scholarly journals Restricting Visual Exploration Directly Impedes Neural Activity, Functional Connectivity, and Memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong-Xu Liu ◽  
R Shayna Rosenbaum ◽  
Jennifer D Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Visual Exploration ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Single Location ◽  
Hippocampal Activity ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Gaze Fixations

Abstract We move our eyes to explore the visual world, extract information, and create memories. The number of gaze fixations—the stops that the eyes make—has been shown to correlate with activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory, and with later recognition memory. Here, we combined eyetracking with fMRI to provide direct evidence for the relationships between gaze fixations, neural activity, and memory during scene viewing. Compared to free viewing, fixating a single location reduced: 1) subsequent memory, 2) neural activity along the ventral visual stream into the hippocampus, 3) neural similarity between effects of subsequent memory and visual exploration, and 4) functional connectivity among the hippocampus, parahippocampal place area, and other cortical regions. Gaze fixations were uniquely related to hippocampal activity, even after controlling for neural effects due to subsequent memory. Therefore, this study provides key causal evidence supporting the notion that the oculomotor and memory systems are intrinsically related at both the behavioral and neural level. Individual gaze fixations may provide the basic unit of information on which memory binding processes operate.

scholarly journals Restricting visual exploration directly impedes neural activity, functional connectivity, and memory

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong-Xu Liu ◽  
R. Shayna Rosenbaum ◽  
Jennifer D. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Visual Exploration ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Memory Binding ◽  
Single Location ◽  
Hippocampal Activity ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Gaze Fixations

AbstractWe move our eyes to explore the visual world, extract information, and create memories. The number of gaze fixations – the stops that the eyes make – has been shown to correlate with activity in the hippocampus, a region critical for memory, and with later recognition memory. Here, we combined eyetracking with fMRI to provide direct evidence for the relationships between gaze fixations, neural activity, and memory during scene viewing. Compared to free viewing, fixating a single location reduced: 1) subsequent memory, 2) neural activity along the ventral visual stream into the hippocampus, 3) neural similarity between effects of subsequent memory and visual exploration, and 4) functional connectivity among the hippocampus, parahippocampal place area, and other cortical regions. Gaze fixations were uniquely related to hippocampal activity, even after controlling for neural effects due to subsequent memory. Individual gaze fixations may provide the basic unit of information on which memory binding processes operate.

Brain Mechanisms of Conscious Awareness: Detect, Pulse, Switch, and Wave

2021 ◽  
pp. 107385842110493
Author(s):  
Hal Blumenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Neural Activity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Attention And Memory ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Conscious Perception ◽  
Discrete Events ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Large Scale Networks ◽  
Experimental Findings

Consciousness is a fascinating field of neuroscience research where questions often outnumber the answers. We advocate an open and optimistic approach where converging mechanisms in neuroscience may eventually provide a satisfactory understanding of consciousness. We first review several characteristics of conscious neural activity, including the involvement of dedicated systems for content and levels of consciousness, the distinction and overlap of mechanisms contributing to conscious states and conscious awareness of transient events, nonlinear transitions and involvement of large-scale networks, and finally the temporal nexus where conscious awareness of discrete events occurs when mechanisms of attention and memory meet. These considerations and recent new experimental findings lead us to propose an inclusive hypothesis involving four phases initiated shortly after an external sensory stimulus: (1) Detect—primary and higher cortical and subcortical circuits detect the stimulus and select it for conscious perception. (2) Pulse—a transient and massive neuromodulatory surge in subcortical-cortical arousal and salience networks amplifies signals enabling conscious perception to proceed. (3) Switch—networks that may interfere with conscious processing are switched off. (4) Wave—sequential processing through hierarchical lower to higher cortical regions produces a fully formed percept, encoded in frontoparietal working memory and medial temporal episodic memory systems for subsequent report of experience. The framework hypothesized here is intended to be nonexclusive and encourages the addition of other mechanisms with further progress. Ultimately, just as many mechanisms in biology together distinguish living from nonliving things, many mechanisms in neuroscience synergistically may separate conscious from nonconscious neural activity.

