Monetary reward enhances response inhibition processes manifested in No-go P3.

This study investigated the impact of motivational valence on No-go P3 and N2 by incorporating monetary rewards based on response outcomes. We also investigated how personality differences in terms of the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral approach system (BAS) influenced No-go N2 and No-go P3. Twenty-eight participants performed Go/No-go tasks (80 % Go and 20 % No-go) under two conditions. In the reward condition, each correct-rejection trial for the No-go stimulus was rewarded with 10 yen (∼6 cents), whereas in the neutral condition, neither monetary rewards nor punishments were contingent on response outcomes. Individual responsiveness to punishment and rewards was evaluated using the BIS and BAS scales. The error rate was significantly lower in the reward condition than in the neutral condition. P3 amplitude for correct-rejection trials (i.e., preceding erroneous muscular activity on the wrong hand) was larger in the reward condition than in the neutral condition; however, N2 amplitudes did not differ between the two conditions. These results suggest that monetary rewards may enhance motor inhibition control. Individuals with a higher BIS score exhibited a larger No-go N2 for correct-rejection in the neutral condition. We conclude that No-go N2 amplitude is modulated by avoidance motivation.

Effects of daily listening to 6 Hz binaural beats over one month: an event-related potentials study.

The aim of the present study was to identify cognitive alterations, as indicated by event-related potentials (ERPs), after one month of daily exposure to theta binaural beats (BBs) for 10 minutes. The recruited healthy subjects (n = 60) were equally divided into experimental and control groups. For a month, the experimental group was required to practice BBs listening daily, while the control group did not. ERPs were assessed at three separate visits over a span of one month, with a two-week interval between each visit. At each visit, ERPs were measured before and after listening. The auditory and visual ERPs significantly increased the auditory and visual P300 amplitudes consistently at each visit. BBs enhanced the auditory N200 amplitude consistently across all visits, but the visual N200 amplitude increased only at the second and third visits. Compared to the healthy controls, daily exposure to BBs for two weeks resulted in increased auditory P300 amplitude. Additionally, four weeks of BBs exposure not only increased auditory P300 amplitude but also reduced P300 latency. These preliminary findings suggest that listening to BBs at 6 Hz for 10 minutes daily may enhance certain aspects of cognitive function. However, further research is needed to confirm these effects and to understand the underlying mechanisms. Identifying the optimal duration and practice of listening to 6 Hz BBs could potentially contribute to cognitive enhancement strategies in healthy individuals.

Exploring the neuropsychological basis of behavioral contagion during learning about another agent's social preferences: Evidence from an ERP study.

Social contagion is a pervasive phenomenon and an important social influence that involves the rapid dissemination (propagation) of behaviors, attitudes, emotions, or ideas from one person to another, often without conscious reflection or rational thought. This phenomenon is closely related to conformity, by which a person changes his/her original ideas and attitude and imitates certain behavior of others. Although some behavioral research has been carried out on contagion and conformity, there is very little neuropsychological understanding of these phenomena. Existing research on social influence and conformity has predominantly focused on tasks like mental rotation or rating tasks involving facial expressions, with fewer studies exploring risk preferences and temporal discounting. However, there is a notable gap in the literature when it comes to examining social influence and conformity using other­regarding preference models derived from heterodox economics. To address this research gap, the present study investigates the neuropsychological underpinnings of social contagion by utilizing event­related potentials (ERPs) recorded while subjects engage in mini­dictator games. The behavioral analysis revealed that contagion had an impact on the participants' preferences, leading to a change in their choices. We observed a P300 component in the midline and right posterior during the time window of 200­350 ms after stimulus onset, which showed a significant increase in mean amplitude when participants observed others' behavior, compared to when they made decisions based on their own preferences. Moreover, the lack of late positive potential in the time window of 500­650 ms suggests that the presence of P300 may indicate difficulty in making decisions. In summary, by analyzing both behavioral and ERP data, this study may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the cognitive and neural processes that drive conformity and contagion behavior. Our analysis has the potential to inform policymakers in developing effective interventions for promoting positive social behaviors and reducing negative ones.

Decrease in reaction time for volleyball athletes during saccadic eye movement task: A preliminary study with evoked potentials.

