No title, no theme: The joined neural space between speakers and listeners during production and comprehension of multi-sentence discourse

AbstractSpeakers and listeners usually interact in larger discourses than single words or even single sentences. The goal of the present study was to identify the neural bases reflecting how the mental representation of the situation denoted in a multi-sentence discourse (situation model) is constructed and shared between speakers and listeners. An fMRI study using a variant of the ambiguous text paradigm was designed. Speakers produced ambiguous texts in the scanner and listeners subsequently listened to these texts in different states of ambiguity: preceded by a highly informative, intermediately informative or no title at all. Conventional BOLD activation analyses in listeners, as well as inter-subject correlation analyses between the speakers’ and the listeners’ hemodynamic time courses were performed. Critically, only the processing of disambiguated, coherent discourse with an intelligible situation model representation involved (shared) activation in bilateral lateral parietal and medial prefrontal regions. This shared spatiotemporal pattern of brain activation between the speaker and the listener suggests that the process of memory retrieval in medial prefrontal regions and the binding of retrieved information in the lateral parietal cortex constitutes a core mechanism underlying the communication of complex conceptual representations.

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Sparse Representation-Based Denoising for High-Resolution Brain Activation and Functional Connectivity Modeling: A Task fMRI Study

IEEE Access ◽

10.1109/access.2020.2971261 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 8 ◽

pp. 36728-36740 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Seongah Jeong ◽

Xiang Li ◽

Jiarui Yang ◽

Quanzheng Li ◽

Vahid Tarokh

Keyword(s):

High Resolution ◽

Functional Connectivity ◽

Sparse Representation ◽

Brain Activation ◽

Fmri Study ◽

Connectivity Modeling

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The long-term associations between parental behaviors, cognitive function and brain activation in adolescence

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-90474-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Orwa Dandash ◽

Nicolas Cherbuin ◽

Orli Schwartz ◽

Nicholas B. Allen ◽

Sarah Whittle

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Performance ◽

Early Adolescence ◽

Maternal Behavior ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Brain Activation ◽

Late Adolescence ◽

Parenting Behavior ◽

Vital Role ◽

Childhood And Adolescence ◽

Fmri Study

AbstractParenting behavior has a vital role in the development of the brain and cognitive abilities of offspring throughout childhood and adolescence. While positive and aggressive parenting behavior have been suggested to impact neurobiology in the form of abnormal brain activation in adolescents, little work has investigated the links between parenting behavior and the neurobiological correlates of cognitive performance during this age period. In the current longitudinal fMRI study, associations between parenting behaviors and cognitive performance and brain activation across mid- and late-adolescence were assessed. Observed measures of maternal aggressive and positive behavior were recorded in early adolescence (12 years) and correlated with fMRI activation and in-scanner behavioral scores on the multi-source interference task (MSIT) during mid- (16 years; 95 participants) and late-adolescence (19 years; 75 participants). There was a significant reduction in inhibitory-control-related brain activation in posterior parietal and cingulate cortices as participants transitioned from mid- to late-adolescence. Positive maternal behavior in early-adolescence was associated with lower activation in the left parietal and DLPFC during the MSIT in mid-adolescence, whereas maternal aggressive behavior was associated with longer reaction time to incongruent trials in late-adolescence. The study supports the notion that maternal behavior may influence subsequent neurocognitive development during adolescence.

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Brain Activation during Thoughts of One’s Own Death and Its Linear and Curvilinear Correlations with Fear of Death in Elderly Individuals: An fMRI Study

Cerebral Cortex Communications ◽

10.1093/texcom/tgab003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kanan Hirano ◽

Kentaro Oba ◽

Toshiki Saito ◽

Shohei Yamazaki ◽

Ryuta Kawashima ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Brain Activation ◽

Posterior Cingulate Cortex ◽

Fear Of Death ◽

Supramarginal Gyrus ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Fmri Study ◽

Negative Linear Correlation ◽

The Right ◽

Older Populations ◽

Existential Issues

Abstract Facing one’s own death and managing the fear of death are important existential issues, particularly in older populations. Although recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have investigated brain responses to death-related stimuli, none has examined whether this brain activation was specific to one’s own death or how it was related to dispositional fear of death. In this study, during fMRI, 34 elderly participants (aged, 60–72 years) were presented with either death-related or death-unrelated negative words and asked to evaluate the relevance of these words to the “self” or the “other.” The results showed that only the left supplementary motor area (SMA) was selectively activated during self-relevant judgments of death-related words. Regression analyses of the effect of fear of death on brain activation during death-related thoughts identified a significant negative linear correlation in the right supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and an inverted-U-shaped correlation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) only during self-relevant judgments. Our results suggest potential involvement of the SMA in the existential aspect of thoughts of death. The distinct fear-of-death-dependent responses in the SMG and PCC may reflect fear-associated distancing of the physical self and the processing of death-related thoughts as a self-relevant future agenda, respectively.

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