Cognitive Neuroscience Commons^™

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Neural Bases Of Metamemory Judgments, Alexandra M. Gaynor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory monitoring, the process of making subjective assessments of the status of one’s own memory, is crucial to guiding behavior and effective learning. Past cognitive research has shown that subjective confidence judgments are inferential in nature, and based on cues available at the time of the judgment. When confidence is based on cues that are related to objective memory performance, metamemory accuracy is high. However, past studies have shown that metamemory monitoring tends to be inaccurate because individuals base their confidence on information that is not predictive of memory success, such as the fluency with which items were encoded during …

The Inter-Subject Correlation Of Eeg In Response To Naturalistic Stimuli, Samantha S. Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Inter-subject correlation is a measure of the similarity of the brain activity of a group of people as they respond to the same naturalistic stimulus, typically a story or video, meant to simulate a real world experience. This thesis tests the hypothesis that the correlation of the brain responses of a group of people is indicative of stimulus engagement. The rationale is that the content of the stimulus drives brain activity in a consistent manner, while internal thoughts are divergent and result in uncorrelated activity. The inter-subject correlation (ISC) of neural responses have previously been assessed with fMRI, EEG, and …

Neural Correlates Of Polysubstance Use: Differential And Interactive Effects Of Alcohol And Cannabis On The Adolescent Brain, Joseph Aloi

Theses & Dissertations

Two of the most commonly used and abused substances by adolescents in the United States are alcohol and cannabis, which are associated with adverse medical and psychiatric outcomes. Alcohol use and cannabis use during adolescence is also associated with an increased risk of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and/or cannabis use disorder (CUD) in adulthood as well as increased likelihood of relapse after successful treatment. Despite this, much of the previous work on the neurobiology of substance use disorders has focused on adult substance use. This work has shown that individuals with AUD and/or CUD show dysfunction within reward processing, emotion …

Population Codes And Their Correlates In Decision Making, Neda Shahidi

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

This dissertation was organized in two parts: in part 1, we discussed Neural Correlates of Perceptual Accuracy” and in part 2 we discussed “Strategy encoding in Prefrontal Cortex”.

Abstract of part 1_The accurate transmission of electrical signals within neocortex is central to sensory perception and cognition. Theoretical studies have long proposed that the temporal coordination of cortical spiking activity controls signal transmission and cognitive function. In reality, whether and how the precise temporal coordination in neuronal populations during wakefulness influences perception remains a mystery. Here, we simultaneously recorded populations of neurons in early and mid-level visual cortex (areas V1 …

Immature Auditory Evoked Potentials In Children With Moderate-Severe Developmental Language Disorder., Elaine Yuen Ling Kwok, Marc F Joanisse, Lisa Archibald, Janis Oram Cardy

Health and Rehabilitation Sciences Publications

Purpose: Immature auditory processing has been proposed to underlie language impairments in children with developmental language disorder (DLD; also known as specific language impairment). Using newly available normative auditory evoked potential (AEP) waveforms, we estimated AEP maturity in individual children with DLD and explored whether this maturational index was related to their language abilities.

Method: AEPs were elicited by 225 trials of a 490-Hz pure tone. Using intraclass correlation and our previously established normative AEP waveforms of 7- to 10-year-old children with typical development, we estimated the age equivalent of the AEPs (AEP-age) from 21 children with DLD. The relation …

Ca2+, Astrocyte Activation And Calcineurin/Nfat Signaling In Age-Related Neurodegenerative Diseases, Pradoldej Sompol, Christopher M. Norris

Sanders-Brown Center on Aging Faculty Publications

Mounting evidence supports a fundamental role for Ca²⁺ dysregulation in astrocyte activation. Though the activated astrocyte phenotype is complex, cell-type targeting approaches have revealed a number of detrimental roles of activated astrocytes involving neuroinflammation, release of synaptotoxic factors and loss of glutamate regulation. Work from our lab and others has suggested that the Ca²⁺/calmodulin dependent protein phosphatase, calcineurin (CN), provides a critical link between Ca²⁺ dysregulation and the activated astrocyte phenotype. A proteolyzed, hyperactivated form of CN appears at high levels in activated astrocytes in both human tissue and rodent tissue around regions of amyloid and …

