scholarly journals Effects of binaural and monaural beat stimulation on attention and EEG

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hessel Engelbregt ◽  
Marinda Barmentlo ◽  
Daniel Keeser ◽  
Oliver Pogarell ◽  
Jan Berend Deijen
Keyword(s):  
Flanker Task ◽  
Cognitive Test ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Binaural Beats ◽  
Frequency Following Response ◽  
Neural Entrainment ◽  
Specific Frequency ◽  
Eeg Recordings ◽  
Mood And Cognition ◽  
40 Hz

AbstractNowadays a popular technique to improve mood and cognition is auditory beat stimulation (ABS), which is thought to induce a frequency-following response of brainwaves. The main types of ABS are monaural beats (MB) and binaural beats (BB). BB involves the presentation of a specific frequency to one ear and another frequency to the other ear which may induce neural entrainment. A difference between the frequencies of 40 Hz is assumed to improve cognition. The present study examined the effect of 40 Hz binaural beats (BB) and monaural beats (MB) on attention and electroencephalography (EEG). A total of 25 first-year psychology students (11 males, 14 females) performed a Flanker task while EEG was recorded during the 5 min-presentation of pink noise (PN), MB and BB. With respect to attention, as measured by the Flanker task, the number of false responses in the BB condition was smaller than that in the PN condition while the number of false responses in the MB condition was larger as compared to the PN condition. As there was no association of BB with a consistent increase in absolute 40 or 45 Hz power compared to PN or MB, EEG recordings could not confirm the hypothesized neural entrainment in the brain. Overall, the current findings show that listening to 40 Hz BB improves attention but do not show the occurrence of neural entrainment. Future research is recommended to include a larger sample, to use a broader cognitive test battery and to present auditory beats with a longer duration.

scholarly journals Cognitive Performance during a 24-Hour Cold Exposure Survival Simulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Michael J. Taber ◽  
Geoffrey L. Hartley ◽  
Gregory W. McGarr ◽  
Dessi Zaharieva ◽  
Fabien A. Basset ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Core Temperature ◽  
Cold Exposure ◽  
Ambient Air ◽  
Cognitive Test ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Polar Regions ◽  
Active Engagement ◽  
Metabolic Heat ◽  
Tolerable Level

Survivor of a ship ground in polar regions may have to wait more than five days before being rescued. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore cognitive performance during prolonged cold exposure. Core temperature (Tc) and cognitive test battery (CTB) performance data were collected from eight participants during 24 hours of cold exposure (7.5°C ambient air temperature). Participants (recruited from those who have regular occupational exposure to cold) were instructed that they could freely engage in minimal exercise that was perceived to maintaining a tolerable level of thermal comfort. Despite the active engagement, test conditions were sufficient to significantly decreaseTcafter exposure and to eliminate the typical 0.5–1.0°C circadian rise and drop in core temperature throughout a 24 h cycle. Results showed minimal changes in CTB performance regardless of exposure time. Based on the results, it is recommended that survivors who are waiting for rescue should be encouraged to engage in mild physical activity, which could have the benefit of maintaining metabolic heat production, improve motivation, and act as a distractor from cold discomfort. This recommendation should be taken into consideration during future research and when considering guidelines for mandatory survival equipment regarding cognitive performance.

scholarly journals Daily and Non-daily Smokers: A Profile of Drive and Cognitive Control Mechanisms

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Edward Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Error Processing ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Meaningful Difference ◽  
Addictive Behaviour ◽  
Drive And Control ◽  
And Control

Historically, smokers were considered a single homogeneous group, but over the past two decades research has increasingly focused on differentiating daily and non-daily smokers. Despite fundamentally different smoking habits and motives, daily and non-daily smokers have similar cessation rates. In order to understand why both groups may experience a similar difficulty quitting smoking, this thesis explored neurocognitive mechanisms associated with addictive behaviour. In order to profile these mechanisms, a systematic review was conducted, highlighting there was a gap to address in two areas of research relating to drive and control. Study One (N = 60) and Study Two (N = 166) investigated attentional bias towards smoking cues using the visual probe task, finding there was no meaningful difference between daily and non-daily smokers in trait-level attentional bias. Study Three (N = 28) measured ERP components associated with inhibitory control (Go/NoGo task) and error processing (Eriksen Flanker task). There were no significant effects of interest, but the sample size was smaller than planned. This thesis made three contributions to the study of addictive behaviour. First, the systematic review highlighted that research investigating lighter and heavier smokers has a problematic level of heterogeneity in the definitions used to define the groups. Second, there was no meaningful difference in attentional bias between daily and non-daily smokers, supporting contemporary theories that attentional bias may be best conceptualised as a state-level construct. Finally, internal consistency estimates of the ERP measures of inhibitory control and error processing supported previous research reporting good psychometric properties. Overall, this thesis presented a focused profile of measures relating to drive and control neurocognitive mechanisms, but there were no meaningful differences between daily and non-daily smokers. If these mechanisms are important to addictive behaviour, future research will have to investigate their role using alternative designs.

