782397	Diurnal preference (chronotype) is a useful instrument for studying circadian biology in humans. It harbours trait-like dimensions relating to circadian period and sleep homeostasis, but also has ontogenetic components (morningness increases with age). We used the Morningness-Eveningness questionnaire (MEQ) in the Baependi study, a family-based cohort study based in a small town in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The population is highly admixed and has a cohesive and conservative lifestyle. 825 individuals (497 female) aged 18-89 years (average ± SD = 46.4 ± 16.3) and belonging to 112 different families participated in this study. The average MEQ score was 63.5 ± 11.2 with a significant (P < 0.0001) linear increase with age. Morningness was significantly (P < 0.0001) higher in the rural (70.2 ± 9.8) than in the municipal zone (62.6 ± 11.1), and was also significantly (P = 0.025) higher in male (64.6 ± 10.9) than in female (62.8 ± 11.2) participants. Thus, in spite of universal access to electricity, the Baependi population was strongly shifted towards morningness, particularly in the rural zone. Heritability of MEQ score was 0.48 when adjusted for sex and age, or 0.38 when adjusted for sex, age, and residential zone. The reported MEQ score heritability is more akin to those of previous twin studies than previous family studies.	\N	\N
25784489	Electrical stimulation of upper limb nerves evokes a train of high-frequency wavelets (high-frequency oscillations, HFOs) on the human scalp. These HFOs are related to the influence of arousal-promoting structures on somatosensory input processing, and are generated in the primary somatosensory cortex (post-synaptic HFOs) and the terminal tracts of thalamocortical radiations (pre-synaptic HFOs). We previously reported that HFOs do not undergo habituation to repeated stimulations; here, we verified whether HFOs could be modulated by external sensitizing stimuli. We recorded somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) in 15 healthy volunteers before and after sensitization training with an auditory stimulus. Pre-synaptic HFO amplitudes, reflecting somatosensory thalamic/thalamocortical activity, significantly increased after the sensitizing acoustic stimulation, whereas both the low-frequency N20 SSEP component and post-synaptic HFOs were unaffected. Cross-talk between subcortical arousal-related structures is a probable mechanism for the pre-synaptic HFO effect observed in this study. We propose that part of the ascending somatosensory input encoded in HFOs is specifically able to convey sensitized inputs. This preferential involvement in sensitization mechanisms suggests that HFOs play a critical role in the detection of potentially relevant stimuli, and act at very early stages of somatosensory input processing.	\N	\N
25788036	Recent studies have shown that attentional facilitation lingers at the retinotopic coordinates of a previously attended position after an eye movement. These results are intriguing, because the retinotopic location becomes behaviorally irrelevant once the eyes have moved. Critically, in these studies participants were asked to maintain attention on a blank location of the screen. In the present study, we examined whether the continuing presence of a visual object at the cued location could affect the allocation of attention across eye movements. We used a trans-saccadic cueing paradigm in which the relevant positions could be defined or not by visual objects (simple square outlines). We find an attentional benefit at the spatiotopic location of the cue only when the object (the placeholder) has been continuously present at that location. We conclude that the presence of an object at the attended location is a critical factor for the maintenance of spatial constancy of attention across eye movements, a finding that helps to reconcile previous conflicting results.	\N	\N
25801520	Structural and Electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in right temporoparietal cortex have been associated with family history of depression (FH). Here we investigate if functional abnormalities in this area, indexed by attenuated responses to emotionally arousing stimuli, are also family-history-dependent. Neuromagnetic activity for emotional and neutral complex scenes was recorded by Magnetoencephalography (MEG) in 20 depressed patients without, 8 depressed patients with FH, and 15 healthy controls. Emotion-sensitive neuronal steady state responses were cortical source localized and tested for group-by-emotion interactions. The group-by-emotion interaction (F(4, 80)=4.4, p=0.004) was explained by a significant modulation of right temporoparietal cortex activity by emotional arousal in controls and patients without FH. This effect was reduced in FH positive patients. The difference between patient groups remained when clinical variables such as symptom severity were accounted for. All patients were medicated, but differences between patient groups remained after accounting for medication dosage. Further, the sample size was limited, but data-driven resampling statistics showed the robustness of our effects. Finally, the sample consists of female patients only and we cannot generalize our results to male samples. Patients with FH show impaired recruitment of attention-relevant cortical circuitry by emotional stimuli. The neuroanatomical locus of this effect accords with previous reports on structural abnormalities and electrophysiological deficits at rest in individuals with FH. Our results speak to the relevance of right temporoparietal dysfunction in emotional information processing as a potential endophenotype for depression with FH.	\N	\N