Inactivation Of The Medial-Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Interval Timing Precision, But Not Timing Accuracy Or Scalar Timing In A Peak-Interval Procedure In Rats, Catalin V. Buhusi, Marcelo B. Reyes, Cody-Aaron Gathers, Sorinel A. Oprisan, Mona Buhusi

Psychology Faculty Publications

Motor sequence learning, planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors, and decision making rely on accurate time estimation and production of durations in the seconds-to-minutes range. The pathways involved in planning and execution of goal-directed behaviors include cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuitry modulated by dopaminergic inputs. A critical feature of interval timing is its scalar property, by which the precision of timing is proportional to the timed duration. We examined the role of medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in timing by evaluating the effect of its reversible inactivation on timing accuracy, timing precision and scalar timing. Rats were trained to time two durations in a …

Processing Emotional Expression In The Dance Of A Foreign Culture: Gestural Responses Of Germans And Koreans To Ballet And Korean Dance, Zi Hyun Kim, Hedda Lausberg

Journal of Movement Arts Literacy Archive (2013-2019)

Artistic dance differs between cultures with regard to the formal movement repertoire and methods to represent dancer's emotions. The present study explores how differently the spectators perceive the dance scenes of their own and foreign cultures. We showed German and Korean participants sad and happy dance scenes of the French ballet Giselle and Korean dance Sung-Mu. To learn the perceived thoughts and feelings of the participant from the dance scenes, we analyzed the frequency of their hand movements and gestures, which were accompanied by verbal descriptions of the participant's appreciation immediately after observation of the dance stimuli. The videotaped …

When Less Is More: Mindfulness Predicts Adaptive Affective Responding To Rejection Via Reduced Prefrontal Recruitment, Alexandra M. Martelli, David S. Chester, Kirk Warren Brown, Naomi I. Eisenberger, C. Nathan Dewall

Psychology Faculty Publications

Social rejection is a distressing and painful event that many people must cope with on a frequent basis. Mindfulness—defined here as a mental state of receptive attentiveness to internal and external stimuli as they arise, moment-to-moment—may buffer such social distress. However, little research indicates whether mindful individuals adaptively regulate the distress of rejection—or the neural mechanisms underlying this potential capacity. To fill these gaps in the literature, participants reported their trait mindfulness and then completed a social rejection paradigm (Cyberball) while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Approximately 1 hour after the rejection incident, participants reported their level of distress during …

Neural And Behavioral Correlates Of Attentional Inhibition Training And Perceptual Discrimination Training In A Visual Flanker Task, Robert D. Melara, Shalini Singh, Denise A. Hien

Publications and Research

Two groups of healthy young adults were exposed to 3 weeks of cognitive training in a modified version of the visual flanker task, one group trained to discriminate the target (discrimination training) and the other group to ignore the flankers (inhibition training). Inhibition training, but not discrimination training, led to significant reductions in both Garner interference, indicating improved selective attention, and in Stroop interference, indicating more efficient resolution of stimulus conflict. The behavioral gains from training were greatest in participants who showed the poorest selective attention at pretest. Electrophysiological recordings revealed that inhibition training increased the magnitude of Rejection Positivity …

Linking Signal Detection Theory And Encoding Models To Reveal Independent Neural Representations From Neuroimaging Data, Fabian A. Soto

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Feature-Based Model Of Visually Perceiving Deformable Objects, Vivian C. Paulun, Filipp Schmidt, Roland W. Fleming

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Global Estimation Of Signed 3d Surface Tilt From Natural Images, Seha Kim, Johannes Burge

MODVIS Workshop

The ability of human visual systems to estimate 3D surface orientation from 2D retinal images is critical. But the computation to calculate 3D orientation in real-world scenes is not fully understood. A Bayes optimal model grounded in natural statistics has explained 3D surface tilt estimation of human observers in natural scenes (Kim and Burge, 2018). However, the model is limited because it estimates only unsigned tilt (tilt modulo 180deg). We extend the model to predict signed tilt estimates and compared with human signed estimates. The model takes image pixels as input and produces optimal estimates of tilt as output, using …

Inferring The Neural Representation Of Faces From Adaptation Aftereffects, Kara J. Emery, Michael A. Webster Ph.D.