scholarly journals Flanker task-elicited Event Related Potential sources reflect human recombinant Erythropoietin differential effects on Parkinson’s patients

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria L Bringas Vega ◽  
Shengnan Liu ◽  
Min Zhang ◽  
Ivonne Pedroso Ibañez ◽  
Lilia M. Morales Chacon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flanker Task ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Source Analysis ◽  
Random Allocation ◽  
Recombinant Erythropoietin ◽  
Human Recombinant Erythropoietin ◽  
Human Erythropoietin ◽  
Eeg Source Analysis ◽  
Eeg Recordings

AbstractWe used EEG source analysis to identify which cortical areas were involved in the automatic and controlled processes of inhibitory control on a flanker task and compared the potential efficacy of recombinant-human erythropoietin (rHuEPO) on the performance of Parkinson’ s Disease patients.The samples were 18 medicated PD patients (nine of them received rHuEPO in addition to their usual anti-PD medication through random allocation and the other nine patients were on their regular anti-PD medication only) and 9 age and education-matched healthy controls (HCs) who completed the flanker task with simultaneous EEG recordings. N1 and N2 event-related potential (ERP) components were identified and a low-resolution tomography (LORETA) inverse solution was employed to localize the neural generators.Reaction times and errors were increased for the incongruent flankers for PD patients compared to controls. EEG source analysis identified an effect of rHuEPO on the lingual gyri for the early N1 component. N2-related sources in middle cingulate and precuneus were associated with the inhibition of automatic responses evoked by incongruent stimuli differentiated PD and HCs.From our results rHuEPO, seems to mediate an effect on N1 sources in lingual gyri but not on behavioural performance. N2-related sources in middle cingulate and precuneus evoked by incongruent stimuli differentiated PD and HCs.

MEG/EEG in the Study of Brain Function

2017 ◽  
pp. 304-310
Author(s):  
Riitta Hari ◽  
Aina Puce
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Social Neuroscience ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Noninvasive Methods ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
Eeg Recordings ◽  
Two Sides

This chapter summarizes some relative advantages and disadvantages of MEG and EEG, most of which have been previously elaborated. MEG and EEG are the two sides of the same coin and provide complementary information about the human brain’s neurodynamics. The combined use of MEG or EEG together and with other noninvasive methods used to study human brain function is advocated to be important for future research in systems and cognitive/social neuroscience. This chapter also examines combined use and interpretation of MEG/EEG with MRI/fMRI, and performing EEG recordings during non-invasive brain stimulation.

Human cortical responses to slow and fast binaural beats reveal multiple mechanisms of binaural hearing

2014 ◽  
Vol 112 (8) ◽  
pp. 1871-1884 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Ross ◽  
Takahiro Miyazaki ◽  
Jessica Thompson ◽  
Shahab Jamali ◽  
Takako Fujioka
Keyword(s):  
Binaural Hearing ◽  
Gamma Oscillations ◽  
Neural Population ◽  
Neural Firing ◽  
Sound Location ◽  
Binaural Beats ◽  
Cortical Responses ◽  
Left And Right ◽  
Auditory Cortices ◽  
40 Hz