AIM: This preliminary study investigated the differences in event-related potential and reaction time under two groups (athletes vs. non-athletes). MATERIAL AND METHODS: The P300 was analyzed for Fz, Cz, and Pz electrodes in thirty-one healthy volunteers divided into two groups (volleyball athletes and non-athletes). In addition, the participants performed a saccadic eye movement task to measure reaction time. RESULTS: The EEG analysis showed that the athletes, in comparison to the no-athletes, have differences in the P300 in the frontal area (p = 0.021). In relation to reaction time, the results show lower reaction time for athletes (p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The volleyball athletes may present a greater allocation of attention during the execution of the inhibition task, since they have a lower reaction time for responses when compared to non-athletes.

Application of hybrid SSVEP + P300 brain computer interface to control avatar movement in mobile virtual reality gaming environment.

INTRODUCTION: This research evaluated the feasibility of a hybrid SSVEP + P300 brain computer interface (BCI) for controlling the movement of an avatar in a virtual reality (VR) gaming environment (VR + BCI). Existing VR + BCI gaming environments have limitations, such as visual fatigue, a lower communication rate, minimum accuracy, and poor system comfort. Hence, there is a need for an optimized hybrid BCI system that can simultaneously evoke the strongest P300 and SSVEP potentials in the cortex. METHODS: A BCI headset was coupled with a VR headset to generate a VR + BCI environment. The author developed a VR game in which the avatar's movement is controlled using the user's cortical responses with the help of a BCI headset. Specifically designed visual stimuli were used in the proposed system to elicit the strongest possible responses from the user's brain. The proposed system also includes an auditory feedback mechanism to facilitate precise avatar movement. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Conventional P300 BCI and SSVEP BCI were also used to control the movements of the avatar, and their performance metrics were compared to those of the proposed system. The results demonstrated that the hybrid SSVEP + P300 BCI system was superior to the other systems for controlling avatar movement.

Behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion in women: the role of facial attractiveness and friendliness.

The behavioral and neural responses to social exclusion were examined in women randomized to four conditions, varying in levels of attractiveness and friendliness. Informed by evolutionary theory, we predicted that being socially excluded by attractive unfriendly women would be more distressing than being excluded by unattractive women, irrespective of their friendliness level. Our results contradicted most of our predictions but provide important insights into women's responses to interpersonal conflict. Accounting for rejection sensitivity, P300 event-related potential amplitudes were largest when women were excluded by unattractive unfriendly women. This may be due to an expectancy violation or an annoyance with being excluded by women low on social desirability. An examination of anger rumination rates by condition suggests the latter. Only attractive women's attractiveness ratings were lowered in the unfriendly condition, indicating they were specifically punished for their exclusionary behavior. Women were more likely to select attractive women to compete against with one exception-they selected the Black attractive opponent less often than the White attractive opponent when presented as unfriendly. Finally, consistent with studies on retaliation in relation to social exclusion, women tended to rate competitors who rejected them as being more rude, more competitive, less attractive, less nice, and less happy than non-competitors. The ubiquity of social exclusion and its pointed emotional and physiological impact on women demands more research on this topic.

A Hybrid BCI Integrating EEG and Eye-Tracking for Assisting Clinical Communication in Patients With Disorders of Consciousness.

Assessing communication abilities in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs) is challenging due to limitations in the behavioral scale. Electroencephalogram-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and eye-tracking for detecting ocular changes can capture mental activities without requiring physical behaviors and thus may be a solution. This study proposes a hybrid BCI that integrates EEG and eye tracking to facilitate communication in patients with DOC. Specifically, the BCI presented a question and two randomly flashing answers (yes/no). The subjects were instructed to focus on an answer. A multimodal target recognition network (MTRN) is proposed to detect P300 potentials and eye-tracking responses (i.e., pupil constriction and gaze) and identify the target in real time. In the MTRN, the dual-stream feature extraction module with two independent multiscale convolutional neural networks extracts multiscale features from multimodal data. Then, the multimodal attention strategy adaptively extracts the most relevant information about the target from multimodal data. Finally, a prototype network is designed as a classifier to facilitate small-sample data classification. Ten healthy individuals, nine DOC patients and one LIS patient were included in this study. All healthy subjects achieved 100% accuracy. Five patients could communicate with our BCI, with 76.1±7.9% accuracy. Among them, two patients who were noncommunicative on the behavioral scale exhibited communication ability via our BCI. Additionally, we assessed the performance of unimodal BCIs and compared MTRNs with other methods. All the results suggested that our BCI can yield more sensitive outcomes than the CRS-R and can serve as a valuable communication tool.