25801753	The aim of this study was to find out how people with epilepsy in NE Thailand feel about their levels of stress, sleep, diet, exercise habits, and sex lives using a cross-sectional design. Two hundred and three people with epilepsy (PWE) were randomly recruited from a university epilepsy clinic in Khon Kaen and then completed an interview and a questionnaire. A total of 27.6% of the patients believed that diet had an influence on their epilepsy (of those who reported changes, 41.1% stopped consuming alcohol, while 32.1% stopped drinking caffeinated beverages). A total of 47.2% of the patients exercised at least three times per week, while 52.8% exercised two times or less a week. Daytime sleeping was prevalent, with 43.3% saying that they slept during the day frequently or every day. There were 44.3% of the patients who believed that their sex lives changed after the onset of epilepsy, with decreased sexual arousal being most commonly mentioned. A total of 76.4% of the patients said that they had medium or high levels of stress, and epilepsy was listed as the most common reason for their stress (50.2%). Focusing on the problem was the most common method to reduce stress (80.3%). The findings illuminate the need to increase attention towards improving and promoting self-management of epilepsy. As a whole, diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction, and sex therapy can be valuable tools to improve the quality of life of people with epilepsy.	\N	\N
25832193	We used contingent attentional capture to investigate whether capture in a given trial n was affected by the cue-target position relations in a preceding trial n-1. Typically, attentional capture by a cue facilitates reaction times for targets in valid conditions (with the cue and target at the same position) relative to invalid conditions (with the cue and target at different positions). Also, this validity effect holds for cues with a feature similar to the searched-for target features (i.e., matching cues), but not for cues dissimilar to the searched-for target features (i.e., nonmatching cues), a pattern termed contingent capture because capture is assumed to be contingent on the match between the cue and top-down control settings. Here, we replicated this contingent-capture pattern with cues that were nonpredictive of the target position. In addition, we showed that during search for white onset targets, red nonmatching color cues also created a validity effect if the same nonmatching cue had been used as a valid cue in trial n-1 (Exps. 1 and 2). This intertrial contingency of the nonmatching cue's validity effect was also found if the cues and targets both changed their positions from trial to trial, rendering position priming unlikely (Exp. 2). A similar intertrial contingency was found for nonmatching white onset cues, but not for matching red color cues during search for red color targets (Exp. 3). These results are discussed in light of explanations of the contingent-capture effect and of intertrial contingencies.	\N	\N
25874883	It is a well-known fact today that driver sleepiness is a contributory factor in crashes. Factors considered as sleepiness contributor are mostly related to time of the day, hours being awake and hours slept. Factors contributing to active and passive fatigue are mostly focusing on the level of cognitive load. Less is known what role external factors, e.g. type of road, sound/noise, vibrations etc., have on the ability to stay awake both under conditions of sleepiness and under active or passive fatigue. The aim of this moving base driving simulator study with 19 drivers participating in a random order day and night time, was to evaluate the effect of low-frequency road noise on driver sleepiness and performance, including both long-term and short-term effects. The results support to some extent the hypothesis that road-induced interior vehicle sound affects driving performance and driver sleepiness. Increased low-frequency noise helps to reduce speed during both day- and night time driving, but also contributes to increase the number of lane crossings during night time.	\N	\N
25878263	Amplitude modulations are fundamental features of natural signals, including human speech and nonhuman primate vocalizations. Because natural signals frequently occur in the context of other competing signals, we used a forward-masking paradigm to investigate how the modulation context of a prior signal affects cortical responses to subsequent modulated sounds. Psychophysical "modulation masking," in which the presentation of a modulated "masker" signal elevates the threshold for detecting the modulation of a subsequent stimulus, has been interpreted as evidence of a central modulation filterbank and modeled accordingly. Whether cortical modulation tuning is compatible with such models remains unknown. By recording responses to pairs of sinusoidally amplitude modulated (SAM) tones in the auditory cortex of awake squirrel monkeys, we show that the prior