Gender Specific Processing of Eye Contact within the Human Medial Temporal Lobe

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-147
Author(s):  
Thomas Grunwald ◽  
Manila Vannucci ◽  
Nico Pezer ◽  
Martin Kurthen ◽  
Johannes Schramm ◽  
...  

Eye contact is a powerful social stimulus for human and non-human primates. However, it is unclear whether brain mechanisms that interpret eye contact are sensitive to gender. Here we show that human brain responses to eye contact are indeed gender specific. Recording event-related potentials directly from the medial temporal lobes, we found that eye contact elicited specific responses in men only when they saw female faces. Conversely, women responded specifically to eye contact only when they saw pictures of men. Thus, the human medial temporal lobes subserve specifically the processing of eye contact with persons of the opposite gender.

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (5) ◽  
pp. 1017-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Metzner ◽  
Titus von der Malsburg ◽  
Shravan Vasishth ◽  
Frank Rösler

Recent research has shown that brain potentials time-locked to fixations in natural reading can be similar to brain potentials recorded during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). We attempted two replications of Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, and Petersson [Hagoort, P., Hald, L., Bastiaansen, M., & Petersson, K. M. Integration of word meaning and world knowledge in language comprehension. Science, 304, 438–441, 2004] to determine whether this correspondence also holds for oscillatory brain responses. Hagoort et al. reported an N400 effect and synchronization in the theta and gamma range following world knowledge violations. Our first experiment (n = 32) used RSVP and replicated both the N400 effect in the ERPs and the power increase in the theta range in the time–frequency domain. In the second experiment (n = 49), participants read the same materials freely while their eye movements and their EEG were monitored. First fixation durations, gaze durations, and regression rates were increased, and the ERP showed an N400 effect. An analysis of time–frequency representations showed synchronization in the delta range (1–3 Hz) and desynchronization in the upper alpha range (11–13 Hz) but no theta or gamma effects. The results suggest that oscillatory EEG changes elicited by world knowledge violations are different in natural reading and RSVP. This may reflect differences in how representations are constructed and retrieved from memory in the two presentation modes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tzu-Yu Hsu ◽  
Tzu-Ling Liu ◽  
Paul Z. Cheng ◽  
Hsin-Chien Lee ◽  
Timothy J. Lane ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundRumination, a tendency to focus on negative self-related thoughts, is a central symptom of depression. Studying the self-related aspect of such symptoms is challenging due to the need to distinguish self effects per se from the emotional content of task stimuli. This study employs an emotionally neutral self-related paradigm to investigate possible altered self processing in depression and its link to rumination.MethodsPeople with unipolar depression (MDD; n = 25) and controls (n = 25) underwent task-based EEG recording. Late event-related potentials were studied along with low frequency oscillatory power. EEG metrics were compared between groups and correlated with depressive symptoms and reported rumination.ResultsThe MDD group displayed a difference in late potentials across fronto-central electrodes between self-related and non-self-related conditions. No such difference was seen in controls. The magnitude of this difference was positively related with depressive symptoms and reported rumination. MDD also had elevated theta oscillation power at central electrodes in self-related conditions, which was not seen in controls.ConclusionsRumination appears linked to altered self-related processing in depression, independently of stimuli-related emotional confounds. This connection between self-related processing and depression may point to self-disorder being a core component of the condition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-09
Author(s):  
Jan Rouke Kuipers ◽  
William A. Phillips

Pupillometry has been found to be correlated with activity of cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulator systems. These systems regulate the level of cortical arousal and therefore perception, attention, and memory. Here, we tested how different types of pupil size variance (prestimulus baseline and prestimulus hippus power) may correlate with behavioral and electrophysiological brain responses (ERPs). We recorded pupil size and ERPs while participants were presented with a series of words and then asked whether they had been in the initial list when they were later presented intermixed with unpresented words. We found that a smaller prestimulus baseline pupil size during the study phase was associated with better memory performance. Study items also evoked a larger P3 response at presentation and a greater old/new memory ERP effect at test when prestimulus pupil size was small rather than large. Prestimulus hippus power was found to be a between-subjects factor affecting the robustness of memory encoding with less power being associated with a greater old/new memory ERP effect. These results provide evidence relating memory and ERPs to variables defined on pupil size that are thought to reflect varying states of parasympathetic and sympathetic arousal.


2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Atienza ◽  
Jose L. Cantero ◽  
Robert Stickgold

Perceptual learning can develop over extended periods, with slow, at times sleep-dependent, improvement seen several days after training. As a result, performance can become more automatic, that is, less dependent on voluntary attention. This study investigates whether the brain correlates of this enhancement of automaticity are sleep-dependent. Event-related potentials produced in response to complex auditory stimuli were recorded while subjects' attention was focused elsewhere. We report here that following training on an auditory discrimination task, performance continued to improve, without significant further training, for 72 hr. At the same time, several event-related potential components became evident 48–72 hr after training. Posttraining sleep deprivation prevented neither the continued performance improvement nor the slow development of cortical dynamics related to an enhanced familiarity with the task. However, those brain responses associated with the automatic shift of attention to unexpected stimuli failed to develop. Thus, in this auditory learning paradigm, posttraining sleep appears to reduce the voluntary attentional effort required for successful perceptual discrimination by facilitating the intrusion of a potentially meaningful stimulus into one's focus of attention for further evaluation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Ewa Wilczek-Rużyczka ◽  
Andrzej Mirski ◽  
Maciej Korab ◽  
Mariusz Trystuła

