scholarly journals Looking for effects of qualia on event-related brain potentials of close others in search for a cause of the similarity of qualia assumed across individuals

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
Hugo Pantecouteau ◽  
J. Bruno Debruille
Keyword(s):  
Time Window ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Frontal Electrode ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Brain

Qualia, the individual instances of subjective conscious experience, are private events. However, in everyday life, we assume qualia of others and their perceptual worlds, to be similar to ours. One way this similarity is possible is if qualia of others somehow contribute to the production of qualia by our own brain and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, we focused on the mean voltages of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the time-window of the P600 component, whose amplitude correlates positively with conscious awareness. These ERPs were elicited by images of the international affective picture system in 16 pairs of friends, siblings or couples going side by side through hyperscanning without having to interact. Each of the 32 members of these 16 pairs faced one half of the screen and could not see what the other member was presented with on the other half. One stimulus occurred on each half simultaneously. The sameness of these stimulus pairs was manipulated as well as the participants’ belief in that sameness by telling subjects’ pairs that they were going to be presented with the same stimuli in two blocks and with different ones in the two others. ERPs were more positive at all electrode subsets for stimulus pairs that were inconsistent with the belief than for those that were consistent. In the N400 time window, at frontal electrode sites, ERPs were again more positive for inconsistent than for consistent stimuli. As participants had no way to see the stimulus their partner was presented with and thus no way to detect inconsistence, these data might reveal an impact of the qualia of a person on the brain activity of another. Such impact could provide a research avenue when trying to explain the similarity of qualia across individuals.

scholarly journals Finding indexes of spontaneous brain-to-brain communications when looking for a cause of the similarity of qualia assumed across individuals

F1000Research ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
Hugo Pantecouteau ◽  
J. Bruno Debruille
Keyword(s):  
Time Window ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Frontal Electrode ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Mean ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Research Avenue

Qualia, the individual instances of subjective conscious experience, are private events. However, in everyday life, we assume qualia of others and their perceptual worlds, to be similar to ours. One way this similarity is possible is if qualia of others somehow contribute to the production of qualia by our own brain and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, we focused on the mean voltages of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the time-window of the P600 component, whose amplitude correlates positively with conscious awareness. These ERPs were elicited by stimuli of the international affective picture system in 16 pairs of friends, siblings or couples going side by side through hyperscanning without having to interact. Each of the 32 members of these 16 pairs faced one half of the screen and could not see what the other member was presented with on the other half. One stimulus occurred on each half simultaneously. The sameness of these stimulus pairs was manipulated as well as the participants’ belief in that sameness by telling subjects’ pairs that they were going to be presented with the same stimuli in two blocks and with different ones in the two others. In the P600 time window, belief, and thus social cognition, was found to have an effect on ERPs only at left anterior electrode sites. In contrast, ERPs were more positive at all electrode subsets for stimulus pairs that were   inconsistent with the belief than for those that were consistent. In the N400 time window, at frontal electrode sites, ERPs were again more positive for inconsistent than for consistent stimuli. As participants had no way to see the stimulus their partner was presented with, and thus no way to detect inconsistence, we proposed that these data could support the existence of spontaneous brain-to-brain communications. Such communications might provide a research avenue when trying to explain the similarity of qualia across individuals, which is assumed in virtually all instants of every day life.

scholarly journals Qualia as social effects of minds

F1000Research ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 316
Author(s):  
Sheila Bouten ◽  
J. Bruno Debruille
Keyword(s):  
Time Window ◽  
Conscious Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Effects ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Private Events ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Assumed Similarity ◽  
The Individual

Qualia, the individual instances of subjective conscious experience, are private events. However, in everyday life, we assume qualia of others and their perceptual worlds, to be similar to ours. One way this similarity is possible is if qualia of others somehow contribute to the production of qualia by our own brain and vice versa. To test this hypothesis, we focused on the mean voltages of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in the time-window of the P600 component, whose amplitude correlates positively with conscious awareness. These ERPs were elicited by stimuli of the international affective picture system in 16 pairs of friends, siblings or couples going side by side through hyperscanning without having to interact. Each member of each pair faced one half of the screen and could not see what the other member was presented with on the other half. One stimulus occurred on each half simultaneously. The sameness of these two stimuli was manipulated as well as the participants’ belief in that sameness. ERPs were more negative over left frontal sites and P600 amplitudes were minimal at midline sites when the two stimuli were, and were believed to be, different, suggesting that this belief could filter others’ qualia. ERPs were less negative over left frontal sites and midline P600s were a bit larger when the two stimuli were, and were believed to be, the same, suggesting some mutual enrichment of the content of awareness in conditions of real and assumed similarity. When stimuli were believed to be the same but actually differed, P600s were greater over a large number of sites, suggesting greater enrichment in conditions of qualia difference and assumed similarity. P600s were also larger over many sites, when stimuli were believed to differ but were identical, suggesting that qualia similar to ours could pass the “believed-different filter”.