presentation of the SAM masker elicited persistent and tuned suppression of the firing rate to subsequent SAM signals. Population averages of these effects are compatible with adaptation in broadly tuned modulation channels. In contrast, modulation context had little effect on the synchrony of the cortical representation of the second SAM stimuli and the tuning of such effects did not match that observed for firing rate. Our results suggest that, although the temporal representation of modulated signals is more robust to changes in stimulus context than representations based on average firing rate, this representation is not fully exploited and psychophysical modulation masking more closely mirrors physiological rate suppression and that rate tuning for a given stimulus feature in a given neuron's signal pathway appears sufficient to engender context-sensitive cortical adaptation.	\N	\N
25902810	To validate the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) as a treatment effect measure in narcolepsy, and to compare the SART with the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). Validation of treatment effect measurements within a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Ninety-five patients with narcolepsy with or without cataplexy. The RCT comprised a double-blind, parallel-group, multicenter trial comparing the effects of 8-w treatments with pitolisant (BF2.649), modafinil, or placebo (NCT01067222). MWT, ESS, and SART were administered at baseline and after an 8-w treatment period. The severity of excessive daytime sleepiness and cataplexy was also assessed using the Clinical Global Impression scale (CGI-C). The SART, MWT, and ESS all had good reliability, obtained for the SART and MWT using two to three sessions in 1 day. The ability to distinguish responders from nonresponders, classified using the CGI-C score, was high for all measures, with a high performance for the SART (r = 0.61) and the ESS (r = 0.54). The Sustained Attention to Response Task is a valid and easy-to-administer measure to assess treatment effects in narcolepsy, enhanced by combining it with the Epworth Sleepiness Scale.	\N	\N
25939700	Memory for multiple features might be limited by the number of features, the number of objects, or both. To focus on the role of features, we tested memory for a variable number of features within a single object. Subjects studied a single ellipse that varied in four features: size, orientation, contrast, and position. We conducted two experiments that differed in how memory was tested. If performance is limited only by the number of objects to be remembered, there should be no effect of the number of relevant features within a single object. Instead, for both experiments, the proportion correct was lower when four features had to be remembered rather than one. The magnitude of these effects varied with the details of the two experiments. Although similar results have been reported for experiments using multiple objects, the present experiments are some of the first to have demonstrated such an effect for a single object. This result is inconsistent with theories in which visual memory has a discrete limit on the number of stored objects, and no limit on the stored features within an object. Instead, it seems likely that objects and features both play roles in limiting performance in memory tasks.	\N	\N
25961880	It is commonly assumed that attentional inhibitory functioning decreases with age, even though empirical evidence is mixed. These inconsistencies possibly stem from methodological artifacts: distractor inhibition is typically assessed with the negative priming paradigm, which confounds inhibition and episodic retrieval. In the present study, we investigated age differences in a sequential distractor repetition paradigm (Giesen, Frings, & Rothermund, 2012) that provides independent estimates of distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval processes. Older (60+ yrs) and younger (below 30 years) adults identified target letters that were flanked by distractors (JKJ). Inhibitory processes were preserved in older adults, who showed reliable distractor repetition benefits resulting from persistent distractor inhibition; however, a significant loss of inhibition was apparent for the older subgroup of participants (65+ yrs) compared with a subgroup of young-old participants (60 to 64 years). No age differences were found for episodic retrieval processes of stimulus-response bindings that were indexed by an interaction of distractor repetition and response relation. Findings highlight the importance of dissociating between distractor inhibition and retrieval processes that are differently implicated in age-related cognitive change.	\N	\N
25962854	Hearing loss often triggers an inescapable buzz (tinnitus) and causes everyday sounds to become intolerably loud (hyperacusis), but exactly where and how this occurs in the brain is unknown. To identify the neural substrate for these debilitating disorders, we induced both tinnitus and hyperacusis with an ototoxic drug (salicylate) and used behavioral, electrophysiological, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to identify the tinnitus-hyperacusis network. Salicylate depressed the neural output of the cochlea, but vigorously amplified sound-evoked neural responses in the amygdala, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex. Resting-state fMRI revealed hyperactivity in an auditory network composed of inferior colliculus, medial geniculate, and auditory cortex with side branches to cerebellum, amygdala, and reticular formation. Functional connectivity revealed enhanced coupling within the auditory network and segments of the auditory network and cerebellum, reticular formation, amygdala, and hippocampus. A testable model accounting for distress, arousal, and gating of tinnitus and hyperacusis is proposed.	\N	\N