scholarly journals Occipital Cortex of Blind Individuals Is Functionally Coupled with Executive Control Areas of Frontal Cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (8) ◽  
pp. 1633-1647 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Deen ◽  
Rebecca Saxe ◽  
Marina Bedny
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Occipital Cortex ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Functional Responses ◽  
Congenitally Blind ◽  
Blind Individuals

In congenital blindness, the occipital cortex responds to a range of nonvisual inputs, including tactile, auditory, and linguistic stimuli. Are these changes in functional responses to stimuli accompanied by altered interactions with nonvisual functional networks? To answer this question, we introduce a data-driven method that searches across cortex for functional connectivity differences across groups. Replicating prior work, we find increased fronto-occipital functional connectivity in congenitally blind relative to blindfolded sighted participants. We demonstrate that this heightened connectivity extends over most of occipital cortex but is specific to a subset of regions in the inferior, dorsal, and medial frontal lobe. To assess the functional profile of these frontal areas, we used an n-back working memory task and a sentence comprehension task. We find that, among prefrontal areas with overconnectivity to occipital cortex, one left inferior frontal region responds to language over music. By contrast, the majority of these regions responded to working memory load but not language. These results suggest that in blindness occipital cortex interacts more with working memory systems and raise new questions about the function and mechanism of occipital plasticity.

scholarly journals Effects of amnesia on processing in the hippocampus and default mode network during a naturalistic memory task: a case study

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Oedekoven ◽  
James L. Keidel ◽  
Stuart Anderson ◽  
Angus Nisbet ◽  
Chris Bird
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Structural Mri ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Left Hippocampus ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Encoding And Retrieval

Despite their severely impaired episodic memory, individuals with amnesia are able to comprehend ongoing events. Online representations of a current event are thought to be supported by a network of regions centred on the posterior midline cortex (PMC). By contrast, episodic memory is widely believed to be supported by interactions between the hippocampus and these cortical regions. In this MRI study, we investigated the encoding and retrieval of lifelike events (video clips) in a patient with severe amnesia likely resulting from a stroke to the right thalamus, and a group of 20 age-matched controls. Structural MRI revealed grey matter reductions in left hippocampus and left thalamus in comparison to controls. We first characterised the regions activated in the controls while they watched and retrieved the videos. There were no differences in activation between the patient and controls in any of the regions. We then identified a widespread network of brain regions, including the hippocampus, that were functionally connected with the PMC in controls. However, in the patient there was a specific reduction in functional connectivity between the PMC and a region of left hippocampus when both watching and attempting to retrieve the videos. A follow up analysis revealed that in controls the functional connectivity between these regions when watching the videos was correlated with memory performance. Taken together, these findings support the view that the interactions between the PMC and the hippocampus enable the encoding and retrieval of multimodal representations of the contents of an event.

scholarly journals Impact of prenatal maternal cytokine exposure on sex differences in brain circuitry regulating stress in offspring 45 years later

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (15) ◽  
pp. e2014464118
Author(s):  
Jill M. Goldstein ◽  
Justine E. Cohen ◽  
Klara Mareckova ◽  
Laura Holsen ◽  
Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Proinflammatory Cytokines ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
In Utero ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Hippocampal Activity ◽  
Brain Circuitry ◽  
Anti Inflammatory ◽  
In Utero Development

Stress is associated with numerous chronic diseases, beginning in fetal development with in utero exposures (prenatal stress) impacting offspring’s risk for disorders later in life. In previous studies, we demonstrated adverse maternal in utero immune activity on sex differences in offspring neurodevelopment at age seven and adult risk for major depression and psychoses. Here, we hypothesized that in utero exposure to maternal proinflammatory cytokines has sex-dependent effects on specific brain circuitry regulating stress and immune function in the offspring that are retained across the lifespan. Using a unique prenatal cohort, we tested this hypothesis in 80 adult offspring, equally divided by sex, followed from in utero development to midlife. Functional MRI results showed that exposure to proinflammatory cytokines in utero was significantly associated with sex differences in brain activity and connectivity during response to negative stressful stimuli 45 y later. Lower maternal TNF-α levels were significantly associated with higher hypothalamic activity in both sexes and higher functional connectivity between hypothalamus and anterior cingulate only in men. Higher prenatal levels of IL-6 were significantly associated with higher hippocampal activity in women alone. When examined in relation to the anti-inflammatory effects of IL-10, the ratio TNF-α:IL-10 was associated with sex-dependent effects on hippocampal activity and functional connectivity with the hypothalamus. Collectively, results suggested that adverse levels of maternal in utero proinflammatory cytokines and the balance of pro- to anti-inflammatory cytokines impact brain development of offspring in a sexually dimorphic manner that persists across the lifespan.

