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Buczkowicz, P.1, Krzywoszański, Ł.2, Klimkowicz-Mrowiec, A.3
1 Doctoral School in the Social Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2 Institute of Psychology, University of the National Education Commission, Krakow, Poland
3 College of Medicine, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Abstract:
Background
Candidate neuromarkers for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) have long been sought because the disorder is common but difficult to diagnose. The use of objective physiological measures, particularly EEG and oculography, may be a promising way to overcome these difficulties. This study aimed to preliminary explore the differences between children with ADHD and control group in bioelectric brain activity, eye movement, and performance of Flanker Task.
Methods
64-channel BioSemi EEG, EyeLink 1000+ eye-tracker and Flanker Task using child-friendly fish instead of arrows were used during the experiment. We analysed behavioral and electrophysiological data from 17 children (13 with ADHD, 4 without ADHD; 6 girls, 11 boys), aged 6-11 (m=8,7).
Results
The mean reaction time (rt) in the ADHD group (873 ms) was longer than in the control group (674 ms), but this difference was below the significance threshold. Children's answers were faster (rt) and more often correct (corr) in congruent trials (rt=740ms, corr=97%) than in incongruent trials (rt=801ms, p<0,005; corr=92%, p<0,001). There was a positive association between age and rt (p=0,014, t=-2,77).
Alpha frequency (8-12Hz) power in midline channels was significantly (p<0,05) higher in control group than in ADHD group. No other differences in resting state EEG were observed.
Conclusion
The preliminary results obtained are consistent with previous findings. Further studies should use larger sample sizes, which should allow statistically significant effects. Furthermore, the results suggest that the use of both EEG and oculography may provide new insights into neurocognitive function in ADHD.
Ingrida Zelionkaitė, Erik Ilkevič, Jolvita Briazkalaitė, Miglė Usonytė, Rimantė Gaižauskaitė, Ramunė Grikšienė
Department of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Vilnius University, Lithuania
Abstract: Women taking oral contraceptives (OC) may exhibit differences in how they perceive and process emotions compared to naturally cycling (NC) women. However, the relationship between the use of OC and emotional perception is complex and not fully understood. The eye-tracking study aimed to evaluate the association between women’s hormonal status and emotional perception.
Women using OC (n=28) or in the follicular phase of their menstrual cycle (n=36) freely looked at the erotic, negative, and neutral pictures while their eye movements and pupil diameter were recorded. Participants evaluated pleasantness and arousal after each picture. Saliva samples were taken to assess the 17β-estradiol, progesterone, and testosterone concentrations.
NC women tended to evaluate erotic pictures as more pleasant than the OC-users (p=.050), but there was no between-group difference in arousal evaluation. However, larger pupil diameter in NC women compared to OC-users (p=.039) in response to affective pictures, suggests differences in physiological arousal. NC women dwelled longer (erotica, p=.027) and had more fixations (neutral, p=.025) to human faces than OC-users. There were no group differences in gaze parameters when watching negative stimuli (all p>.05).
In conclusion, results revealed changes in emotional perception among OC-users, characterized by lower pupillary response and less attention towards faces.
Katarzyna Jurewicz1, Buxin Liao1,2, B. Suresh Krishna1
1Department of Physiology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
2Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China
Abstract: When searching for an object in a scene, are saccade targets selected independently at each fixation? The timing between saccades suggests this is not always the case: saccade latencies can sometimes be much shorter than the usual minimum of ~125 ms, indicating that such second saccades are based on visual information obtained prior to the first movement. Here, we examined information transfer in goal-directed visual search in naturalistic context. We used a large open dataset of eye-movements from participants (n = 10) performing category-search with 18 target categories (COCO-Search18) on over 4000 unique photographs of complex everyday scenes. When the target was present in the scene, short-latency second saccades occurred frequently (~45%) and foveated the search target more often than saccades executed after longer latencies. These were not small-amplitude “corrective” saccades: they were both more common and more likely to foveate the target when initiated further away from the target and in the opposite direction to the preceding saccade. There were fewer short-latency second saccades in target-absent scenes, highlighting the contribution from the top-down salience of the search-target. Together, these results reveal a “satisficing” strategy used in naturalistic searches and a prominent role of information transfer in naturalistic vision.
Funding: BSK - NSERC Discovery Research program (RGPIN-2022-05399, DGECR-2022-00321), Calcul Quebec/Digital Research Alliance of Canada grant; KJ - IVADO Postdoctoral Research Funding (PostDoc-2021a-8859659558_2), Bourse d’excellence UNIQUE.
Julia Papiernik1,2, Simon Hviid del Pin3, Michał Wierzchoń1,4, Renate Rutiku1
1Consciousness Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2Doctoral School in the Social Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
3Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Gjøvik, Norway
4Centre for Brain Research, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Abstract: Visual performance is best at the center of our gaze and worst in the periphery. It is also better along the horizontal than the vertical axis, and at the lower half of the vertical axis. These asymmetries have been well-established for various perception tasks and are linked to differences in brain structure and function. Albeit it remains unclear to what extent these asymmetries extend to cognitive performance, particularly visual working memory, and whether sensory cortices are involved in maintaining working memory content.
We replicated a previous study demonstrating visual field asymmetries in a working memory task in a large sample (N = 292). The results reiterate the horizontal vs vertical meridian asymmetry in the processing of stimuli. Notably, we observed unexpected results regarding the superior performance in the right compared to the left part of the visual field. Additionally, vertical asymmetries were found to be reversed compared to effects reported in prior research.
Quantitative Multi-Parameter Mapping was performed to shed light on how interindividual structural differences in the early visual cortex are linked to behavioral performance patterns. We observed notable outcomes in the gray matter density specific to the R2* maps - a contrast that reflects variations in accumulated iron levels. This aligns with prior research associating increased iron deposition in the brain with a decline in memory capabilities and the onset of neurodegenerative diseases. Taken together, this work helps to uncover the complex relationship between perception and working memory, and the involvement of sensory cortices in working memory tasks.
Funding: TThis work was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland (research project No. 2021/42/E/HS6/00425 awarded to Renate Rutiku and research project No. 2017/27/B/HS6/00937 for data collection awarded to Michał Wierzchoń) and by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST, Action CA18106).