25977319	The aim of this study was to illustrate how a consideration of glance sequences to in-vehicle tasks and their associated distributions can be informative. The rapid growth in the number of nomadic technologies and in-vehicle devices has the potential to create complex, visually intensive tasks for drivers that may incur long in-vehicle glances. Such glances place drivers at increased risk of a motor vehicle crash. We used eye-glance data from a study of distraction training programs to examine the change in glance duration distributions across consecutive glances during the performance of various in-vehicle tasks. The sequential analysis across trained and untrained drivers showed that the proportion of late-sequence glances longer than a 2-s threshold among untrained drivers was almost double the number of such glances for the trained drivers, that the third and later glances were particularly problematic, and that training reduced the proportion of early- and later-sequence glances. Examining how the duration of off-road glances varies as a function of their order in a sequence of glances and the visual demands of the task can offer important insights into the change in the distracting potential of in-vehicle tasks across glances and the effects of training. The sequential analysis of in-vehicle glance data can be useful for researchers and practitioners and has implications for the development and evaluation of training programs as well as for task and interface design.	\N	\N
25994341	The food habit is involved in the onset and development of lifestyle-related diseases. In this review I would like to describe a historical case of vitamin B1 deficiency, as well as our case study of fatty acid metabolism abnormality due to carnitine deficiency. In history, the army and navy personnel in Japan at the end of the 19th century received food rations based on a high-carbohydrate diet including white rice, resulting in the onset of beriberi. An epidemiological study by Kenkan Takaki revealed the relationship between the onset of beriberi and rice intake. Then, Takaki was successful in preventing the onset of beriberi by changing the diet. However, the primary cause had yet to be elucidated. Finally, Christian Eijkman established an animal model of beriberi (chickens) showing peripheral neuropathy, and he identified the existence of an anti-beriberi substance, vitamin B1. This is an example of the successful control of a disease by integrating the results of epidemiological and experimental studies. In our study using a murine model of fatty acid metabolism abnormality caused by carnitine deficiency, cardiac abnormality and fatty liver developed depending on the amount of dietary fat. In addition, the mice showed disturbance of orexin neuron activity related to the sleep-arousal system, which is involved in fatigue symptoms under fasting condition, one of the states showing enhanced fatty acid metabolism. These findings suggest that fatty acid toxicity is enhanced when the mice are more dependent on fatty acid metabolism. Almost simultaneously, a human epidemiological study showed that narcolepsy, which is caused by orexin system abnormality, is associated with the polymorphism of the gene coding for carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1B, which is involved in carnitine metabolism. To understand the pathological mechanism of fatty acid toxicity, not only an experimental approach using animal models, but also an epidemiological approach is necessary. The results will be applied to preventing and treating lifestyle-related diseases associated with fatty acid metabolism abnormality.	\N	\N
26002721	Auditory selective attention is a critical skill for goal-directed behavior, especially where noisy distractions may impede focusing attention. To better understand the developmental trajectory of auditory spatial selective attention in an acoustically complex environment, in the current study we measured auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) across five age groups: 3-5 years; 10 years; 13 years; 16 years; and young adults. Using a naturalistic dichotic listening paradigm, we characterized the ERP morphology for nonlinguistic and linguistic auditory probes embedded in attended and unattended stories. We documented robust maturational changes in auditory evoked potentials that were specific to the types of probes. Furthermore, we found a remarkable interplay between age and attention-modulation of auditory evoked potentials in terms of morphology and latency from the early years of childhood through young adulthood. The results are consistent with the view that attention can operate across age groups by modulating the amplitude of maturing auditory early-latency evoked potentials or by invoking later endogenous attention processes. Development of these processes is not uniform for probes with different acoustic properties within our acoustically dense speech-based dichotic listening task. In light of the developmental differences we demonstrate, researchers conducting future attention studies of children and adolescents should be wary of combining analyses across diverse ages.	\N	\N