scholarly journals Distributed context-dependent choice information in mouse dorsal-parietal cortex

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Orlandi ◽  
Mohammad Adbolrahmani ◽  
Ryo Aoki ◽  
Dmitry Lyamzin ◽  
Andrea Benucci
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Decision Variable ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Posterior Cortex ◽  
Neural Data ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
Low Dimensional ◽  
Independent Decision ◽  
The Brain

Abstract Choice information appears in the brain as distributed signals with top-down and bottom-up components that together support decision-making computations. In sensory and associative cortical regions, the presence of choice signals, their strength, and area specificity are known to be elusive and changeable, limiting a cohesive understanding of their computational significance. In this study, examining the mesoscale activity in mouse posterior cortex during a complex visual discrimination task, we found that broadly distributed choice signals defined a decision variable in a low-dimensional embedding space of multi-area activations, particularly along the ventral visual stream. The subspace they defined was near-orthogonal to concurrently represented sensory and motor-related activations, and it was modulated by task difficulty and contextually by the animals’ attention state. To mechanistically relate choice representations to decision-making computations, we trained recurrent neural networks with the animals’ choices and found an equivalent decision variable whose context-dependent dynamics agreed with that of the neural data. In conclusion, our results demonstrated an independent decision variable broadly represented in the posterior cortex, controlled by task features and cognitive demands. Its dynamics reflected decision computations, possibly linked to context-dependent feedback signals used for probabilistic-inference computations in variable animal-environment interactions.

scholarly journals Patterns of EEG Activity in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
M.A. Zhukova
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Semantic Integration ◽  
Adults With Autism ◽  
Eeg Activity ◽  
Spectrum Disorders ◽  
Cortical Regions

The article reviews most recent findings on neural activity in children and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Most of the studies demonstrate decreased connectivity in cortical regions, excitatory/inhibitory imbalance and atypical processing of language in people with ASD. It is argued that difficulties in semantic integration are connected to selective insensitivity to language, which is manifested in atypical N400 ERP component. In the article we analyze the data suggesting a strong relationship between ASD and epilepsy and argue that the comorbidity is more prevalent among individuals who have cognitive dysfunction. The EEG profile of people with ASD suggests U-shaped alterations with excess in high- and low-frequency EEG bands. We critically analyze the “broken mirror” hypothesis of ASD and demonstrate findings which challenge this theory.

Functional Connectivity Relationships Predict Similarities in Task Activation and Pattern Information during Associative Memory Encoding

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 1085-1099 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Ritchey ◽  
Andrew P. Yonelinas ◽  
Charan Ranganath
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Functional Properties ◽  
Associative Memory ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Neural Systems ◽  
General Level ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Memory Encoding ◽  
Cortical Regions

Neural systems may be characterized by measuring functional interactions in the healthy brain, but it is unclear whether components of systems defined in this way share functional properties. For instance, within the medial temporal lobes (MTL), different subregions show different patterns of cortical connectivity. It is unknown, however, whether these intrinsic connections predict similarities in how these regions respond during memory encoding. Here, we defined brain networks using resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) then quantified the functional similarity of regions within each network during an associative memory encoding task. Results showed that anterior MTL regions affiliated with a network of anterior temporal cortical regions, whereas posterior MTL regions affiliated with a network of posterior medial cortical regions. Importantly, these connectivity relationships also predicted similarities among regions during the associative memory task. Both in terms of task-evoked activation and trial-specific information carried in multivoxel patterns, regions within each network were more similar to one another than were regions in different networks. These findings suggest that functional heterogeneity among MTL subregions may be related to their participation in distinct large-scale cortical systems involved in memory. At a more general level, the results suggest that components of neural systems defined on the basis of RSFC share similar functional properties in terms of recruitment during cognitive tasks and information carried in voxel patterns.

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