Syntactically Based Sentence Processing Classes: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials

1991 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Neville ◽  
Janet L. Nicol ◽  
Andrew Barss ◽  
Kenneth I. Forster ◽  
Merrill F. Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Negative Potential ◽  
Developmental Studies ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

Theoretical considerations and diverse empirical data from clinical, psycholinguistic, and developmental studies suggest that language comprehension processes are decomposable into separate subsystems, including distinct systems for semantic and grammatical processing. Here we report that event-related potentials (ERPs) to syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous sentences produced a pattern of brain activity that is distinct in timing and distribution from the patterns elicited by syntactically deviant sentences, and further, that different types of syntactic deviance produced distinct ERP patterns. Forty right-handed young adults read sentences presented at 2 words/sec while ERPs were recorded from over several positions between and within the hemispheres. Half of the sentences were semantically and grammatically acceptable and were controls for the remainder, which contained sentence medial words that violated (1) semantic expectations, (2) phrase structure rules, or (3) WH-movement constraints on Specificity and (4) Subjacency. As in prior research, the semantic anomalies produced a negative potential, N400, that was bilaterally distributed and was largest over posterior regions. The phrase structure violations enhanced the N125 response over anterior regions of the left hemisphere, and elicited a negative response (300-500 msec) over temporal and parietal regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Specificity constraints produced a slow negative potential, evident by 125 msec, that was also largest over anterior regions of the left hemisphere. Violations of Subjacency constraints elicited a broadly and symmetrically distributed positivity that onset around 200 msec. The distinct timing and distribution of these effects provide biological support for theories that distinguish between these types of grammatical rules and constraints and more generally for the proposal that semantic and grammatical processes are distinct subsystems within the language faculty.

Source Localization of Subtopographic Brain Maps for Event Related Potentials (ERP)

2008 ◽  
pp. 1247-1252
Author(s):  
Adil Deniz Duru ◽  
Ali Bayram ◽  
Tamer Demiralp ◽  
Ahmet Ademoglu
Keyword(s):  
Source Localization ◽  
Temporal Frequency ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Functional Brain Imaging ◽  
Frequency Content ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Functional Brain ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Brain

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).

scholarly journals Accuracy in Archery Shooting is linked to the Amplitude of the ERP N1 to the Snap of Clicker

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-44
Author(s):  
Hayri Ertan ◽  
◽  
Suha Yagcioglu ◽  
Alpaslan Yılmaz ◽  
Pekcan Ungan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Confidence Intervals ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Operational Definition ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Long Latency ◽  
Eeg Data ◽  
Continuous Eeg ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Brain

An archer requires a well-balanced and highly reproducible release of the bowstring to attain high scores in competition. Recurve archers use a mechanical device called the “clicker” to check the draw length. The fall of the clicker that generates an auditory stimulus should evoke a response in the brain. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the event-related potentials during archery shooting as a response to the fall of the clicker. Fifteen high-level archers participated. An electro cap was placed on the archers’ scalps, and continuous EEG activity was recorded (digitized at 1000 Hz) and stored for off-line analysis. The EEG data were epoched beginning 200 ms before and lasting 800 ms after stimulus marker signals. An operational definition has been developed for classifying hits corresponding to hit and/or miss areas. The hit area enlarged gradually starting from the centre of the target (yellow: 10) to blue (6 score) by creating ten hit area indexes. It is found that the snap of the clicker during archery shooting evokes N1–P2 components of long-latency evoked brain potentials. N1 amplitudes are significantly higher in hit area than that of miss areas for the 2nd and 4th indexes with 95% confidence intervals and 90% confidence intervals for the 1st and 3rd indexes with 90% confidence intervals. We conclude that the fall of the clicker in archery shooting elicits an N1 response with higher amplitude. Although evoked potential amplitudes were higher in successful shots, their latencies were not significantly different from the unsuccessful ones.

The Similarity of Brain Activity Associated with True and False Recognition Memory Depends On Test Format

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia K. Johnson ◽  
Scott F. Nolde ◽  
Mara Mather ◽  
John Kounios ◽  
Daniel L. Schacter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Source Monitoring ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Emission Tomography ◽  
Test Format ◽  
Test Items ◽  
Positron Emission ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
False Recognitions ◽  
The Brain

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures) When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et al, 1996) When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e.g., PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed

scholarly journals Sequential conflict resolution under multiple concurrent conflicts: An ERP study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alodie Rey-Mermet ◽  
Miriam Gade ◽  
Marco Steinhauser
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Congruency Effect ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Response Alternatives ◽  
Resolution Processes ◽  
The Brain