26003250	Strokes are the second leading cause of death and the third leading cause of disability worldwide. Thanks in part to better and more available diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, the vast majority of stroke patients tend to survive strokes, particularly in the industrialized world. Motor disability and cognitive changes such as aphasia and visuospatial disorders are most often considered among the major contributors to stroke burden. This chapter discusses disorders of sexual functions as another frequent sequel of strokes. Strokes generally induce hyposexuality, but in some instances they may be followed by hypersexuality. There is some evidence suggesting that lesions of either hemisphere affect sexual activities, but for different reasons: aphasia and depression after left-hemisphere lesions, a deficit in arousal and perhaps visuospatial disorders after right-hemisphere lesions. Psychologic, psychosocial, and physical factors, as well as medications, play an important role. A better understanding of the psychosocial and physiologic mechanisms underlying sexual functioning can provide insight into improving sexual activity and therefore quality of life in patients affected by strokes and other brain lesions.	\N	\N
26042011	In classical conditioning, an initially neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus, CS) becomes associated with a biologically salient event (unconditioned stimulus, US), which might be pain (aversive conditioning) or food (appetitive conditioning). After a few associations, the CS is able to initiate either defensive or consummatory responses, respectively. Contrary to aversive conditioning, appetitive conditioning is rarely investigated in humans, although its importance for normal and pathological behaviors (e.g., obesity, addiction) is undeniable. The present study intents to translate animal findings on appetitive conditioning to humans using food as an US. Thirty-three participants were investigated between 8 and 10 am without breakfast in order to assure that they felt hungry. During two acquisition phases, one geometrical shape (avCS+) predicted an aversive US (painful electric shock), another shape (appCS+) predicted an appetitive US (chocolate or salty pretzel according to the participants' preference), and a third shape (CS-) predicted neither US. In a extinction phase, these three shapes plus a novel shape (NEW) were presented again without US delivery. Valence and arousal ratings as well as startle and skin conductance (SCR) responses were collected as learning indices. We found successful aversive and appetitive conditioning. On the one hand, the avCS+ was rated as more negative and more arousing than the CS- and induced startle potentiation and enhanced SCR. On the other hand, the appCS+ was rated more positive than the CS- and induced startle attenuation and larger SCR. In summary, we successfully confirmed animal findings in (hungry) humans by demonstrating appetitive learning and normal aversive learning.	\N	\N
26042057	Emotional experience has a pervasive impact on choice behavior, yet the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Introducing facial-expression primes into a probabilistic learning task, we investigated how affective arousal regulates reward-related choice based on behavioral, model fitting, and feedback-related negativity (FRN) data. Sixty-six paid subjects were randomly assigned to the Neutral-Neutral (NN), Angry-Neutral (AN), and Happy-Neutral (HN) groups. A total of 960 trials were conducted. Subjects in each group were randomly exposed to half trials of the pre-determined emotional faces and another half of the neutral faces before choosing between two cards drawn from two decks with different assigned reward probabilities. Trial-by-trial data were fit with a standard reinforcement learning model using the Bayesian estimation approach. The temporal dynamics of brain activity were simultaneously recorded and analyzed using event-related potentials. Our analyses revealed that subjects in the NN group gained more reward values than those in the other two groups; they also exhibited comparatively differential estimated model-parameter values for reward prediction errors. Computing the difference wave of FRNs in reward vs. non-reward trials, we found that, compared to the NN group, subjects in the AN and HN groups had larger "General" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in no-reward trials minus FRNs in reward trials) and "Expected" FRNs (i.e., FRNs in expected reward-omission trials minus FRNs in expected reward-delivery trials), indicating an interruption in predicting reward. Further, both AN and HN groups appeared to be more sensitive to negative outcomes than the NN group. Collectively, our study suggests that affective arousal negatively regulates reward-related choice, probably through overweighting with negative feedback.	\N	\N
