Event-related potentials of 4–7-week-old infants in a visual recognition memory task

Recognition memory was studied In the normal subjects and patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) using continuous auditory and visual recognition memory tasks and event-related potentials (ERPs). In both auditory and visual tasks, the accuracy of old/new responses for words or faces was decreased in normal elderly subjects and decreases even in patients with PD compared to the normal young subjects. In the auditory task, ERP repetition effects were found in the normal young subjects at lags 0,1 and 6, while no repetition effects were evident for lag 6 repetition in the normal elderly subjects and patients with PD. There was a significant difference in ERP amplitudes for new words between normal elderly subjects and patients with PD. In the visual task, both normal groups showed the ERP repetition effect for lag 0 repetition, while the effect in the PD group was not noted even for the lag 0 repetition. The PD patients showed a more positive ERP amplitude than control subjects. Our data suggest that recognition memory for both auditory and visual stimuli declines in normal advancing age and declines even more in patients with PD. In addition, recognition memory deficits in PD may result, at least partly from the impairment of context integration process.

It is uncertain if different brain areas in response to pre-semantic picture processing are functionally homogeneous. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we aimed to explore the neural activities in different brain regions in relation to processing of sentence memory and picture identification. Healthy subjects were chosen to discriminate visual stimulus pairs, and the ERPs were recorded from the scalp. Two kinds of stimuli were provided for each subject in the present study. One was Chinese sentence reading, referred as task 1. Another one was watching a line-drawing picture to judge if the picture matched the meaning of the sentence before. When the line-drawing picture received by the subject was inconsistent with the meaning of the sentence before, it was called as task 2, otherwise, if incongruous, it was called as task 3. Our findings implicate that stimuli of sentence memory and picture identification may exert neural activities on different working memory areas in the brain of human.

Keywords: PFAS, mixtures, neurodevelopment Background: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are man-made chemicals that are of health concern given their persistence in the environment and human body, and transmission to offspring during pregnancy. Studies examining the relationship between PFAS and neurodevelopment are inconclusive and largely have been conducted in older children. In the present study, we examined whether prenatal exposure to a mixture of PFAS was related to cognitive function in infancy. Methods: Pregnant participants were enrolled in the Chemicals in Our Bodies cohort and Illinois Kids Development Study, which together make up the ECHO.CA.IL cohort. Seven PFAS were previously measured in 2nd trimester maternal serum samples and were natural log transformed for analyses. Infant cognition was assessed at 7.5 months using a visual recognition memory task that tracks infant looking behavior using an infrared eye tracker. From the eye-tracking data, we calculated two measures of attention (based on infants shifting their looking between two stimuli, and the time it took them to reach cumulative looking criterion), information processing speed (based on how long infants looked at the stimuli before looking away) during the familiarization trial, and recognition memory (based on infants’ looking at novel compared to the familiar stimulus) in the test trial. Bayesian kernel machine regressions (BKMR) were used to assess joint associations between multiple PFAS and individual cognitive outcomes (N=160). Results: Unexpectedly, prenatal exposure to the PFAS mixture was modestly associated with better attention, as indicated by faster shifts between stimuli, with PFNA, PFOS, PFHxS, and PFUdA contributing the most to the overall mixture effect. Increasing exposure to the PFAS mixture was weakly associated better information processing speed and attention although credible intervals include the null value. Conclusions: Using a visual recognition memory task, we observed little evidence that prenatal PFAS exposure is associated with cognitive function.

This manuscript covers my personal history on the search for the neural circuits supporting early developing memory in primates. A series of developmental neuropsychological studies is presented to follow the successive knowledge we gained over several decades on the timing of development of the hippocampus and hippocampal-dependent recognition memory functions in primates. The borrowing of an incidental recognition memory task measuring novelty preference to infer subjects' memory was central to assessing memory in young infant monkeys of only a few weeks old. Data revealed that the emergence of adult-like proficiency in visual recognition and spatial memory tasks sensitive to hippocampal dysfunction is a stepwise process. This progressive development was associated with the gradual maturation of different hippocampal intrinsic circuits (Entorhinal-CA1 and Entorhinal-Dentate Gyrus-CA fields) and their connections with other cortical structures (the perirhinal, parahippocampal, parietal, and prefrontal cortices). We also showed that a similar postnatal maturation of hippocampal-dependent memory is observed in human infants, suggesting important changes in the role of the hippocampus and medial temporal cortical areas in human memory development as well.

