Initially encoding attended but outdated information into working memory: behavioral and neural evidence

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This commentary discusses the insights and suggestions of a review by The authors have diagnosed a controversial accumulation of findings in the field of visual word identification and, hence, have provided an overview of the field with the aim to separate substantial effects from findings that need further confirmation. The authors aim to provide a broad basis for theory development. The authors summarize 17 robust experimental effects and suggest that "any theory should be able to explain" this set of experimental effects (cf. abstract). Thus, the listed effects are supposed to help to decide which among competing theories have more explanatory power and might thus be considered scientifically superior.

Lower parental education impairs cognitive abilities of their offspring such as general fluid intelligence dependent on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), but the independent contribution of mother's and father's education is unknown. We used an individual difference approach to test whether mother's and father's education independently affected general fluid intelligence in emerging adulthood at both the behavioral and neural level. Behaviorally, mother's but not father's education accounted for unique variance in general fluid intelligence in emerging adulthood (assessed by the Raven's advanced progressive matrices). Neurally, the whole-brain correlation analysis revealed that the regional gray matter volume (rGMV) in the medial PFC was related to both mother's education and general fluid intelligence but not father's education. Furthermore, after controlling for mother's education, the association between general fluid intelligence and the rGMV in medial PFC was no longer significant, indicating that mother's education plays an important role in influencing the structure of the medial PFC associated with general fluid intelligence. Taken together, our study provides the first behavioral and neural evidence that mother's education is a more important determinant of general cognitive ability in emerging adulthood than father's education.

The Bayesian Brain: An Evolutionary Approach to Cognition

The ubiquity of model-based reinforcement learning

An assessment of consciousness in nonverbal animals requires a framework for research that extends testing methods beyond subjective report. This chapter proposes a working definition of consciousness in terms of temporal representation that provides the critical link between internal phenomenology and external behavior and neural structure. Our claim is that consciousness represents the present moment as distinct from the past and the future in order to flexibly respond to stimuli. We discuss behavioral and neural evidence that indicates the capacity for both flexible response and temporal representation, and we illustrate these capacities in fish, a taxonomic group that challenges human intuitions about consciousness.

The manipulation of the proposer’s description in the ultimatum game (UG) using mentalistic labels might influence the final decision along with the sensitivity toward fairness. The present study aimed to investigate neural changes related to the mentalistic description of the proposer in the UG task. For this purpose, 21 healthy adults played the UG task for real during a functional MRI session. According with previous evidence, we considered the responder’s behavior to unfair offers in an UG paradigm, in which proposers were described as generous, selfish and neutral. Our results showed that the mentalistic labels significantly influence the acceptance rate; however, no significant differences emerged with respect to the response time. At the neural level, we observed activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in the theory of mind network. The mentalistic labels did not result in changes of the neural network activated in the unfair condition during the UG task, except for the level of activation within the cingulate cortex. Particularly, the most incoherent situation where a generous proposer made an unfair offer was associated with a greater activation of the posterior cingulate cortex, an area involved in maintaining a state of vigilance and attention. These results support the idea that the posterior cingulate cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex are coinvolved when dealing with incoherent situations due to different mentalistic features of the proposer in the UG task.

This chapter explains a model of autobiographical memory based on the dimensions of self-reference, the construction of scenes needed to create memories of events, explicit versus implicit memory, emotional intensity, uncertainty, and other processes of memory. The model is an extension of the basic systems model and event memory, which when combined resolve many inconsistencies in the current literature, integrate the behavioral and neural level of analysis more efficiently, and identify new research questions. In doing so, it places autobiographical memory into a well-specified organization with other types of memory and psychological topics and thus into a broader context not attempted in earlier models of autobiographical memory. These topics include episodic memory, memory for fiction and film, other people’s memories, personality, habits, phobias, and déjà vu. The behavioral and neural evidence used to define, support, and evaluate the model locates autobiographical memory in a knowledge-rich, more easily applied memory organization.