26057772	Encoding of stressful experiences plays an important role in the development of posttraumatic stress disorder. A crucial aspect of memory encoding is binding: the "gluing" of the temporal and spatial elements of an episode into a cohesive unit. This study investigated the effect of emotional arousal on temporal binding and examined whether temporal binding varied as a function of state anxiety and/or state dissociation. Participants saw picture sequences that varied in arousal and valence. After each sequence, participants were presented with all the pictures simultaneously and had to sort the pictures in the original order. Temporal context binding was indexed by sorting accuracy. Binding was generally lower for high than low arousing pictures. Reduced binding of arousing material was specifically pronounced in participants with high state anxiety, whereas it seemed independent of state dissociation. These findings point to the relevance of impaired temporal binding as a component of aberrant memory encoding in stressful situations.	\N	\N
26099122	The main aim of this study was to differentiate the magnitude of a pilot's heart rate variability (HRV) when performing assisted and unassisted flights, as well as simple and complex flight tasks. Cardiac monitoring in flights was carried out using a compact, mobile ECG recorder. A frequency analysis of the heart rate (HR) signal was performed to determine the ratio of low-frequency spectral power (LF) to high-frequency spectral power (HF). The LF/HF ratio observed in the zone (M=1.047, SD=0.059) was significantly different than the LF/HF calculated preflight (M=0.877, SD=0.043) and postflight (M=0.793, SD=0.037). There was no main effect of the flight type (unassisted zone flight vs. zone flight with an instructor) on the LF/HF parameter. However, greater psychophysiological load of a pilot was observed in the training zone flights when compared to simple circle flights (main effect of the flight type). As the LF/HF ratio turned out to be significantly higher in the zone than pre- and postflight, this parameter can be useful for predicting the risk of excessive stress and arousal of pilots during flights. Based on the LF/HF ratio we can also estimate difficulty level of flight tasks, because our research has shown higher values of this parameter in the training zone flights than in simple circle flights.	\N	\N
26140258	Negative emotions can cause discomforting autonomic arousal, which can be difficult to inhibit using willpower alone. Although previous physiological studies have reported that skin pressure at certain bilateral locations reflexively inhibits sympathetic nervous system activity, few studies have tested the effect of this inhibition on emotion-related autonomic arousal in humans. I recorded skin potential response (SPR) and heart rate (HR) in healthy participants in response to loud noises presented concomitantly with or without skin pressure applied bilaterally to the sides of the chest. Weaker SPR and lower HR were observed in response to the noises accompanied by skin pressure. These findings indicate that skin pressure can be an easy and effective method to inhibit autonomic arousal related to negative emotions.	\N	\N
26151610	This meta-analysis examined the effect experimental sleep restriction has on youth's attention and hyperactivity outcomes. Thirteen published studies containing 17 independent samples were included (N = 496). Random- and fixed-effects models were used to estimate pooled effect sizes and moderator effects, respectively. Results indicate that sleep-restricted youth had significantly worse attention outcomes than youth with extended sleep, but no differences were evident regarding hyperactivity. Significant moderators of this effect included age and sex. These results have important implications for both the prevention and treatment of attention problems, highlighting the need for health professionals to screen for and treat underlying sleep issues.	\N	\N
26261317	Episodic memory performance is the result of distinct mental processes, such as learning, memory maintenance, and emotional modulation of memory strength. Such processes can be effectively dissociated using computational models. Here we performed gene set enrichment analyses of model parameters estimated from the episodic memory performance of 1,765 healthy young adults. We report robust and replicated associations of the amine compound SLC (solute-carrier) transporters gene set with the learning rate, of the collagen formation and transmembrane receptor protein tyrosine kinase activity gene sets with the modulation of memory strength by negative emotional arousal, and of the L1 cell adhesion molecule (L1CAM) interactions gene set with the repetition-based memory improvement. Furthermore, in a large functional MRI sample of 795 subjects we found that the association between L1CAM interactions and memory maintenance revealed large clusters of differences in brain activity in frontal cortical areas. Our findings provide converging evidence that distinct genetic profiles underlie specific mental processes of human episodic memory. They also provide empirical support to previous theoretical and neurobiological studies linking specific neuromodulators to the learning rate and linking neural cell adhesion molecules to memory maintenance. Furthermore, our study suggests additional memory-related genetic pathways, which may contribute to a better understanding of the neurobiology of human memory.	\N	\N
