Environmental hypoxia, resulting from reduced oxygen supply, poses a significant risk of dysfunct... more Environmental hypoxia, resulting from reduced oxygen supply, poses a significant risk of dysfunctioning and damaging the neurocognitive system, particularly in relation to anxiety and stress. Inadequate oxygenation can lead to acute and chronic brain damage. Scholars used behavioral, hemodynamic, and electromagnetic neurofunctional techniques to investigate the effects of normobaric and hypobaric hypoxia on neurocognitive systems. They found a correlation between hypoxia, altered psychomotor responses, and changes in EEG alpha, theta, beta, and gamma rhythms, which affect spatial attention and memory. Hypoxia affects event related potential (ERP) components differently depending on latency. Perceptual responses N1 and P2 remain largely unaffected, while the amplitudes of preattentive MMN, vMMN, and P3a are significantly altered. Late latency components related to attention, particularly P3b, are also altered. These changes illustrate the spectrum from sensory detection to more complex cognitive processing, highlighting the brain's efficiency in managing information. Interestingly, the amplitudes of P3b, ADAN and CNV can increase with increased cognitive demands in hypoxia. This suggests a compensatory response. Prolonged exposure exacerbates these effects, resulting in compensatory delayed behavioral responses and alterations in behavioral monitoring and conflict inhibitory control, as reflected by reduced amplitudes in some attention related ERP components, including N2, N2pc, and ERN. Thus, neurocognitive function and integrity are under stress. ERP sources and hemodynamic images reveal that vulnerable brain regions include the frontal prefrontal cortices, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and parietal and visual cortices, which are essential for attention related processes like decision making and spatial memory. The auditory system appears less affected.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
We would like to thank all contributors for sharing their research and for making this meeting a ... more We would like to thank all contributors for sharing their research and for making this meeting a rich and stimulating event.
Publisher Summary The cognitive activity that accompanies functional activation of the brain is r... more Publisher Summary The cognitive activity that accompanies functional activation of the brain is reflected in a series of physiological transformations; these can be recorded by a variety of techniques of varying invasiveness, ranging from single-unit recordings to hemodynamic and electromagnetic techniques. This chapter discusses the principles underlying the nature of the electromagnetic signal, including a description of the intracortical sources of the potentials recorded from scalp surface, and the methods of analyzing and identifying the best known components of these signals based on their functional properties. Irrespective of the case, it is important that the head is roughly spherical and that the compartments form a series of concentric spherical layers. With the use of geometry, it is possible to calculate the distribution of potentials using a fast mathematical algorithm, even if some of the conduction is anisotropic. From a practical point of view, electrophysiologists and magnetophysiologists trying to localize neural processes find themselves working in a difficult situation in which the cerebral potentials and magnetic fields are known, because they have been recorded, but their intracerebral origins are still to be determined.
Motor resonance processes that occur when observing an individual perform an action may be modula... more Motor resonance processes that occur when observing an individual perform an action may be modulated by acquired visuomotor expertise. We used the event-related potential (EEG/ERP) technique to investigate the ability to automatically recognize a subtle difference between very similar novel contemporary dance movements. Twelve professional dancers and twelve non-dancers were shown 212 pairs of videos of complex whole-body movements that lasted 3 seconds. The second of each pair was the repetition of the previous movement or a slight variation of it (deviance). The participants were engaged in a secondary attentional task. Modulation of a larger centro-parietal N400 effect and a reduction of the Late Positivity amplitude (repetition suppression effect) were identified in response to deviant stimuli only in the dancers. Source reconstruction (swLORETA) showed activations in biological motion, body and face processing related areas, and fronto-parietal and limbic systems. The current findings provide evidence that acquired dance expertise modifies the ability to visually code whole-body complex movements.