Ownership and agency modulate self-positivity effect: Behavioral and neural evidence.

In some circles in psycholinguistics, there is the view that words are the least interesting aspect of language processing. In others, there is the view that monolingual speakers will tell us all that we need to know about language in the mind and the brain. In the past two decades there has been an upsurge of research on bilingualism and much of it has examined the lexicon. The new research on lexical processing in bilinguals has revealed persistent activation of words in both languages even when comprehending or producing one language alone. The consequences of this discovery have been profound for understanding the architecture of the lexicon and the dynamics of lexical access more generally. Cross-language activation changes both languages and engages domain general cognitive mechanisms that extend beyond language. There is a level of interaction between the bilingual‘s two languages that shapes a dynamic system to enable comprehension and production in each language and that is reflected in both behavior and in the brain. Most critically, research on the bilingual lexicon has become a model for the examination of cross-language interactions at every level of language processing, including the grammar and phonology. It also exposes the dynamics of the lexicon in a way that would not be known if we examined monolingual performance alone. In this chapter we review the most exciting new behavioral and neural evidence on the bilingual lexicon and consider the implications for learning new words, adapting existing ones, and for acquiring cognitive control more generally.

Athletes extract kinematic information to anticipate action outcomes. Here, we examined the influence of linguistic information (experiment 1, 2) and its underlying neural correlates (experiment 2) on anticipatory judgment. Table tennis experts and novices remembered a hand- or leg-related verb or a spatial location while predicting the trajectory of a ball in a video occluded at the moment of the serve. Experiment 1 showed that predictions by experts were more accurate than novices, but experts' accuracy significantly decreased when hand-related words versus spatial locations were memorized. For nonoccluded videos with ball trajectories congruent or incongruent with server actions in experiment 2, remembering hand-related verbs shared cognitive resources with action anticipation only in experts, with heightened processing load (increased P3 amplitude) and more efficient conflict monitoring (decreased N2 amplitude) versus leg-related verbs. Thus, action anticipation required updating of motor representations facilitated by motor expertize but was also affected by effector-specific semantic representations of actions, suggesting a link from language to motor systems.

Previous research has shown that exposure to violent video games increases aggression, whereas exposure to prosocial video games can reduce aggressive behavior. However, little is known about the neural correlates of these behavioral effects. This work is the first to investigate the electrophysiological features of the relationship between playing a prosocial video game and inhibition of aggressive behavior. Forty-nine subjects played either a prosocial or a neutral video game for 20 min, then participated in an event-related potential (ERP) experiment based on an oddball paradigm and designed to test electrophysiological responses to prosocial and violent words. Finally, subjects completed a competitive reaction time task (CRTT) which based on Taylor's Aggression Paradigm and contains reaction time and noise intensity chosen as a measure of aggressive behavior. The results show that the prosocial video game group (compared to the neutral video game group) displayed smaller P300 amplitudes, were more accurate in distinguishing violent words, and were less aggressive as evaluated by the CRTT of noise intensity chosen. A mediation analysis shows that the P300 amplitude evoked by violent words partially mediates the relationship between type of video game and subsequent aggressive behavior. The results support theories based on the General Learning Model. We provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that exposure to prosocial media may reduce aggression.