When two tones with slightly different frequencies are presented to both ears, they interact in the central auditory system and induce the sensation of a beating sound. At low difference frequencies, we perceive a single sound, which is moving across the head between the left and right ears. The percept changes to loudness fluctuation, roughness, and pitch with increasing beat rate. To examine the neural representations underlying these different perceptions, we recorded neuromagnetic cortical responses while participants listened to binaural beats at a continuously varying rate between 3 Hz and 60 Hz. Binaural beat responses were analyzed as neuromagnetic oscillations following the trajectory of the stimulus rate. Responses were largest in the 40-Hz gamma range and at low frequencies. Binaural beat responses at 3 Hz showed opposite polarity in the left and right auditory cortices. We suggest that this difference in polarity reflects the opponent neural population code for representing sound location. Binaural beats at any rate induced gamma oscillations. However, the responses were largest at 40-Hz stimulation. We propose that the neuromagnetic gamma oscillations reflect postsynaptic modulation that allows for precise timing of cortical neural firing. Systematic phase differences between bilateral responses suggest that separate sound representations of a sound object exist in the left and right auditory cortices. We conclude that binaural processing at the cortical level occurs with the same temporal acuity as monaural processing whereas the identification of sound location requires further interpretation and is limited by the rate of object representations.

scholarly journals EEG evidence for the effective proactive control of emotional distraction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Justin Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Control Strategy ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Proactive Control ◽  
Frequency Condition ◽  
Eeg Alpha ◽  
Emotional Distraction

<p>Recent behavioural studies using an emotional flanker task have found that task-irrelevent emotional images are more distracting than neutral images under infrequent, but not frequent, distractor conditions.It has been proposed the effective control of distraction in the high distractor frequency condition may be due to a shift to a proactive control strategy, whereby a potential distraction is anticipated and minimised in advance. However, although it is well established that proactive control is effective at reducingneutral distraction, it is not yet clear whether emotional distraction can be effectively proactively controlled. In this thesis, I used EEG to measure pre-stimulus indices of proactive control in order to determine whether proactive control is responsible for the effective control of emotional and neutral distraction in the high distractor frequency condition, as well asto examine whether proactive control differs according whether a neutral or emotional distraction is anticipated.In addition to replicating the previous behavioural findings, posterior EEG alpha was found to be tonically suppressed in the high compared to low distractor frequency condition, strongly supporting the hypothesis that proactive control was engaged in the high distractor frequency condition. By contrast, there was no difference in phasic alpha suppression (i.e., the drop in alpha in response to fixation onset) between conditions, indicating that the more effective control of distraction in the high frequency distractor conditions was due to a sustained proactive control strategy, rather than greater trial-by-trial preparation to attend to the target. In addition, no alpha lateralisation was found, indicating the mechanisms by which distraction was proactively controlled did not include the preparatory suppression of expected distractor locations. Finally, tonic alpha did not differ according to the expected distractor valence, but phasic alpha suppression was more pronounced when negative, compared to neutral or positive, distractors were expected, independent of distractor frequency condition. This suggests proactive control was also used to some extent in the low distractor frequency condition, but more importantly also provides initial evidence that the proactive control of negative distraction may be unique. Taken together, my findings provide compelling evidence that emotional distraction can be effectively proactively controlled. Future research is needed to determine the mechanisms by which this occurs, and whether the proactive control of emotional distraction is particularly effortful.</p>

scholarly journals EEG evidence for the effective proactive control of emotional distraction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Justin Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Control Strategy ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Effective Control ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Proactive Control ◽  
Frequency Condition ◽  
Eeg Alpha ◽  
Emotional Distraction

<p>Recent behavioural studies using an emotional flanker task have found that task-irrelevent emotional images are more distracting than neutral images under infrequent, but not frequent, distractor conditions.It has been proposed the effective control of distraction in the high distractor frequency condition may be due to a shift to a proactive control strategy, whereby a potential distraction is anticipated and minimised in advance. However, although it is well established that proactive control is effective at reducingneutral distraction, it is not yet clear whether emotional distraction can be effectively proactively controlled. In this thesis, I used EEG to measure pre-stimulus indices of proactive control in order to determine whether proactive control is responsible for the effective control of emotional and neutral distraction in the high distractor frequency condition, as well asto examine whether proactive control differs according whether a neutral or emotional distraction is anticipated.In addition to replicating the previous behavioural findings, posterior EEG alpha was found to be tonically suppressed in the high compared to low distractor frequency condition, strongly supporting the hypothesis that proactive control was engaged in the high distractor frequency condition. By contrast, there was no difference in phasic alpha suppression (i.e., the drop in alpha in response to fixation onset) between conditions, indicating that the more effective control of distraction in the high frequency distractor conditions was due to a sustained proactive control strategy, rather than greater trial-by-trial preparation to attend to the target. In addition, no alpha lateralisation was found, indicating the mechanisms by which distraction was proactively controlled did not include the preparatory suppression of expected distractor locations. Finally, tonic alpha did not differ according to the expected distractor valence, but phasic alpha suppression was more pronounced when negative, compared to neutral or positive, distractors were expected, independent of distractor frequency condition. This suggests proactive control was also used to some extent in the low distractor frequency condition, but more importantly also provides initial evidence that the proactive control of negative distraction may be unique. Taken together, my findings provide compelling evidence that emotional distraction can be effectively proactively controlled. Future research is needed to determine the mechanisms by which this occurs, and whether the proactive control of emotional distraction is particularly effortful.</p>

