We hypothesized that facial attractiveness represents a dual judgment, a combination of reward-based, sexual processes, and aesthetic, cognitive processes. Herein we describe a study that demonstrates that sexual and nonsexual processes both contribute to attractiveness judgments and that these processes can be dissociated. Female participants…

To investigate attentional shifting in perihand space, we measured performance on a covert visual orienting task under different hand positions. Participants discriminated visual shapes presented on a screen and responded using footpedals placed under their right foot. With the right hand positioned by the right side of the screen, mean cueing…

Fragile X Syndrome is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by the silencing of a single gene on the X chromosome, the Fragile X Mental Retardation 1 ("FMR1") gene. In recent years, the premutation ("carrier") status has received considerable attention and there is now an emerging consensus that despite intellectual functioning being within…

Previous research has revealed that a stimulus presented in the blind visual field of participants with visual hemifield defects can evoke oculomotor competition, in the absence of awareness. Here we studied three cases to determine whether a distractor in a blind hemifield would be capable of inducing a "global effect", a shift of saccade…

This study examined predictions based upon the right hemisphere (RH) model, the valence-arousal model, and a recently proposed integrated model (Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2007) of emotion processing by testing immediate recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral verbal stimuli among 35 right-handed women. Building upon…

The present study investigated how auditory processing is modulated by expectations for time and pitch by analyzing reaction times and event-related potentials (ERPs). In two experiments, tone sequences were presented to the participants, who had to discriminate whether the last tone of the sequence contained a short gap or was continuous…

It has been proposed that spatial relations can be encoded in two different ways: categorically, where the relative position of objects can be described in prepositional terms (to the left/right, above/below, etc.) and coordinately, where a precise distance between the objects is assessed. Processing of categorical and coordinate spatial relations…

Background monitoring is a necessary prerequisite to detect unexpected changes in the environment, while being involved in a primary task. Here, we used fMRI to investigate the neural mechanisms that underlie adaptive goal-directed behavior in a cued task switching paradigm during real response conflict or, more generally, when expectations on the…

Changes in oscillatory brain activity have been related to perceptual and cognitive processes such as selective attention and memory matching. Here we examined brain oscillations, measured with electroencephalography (EEG), during a semantic speech processing task that required both lexically mediated memory matching and selective attention.…

Although P3 event-related potential abnormalities have been found in psychopathic individuals, it is unknown whether successful (uncaught) psychopaths and unsuccessful (caught) psychopaths show similar deficits. In this study, P3 amplitude and latency were assessed from a community sample of 121 male adults using an auditory three-stimulus oddball…

With an increasing population living at a high altitude (HA), the impact of HA residence on human cognitive function has raised concerns. We recruited two groups of college students with one group born and grew up at HA until early adulthood and the control group born and grew up at near sea level (SL); the two groups were matched at age, gender…

Background: Tourette syndrome (TS) is characterized by dysfunctional connectivity between prefrontal cortex and sub-cortical structures, and altered meso-cortical and/or meso-striatal dopamine release. Since time processing is also regulated by fronto-striatal circuits and modulated by dopaminergic transmission, we hypothesized that time…

Vulnerability to depression and non-response to Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are associated with specific neurophysiological characteristics including greater right hemisphere (RH) relative to left hemisphere (LH) activity. The present study investigated the relationship between hemispheric specialization and processing of…

Neurologically normal observers misperceive the midpoint of horizontal lines as systematically "leftward" of veridical center, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect. Pseudoneglect is attributed to a tonic asymmetry of visuospatial attention favoring left hemispace. Whereas visuospatial attention is biased toward left hemispace, some evidence…

Much evidence suggests that common posterior parietal mechanisms underlie the orientation of attention in physical space and along the "mental number line." For example, the small leftward bias ("pseudoneglect") found in paper-and-pencil line bisection is also found when participants "bisect" number pairs, estimating (without calculating) the…