Film cognition explores the influence of cinematic elements, such as editing and film color, on viewers' perception. The Kuleshov effect, a famous example of how editing influences viewers' emotional perception, was initially proposed to support montage theory through the Kuleshov experiment. This effect, which has since been recognized as a manifestation of point-of-view (POV) editing practices, posits that the emotional interpretation of neutral facial expressions is influenced by the accompanying emotional scene in a face-scene-face sequence. However, concerns persist regarding the validity of previous studies, often employing inauthentic film materials like static images, leaving the question of its existence in authentic films unanswered. This study addresses these concerns by utilizing authentic films in two experiments. In Experiment 1, multiple film clips were captured under the guidance of a professional film director and seamlessly integrated into authentic film sequences. 59 participants viewed these face-scene-face film sequences and were tasked with rating the valence and emotional intensity of neutral faces. The findings revealed that the accompanying fearful or happy scenes significantly influence the interpretation of emotion on neutral faces, eliciting perceptions of negative or positive emotions from the neutral face. These results affirm the existence of the Kuleshov effect within authentic films. In Experiment 2, 31 participants rated the valence and arousal of neutral faces while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The behavioral results confirm the Kuleshov effect in the MRI scanner, while the neural data identify neural correlates that support its existence at the neural level. These correlates include the cuneus, precuneus, hippocampus, parahippocampal gyrus, post cingulate gyrus, orbitofrontal cortex, fusiform gyrus, and insula. These findings also underscore the contextual framing inherent in the Kuleshov effect. Overall, the study integrates film theory and cognitive neuroscience experiments, providing robust evidence supporting the existence of the Kuleshov effect through both subjective ratings and objective neuroimaging measurements. This research also contributes to a deeper understanding of the impact of film editing on viewers' emotional perception from the contemporary POV editing practices and neurocinematic perspective, advancing the knowledge of film cognition.

The authors investigated the strategic component (i.e., elaboration and organization of episodic features) and the associative component (i.e., binding processes) of episodic memory and their interactions in 4 age groups (10-12, 13-15, 20-25, and 70-75 years of age). On the basis of behavioral and neural evidence, the authors hypothesized that the two components are functionally related but follow different life-span gradients. In a fully crossed design, age differences in recognition memory for single words versus word pairs (associative demand manipulation) were examined under instructions that emphasized item, pair, or elaborative-pair encoding (strategy manipulation). As predicted, the results showed that the strategic and associative components follow different life-span trajectories. Relative to younger adults, children's difficulties in episodic memory primarily reflected lower levels of strategic functioning. In contrast, older adults showed impairments in both strategic and associative components. The authors conclude that the comparison of strategic and associative components of episodic memory across the life span helps to delineate the two components' unique and interactive contributions to episodic memory performance.

<h3>Abstract</h3> Working memory (WM) is assumed to consist of a process that sustains memory representations in an active state (<i>maintenance</i>) and a process that operates on these activated representations (<i>manipulation</i>). Prior fMRI studies have examined maintenance and manipulation in separate task conditions, whereas in real life these processes operate simultaneously. In the current study, the neural mechanisms of maintenance and manipulation were disentangled during the same task by parametrically varying these processes. During fMRI, participants maintained consonant letters in WM while sorting them in alphabetical order. Maintenance was investigated by varying the number of letters held in WM and manipulation by varying the number of moves required to sort the list alphabetically. The study yielded three main findings. First, the degree of both maintenance and manipulation demand had significant effects on behavior that were associated with different cortical regions: maintenance was associated with bilateral prefrontal and left parietal cortex, and manipulation with right parietal activity, a link that is consistent with the role of parietal cortex in symbolic computations. Second, univariate fMRI and tractography based on diffusion-weighted imaging showed that maintenance and manipulation regions are supported by two dissociable structural networks. Finally, maintenance and manipulation functional networks became increasingly segregated with increasing demand, possibly reflecting the protection of information held in WM from interference generated by manipulation operations. These results represent a novel approach to study the brain as an adaptive system that coordinates multiple ongoing cognitive processes. <h3>Significance Statement</h3> Despite the importance of working memory (WM) in everyday life, little is known about how the brain is able to simultaneously maintain and manipulate information stored in short-term memory buffers. We examined evidence for two distinct, concurrent cognitive functions supporting maintenance and manipulation abilities by testing brain activity as participants performed a WM alphabetization task. We found behavioral and neural evidence in support of dissociable cognitive functions associated with these two operations. Furthermore, we found that connectivity between these networks was increasingly segregated as difficulty increased, and that this effect was positively related to individual WM ability. These results provide evidence that network segregation may act as a protective mechanism to enable successful performance under increasing WM demand.