The timing and neural processing of the understanding of social interactions was investigated by ... more The timing and neural processing of the understanding of social interactions was investigated by presenting scenes in which 2 people performed cooperative or affective actions. While the role of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in understanding actions and intentions is widely accepted, little is known about the time course within which these aspects of visual information are automatically extracted. Event-Related Potentials were recorded in 35 university students perceiving 260 pictures of cooperative (e.g., 2 people dragging a box) or affective (e.g., 2 people smiling and holding hands) interactions. The action's goal was automatically discriminated at about 150-170 ms, as reflected by occipito/temporal N170 response. The swLORETA inverse solution revealed the strongest sources in the right posterior cingulate cortex (CC) for affective actions and in the right pSTS for cooperative actions. It was found a right hemispheric asymmetry that involved the fusiform gyrus (BA37), the posterior CC, and the medial frontal gyrus (BA10/11) for the processing of affective interactions, particularly in the 155-175 ms time window. In a later time window (200-250 ms) the processing of cooperative interactions activated the left post-central gyrus (BA3), the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left superior frontal gyrus (BA10), as well as the right premotor cortex (BA6). Women showed a greater response discriminative of the action's goal compared to men at P300 and anterior negativity level (220-500 ms). These findings might be related to a greater responsiveness of the female vs. male MNS. In addition, the discriminative effect was bilateral in women and was smaller and left-sided in men. Evidence was provided that perceptually similar social interactions are discriminated on the basis of the agents' intentions quite early in neural processing, differentially activating regions devoted to face/body/action coding, the limbic system and the MNS.
Last descriptions about the Ukraine Crisis varied from escalating to de-escalating East vs. West ... more Last descriptions about the Ukraine Crisis varied from escalating to de-escalating East vs. West scenarios, often accompanied by protagonists of either side (NATO or Russia). We investigated 6 Perception 44(S1)
According to V.S. Ramachandran (inaugural 'Decade of the Brain' lecture at Society for Neuroscien... more According to V.S. Ramachandran (inaugural 'Decade of the Brain' lecture at Society for Neuroscience meeting), 'mirror neurons are to neuroscience what DNA was to biology'. Their discovery (by Rizzolatti's group) led to the understanding of how hominids rapidly evolved through imitation and cultural transmission in the last 100,000 years. In this chapter, we will review the role of human mirror neuron system (MNS) in several mental and brain functions including: interacting with the environment, grasping objects, empathy and compassion for others, empathizing, emulation and emotional contagion, observing and imitating, learning sports, motor skills and dance, motor rule understanding, understanding the intentions of others, understanding gestures and body language, lip reading, recognizing actions by their sounds, learning to play a musical instrument. The chapter is enriched with a discussion of possible criticalities and caveats.
N40 is a well‐known component of evoked potentials with respect to the auditory and somatosensory... more N40 is a well‐known component of evoked potentials with respect to the auditory and somatosensory modality but not much recognized with regard to the visual modality. To be detected with event‐related potentials (ERPs), it requires an optimal signal‐to‐noise ratio. To investigate the nature of visual N40, we recorded EEG/ERP signals from 20 participants. Each of them was presented with 1800 spatial frequency gratings of 0.75, 1.5, 3 and 6 c/deg. Data were collected from 128 sites while participants were engaged in both passive viewing and attention conditions. N40 (30–55 ms) was modulated by alertness and selective attention; in fact, it was larger to targets than irrelevant and passively viewed spatial frequency gratings. Its strongest intracranial sources were the bilateral thalamic nuclei of pulvinar, according to swLORETA. The active network included precuneus, insula and inferior parietal lobule. An N80 component (60–90 ms) was also identified, which was larger to targets than ...
