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Ilona Kotlewska, Bartłomiej Panek, Dariusz Asanowicz
Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Abstract:
The talk will investigate the neural basis of proactive adjustments of executive control, and their modulatory effects on online processing of response conflict. In two EEG experiments, participants performed the flanker task in which conflict trials were signaled by predictive (red) cue.
We observed improved behavioral performance in the predictive condition, suggesting that participants proactively used the cues to prepare for the upcoming demands. Conflict-related modulations of midfrontal EEG component N2, theta power, and theta phase synchrony were smaller in the predictive than in the neutral condition. This suggests that proactive control suppressed the impact of incongruent flankers in conflict trials, so that the conflict was reduced, and so was the online control involvement.
Conflict-cueing also increased midfrontal theta power and connectivity between occipital and midfrontal sites before target onset, suggesting pre-activation of the control processes beforehand. Unlike the online control, the proactive control triggered a burst of theta power in the right hemisphere's dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal cortices. In other words, two separate components of frontal theta power were observed during the proactive adjustments of control. This indicates that the two modes of control involve partially unique neural processes.
Funding: NCN grant nr 2016/22/E/HS6/00139
Łucja Doradzińska, Michał Bola
Laboratory of Brain Imaging, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract:
A growing body of evidence indicates that Perceptual Awareness Negativity (PAN) - a negative ERP component observed at posterior brain regions around 200 ms after the stimulus presentation - is a robust correlate of phenomenal awareness. However, in terms of spatio-temporal features PAN is very similar to the previously described ERP correlates of selective attention (e.g. SN and N2pc). Therefore, whether PAN is indeed a specific mechanism of perceptual consciousness or rather an index of attentional amplification remains to be addressed. To this end we designed two experiments in which stimulus awareness and various aspects of visual attention were manipulated orthogonally. Participants were presented with letters, which were either backward-masked or unmasked. Letters were presented on the attended or unattended side of the screen and were defined as targets or task-irrelevant distractors. Our analysis revealed that PAN’s amplitude was more negative in response to letters presented on the attended side of the screen (in comparison to letters on the unattended side) or defined as targets (in comparison to distractors). Therefore our study suggests that PAN is modulated by both spatial attention and task-relevance and thus should not be considered a “pure” and specific correlate of consciousness.
Funding: Grant project 2018/29/B/HS6/02152 National Science Centre Poland
Julia Papiernik, Marek Binder
Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
Abstract:
Diagnosis of the level of awareness in disorders of consciousness after severe brain injury is a challenging issue. In order to establish an EEG-based biomarker of awareness we have tested auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) in a group of 58 DOC patients (diagnosed as conscious and unconscious) and 20 healthy control participants. Condition of DOC patients were assessed with the use of Coma Recovery-Scale Revised (CRS-R) tool. To evoke ASSRs, we used chirp-modulated acoustic periodic stimulation in two variants: narrow-band chirps (NBC, 1000 Hz tones, modulated within the range of 25-55 Hz) and wide-band chirps (WBC, white noise bursts chirp-modulated within 30-100 Hz range). Both types of stimulation were decreasing in frequency during presentation. The inter-trial phase clustering parameter was used to evaluate the strength of the response. Responses to NBC stimulation allowed for discrimination between unconscious and conscious conditions of DOC. The responses to WBC were significantly weaker in the DOC patients group than in the control group, yet we did not found significant differences between unconscious and conscious DOC group. The results show the promising perspective of using gamma-band auditory responses as a potential biomarker of consciousness in the studied patient group.
Funding: OPUS16 project financed by the Polish National Science Centre under the award number 2018/31/B/HS6/03920
Klaudia Krystecka , Magdalena Stanczyk , Aneta Szymaszek , Anna Bombinska , Elzbieta Szelag
Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract:
As time is omnipresent in our life, the efficient Temporal Information Processing (TIP) is crucial not only for our every-day activity, but also for mental processes underlying human cognition, like language, perception, memory, motor control, etc. This study was aimed at testing relationships between individual differences in TIP and EEG activity of the brain.
Eighty-three healthy participants (Mage = 25 years) completed: (1) Temporal-Order Judgement task (TOJ) which measured the efficiency of TIP on the millisecond level, and (2) EEG resting state procedure. On the basis of these TOJ values achieved in TIP task, subjects were classified into two groups characterized by high (HTE) or low (LTE) temporal efficiency. The analyses of theta, alpha, beta and gamma power activity in HTE and LTE groups were performed using U Mann-Whitney rang test. We indicated that HTE showed significantly lower average range of frontal gamma than LTE (U = 374; p < 0.05).
These results showed that more efficient millisecond TIP was associated with less gamma power. It is consistent with the hypothesis that better cognitive performance may be linked to the lower cortical energy consumption. Our study suggests that temporal resolution is related to the dynamics of EEG activity in normal young adults.
Funding: Supported by National Science Centre, Poland, grant no. 2018/29/B/HS6/02038
Karolina Golec1, Agnieszka Pluta1, Jakub Wojciechowski2,3, Tomasz Wolak2, Maciej Haman1, Joanna Wysocka1
1Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, Poland
2 World Hearing Center, Institute of Physiology and Pathology of Hearing, Bioimaging Research Center, Kajetany, Poland
3Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland
Abstract: In the current study we aimed to inform the ongoing debate concerning the neurocognitive basis of the Theory of Mind (ToM) as a crucial but complex social-cognitive ability. by investigating the functional divisions within the dedicated ToM network.
To this end 61 healthy adults took part in a fMRI study in which we examined the responses of the key nodes of the ToM network taking into consideration the phase of others’ mental state processing. We explored the activity patterns during two ToM tasks engaging belief-reasoning. We expected to observe differential patterns of activity related to the phases of 1) formation of mental state representation and 2) reporting others’ beliefs.
We demonstrate a division of function between the right posterior temporo-parietal junction (RTPJp) and the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) during ToM task performance. The former seems crucial for representing the mental states whereas the latter is rather engaged in reporting them. Moreover the activity of mPFC seems not to be specific for ToM. This is further supported by the seed-to-ROI resting-state fMRI analysis. Our results add to the evidence that the “core” of the ToM network is functionally heterogeneous and probably hierarchically organized.
Funding: This work was supported by the Polish National Science Center under OPUS Grant [2017/25/B/HS6/01624] to Agnieszka Pluta.