Is misokinesia sensitivity explained by visual attentional orienting? ERP evidence from an emotional oddball task suggests no.

Misokinesia is a prevalent condition characterized by strong, negative emotional reactions to the sight of repetitive fidgeting movements in others. Here we present the results of a study designed to explore the relationship between misokinesia sensitivity (MKS) and attentional sensitivity to affectively-valenced visual stimuli. In particular, we asked participants with either high or low levels of MKS to perform an emotional oddball task that included responding to faces that had either angry or happy expressions, while we recorded event-related potentials. We found that there were no significant differences between the two MKS groups in attentional sensitivity to these faces, as indexed by the amplitude of the P300 ERP component they elicited. Importantly, we could not ascribe this null ERP finding to either low statistical power or the idiosyncrasies of our ERP analysis parameters. As such, our findings add to growing evidence that MKS may not be the simple result of heightened attentional orienting responses to visual events, but rather, it may be associated with other aspects of cognitive-affective processing.

From lab to life: assessing the impact of real-world interactions on the operation of rapid serial visual presentation-based brain-computer interfaces.

Objective.Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) have been extensively researched in controlled lab settings where the P300 event-related potential (ERP), elicited in the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm, has shown promising potential. However, deploying BCIs outside of laboratory settings is challenging due to the presence of contaminating artifacts that often occur as a result of activities such as talking, head movements, and body movements. These artifacts can severely contaminate the measured EEG signals and consequently impede detection of the P300 ERP. Our goal is to assess the impact of these real-world noise factors on the performance of a RSVP-BCI, specifically focusing on single-trial P300 detection.Approach.In this study, we examine the impact of movement activity on the performance of a P300-based RSVP-BCI application designed to allow users to search images at high speed. Using machine learning, we assessed P300 detection performance using both EEG data captured in optimal recording conditions (e.g. where participants were instructed to refrain from moving) and a variety of conditions where the participant intentionally produced movements to contaminate the EEG recording.Main results.The results, presented as area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC) scores, provide insight into the significant impact of noise on single-trial P300 detection. Notably, there is a reduction in classifier detection accuracy when intentionally contaminated RSVP trials are used for training and testing, when compared to using non-intentionally contaminated RSVP trials.Significance.Our findings underscore the necessity of addressing and mitigating noise in EEG recordings to facilitate the use of BCIs in real-world settings, thus extending the reach of EEG technology beyond the confines of the laboratory.

A Cascade xDAWN EEGNet Structure for Unified Visual-Evoked Related Potential Detection.

Visual-based brain-computer interface (BCI) enables people to communicate with others by spelling words from the brain and helps professionals recognize targets in large numbers of images. P300 signals evoked by different types of stimuli, such as words or images, may vary significantly in terms of both amplitude and latency. A unified approach is required to detect variable P300 signals, which facilitates BCI applications, as well as deepens the understanding of the P300 generation mechanism. In this study, our proposed approach involves a cascade network structure that combines xDAWN and classical EEGNet techniques. This network is designed to classify target and non-target stimuli in both P300 speller and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigms. The proposed approach is capable of recognizing more symbols with fewer repetitions (up to 5 rounds) compared to other models while possessing a better information transfer rate (ITR) as demonstrated on Dataset II (17.22 bits/min in the second repetition round) of BCI Competition III. Additionally, our approach has the highest unweighted average recall (UAR) performance for both 5 Hz ( 0.8134±0.0259 ) and 20 Hz ( 0.6527±0.0321 ) RSVP. The results show that the cascade network structure has better performance between both the P300 Speller and RSVP paradigms, manifesting that such a cascade structure is robust enough for dealing with P300-related signals (source code is available at https://github.com/embneural/Cascade-xDAWN-EEGNet-for-ERP-Detection).

Towards electrophysiological measurement of presence in virtual reality through auditory oddball stimuli.

