Cognitive Neuroscience

NeuroChat: A Neuroadaptive AI Chatbot for Customizing Learning Experiences

This study introduces NeuroChat, an AI chatbot that uses real-time brainwave (EEG) data to adapt its responses, demonstrating significantly increased user engagement during learning tasks compared to a non-adaptive chatbot. However, despite higher engagement in a 20-minute session, the system showed no significant differences in short-term learning outcomes, highlighting challenges in translating engagement into measurable knowledge gains.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Oct 11, 12:14 PM

COVID-19 related cognitive, structural and functional brain changes among Italian adolescents and young adults: a multimodal longitudinal case-control study

This small longitudinal study of Italian adolescents and young adults found brain changes in those who had mild COVID-19, particularly in areas related to memory and smell. Specifically, functional connectivity differences and volume reduction were observed in the left hippocampus and amygdala, with changes in the amygdala potentially affecting spatial working memory. The study's small sample size limits the generalizability of the findings.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Sep 22, 06:22 PM

The critical dimension of memory engrams and an optimal number of senses

This theoretical study uses a mathematical model of "memory engrams" to explore how our brains store concepts. The model suggests there's a critical dimension, like a sweet spot, where the number of different concepts we can hold is maximized, and it happens to be around seven, possibly corresponding to our seven senses.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Sep 09, 04:51 PM

Integrated information and predictive processing theories of consciousness: An adversarial collaborative review

This review compares and contrasts three theories of consciousness—Integrated Information Theory, Neurorepresentationalism, and Active Inference—that are being directly tested against each other in a "research competition." The review focuses on what each theory attempts to explain, how they explain it, and the methods used to test them, highlighting key hypotheses under investigation.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Sep 08, 05:11 PM

A brain-wide map of neural activity during complex behaviour

This study used Neuropixels probes to record from over 600,000 neurons in mice performing a decision-making task. They found brain-wide neural correlates of various task elements, including visual stimuli, choices, feedback, and movement, with varying degrees of representation across brain regions. Some regions responded strongly to feedback and movement, while others showed stronger selectivity for visual stimuli or choices.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Sep 03, 05:45 PM

Damage to white matter networks resulting from small vessel disease and the effects on cognitive function

This study found that age-related white matter changes in the brain, particularly in the right hemisphere, are associated with decreased cognitive performance in older adults. Specifically, problems in certain white matter tracts were linked to lower scores on memory tests. However, the study used a brief cognitive test and didn't account for other contributing factors like BMI, anxiety, and depression.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Aug 16, 01:41 PM

The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization

This corrigendum clarifies how the brain uses "degeneracy" to represent the same emotional category (like anger) within the *same* context. The original article incorrectly implied different contexts, which has been corrected.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Aug 15, 07:26 PM

TRIBE: TRImodal Brain Encoder for whole-brain fMRI response prediction

This study developed an AI model called TRIBE that can predict brain responses to videos using information from the video's images, audio, and transcript. The model performs better using all three information sources combined compared to using them individually and achieves good predictive accuracy even with out-of-distribution movies. The current study is limited by a relatively small sample size of four participants and the resolution of fMRI data used.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Aug 11, 03:51 PM

Brain-to-brain coupling during handholding is associated with pain reduction

This study found that hand-holding between romantic partners during a pain experiment increased brain-to-brain coupling in the alpha-mu frequency band, primarily between the central brain regions of the person experiencing pain and the right hemisphere of their partner. This coupling correlated with both pain reduction in the target and empathic accuracy in the observer. However, it's important to note that the study has limitations due to sample size and demographics, limited EEG spatial resolution, the correlational nature of the data, and the potential confound of the sound cue used in the experiment.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Aug 01, 07:28 PM

Cortical activity upon awakening from sleep reveals consistent spatio-temporal gradients across sleep stages in human EEG

This study used high-density EEG to show that the brain awakens in a consistent sequence, starting in frontal areas and progressing towards the back. Low-frequency EEG changes in NREM sleep originate in a central "hotspot," while subjective sleepiness upon awakening correlated with specific EEG patterns in NREM but not REM sleep.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 19, 04:53 PM

MetaFormer Is Actually What You Need for Vision

This paper proposes PoolFormer, a Vision Transformer architecture that replaces the attention mechanism with simple spatial pooling. Surprisingly, PoolFormer achieves competitive performance on ImageNet, object detection, and semantic segmentation tasks, suggesting the general architecture of Vision Transformers matters more than the specific token mixer used.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 14, 10:35 AM

Reproducible brain-wide association studies require thousands of individuals

Brain-wide association studies (BWAS) need thousands of participants for reliable results, as effect sizes are smaller than previously thought. Sampling variability in smaller studies leads to inflated and often irreproducible findings, emphasizing the need for larger, well-powered studies in future BWAS research.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 14, 10:35 AM

Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2016

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among children aged 8 years in the US was 18.5 per 1,000 in 2016, higher than previous estimates. While no overall difference in prevalence was found between Black and White children, disparities persist in early evaluation and diagnosis for Black children, and Hispanic children continue to be identified less frequently.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 14, 10:35 AM

Prevalence and Characteristics of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 8 Years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 11 Sites, United States, 2020

The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among 8-year-old children in the U.S. was 27.6 per 1,000 (1 in 36) in 2020, higher than previous estimates. For the first time, ASD prevalence was lower among White children than other racial/ethnic groups, while Black children with ASD remain more likely to have a co-occurring intellectual disability.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 14, 10:35 AM

Controlling for Participants' Viewing Distance in Large-Scale, Psychophysical Online Experiments Using a Virtual Chinrest

The study introduces the "Virtual Chinrest," a method for measuring viewing distance online using the blind spot. The method was validated in laboratory experiments and used in a large online study (N=1153) replicating previous findings on visual crowding, showing increased crowding with greater eccentricity and in individuals with dyslexia.

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Cognitive Neuroscience Jul 14, 10:35 AM