26308302	Extracorporeal life support (ECLS) as a bridge to lung transplantation (LuTx) is a promising option for patients with end-stage lung disease on the transplant waiting list. We investigated the outcome of patients bridged to lung transplantation on ECLS technologies, mainly extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Between January 2007 and October 2013, ECLS was implanted in 30 patients with intention to bridge to LuTx. Twenty-six patients (26/30) were successfully bridged to LuTx on ECLS. The most common diagnosis was cystic fibrosis (N = 12). Venovenous ECMO was used in 10, venoarterial in 4, interventional lung assist in 5, and stepwise combination of them in 7 recipients. Two patients weaned from ECMO, and 2 patients died on ECMO on the waiting list. Median duration of ECLS was 21 days (1-81 years). Six patients were awake and spontaneously breathing during ECLS support. Thirty-day, 1-year, and 2-year survivals were 89%, 68%, and 53%, respectively, for bridged patients and 96%, 85%, and 79%, respectively, for control group (P = 0.001). Three months conditional survivals were 89% and 69% at 1 and 2 years for ECLS group, compared to 92% and 86% for control group (P = 0.03). Cystic fibrosis recipients had 82% survival rate at 1 and 2 years. All recipients bridged to LuTx on awake ECLS (N = 6) are alive with a median follow-up of 10.8 months (range, 6-21 months). Our data show significantly lower survival in this high-risk group compared to patients transplanted without preoperative ECLS. Awake and ambulatory ECLS provides the best prognosis for these high-risk patients.	\N	\N
26320752	In recent years , increasing attention has been given to the development of deaf children, though few studies have included Deaf parents. The present study examined emotional availability (EA) and functions of touch used by Deaf or hearing parents with hearing or deaf infants during free play. Sixty dyads representing four hearing status groups were observed when the infants were 18 months old. Comparisons among all four groups revealed significant differences in regard to parental sensitivity and child responsiveness, with hearing mothers with deaf infants tending to score lowest in the various subcategories of EA. Significant differences were also found for attentional touch and total touch, with deaf mothers of deaf or hearing infants using both types of touch more than hearing mothers of deaf or hearing infants. The importance of support and interventions for hearing mothers with deaf infants is discussed.	\N	\N
26420517	Negative non-specific (nocebo-like) effects of medications and electromagnetic fields are often described as results of mistaken attribution. The current study aimed to find empirical evidence supporting this theory. Participants completed questionnaires assessing modern health worries, health anxiety, and somatosensory amplification, were assigned to one of three conditions (placebo pill with sedative information, sham magnetic field, or control), and completed a 14-min vigilance task. Changes in physiological arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance) and reported symptoms were also measured. Finally, causal attributions concerning cognitive performance and reported symptoms were assessed. No increase in symptom reports and physiological arousal was measured in the two intervention groups. A perceived negative effect on cognitive performance was attributed to both sham conditions, and attributions were connected to modern health worries. A proportion of reported symptoms was ascribed to the placebo pill but not to the sham magnetic field. Symptom attributions were not related to any assessed psychological variables. An aroused physiological state is not necessary for the automatic causal attribution process. Negative effects attributed to medication and environmental factors can be regarded as unavoidable side effects of human cognitive-emotional functioning; they might be alleviated, but cannot be completely eradicated.	\N	\N
26442340	Although alexithymia is recognized as a set of traitlike deficits in emotion processing, research suggests there are concomitant cognitive issues as well, including what appears to be an unusual pattern of enhanced working memory (WM) despite broader executive dysfunction. It is unknown whether this enhancement includes the executive elements of WM and whether executive control of WM in alexithymia differs for emotional and neutral stimuli. This study examined how alexithymia moderates patterns of interference resolution in WM with valenced and nonvalenced stimuli. Participants (N = 93) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and a recency probes WM task containing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli, with some trials containing proactive interference from previous trials. The reaction time difference between interference and noninterference trials indexed degree of interference resolution. Toronto Alexithymia Scale score moderated a within-subject effect such that, when valenced probes were used, there was less proactive interference in the positive relative to negative valence condition; this valence-based interference discrepancy was significant for a subset of highly alexithymic participants. Alexithymia did not moderate proactive interference to negative or neutral stimuli or accuracy of responses. These results suggest that, although alexithymia does not influence executive control in WM for nonemotional items, alexithymic people demonstrate an idiosyncratic response to positive stimuli that might indicate blunted reactivity.	\N	\N