Objective.Presence is an important aspect of user experience in virtual reality (VR). It corresponds to the illusion of being physically located in a virtual environment (VE). This feeling is usually measured through questionnaires that disrupt presence, are subjective and do not allow for real-time measurement. Electroencephalography (EEG), which measures brain activity, is increasingly used to monitor the state of users, especially while immersed in VR.Approach.In this paper, we present a way of evaluating presence, through the measure of the attention dedicated to the real environment via an EEG oddball paradigm. Using breaks in presence, this experimental protocol constitutes an ecological method for the study of presence, as different levels of presence are experienced in an identical VE.Main results.Through analysing the EEG data of 18 participants, a significant increase in the neurophysiological reaction to the oddball, i.e. the P300 amplitude, was found in low presence condition compared to high presence condition. This amplitude was significantly correlated with the self-reported measure of presence. Using Riemannian geometry to perform single-trial classification, we present a classification algorithm with 79% accuracy in detecting between two presence conditions.Significance.Taken together our results promote the use of EEG and oddball stimuli to monitor presence offline or in real-time without interrupting the user in the VE.

A systematic review of mobile brain/body imaging studies using the P300 event-related potentials to investigate cognition beyond the laboratory.

The P300 ERP component, related to the onset of task-relevant or infrequent stimuli, has been widely used in the Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) literature. This systematic review evaluates the quality and breadth of P300 MoBI studies, revealing a maturing field with well-designed research yet grappling with standardization and global representation challenges. While affirming the reliability of measuring P300 ERP components in mobile settings, the review identifies significant hurdles in standardizing data cleaning and processing techniques, impacting comparability and reproducibility. Geographical disparities emerge, with studies predominantly in the Global North and a dearth of research from the Global South, emphasizing the need for broader inclusivity to counter the WEIRD bias in psychology. Collaborative projects and mobile EEG systems showcase the feasibility of reaching diverse populations, which is essential to advance precision psychiatry and to integrate varied data streams. Methodologically, a trend toward ecological validity is noted, shifting from lab-based to real-world settings with portable EEG system advancements. Future hardware developments are expected to balance signal quality and sensor intrusiveness, enriching data collection in everyday contexts. Innovative methodologies reflect a move toward more natural experimental settings, prompting critical questions about the applicability of traditional ERP markers, such as the P300 outside structured paradigms. The review concludes by highlighting the crucial role of integrating mobile technologies, physiological sensors, and machine learning to advance cognitive neuroscience. It advocates for an operational definition of ecological validity to bridge the gap between controlled experiments and the complexity of embodied cognitive experiences, enhancing both theoretical understanding and practical application in study design.

Associations between physical activity, sedentary time, and neurocognitive function during adolescence: Evidence from accelerometry and the flanker P300.

Physical activity and sedentary behavior are two lifestyle factors related to overall health during adolescence. Public health efforts emphasize the importance of increasing physical activity to improve physical and mental health outcomes, including neurocognitive functioning. However, the unique effects of sedentary behavior on neurocognitive functioning remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate associations between daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), sedentary time, and neurocognitive functioning during adolescence. Fifty-seven participants (37% female) between the ages of 13 and 17 years wore an accelerometer on their non-dominant wrist for approximately 1 week to quantify daily MVPA and sedentary time prior to completing a flanker task to elicit P300 amplitude at a laboratory visit. Results indicated that daily MVPA and sedentary time exhibited unique, significant associations with P300 amplitude in opposing directions: increased daily MVPA was correlated with larger P300 amplitudes, while increased daily sedentary time was linked to reduced P300 amplitudes. Notably, these associations remained significant even after adjusting for age, sex, and BMI-for-age percentile. These findings underscore the independent influence of daily MVPA and sedentary time on neurocognitive functioning during adolescence. Future research should explore whether modifying MVPA levels can improve neurocognitive outcomes-including the P300-during adolescence, and determine whether reducing sedentary time results in similar or differential effects.

Effect of inverted faces as visual stimuli on the performance of the hybrid SSVEP + P300 brain computer interface.

INTRODUCTION: This study proposes a hybrid brain-computer interface (BCI) system that simultaneously evokes steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP) and event-related potentials (P300). The goal of this study was to improve the performance of the current hybrid SSVEP + P300 BCI systems by incorporating inverted faces into visual stimuli. METHODS: In this study, upright and inverted faces were added to visual stimulus to elicit stronger cortical responses in a hybrid SSVEP + P300 BCI. We also considered triggering the P300 signals with facial stimuli and the SSVEP signals with non-facial stimuli. We have tested four paradigms: the upright face paradigm (UF), the inverted face paradigm (IF), the upright face and flicker paradigm (UFF), and the inverted face and flicker paradigm (IFF). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that the IFF paradigm evoked more robust cortical responses, which led to enhanced system accuracy and ITR. The IFF paradigm had an average accuracy of 96.6% and a system communication rate of 26.45 bits per second. The UFF paradigm is the best candidate for BCI applications among other paradigms because it provides maximum comfort while maintaining a reasonable ITR.