The objective of comparing visual behavior (number and duration of visual fixations) and decision-making (DM) in the analysis of attack scenes in volleyball, between coaches and young players. 59 subjects will participate – 34 coaches (M = 16.7, SD = 9.4) with experience as players and volleyball coaches (M = 16.78, SD = 11.09), and 25 players (M = 16.9, SD = 1) with experience as volleyball players (M = 3.72 , SD = 1.17). For the analysis of DM quality, the attack scenes of the Tactical Declarative Knowledge Test in Volleyball (TDKT:Vb) were used. For the analysis of visual behavior, the Eye Tracking SMI RED500® was used during the analysis of the scenes. The results show significant differences in duration of fixations being greater for the coaches group. It concludes that there is a similar pattern of visual behavior in the comparison between groups only differentiated by the duration of the visual fixations.

Event-related potentials in auditory backward recognition masking: a new way to study the neurophysiological basis of sensory memory in humans.

The P300 event-related brain potential (ERP) was examined in 14 young (20 - 29 years of age) and 16 elderly (60 - 82 years of age) adult subjects during the performance of auditory and visual discrimination tasks requiring silent counting or key pressing in response to target stimuli. P300 latencies were longer in elderly (vs young) adults and in visual (vs auditory) tasks, and visual tasks elicited larger P300 amplitudes than auditory tasks in both age groups. Neither stimulus modality nor response mode affected P300 differentiation of young and elderly subjects. Steeper P300 anterior-posterior scalp amplitude gradients were seen in the young (vs elderly) adults, regardless of stimulus or response type. Examination of inter-subject variability with the coefficient of variation (CV) statistic found the lowest (i.e., best) CV values to be exhibited in the visual task requiring the counting of target stimuli. Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to P300 applications in the clinical assessment of dementia and aging-associated cognitive alterations.

Visual discrimination and short-term recognition memory for computer-generated random patterns were explored in 23 patients with a postsurgical lesion in one of the cortical hemispheres. Their results are compared with those of 23 age-matched volunteers. In a same-different forced-choice discrimination task, d' and log beta (measures of sensitivity and bias), as well as reaction time (RT) were determined. All participants viewed patterns defined either by luminance contrast or isoluminant red-green color contrast, the amplitude of which was adjusted to be 10 times the respective detection threshold level. Block patterns consisting of a 6 x 6 matrix of light and dark (red and green) checks were randomly configured on each presentation. They were presented in pairs, randomly in two visual quadrants for a duration of 200 msec. Three presentation conditions were used: simultaneous presentation of reference and test stimulus, sequential presentation with a short delay (interstimulus interval, ISI = 3 s), and sequential presentation with a long delay (ISI = 6 s). The results indicate that patients with a lesion in the occipitotemporal cortex, the superior temporal cortex and the frontal cortex were significantly impaired on both luminance-contrast and color-contrast pattern discrimination. Patients with damage in the anterior inferotemporal cortex showed no overall impairment. The results suggest that performance in visual discrimination and recognition memory tasks rely on distributed neural processes with more than one neocortical location.

Effects of aging on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in a visual detection task

Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) and Cognitive Processing

This paper gives a brief explanation of event related brain potentials (ERPs) within an electroencephalogram (EEG) and discusses a method for their clear detection. An ERP is evoked as an inner psychological response to an outward physical stimulus. Basically, one is able to know when another person has a greater interest in one of various targets by detecting the ERP. The ERP appears from about 100 to 600 ms after the stimulating impulse. Unfortunately, the ERP is so weak as to be buried under the EEG. To detect the ERP, EEG records are transformed into a Haar-wavelet series, and accumulated over every stimulus. If one can characterize visual stimuli by any feature and arrange them in a semantic order, one is able to understand what a companion thinks. This means that one can have some conversation with a serious amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patient via a series of questions and answers.

Alterations in task-induced activity and resting-state fluctuations in visual and DMN areas revealed in long-term meditators

Time effects on event-related brain potentials and vigilance performance

On the specificities of the inverted-optimal viewing position effect and their implications on models of eye movement control during reading

Using ERPs to dissociate recollection from familiarity in picture recognition