Learning movement sequences is thought to develop from an initial controlled attentive phase to a more automatic inattentive phase. Furthermore, execution of sequences becomes faster with practice, which may result from changes at a general motor processing level rather than at an effector specific motor processing level. In the current study, we…

What accounts for the Right Hemisphere (RH) functional superiority in visual change detection? An original task which combines one-shot and divided visual field paradigms allowed us to direct change information initially to the RH or the Left Hemisphere (LH) by deleting, respectively, an object included in the left or right half of a scene…

Anxiety is characterized by exaggerated attention to threat. Several studies suggest that this threat bias plays a causal role in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders. Furthermore, although the threat bias can be reduced in anxious individuals and induced in non-anxious individual, the attentional mechanisms underlying these…

Why does the brain contain more than one memory system? Genetic algorithms can play a role in elucidating this question. Here, model animals were constructed containing a dorsal striatal layer that controlled actions, and a ventral striatal layer that controlled a dopaminergic learning signal. Both layers could gain access to three modeled memory…

Switching from one functional or cognitive operation to another is thought to rely on executive/control processes. The efficacy of these processes may depend on the extent of overlap between neural circuitry mediating the different tasks; more effective task preparation (and by extension smaller switch costs) is achieved when this overlap is…

The main issue of this study was to determine whether cognitive control is affected by acute moderate exercise. Twelve participants [4 females (VO[subscript 2 max]=42 ml/kg/min) and 8 males (VO[subscript 2 max]=48 ml/kg/min)] performed a Simon task while cycling at a carefully controlled workload intensity corresponding to their individual…

Several studies have demonstrated that women believe they are more prone to left-right confusion (LRC) than men. However, while some studies report that there is also a sex difference in LRC tasks favouring men, others report that men and women perform equally well. Recently, it was suggested that sex differences only emerge in LRC tasks when they…

Throughout middle-childhood, inhibitory processes, which underlie many higher order cognitive tasks, are developing. Little is known about how inhibitory processes change as a task becomes conceptually more difficult during these important years. In adults, as Go/NoGo tasks become more difficult there is a systematic decrease in the P3 NoGo…

Cortical grey matter atrophy patterns have been reported in healthy ageing and Alzheimer disease (AD), but less consistently in the parietal regions of the brain. We investigated cortical grey matter volume patterns in parietal areas. The grey matter of the somatosensory cortex, superior and inferior parietal lobule was measured in 75 older adults…

Based on the theoretical analysis of self-consciousness concepts, we hypothesized that the spatio-temporal pattern of functional connectivity within the default-mode network (DMN) should persist unchanged across a variety of different cognitive tasks or acts, thus being task-unrelated. This supposition is in contrast with current understanding…

The present study aimed to investigate the slow negative potential (termed Decision Preceding Negativity, DPN, from the family of the Readiness Potential) which precedes a willed risky decision. To this end, evoked potentials preceding and following an economic choice were measured in a sample of 16 male students during the Iowa Gambling Task…

Several studies have shown that handedness has an impact on visual spatial abilities. Here we investigated the effect of laterality on auditory space perception. Participants (33 right-handers, 20 left-handers) completed two tasks of sound localization. In a dark, anechoic, and sound-proof room, sound stimuli (broadband noise) were presented via…

The present work investigated the effects of caffeine (0 mg, 100 mg, 200 mg, 400 mg) on a flanker task designed to test Posner's three visual attention network functions: alerting, orienting, and executive control [Posner, M. I. (2004). "Cognitive neuroscience of attention". New York, NY: Guilford Press]. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind…

In dot-probe tasks, threatening cues facilitate attention to targets and enhance the amplitude of the target P1 peak of the visual-evoked potential. While theories have suggested that evolutionarily relevant threats should obtain preferential neural processing, this has not been examined empirically. In this study we examined the effects of…

Person recognition can be accomplished through several modalities (face, name, voice). Lesion, neurophysiology and neuroimaging studies have been conducted in an attempt to determine the similarities and differences in the neural networks associated with person identity via different modality inputs. The current study used event-related…