26447746	The Introversion/Extraversion dimension may interact with contextual interference, as random and blocked practice schedules imply distinct levels of variation. This study investigated the effect of different practice schedules in the acquisition of a motor skill in extraverts and introverts. Forty male undergraduate students (M = 24.3 yr., SD = 5.6) were classified as extraverts (n = 20) and introverts (n = 20) by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and allocated in one of two practice schedules with different levels of contextual interference: blocked (low contextual interference) and random (high contextual interference). Half of each group was assigned to a blocked practice schedule, and the other half was assigned to a random practice schedule. The design had two phases: acquisition and transfer (5 min. and 24 hr.). The participants learned variations of a sequential timing keypressing task. Each variation required the same sequence but different timing; three variations were used in acquisition, and one variation of intermediate length was used in transfer. Results for absolute error and overall timing error (root mean square error) indicated that the contextual interference effect was more pronounced for introverts. In addition, introverts who practiced according to the blocked schedule committed more errors during the 24-hr. transfer, suggesting that introverts did not appear to be challenged by a low contextual interference practice schedule.	\N	\N
26468192	Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. This neural activity is linked to cognition that operates in the present or anticipates events or stimuli in the near future. We focus on deliberation and planning in the context of decision making as a cognitive process that integrates information across time. We progress to consider how temporal expectations of the future modulate perception. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition. Time is central to cognition. However, the neural basis for time-dependent cognition remains poorly understood. We explore how the temporal features of neural activity in cortical circuits and their capacity for plasticity can contribute to time-dependent cognition over short time scales. We propose that understanding the neural basis for how the brain tells time and operates in time will be necessary to develop general models of cognition.	\N	\N
26501048	People do not use condoms consistently but instead rely on intuition to identify sexual partners high at risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The present study examined gender differences of intuitive impressions about HIV risk. Male and female perceivers evaluated portraits of unacquainted male and female targets regarding their risk for HIV, trait characteristics (trust, responsibility, attractiveness, valence, arousal, and health), and willingness for interaction. Male targets were perceived as more risky than female targets for both perceiver genders. Furthermore, male perceivers reported higher HIV risk perception for both male and female targets than female perceivers. Multiple regression indicated gender differences in the association between person characteristics and HIV risk. In male targets, only trustworthiness predicts HIV risk. In female targets, however, HIV risk is related to trustworthiness, attractiveness, health, valence (for male perceivers), and arousal (for female perceivers). The present findings characterize intuitive impressions of HIV risk and reveal differences according to both target and perceiver gender. Considering gender differences in intuitive judgments of HIV risk may help devise effective strategies by shifting the balance from feelings of risk toward a more rational mode of risk perception and the adoption of effective precautionary behaviors.	\N	\N
21895359	Early evidence of social referencing was examined in 5½-month-old infants. Infants were habituated to 2 films of moving toys, one toy eliciting a woman's positive emotional expression and the other eliciting a negative expression under conditions of bimodal (audiovisual) or unimodal visual (silent) speech. It was predicted that intersensory redundancy provided by audiovisual (but not available in unimodal visual) events would enhance detection of the relation between emotional expressions and the corresponding toy. Consistent with predictions, only infants who received bimodal, audiovisual events detected a change in the affect-object relations, showing increased looking during a switch test in which the toy-affect pairing was reversed. Moreover, in a subsequent live preference test, they preferentially touched the 3-dimensional toy previously paired with the positive expression. These findings suggest social referencing emerges by 5½ months in the context of intersensory redundancy provided by dynamic multimodal stimulation and that even 5½-month-old infants demonstrate preferences for 3-dimensional objects on the basis of affective information depicted in videotaped events.	\N	\N