Hyperacusis questionnaire and event-related potential correlation in migraine patients.

This study aims to investigate auditory hypersensitivity and cortical function in migraine patients using the Hyperacusis Questionnaire and the Event-Related Potential (ERP) technique. The study analyzes alterations in the latency and amplitude of the event-related potentials MMN and P300 components. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the physiological relationship between migraine and auditory hypersensitivity. Seventeen migraine patients were admitted to the outpatient clinic of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Peking University People's Hospital from June 2023 to September 2023. Nineteen matched healthy subjects were also selected. All participants underwent the pure tone audiometry and the auditory brainstem response test to determine hearing thresholds, the Hyperacusis Questionnaire, the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory, and an ERP examination. The Oddball classical paradigm was used as the stimulation task, and electroencephalography signals were recorded synchronously. The scores of the Hyperacusis Questionnaire, latency and amplitude of MMN and P300 component were compared between the migraine group and the control group, and their correlation was analyzed. The latency of MMN at the Fz and Cz sites in migraine patients was significantly shorter than that in the control group (P < 0.05), and the amplitudes were significantly higher than those in the control group (P < 0.05). The variances in latency and amplitude of P300 at Cz and Pz sites in migraine patients were not statistically significant when compared with the control group. (P > 0.05). The Hyperacusis Questionnaire was negatively correlated with MMN latency, with a correlation coefficient of - 0.374 (P = 0.025), and positively correlated with MMN amplitude, with a correlation coefficient of 0.378 (P = 0.023). There was no significant similarity between the Hyperacusis Questionnaire and P300 latency and amplitude (P > 0.05). Overall, auditory hypersensitivity was enhanced in individuals with migraines compared to healthy individuals, leading to faster information processing, while there may be less impairment in cognitive function.

Why creatives don't find the oddball odd: Neural and psychological evidence for atypical salience processing.

Creativity has previously been linked with various attentional phenomena, including unfocused or broad attention. Although this has typically been interpreted through an executive functioning framework, such phenomena may also arise from atypical incentive salience processing. Across two studies, we examine this hypothesis both neurally and psychologically. First we examine the relationship between figural creativity and event-related potentials during an audio-visual oddball task, finding that rater creativity of drawings is associated with a diminished P300 response at midline electrodes, while abstractness and elaborateness of the drawings is associated with an altered distribution of the P300 over posterior electrodes. These findings support the notion that creativity may involve an atypical attribution of salience to prominent information. We further explore the incentive salience hypothesis by examining relationships between creativity and a psychological indicator of incentive salience captured by participants' ratings of enjoyment (liking) and their motivation to pursue (wanting) diverse real world rewards, as well as their positive spontaneous thoughts about those rewards. Here we find enhanced motivation to pursue activities as well as a reduced relationship between the overall tendency to enjoy rewards and the tendency to pursue them. Collectively, these findings indicate that creativity may be associated with atypical allocation of attentional and motivational resources to novel and rewarding information, potentially allowing more types of information access to attentional resources and motivating more diverse behaviors. We discuss the possibility that salience attribution in creatives may be less dependent on task-relevance or hedonic pleasure, and suggest that atypical salience attribution may represent a trait-like feature of creativity.

Longitudinal Exploration of Cortical Brain Activity in Cognitive Fog: An EEG Study in Patients with and without Anosmia.

BACKGROUND: Long-Covid, characterized by persistent symptoms following acute Covid-19 infection, represents a complex challenge for the scientific community. Among the most common and debilitating manifestations, cognitive fog is a neurological disorder characterized by mental confusion and cognitive difficulties. In this study, we investigated the long-term effects of previous Covid-19 infection on cortical brain activity in patients experiencing cognitive fog symptoms in the medium and long term. METHODS: A total of 40 subjects (20 females and 20 males) aged between 45 and 70 years (mean age (M) = 59.78, standard deviation (SD) = 12.93) participated in this study. This sample included individuals with symptoms of cognitive fog, both with and without anosmia, and a control group comprised of healthy subjects. All electroencephalography (EEG) data were collected in two sessions, 1 month and 8 months after recovery from Covid-19, to measure the neurophysiological parameters of P300 and beta band rhythms. RESULTS: The results revealed significant differences in the neurophysiological parameters of P300 and beta band rhythms in subjects affected by cognitive fog, and these alterations persist even 8 months after recovery from Covid-19. Interestingly, no significant differences were observed between the participants with anosmia and without anosmia associated with cognitive fog. CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide a significant contribution to understanding the long-term effects of Covid-19 on the brain and have important implications for future interventions aimed at managing and treating brain fog symptoms. The longitudinal assessment of cortical brain activity helps highlight the persistent impact of the virus on the neurological health of Long-Covid patients.

