196,030 research outputs found
Analysis scripts for: The Experience of Cognitive Conflict is Intrinsically Rewarding
No full textAnalysis scripts for the preprint "The experience of cognitive conflict is intrinsically rewarding", by La Pietra, M., Vives, M. L., Molinaro, N., Ruzzoli, M. (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b83mn_v3.
This research is supported through the SweetC project (PID2020-114717RA-I00 /AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 to Ruzzoli, M.) funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICIIN) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program and the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010-S
Data for the manuscript "The Experience of Cognitive Conflict is Intrinsically Rewarding"
No full textData related to the preprint "The experience of cognitive conflict is intrinsically rewarding", by La Pietra, M., Vives, M. L., Molinaro, N., Ruzzoli, M. (2025), DOI: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b83mn_v3.
This research is supported through the SweetC project (PID2020-114717RA-I00 /AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033 to Ruzzoli, M.) funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICIIN) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022-2025 program and the Spanish State Research Agency through BCBL Severo Ochoa excellence accreditation CEX2020-001010-S
Is transcranial alternating current stimulation effective in modulating brain oscillations?
No full textTranscranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) is a promising tool for modulating brain oscillations, as well as a possible therapeutic intervention. However, the lack of conclusive evidence on whether tACS is able to effectively affect cortical activity continues to limit its application. The present study aims to address this issue by exploiting the well-known inhibitory alpha rhythm in the posterior parietal cortex during visual perception and attention orientation. Four groups of healthy volunteers were tested with a Gabor patch detection and discrimination task. All participants were tested at the baseline and selective frequencies of tACS, including Sham, 6 Hz, 10 Hz, and 25 Hz. Stimulation at 6 Hz and 10 Hz over the occipito-parietal area impaired performance in the detection task compared to the baseline. The lack of a retinotopically organised effect and marginal frequency-specificity modulation in the detection task force us to be cautious about the effectiveness of tACS in modulating brain oscillations. Therefore, the present study does not provide significant evidence for tACS reliably inducing direct modulations of brain oscillations that can influence performance in a visual tas
Modelling non-invasive brain stimulation in cognitive neuroscience
No full textNon-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is a method for the study of cognitive function that is quickly
gaining popularity. It bypasses the correlative approaches of other imaging techniques, making it possible
to establish a causal relationship between cognitive processes and the functioning of specific brain areas.
Like lesion studies, NIBS can provide information about where a particular process occurs. However, NIBS
offers the opportunity to study brain mechanisms beyond process localisation, providing information
about when activity in a given brain region is involved in a cognitive process, and even how it is involved.
When using NIBS to explore cognitive processes, it is important to understand not only how NIBS functions
but also the functioning of the neural structures themselves. We know that NIBS techniques have the
potential to transiently influence behaviour by altering neuronal activity, which may have facilitatory
or inhibitory behavioural effects, and these alterations can be used to understand how the brain works.
Given that NIBS necessarily involves the relatively indiscriminate activation of large numbers of neurons,
its impact on a neural system can be easily understood as modulation of neural activity that changes the
relation between noise and signal. In this review, we describe the mutual interactions between NIBS and
brain activity and provide an updated and precise perspective on the theoretical frameworks of NIBS and
their impact on cognitive neuroscience. By transitioning our discussion from one aspect (NIBS) to the
other (cognition), we aim to provide insights to guide future research
The neural mechanisms of the effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation on perception.
No full textTranscranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technique used to study perceptual, motor, and cognitive functions in the human brain. Its effects have been likened to a "virtual brain lesion," but a direct test of this assumption is lacking. To verify this hypothesis, we measured psychophysically the interaction between the neural activity induced by a visual motion-direction discrimination task and that induced by TMS. The visual stimulus featured two elements: a visual signal (dots that moved coherently in one direction) and visual noise (dots that moved randomly in many directions). Three hypotheses were tested to explain the impairment in performance as a result of TMS: 1) a decrease in signal strength; 2) an induction of randomly distributed neural noise with an accompanying decrement in system sensitivity; and 3) a suppression of relevant information processing and addition of neural noise. We provide evidence in favor of the second hypothesis by showing that TMS basically acts by adding neural noise to the perceptual process
Electrophysiological correlates of contrast perception
No full textContrast information, a primary aspect of visual perception, has been usually bound to
psychophysical investigation in humans. In the current work we recorded the
electroencephalographic activity in healthy participants during a detection and discrimination task
where a gabor was presented under six contrast levels. We analyzed how the variation of the
contrast modulates the behavioural (i.e, accuracy and reaction times) and physiological responses,
such as event related potentials (P100, N2pc) and evoked oscillatory activity. Results showed that
both behavioural and electrophysiological indeces increased with a non-linear trend in relation to
the contrast modulation, which increased exponentially through the conditions. While changes in
the early visual P100 amplitude were more affected by exogenous stimulation, the late N2pc
component varied consistently with the performance, appearing to be predictive of the behaviour.
Moreover, the frequency analysis revealed a power increase of specific frequency bands such as
theta (4-7Hz) and alpha (8–14Hz) in relation to the contrast variation. No modulation of the high
frequencies was observed. On the whole, this study indicates that activity recorded over human
visual cortex is related more to the subjects’ percept than to the physically presented stimul
Effects of Right Parietal Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Object Identification and Orientation Judgments.
No full textWe investigated the role played by the right parietal lobe in object identification and the ability to interpret object orientation, using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to momentarily interfere with ongoing cortical activity. Short trains of TMS pulses (12 Hz) were applied to a site overlying the right intraparietal sulcus/inferior parietal lobe while subjects performed either object identification tasks (i.e., picture-word verification and categorizing objects as natural or manufactured) or object orientation judgment tasks (i.e., picture-arrow verification and deciding whether an object was rotated clockwise or counterclockwise). Across different tasks, right parietal TMS impaired orientation judgments, but facilitated object identification, compared to TMS applied to a brain vertex control site. These complementary findings demonstrate that the right parietal lobe--a region belonging to the dorsal visual stream--is critical for processing the spatial attributes of objects, but not their identity. The observed improvement in object recognition, however, suggests an indirect role for the right parietal lobe in object recognition. We propose that this involves the creation of a spatial reference frame for the object, which allows interaction with the object and the individuation of specific viewing instances
The induction of alpha frequencies across visual areas impairs detection but not discrimination
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