Institute of Psychology,Chinese Academy Of Sciences
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Examination of Local Functional Homogeneity in Autism
No full textIncreasing neuroimaging evidence suggests that autism patients exhibit abnormal brain structure and function. We used the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) sample to analyze locally focal (similar to 8 mm) functional connectivity of 223 autism patients and 285 normal controls from 15 international sites using a recently developed surface-based approach. We observed enhanced local connectivity in the middle frontal cortex, left precuneus, and right superior temporal sulcus, and reduced local connectivity in the right insular cortex. The local connectivity in the right middle frontal gyrus was positively correlated with the total score of the autism diagnostic observation schedule whereas the local connectivity within the right superior temporal sulcus was positively correlated with total subscores of both the communication and the stereotyped behaviors and restricted interests of the schedule. Finally, significant interactions between age and clinical diagnosis were detected in the left precuneus. These findings replicated previous observations that used a volume-based approach and suggested possible neuropathological impairments of local information processing in the frontal, temporal, parietal, and insular cortices. Novel site-variability analysis demonstrated high reproducibility of our findings across the 15 international sites. The age-disease interaction provides a potential target region for future studies to further elucidate the neurodevelopmental mechanisms of autism
Town Mouse or Country Mouse: Identifying a Town Dislocation Effect in Chinese Urbanization
No full textUnderstanding urbanization and evaluating its impact are vital for formulating global sustainable development. The results obtained from evaluating the impact of urbanization, however, depend on the kind of measurement used. With the goal of increasing our understanding of the impact of urbanization, we developed direct and indirect subjective indicators to measure how people assess their living situation. The survey revealed that the projected endorsements and perceived social ambiance of people toward living in different types of settlements did not improve along with the urbanization level in China. The assessment scores from the city dwellers were not significantly different from those from the country areas and, more surprisingly, both were significantly higher than the assessment scores of the town dwellers, which we had expected to fall between the assessment scores of the country and city dwellers. Instead their scores were the lowest. We dubbed this V-shaped relationship the "town dislocation effect." When searching for a potential explanation for this effect, we found additional town dislocation effects in social support, loss aversion, and receptivity toward genetically modified food. Further analysis showed that only social support mediated the relationship between the three tiers of settlements (cities, country areas, and towns) and the subjective indicator. The projected endorsements yielded significant subjective assessments that could enhance our understanding of Chinese urbanization. Towns posed specific problems that require special attention
Input-based structure-specific proficiency predicts the neural mechanism of adult L2 syntactic processing
No full textThis study used Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to explore the role of input-based structure-specific proficiency in L2 syntactic processing, using English subject-verb agreement structures as the stimuli. A pre-test/trainings/post-test paradigm of experimental and control groups was employed, and Chinese speakers who learned English as a second language (L2) participated in the experiment. At pre-test, no ERP component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was observed in either group. At training session, the experimental group learned the subject-verb agreement structures, while the control group learned other syntactic structures. After two continuously intensive input trainings, at post-test, a significant P600 component related to the subject-verb agreement structures violations was elicited in the experimental group, but not in the control group. These findings suggest that input training improves structure-specific proficiency, which is reflected in the neural mechanism of L2 syntactic processing. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved
Course of neurological soft signs in first-episode schizophrenia: Relationship with negative symptoms and cognitive performances
No full textThis prospective study examined the course of neurological soft signs (NSS) in patients with first-episode schizophrenia and its relationship with negative symptoms and cognitive functions. One hundred and forty-five patients with first-episode schizophrenia were recruited, 29 were classified as having prominent negative symptoms. NSS and neuropsychological measures were administered to all patients and 62 healthy controls at baseline. Patients were then followed-up prospectively at six-month intervals for up to a year. Patients with prominent negative symptoms exhibited significantly more motor coordination signs and total NSS than patients without prominent negative symptoms. Patients with prominent negative symptoms performed worse than patients without negative symptoms in working memory functions but not other fronto-parietal or fronto-temporal functions. Linear growth model for binary data showed that the prominent negative symptoms were stable over time. Despite general improvement in NSS and neuropsychological functions, the prominent negative symptoms group still exhibited poorer motor coordination and higher levels of NSS, as well as poorer working memory than patients without prominent negative symptoms. Two distinct subtypes of first-episode patients could be distinguished by NSS and prominent negative symptoms
Temporal perception in visual processing as a research tool