Environmental hypoxia, resulting from reduced oxygen supply, poses a significant risk of dysfunct... more Environmental hypoxia, resulting from reduced oxygen supply, poses a significant risk of dysfunctioning and damaging the neurocognitive system, particularly in relation to anxiety and stress. Inadequate oxygenation can lead to acute and chronic brain damage. Scholars used behavioral, hemodynamic, and electromagnetic neurofunctional techniques to investigate the effects of normobaric and hypobaric hypoxia on neurocognitive systems. They found a correlation between hypoxia, altered psychomotor responses, and changes in EEG alpha, theta, beta, and gamma rhythms, which affect spatial attention and memory. Hypoxia affects event related potential (ERP) components differently depending on latency. Perceptual responses N1 and P2 remain largely unaffected, while the amplitudes of preattentive MMN, vMMN, and P3a are significantly altered. Late latency components related to attention, particularly P3b, are also altered. These changes illustrate the spectrum from sensory detection to more complex cognitive processing, highlighting the brain's efficiency in managing information. Interestingly, the amplitudes of P3b, ADAN and CNV can increase with increased cognitive demands in hypoxia. This suggests a compensatory response. Prolonged exposure exacerbates these effects, resulting in compensatory delayed behavioral responses and alterations in behavioral monitoring and conflict inhibitory control, as reflected by reduced amplitudes in some attention related ERP components, including N2, N2pc, and ERN. Thus, neurocognitive function and integrity are under stress. ERP sources and hemodynamic images reveal that vulnerable brain regions include the frontal prefrontal cortices, hippocampus, basal ganglia, and parietal and visual cortices, which are essential for attention related processes like decision making and spatial memory. The auditory system appears less affected.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during prepara... more Our study investigated the effects of hypoxia on visuospatial attention processing during preparation for a single/double-choice motor response. ERPs were recorded in two sessions in which participants breathed either ambient-air or oxygen-impoverished air. During each session, participants performed four cue-target attention orienting and/or alerting tasks. Replicating the classic findings of valid visuospatial attentional orienting modulation, ERPs to pre-target cues elicited both an Anterior directing attention negativity (ADAN)/CNV and a posterior Late directing attention positivity (LDAP)/ TP, which in ambient air were larger for attention orienting than for alerting. Hypoxia increased the amplitude of both these potentials in the spatial orienting conditions for the upper visual hemifield, while, for the lower hemifield, it increased ADAN/CNV, but decreased LDAP/TP for the same attention conditions. To these ERP changes corresponded compensatory enhanced activation of right anterior cingulate cortex, left superior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus, as well as detrimental effects of hypoxia on behavioral overt performance. Together, these findings reveal for the first time, to our knowledge, that (1) these reversed alterations of the activation patterns during the time between cue and target occur at a larger extent in hypoxia than in air, and (2) acute normobaric hypoxia alters visuospatial attention orienting shifting in space.
We would like to thank all contributors for sharing their research and for making this meeting a ... more We would like to thank all contributors for sharing their research and for making this meeting a rich and stimulating event.
Publisher Summary The cognitive activity that accompanies functional activation of the brain is r... more Publisher Summary The cognitive activity that accompanies functional activation of the brain is reflected in a series of physiological transformations; these can be recorded by a variety of techniques of varying invasiveness, ranging from single-unit recordings to hemodynamic and electromagnetic techniques. This chapter discusses the principles underlying the nature of the electromagnetic signal, including a description of the intracortical sources of the potentials recorded from scalp surface, and the methods of analyzing and identifying the best known components of these signals based on their functional properties. Irrespective of the case, it is important that the head is roughly spherical and that the compartments form a series of concentric spherical layers. With the use of geometry, it is possible to calculate the distribution of potentials using a fast mathematical algorithm, even if some of the conduction is anisotropic. From a practical point of view, electrophysiologists and magnetophysiologists trying to localize neural processes find themselves working in a difficult situation in which the cerebral potentials and magnetic fields are known, because they have been recorded, but their intracerebral origins are still to be determined.
Motor resonance processes that occur when observing an individual perform an action may be modula... more Motor resonance processes that occur when observing an individual perform an action may be modulated by acquired visuomotor expertise. We used the event-related potential (EEG/ERP) technique to investigate the ability to automatically recognize a subtle difference between very similar novel contemporary dance movements. Twelve professional dancers and twelve non-dancers were shown 212 pairs of videos of complex whole-body movements that lasted 3 seconds. The second of each pair was the repetition of the previous movement or a slight variation of it (deviance). The participants were engaged in a secondary attentional task. Modulation of a larger centro-parietal N400 effect and a reduction of the Late Positivity amplitude (repetition suppression effect) were identified in response to deviant stimuli only in the dancers. Source reconstruction (swLORETA) showed activations in biological motion, body and face processing related areas, and fronto-parietal and limbic systems. The current findings provide evidence that acquired dance expertise modifies the ability to visually code whole-body complex movements.