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether responding to multiple concurrent conflicts results in a simultaneous or sequential conflict resolution. To this end, we measured event-related potentials (ERPs) in a paradigm combining a Stroop and a flanker task. In this paradigm, participants were asked to respond to the color of the central letter while ignoring the meaning of the word (Stroop task) and the color of the flanking letters (flanker task). Trials were either incongruent (i.e., inducing a conflict between two response alternatives) or congruent (i.e., inducing no response conflict) in both tasks, or incongruent in one task and congruent in the other task. The behavioral results showed a smaller Stroop congruency effect (i.e., a smaller difference between Stroop incongruent and congruent trials) for flanker incongruent than for flanker congruent trials, replicating previous findings. The ERP results showed that an early ERP component (i.e., P2) was associated with the resolution of the flanker conflict, whereas a later component (i.e., N450) was associated with the resolution of the Stroop conflict. Together, these findings emphasize a sequential organization of conflict resolution processes in the brain which is adaptive when facing multiple concurrent conflicts.

scholarly journals Electroencephalography (EEG) Reveals Increased Frontal Activity in Social Presence

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 731
Author(s):  
Anna Soiné ◽  
Alessandra Natascha Flöck ◽  
Peter Walla
Keyword(s):  
Social Presence ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Significant Other ◽  
Skin Conductance Responses ◽  
Frontal Electrode ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Frontal Activity

It remains an unsolved conundrum how social presence affects the neural processes involved in adaptive situation-specific decision-making mechanisms. To investigate this question, brain potential changes via electroencephalography (EEG) and skin conductance responses (SCR) were taken within this study, while participants were exposed to pre-rated pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures, which they had to rate in terms of their perceived arousal. Crucially, they had to—in respective runs—do this alone and in the presence of a significant other. Contrasting respective event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed significantly more negative going potentials peaking at 708 ms post stimulus onset at mid-frontal electrode locations (around FPz and AFz), when participants were exposed to neutral pictures while in the presence of a significant other. SCR results demonstrate higher states of arousal in the presence of a significant other regardless of picture emotion category. Self-reported arousal turned out to be highest in response to neutral pictures within the significant other condition, whereas in the alone condition in response to the pleasant pictures. In light of existing literature on social aspects and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the ERP finding in the significant other condition, while rating emotionally neutral pictures, is interpreted as reflecting heightened ACC activation, which is supported by electrode locations showing significant brain activity differences as well as by source localization results. Neutral pictures are inherently ambiguous, and the current results indicate the presence of another person to change the way one processes, perceives, and acts on them. This is in support for theories proposing the ACC to be part of a larger signal-specification network that gauges relevant stimuli for adequate execution of control.

scholarly journals Brain activity in an awake chimpanzee in response to the sound of her own name

2009 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Ueno ◽  
Satoshi Hirata ◽  
Kohki Fuwa ◽  
Keiko Sugama ◽  
Kiyo Kusunoki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Auditory Stimuli ◽  
Negative Shift ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Own Name ◽  
Group Member ◽  
The Brain

The brain activity of a fully awake chimpanzee being presented with her name was investigated. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for each of the following auditory stimuli: the vocal sound of the subject's own name (SON), the vocal sound of a familiar name of another group member, the vocal sound of an unfamiliar name and a non-vocal sound. Some differences in ERP waveforms were detected between kinds of stimuli at latencies at which P3 and Nc components are typically observed in humans. Following stimulus onset, an Nc-like negative shift at approximately 500 ms latency was observed, particularly in response to SON. Such specific ERP patterns suggest that the chimpanzee processes her name differently from other sounds.

Brain Imaging Technologies: How, What, When and Why?

1999 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evian Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Brain Imaging ◽  
Single Photon ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Photon Emission ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Emission Computed Tomography ◽  
Imaging Technologies ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
The Brain

Objective: Innovations in physics and computing technology over the past two decades have provided a powerful means of exploring the overall structure and function of the brain using a range of computerised brain imaging technologies (BITs). These technologies offer the means to elucidate the patterns of pathophysiology underlying mental illness. The aim of this paper is to explore the current status and some of the future directions in the application of BITs to psychiatry. Method: Brain imaging technologies provide unambiguous measures of brain structure (computerised tomography and magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]) and also index complementary measures of when (electroencephalography, event related potentials, magnetoencephalography) and where (functional MRI, single photon emission computed tomography, positron emission tomography) aspects of brain activity occur. Results: The structural technologies are primarily used to exclude a biological cause in cases of a suspected psychiatric disorder. The functional technologies show considerable potential to delineate subgroups of patients (that may have different treatment outcomes), and evaluate objectively the effects of treatment on the brain as a system. What is seldom emphasised in the literature are the numerous inconsistencies, the lack of specificity of findings and the simplistic interpretation of much of the data. Conclusion: Brain imaging technologies show considerable utility, but we are barely scratching the surface of this potential. Simplistic over-interpretation of results can be minimised by: replication of BIT findings, judicious combination of complementary methodologies, use of appropriate activation tasks, analysis with respect to large normative databases, control for performance, examining the data ‘beyond averaging’, delineating clinical subtypes, exploring the severity of symptoms, specificity of findings and effects of treatment in the same patients. The technological innovation of BITs still far outstrips the sophistication of their use; it is essential that the meaning and mechanisms underlying BITmeasures are always evaluated with respect to prevailing models of brain function across disciplines.

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