No full textAccumulated evidence has shown that the subjective time in the sub-second range can be altered by different factors; some are related to stimulus features such as luminance contrast and spatial frequency, others are processes like perceptual grouping and contextual modulation. These findings indicate that temporal perception uses neural signals involved in non-temporal feature processes and that perceptual organization plays an important role in shaping the experience of elapsed time. We suggest that the temporal representation of objects can be treated as a feature of objects. This new concept implies that psychological time can serve as a tool to study the principles of neural codes in the perception of objects like "reaction time (RT)." Whereas "RT" usually reflects the state of transient signals crossing decision thresholds, "apparent time" in addition reveals the dynamics of sustained signals, thus providing complementary information of what has been obtained from "RT" studies
I-GSEA4GWAS v2: a web server for functional analysis of SNPs in trait-associated pathways identified from genome-wide association study
No full textCombined Cognitive-Psychological-Physical Intervention Induces Reorganization of Intrinsic Functional Brain Architecture in Older Adults
No full textMounting evidence suggests that enriched mental, physical, and socially stimulating activities are beneficial for counteracting age-related decreases in brain function and cognition in older adults. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to demonstrate the functional plasticity of brain activity in response to a combined cognitive-psychological-physical intervention and investigated the contribution of the intervention-related brain changes to individual performance in healthy older adults. The intervention was composed of a 6-week program of combined activities including cognitive training, Tai Chi exercise, and group counseling. The results showed improved cognitive performance and reorganized regional homogeneity of spontaneous fluctuations in the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals in the superior and middle temporal gyri, and the posterior lobe of the cerebellum, in the participants who attended the intervention. Intriguingly, the intervention-induced changes in the coherence of local spontaneous activity correlated with the improvements in individual cognitive performance. Taken together with our previous findings of enhanced resting-state functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe regions following a combined intervention program in older adults, we conclude that the functional plasticity of the aging brain is a rather complex process, and an effective cognitive-psychological-physical intervention is helpful for maintaining a healthy brain and comprehensive cognition during old age
Pain Now or Later: An Outgrowth Account of Pain-Minimization
No full textThe preference for immediate negative events contradicts the minimizing loss principle given that the value of a delayed negative event is discounted by the amount of time it is delayed. However, this preference is understandable if we assume that the value of a future outcome is not restricted to the discounted utility of the outcome per se but is complemented by an anticipated negative utility assigned to an unoffered dimension, which we termed the "outgrowth." We conducted three studies to establish the existence of the outgrowth and empirically investigated the mechanism underlying the preference for immediate negative outcomes. Study 1 used a content analysis method to examine whether the outgrowth was generated in accompaniment with the delayed negative events. The results revealed that the investigated outgrowth was composed of two elements. The first component is the anticipated negative emotions elicited by the delayed negative event, and the other is the anticipated rumination during the waiting process, in which one cannot stop thinking about the negative event. Study 2 used a follow-up investigation to examine whether people actually experienced the negative emotions they anticipated in a real situation of waiting for a delayed negative event. The results showed that the participants actually experienced a number of negative emotions when waiting for a negative event. Study 3 examined whether the existence of the outgrowth could make the minimizing loss principle work. The results showed that the difference in pain anticipation between the immediate event and the delayed event could significantly predict the timing preference of the negative event. Our findings suggest that people's preference for experiencing negative events sooner serves to minimize the overall negative utility, which is divided into two parts: the discounted utility of the outcome itself and an anticipated negative utility assigned to the outgrowth
The influence of dispositional mindfulness on safety behaviors: A dual process perspective (vol 70, pg 24, 2014)
No full textTemporal perception deficits in schizophrenia: integration is the problem, not deployment of attentions
No full textPatients with schizophrenia are known to have impairments in sensory processing. In order to understand the specific temporal perception deficits of schizophrenia, we investigated and determined to what extent impairments in temporal integration can be dissociated from attention deployment using Attentional Blink (AB). Our findings showed that there was no evident deficit in the deployment of attention in patients with schizophrenia. However, patients showed an increased temporal integration deficit within a hundred-millisecond timescale. The degree of such integration dysfunction was correlated with the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. There was no difference between individuals with/without schizotypal personality disorder in temporal integration. Differently from previous studies using the AB, we did not find a significant impairment in deployment of attention in schizophrenia. Instead, we used both theoretical and empirical approaches to show that previous findings (using the suppression ratio to correct for the baseline difference) produced a systematic exaggeration of the attention deficits. Instead, we modulated the perceptual difficulty of the task to bring the baseline levels of target detection between the groups into closer alignment. We found that the integration dysfunction rather than deployment of attention is clinically relevant, and thus should be an additional focus of research in schizophrenia
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