Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

The Influence Of Valence On Action Control: A Comparison Of Simon Effects In The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (East) And The Spatial Simon Task, Yaara Aleissa

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

People adjust their thoughts and actions in response to a changing environment every day and emotions may influence these actions. Understanding how emotion impacts action control in situations where emotion is central to the action (task-relevant) compared to when it is present in the environment as distracting information (task-irrelevant) is essential. Currently it is unclear when emotion most significantly modulates action control. This study seeks to compare how valence (positive versus negative emotion) impacts action control performance when valence is task-relevant and task-irrelevant by using two modified versions of the Simon conflict task.

The Simon task is a paradigm to …

Mindreading And Embodiment: Beyond Mirror Neurons., Sanad Al Khatib

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This paper examines the question: how do we figure out what other people are thinking and why they act as they do, or put differently, how is it that we can read minds in daily life? For decades, the dominant view held that we explain and predict other people’s behavior by attributing to them mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions, represented symbolically in the brain. The embodied simulation model challenges this view, proposing that understanding others primarily relies on mirror neurons that activate both when we perform an action and when we observe someone else performing it. This …

Anterior Cingulate Cortex Connectivity And The Role In Neuroticism: A Diffusion-Weighted-Imaging-Based Investigation Of Limbic And Prefrontal Circuits., Jake Cox Ii

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Neuroticism is a trait which has been shown to significantly predict psychopathology. Investigating its neurobiological underpinnings may uncover a brain-based relationship that allows clinicians to conceptualize a shared predispositional factor across multiple psychopathologies, implicating treatment protocols. Inter-connectivity network and structural variation has been shown to be implicated in neuroticism, more specifically the frontoparietal network, default mode network, salience networks, and limbic networks. These networks tackle executive, salience, and emotional information, respectively. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is a brain region nested between and functionally related to various networks stated above that are implicated in neuroticism. As such, it was hypothesized …

Adjusting For Speaking Rate When Perceiving Speech In Background Noise., Dawson C Stephens

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Speech perception is a very relevant concept occurring every day. Acoustic context effects such as temporal contrast effects (TCEs) influence perception significantly. For instance, when a faster context sentence is spoken, the participant should perceive the following target word as slower and more like /t/ in “tier”; when a slower context sentence is spoken, the participant should perceive the following target sound as faster and more like /d/ in “deer”. Recent work by Bosker et al. (2020) concluded that selective attention (directing attention to a specific stimulus while ignoring surrounding stimuli) had no effect on TCEs, suggesting they were automatic …

Screen Usage Relates To Neuroanatomy Underlying Reward Processing., Lucus Kiger Hodge

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Today’s world is inundated with technology and our use of screens. It is possible that screen usage might affect the structural development of brain systems underlying motivation, reward, and addiction. Two hundred and thirty-two 10-year-old individuals’ structural MRI and behavioral data from a publicly accessible database were analyzed to find relations between the cortical and subcortical regions of the reward circuits of the brain and the usage of social media, texting, television, YouTube and other video applications, video games, and video chat applications. Both cortical and subcortical results yielded significant relationships with variables of screen time usage. Most significantly, subcortical …

Neural Correlates Relating To Executive Function, Intelligence, And Anxiety., Sarah K L'Heureux

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

The human brain is a complex organ responsible for not only perceiving and sensing information in one’s environment, but also integrating and analyzing these details in a way that will allow an individual to comprehend the material. Scientists for centuries have been curious as to why people process their emotions and thoughts differently, resulting in unique and varied behavior. The manner in which a person comprehends information and whether or not they feel anxious as a result, may be connected to their intellectual and functional capacity. Human intelligence and the ability to function at a high level may be related …