The search for neuromarkers is a very promising way to improve psychiatric and psychological care. They are now considered to be an innovative diagnostic tool in psychiatry and neuropsychology, but more broadly in all human health sciences. The aim of our study was to find the neuromarker of anxiety in a patient who had experienced a Transient IschemicAttack (TIA) of the left brain hemisphere as a result of a critical stenosis of the Internal Carotid Artery (ICA) operated on byendarterectomy (CEA). We will present the case of a 54-year-old man,an architect, who experienced a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) of the left brain hemispherecaused by a critical stenosis of theInternal Carotid Artery (ICA) and was treated successfully with surgical endarterectomy (CEA). One year after the surgery itself, the patient developed severe postoperative anxiety, headaches, difficulty in sleepingas well as the inability to continue working in his profession. Strong anxiety was notedon the adapted 100-millimeter Visual Analogue Anxiety Scale (VAAS). The patient was assessed using the Human Brain Index (HBI) methodology (Kropotov 2009; 2016; 2017; Pąchalska, Kaczmarek&Kropotov 2014) which consisted of recording 19-channel EEG in resting state conditions, during the cued GO/NOGO task and comparing the parameters of EEG spectra and Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) with the normative and patient databases of the Human Brain Index(HBI). No signs of cognitive dysfunction was found, however an excessive Rolandic beta was observed. In line with the working hypothesis as to the presence of an anxiety neuromarker, the patient’s studies confirmed an increased P1 time wave in the left hemisphere of the brain in ERP in response to visual stimuli, i.e. an anxiety neuromarker. Following the detection of this neuromarkera specific anodic Transcranial Direct Current Stimulations (tDCS) protocol was proposed (see: Kropotov 2016; Pąchalska, Kaczmarek & Kropotov 2020). Ten tDCS sessions were performed and the postoperativeanxiety was found to be resolved. The patient returned to work. The use of Human Brain Index (HBI) methodologyenabling the isolation of the Event Related Potentials (ERPs) patterns revealed the presence of a distinct anxietyneuromarker. Neurotherapy with the use of tDCS allowed the reduction of anxiety symptoms and the patient’s return to work. The above case study indicates the necessity to use new neurotechnologies in the diagnosis of mental diseases, with particular emphasis on postoperative anxiety.


Author(s):  
Adil Deniz Duru ◽  
Ali Bayram ◽  
Tamer Demiralp ◽  
Ahmet Ademoglu

Event-related potentials (ERP) are transient brain responses to cognitive stimuli, and they consist of several stationary events whose temporal frequency content can be characterized in terms of oscillations or rhythms. Precise localization of electrical events in the brain, based on the ERP data recorded from the scalp, has been one of the main challenges of functional brain imaging. Several currentDensity estimation techniques for identifying the electrical sources generating the brain potentials are developed for the so-called neuroelectromagnetic inverse problem in the last three decades (Baillet, Mosher, & Leahy, 2001; Koles, 1998; Michela, Murraya, Lantza, Gonzaleza, Spinellib, & Grave de Peraltaa, 2004; Scherg & von Cramon, 1986).


1989 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Risto Näätänen ◽  
Petri Paavilainen ◽  
Kimmo Alho ◽  
Kalevi Reinikainen ◽  
Mikko Sams

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Sardari ◽  
Ali Mohammad Pourrahimi ◽  
Hossein Talebi ◽  
Shahrzad Mazhari

Abstract Research has found auditory spatial processing deficits in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ), but no study has examined SCZ patients’ auditory spatial processing at both pre-attentional and attentional stages. To address this gap, we investigated schizophrenics’ brain responses to sounds originating from different locations (right, left, and bilateral sources). The event-related potentials (ERPs) of 25 chronic schizophrenic patients and 25 healthy subjects were compared. Mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to frequency and duration deviants was assessed. Two P3 components (P3a and P3b) were elicited via a frequency discrimination task, and MMN and P3 were recorded through separate monaural and dichotic stimulation paradigms. Our results corroborated the previously published finding that MMN, P3a, and P3b amplitudes are reduced in SCZ patients, but they showed no significant effect of stimulus location on either MMN or P3. These results indicated similarity between the SCZ patients and healthy individuals as regards patterns of ERP responses to stimuli that come from different directions. No evidence of auditory hemispatial bias in the SCZ patients was found, supporting the existence of non-lateralized spatial processing deficits in such patients and suggesting compensatory changes in the hemispheric laterality of patients’ brains.


2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (4) ◽  
pp. 1902-1911 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. M. Daselaar ◽  
M. S. Fleck ◽  
R. Cabeza

Memory for past events may be based on retrieval accompanied by specific contextual details (recollection) or on the feeling that an item is old (familiarity) or new (novelty) in the absence of contextual details. There are indications that recollection, familiarity, and novelty involve different medial temporal lobe subregions, but available evidence is scarce and inconclusive. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), we isolated retrieval-related activity associated with recollection, familiarity, and novelty by distinguishing between linear and nonlinear oldness functions derived from recognition confidence levels. Within the medial temporal lobes (MTLs), we found a triple dissociation among the posterior half of the hippocampus, which was associated with recollection, the posterior parahippocampal gyrus, which was associated with familiarity, and anterior half of the hippocampus and rhinal regions, which were associated with novelty. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses based on individual trial activity showed that all three memory signals, i.e., recollection, familiarity, and novelty, make significant and independent contributions to recognition memory performance. Finally, functional dissociations among recollection, familiarity, and novelty were also found in posterior midline, left parietal cortex, and prefrontal cortex regions. This is the first study to reveal a triple dissociation within the MTL associated with distinct retrieval processes. This finding has direct implications for current memory models.


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