Transient Attention Gates Access Consciousness: Coupling N2pc and P3 Latencies Using Dynamic Time Warping.

The N2pc and P3 event-related potentials (ERPs), used to index selective attention and access to working memory and conscious awareness, respectively, have been important tools in cognitive sciences. Although it is likely that these two components and the underlying cognitive processes are temporally and functionally linked, such links have not yet been convincingly demonstrated. Adopting a novel methodological approach based on dynamic time warping (DTW), we provide evidence that the N2pc and P3 ERP components are temporally linked. We analyzed data from an experiment where 23 participants (16 women) monitored bilateral rapid serial streams of letters and digits in order to report a target digit indicated by a shape cue, separately for trials with correct responses and trials where a temporally proximal distractor was reported instead (distractor intrusion). DTW analyses revealed that N2pc and P3 latencies were correlated in time, both when the target or a distractor was reported. Notably, this link was weaker on distractor intrusion trials. This N2pc-P3 association is discussed with respect to the relationship between attention and access consciousness. Our results demonstrate that our novel method provides a valuable approach for assessing temporal links between two cognitive processes and their underlying modulating factors. This method allows to establish links and their modulator for any two time-series across all domains of the field (general-purpose MATLAB functions and a Python module are provided alongside this paper).

Accelerometer-based and self-reported physical activity and sedentary time and their relationships with the P300 in a Go/No-Go task in older adults.

Older adults who experience cognitive decline are more likely to have a reduced quality of life. Identifying lifestyle factors that may influence cognitive processing and in turn improve quality of life during older adulthood is an important area of interest. Cognitive function, as measured by the P300 event-related potential (ERP), has been noted to be modified by physical activity; however, no study to date has examined relationships between this neurophysiological measure and physical activity and sedentary time in older adults. Furthermore, there is a gap in understanding as to whether physical activity and sedentary time assessed using self-reported and accelerometer-based methods similarly relate to the P300. This study aimed to assess the P300 during a Go/No-Go task in relation to self-reported and accelerometer-based physical activity and sedentary time in a community sample of 75 older adults. Results indicated that participants engaging in more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity had larger P300 amplitudes across self-reported and accelerometer-based measurements; however, no relationships between sedentary time and P300 amplitude were observed. Notably, accelerometer-based moderate-to-vigorous physical activity explained P300 amplitudes over and above self-reported moderate-to-vigorous physical activity-an effect that remained significant even after accounting for age. Although these results highlight the importance of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in relation to cognitive function, as measured via the P300 in older adults, a secondary analysis indicated that engaging in lifestyle activity may have similar effects on the P300 as moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. In sum, the present study highlights the role of habitual engagement in physical activity as a possible means for supporting cognitive function during the aging process.

Neural mechanisms of Chinese character recognition, updating, and maintenance in the N-back task.

Using the N-back task, we investigated how memory load influences the neural activity of the Chinese character cognitive subprocess (recognition, updating, and maintenance) in Mainland Chinese speakers. Twenty-seven participants completed the Chinese character N-back paradigm while having their event-related potentials recorded. The study employed time and frequency domain analyses of EEG data. Results showed that accuracy decreased and response times increased with larger N values. For ERPs, N2pc and P300 amplitudes decreased and SW amplitude increased with larger N values. For time frequency analyses, the desynchronization of alpha oscillations decreased after stimulus onset, but the synchronization of alpha oscillations increased during the maintenance phase. The results suggest that greater memory load is related to a decrease in cognitive resources during updating and an increase in cognitive resources during information maintenance. The results of a behavioral-ERP data structural equation model analysis showed that the ERP indicators in the maintenance phase predicted behavioral performance.