MODVIS Workshop

The aftereffects of adaptation to faces have been studied widely, in part to characterize the coding schemes for representing different facial attributes. Often these aftereffects have been interpreted in terms of two alternative models of face processing: 1) a norm-based or opponent code, in which the facial dimension is represented by relative activity in a pair of broadly-tuned mechanisms with opposing sensitivities; or 2) an exemplar code, in which the dimension is sampled by multiple channels narrowly-tuned to different levels of the stimulus. Evidence for or against these alternatives is based on the different patterns of aftereffects they predict (e.g. …

Effect Of Noise On Mutually Inhibiting Pyramidal Cells In Visual Cortex: Foundation Of Stochasticity In Bi-Stable Perception, Naoki Kogo, Felix Kern, Thomas Nowotny, Raymond Van Ee, Richard Van Wezel, Takeshi Aihara

MODVIS Workshop

Bi-stable perception has been an important tool to investigate how visual input is interpreted and how it reaches consciousness. To explain the mechanisms of this phenomenon, it has been assumed that a mutual inhibition circuit plays a key role. It is possible that this circuit functions to resolve ambiguity of input image by quickly shifting the balance of competing signals in response to conflicting features. Recently we established an in vitro neural recording system combined with computerized connections mediated by model neurons and synapses (“dynamic clamp” system). With this system, mutual inhibition circuit between two pyramidal cells from primary visual …

Why Latent Representations In Convolutional Neural Networks Fall Outside Visual Space, Katerina Malakhova

MODVIS Workshop

It is common to compare properties of visual information processing by artificial neural networks and the primate visual system.

Some remarkable similarities were observed in the responses of neurons in IT cortex and units in higher layers of CNNs. Here I show that latent representations formed by weights in convolutional layers do not necessarily reflect visual domain. Instead they are strongly dependent on a choice of training set and cost function.

The most striking example is when an individual unit, which is highly selective to some members of a category is, nevertheless, inhibited by visually similar objects of the same …

Divisive Inhibition As A Solution To The Correspondence Problem In Perceptual Grouping, Chien-Chung Chen, Yi-Shiuan Lin, Li Lin

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Discovery Of Activities Via Statistical Clustering Of Fixation Patterns, Jeffrey B. Mulligan

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Neurocognitive Markers Of Cognitive Control In Schizophrenia And Functional Outcomes, Sephira Ryman

Psychology ETDs

Impaired cognitive function results in decreased objective quality of life and community functioning in schizophrenia, resulting in the largest indirect costs from the disease. Disrupted proactive cognitive control, a form of early selection and active goal maintenance, is hypothesized to underlie the broad cognitive deficits observed in patients with schizophrenia. The current study utilized novel electrophysiological (EEG) analytic approach to examine proactive and reactive cognitive control deficits in schizophrenia patients. Behavioral results highlight that patients exhibited a general reduction in reaction time across two multisensory cognitive control tasks, with selective deficits on proactive conditions relative to reactive conditions. The relative …

The Neural Substrates Of Communicative Actions: A Cognitive Psychophysiology Study Of Sign Language Production And Imitation In Deaf Signers And Hearing Non-Signers, Athena S. Willis

Undergraduate University Honors Capstones

What is the neurobiological underpinning of communicative actions? Studies have suggested that the same neural network of imitation is involved in producing communicative actions, regardless if the persons expressing communicative actions are deaf signers or hearing nonsigners. Through neuroimaging method and analysis, we can observe if experience with communicative actions leads to any differences in the neural processing of the one and two handed ASL signs in deaf signers and hearing non-signers. The results indicate that the posterior right parietal region of the brain shows a significant difference in activity during imitation of one handed and two handed ASL signs …