The timing and neural processing of the understanding of social interactions was investigated by ... more The timing and neural processing of the understanding of social interactions was investigated by presenting scenes in which 2 people performed cooperative or affective actions. While the role of the human mirror neuron system (MNS) in understanding actions and intentions is widely accepted, little is known about the time course within which these aspects of visual information are automatically extracted. Event-Related Potentials were recorded in 35 university students perceiving 260 pictures of cooperative (e.g., 2 people dragging a box) or affective (e.g., 2 people smiling and holding hands) interactions. The action's goal was automatically discriminated at about 150-170 ms, as reflected by occipito/temporal N170 response. The swLORETA inverse solution revealed the strongest sources in the right posterior cingulate cortex (CC) for affective actions and in the right pSTS for cooperative actions. It was found a right hemispheric asymmetry that involved the fusiform gyrus (BA37), the posterior CC, and the medial frontal gyrus (BA10/11) for the processing of affective interactions, particularly in the 155-175 ms time window. In a later time window (200-250 ms) the processing of cooperative interactions activated the left post-central gyrus (BA3), the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left superior frontal gyrus (BA10), as well as the right premotor cortex (BA6). Women showed a greater response discriminative of the action's goal compared to men at P300 and anterior negativity level (220-500 ms). These findings might be related to a greater responsiveness of the female vs. male MNS. In addition, the discriminative effect was bilateral in women and was smaller and left-sided in men. Evidence was provided that perceptually similar social interactions are discriminated on the basis of the agents' intentions quite early in neural processing, differentially activating regions devoted to face/body/action coding, the limbic system and the MNS.
Last descriptions about the Ukraine Crisis varied from escalating to de-escalating East vs. West ... more Last descriptions about the Ukraine Crisis varied from escalating to de-escalating East vs. West scenarios, often accompanied by protagonists of either side (NATO or Russia). We investigated 6 Perception 44(S1)
According to V.S. Ramachandran (inaugural 'Decade of the Brain' lecture at Society for Neuroscien... more According to V.S. Ramachandran (inaugural 'Decade of the Brain' lecture at Society for Neuroscience meeting), 'mirror neurons are to neuroscience what DNA was to biology'. Their discovery (by Rizzolatti's group) led to the understanding of how hominids rapidly evolved through imitation and cultural transmission in the last 100,000 years. In this chapter, we will review the role of human mirror neuron system (MNS) in several mental and brain functions including: interacting with the environment, grasping objects, empathy and compassion for others, empathizing, emulation and emotional contagion, observing and imitating, learning sports, motor skills and dance, motor rule understanding, understanding the intentions of others, understanding gestures and body language, lip reading, recognizing actions by their sounds, learning to play a musical instrument. The chapter is enriched with a discussion of possible criticalities and caveats.
N40 is a well‐known component of evoked potentials with respect to the auditory and somatosensory... more N40 is a well‐known component of evoked potentials with respect to the auditory and somatosensory modality but not much recognized with regard to the visual modality. To be detected with event‐related potentials (ERPs), it requires an optimal signal‐to‐noise ratio. To investigate the nature of visual N40, we recorded EEG/ERP signals from 20 participants. Each of them was presented with 1800 spatial frequency gratings of 0.75, 1.5, 3 and 6 c/deg. Data were collected from 128 sites while participants were engaged in both passive viewing and attention conditions. N40 (30–55 ms) was modulated by alertness and selective attention; in fact, it was larger to targets than irrelevant and passively viewed spatial frequency gratings. Its strongest intracranial sources were the bilateral thalamic nuclei of pulvinar, according to swLORETA. The active network included precuneus, insula and inferior parietal lobule. An N80 component (60–90 ms) was also identified, which was larger to targets than ...
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