scholarly journals Validation of an ecological momentary assessment to measure processing speed and executive function in schizophrenia

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecelia Shvetz ◽  
Feng Gu ◽  
Jessica Drodge ◽  
John Torous ◽  
Synthia Guimond
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Impairments ◽  
Cognitive Test ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Validity And Reliability ◽  
Cognitive Assessments ◽  
Subjective Sleep Quality ◽  
Trail Making ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Test Retest Reliability ◽  
Ecological Momentary

AbstractCognitive impairments are a core feature of schizophrenia that have negative impacts on functional outcomes. However, it remains challenging to assess these impairments in clinical settings. Smartphone apps provide the opportunity to measure cognitive impairments in an accessible way; however, more research is needed to validate these cognitive assessments in schizophrenia. We assessed the initial accessibility, validity, and reliability of a smartphone-based cognitive test to measure cognition in schizophrenia. A total of 29 individuals with schizophrenia and 34 controls were included in the analyses. Participants completed the standard pen-and-paper Trail Making Tests (TMT) A and B, and smartphone-based versions, Jewels Trail Tests (JTT) A and B, at the single in-lab visit. Participants were asked to complete the JTT remotely once per week for three months. We also investigated how subjective sleep quality and mood may affect cognitive performance longitudinally. In-lab and remote JTT scores moderately and positively correlated with in-lab TMT scores. Moderate test-retest reliability was observed across the in-lab, first remote, and last remote completion times of the JTT. Additionally, individuals with schizophrenia had significantly lower performance compared to controls on both the in-lab JTT and TMT. Self-reported mood had a significant effect on JTT A performance over time but no other significant relationships were found remotely. Our results support the initial accessibility, validity and reliability of using the JTT to measure cognition in schizophrenia. Future research to develop additional smartphone-based cognitive tests as well as with larger samples and in other psychiatric populations are warranted.

scholarly journals 40-Hz Binaural beats enhance training to mitigate the attentional blink

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Ross ◽  
Marc Danzell Lopez
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Blink ◽  
Binaural Beats ◽  
40 Hz

scholarly journals Effect of Binaural Stimulation on Attention and EEG

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adela Crespo ◽  
Manuel Recuero ◽  
Gerardo Galvez ◽  
Adrián Begoña
Keyword(s):  
Small Sample ◽  
Cognitive Test ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Perceptual Illusion ◽  
Binaural Stimulation ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Eeg Recordings ◽  
Free Open Source ◽  
Statistical Improvement

Abstract When two pure tones of slightly different frequency are presented separately to each ear, the listener perceives a third single tone with amplitude variations at a frequency that equals the difference between the two tones; this perceptual illusion is known as the binaural auditory beat (BB). There are anecdotal reports that suggest that the binaural beat can entrain EEG activity and may affect the arousal levels, although few studies have been published. There is a need for double-blind, well-designed studies in order to establish a solid foundation for these sounds, as most of the documented benefits come from self-reported cases that could be affected by placebo effect. As BBs are a cheap technology (it even exists a free open source programmable binaural- beat generator on the Internet named Gnaural), any achievement in this area could be of public interest. The aim in our research was to explore the potential of BBs in a particular field: tasks that require focus and concentration. In order to detect changes in the brain waves that could relate to any particular improvement, EEG recordings of a small sample of individuals were also obtained. In this study we compare the effect of different binaural stimulation in 7 EEG frequency ranges. 78 participants were exposed to 20-min binaural beat stimulation. The effects were obtained both quali- tative with cognitive test and quantitative with EEG analysis. Results suggest no significant statistical improvement in 20-min stimulation.

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