Anterior N2 enhancement is not a general electrophysiological index of concealed information.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used with the concealed information test (CIT) to detect concealed recognition of specific stimuli (i.e., "probes"). While most research has focused on the P300 component, which is larger for infrequent probes than for frequent control stimuli (i.e., "irrelevants"), some studies have investigated an earlier ERP component, the anterior N2, with mixed results. Although some studies have reported a larger anterior N2 for probes than irrelevants (N2 enhancement), other studies, including our own, have not found such an effect. The present study aimed to replicate and extend our previous findings using the same CIT paradigm and measurement parameters. Results of Bayesian analyses show strong evidence against the hypothesis of anterior N2 enhancement by probes, replicating our previous work. Bayesian analyses also show strong evidence against the hypothesis of N2 enhancement for the three components revealed by a temporal principal component analysis (PCA) conducted to disentangle potentially overlapping ERP effects. In conclusion, whereas the CIT has shown promise in detecting recognition of specific information, anterior N2 enhancement cannot be used as an electrophysiological measure of concealed information across CIT paradigms.

At-risk alcohol users have disrupted valence discrimination during reward anticipation.

Alcohol use disorder is characterised by disrupted reward learning, underpinned by dysfunctional cortico-striatal reward pathways, although relatively little is known about the biology of reward processing in populations who engage in risky alcohol use. Cues that trigger reward anticipation can be categorized according to their learnt valence (i.e., positive vs. negative outcomes) and motivational salience (i.e., incentive vs. neutral cues). Separating EEG signals associated with these dimensions is challenging because of their inherent collinearity, but the recent application of machine learning methods to single EEG trials affords a solution. Here, the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) was used to quantify risky alcohol use, with participants split into high alcohol (HA) (n = 22, mean AUDIT score: 13.82) and low alcohol (LA) (n = 22, mean AUDIT score: 5.77) groups. We applied machine learning multivariate single-trial classification to the electroencephalography (EEG) data collected during reward anticipation. The LA group demonstrated significant valence discrimination in the early stages of reward anticipation within the cue-P3 time window (400-550 ms), whereas the HA group was insensitive to valence within this time window. Notably, the LA, but not the HA group demonstrated a relationship between single-trial variability in the early valence component and reaction times for gain and loss trials. This study evidences disrupted hypoactive valence sensitivity in the HA group, revealing potential neurophysiological markers for risky drinking behaviours which place individuals at-risk of adverse health events.

The effect of mental countermeasures on neuroimaging-based concealed information tests.

During the last decade and a half, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to determine whether it is possible to detect concealed knowledge by examining brain activation patterns, with mixed results. Concealed information tests rely on the logic that a familiar item (probe) elicits a stronger response than unfamiliar, but otherwise comparable items (irrelevants). Previous work has shown that physical countermeasures can artificially modulate neural responses in concealed information tests, decreasing the accuracy of these methods. However, the question remains as to whether purely mental countermeasures, which are much more difficult to detect than physical ones, can also be effective. An fMRI study was conducted to address this question by assessing the effect of attentional countermeasures on the accuracy of the classification between knowledge and no-knowledge cases using both univariate and multivariate analyses. Results replicate previous work and show reliable group activation differences between the probe and the irrelevants in fronto-parietal networks. Critically, classification accuracy was generally reduced by the mental countermeasures, but only significantly so with region of interest analyses (both univariate and multivariate). For whole-brain analyses, classification accuracy was relatively low, but it was not significantly reduced by the countermeasures. These results indicate that mental countermeasure need to be addressed before these paradigms can be used in applied settings and that methods to defeat countermeasures, or at least to detect their use, need to be developed. HIGHLIGHTS: FMRI-based concealed information tests are vulnerable to mental countermeasures Measures based on regions of interest are affected by mental countermeasures Whole-brain analyses may be more robust than region of interest ones Methods to detect mental countermeasure use are needed for forensic applications.

Is anterior N2 enhancement a reliable electrophysiological index of concealed information?

Concealed information tests (CITs) are used to determine whether an individual possesses information about an item of interest. Event-related potential (ERP) measures in CITs have focused almost exclusively on the P3b component, showing that this component is larger when lying about the item of interest (probe) than telling the truth about control items (irrelevants). Recent studies have begun to examine other ERP components, such as the anterior N2, with mixed results. A seminal CIT study found that visual probes elicit a larger anterior N2 than irrelevants (Gamer and Berti, 2010) and suggested that this component indexes cognitive control processes engaged when lying about probes. However, this study did not control for potential intrinsic differences among the stimuli: the same probe and irrelevants were used for all participants, and there was no control condition composed of uninformed participants. Here, first we show that the N2 effect found in the study by Gamer and Berti (2010) was in large part due to stimulus differences, as the effect observed in a concealed information condition was comparable to that found in two matched control conditions without any concealed information (Experiments 1 and 2). Next, we addressed the issue of the generality of the N2 findings by counterbalancing a new set of stimuli across participants and by using a control condition with uninformed participants (Experiment 3). Results show that the probe did not elicit a larger anterior N2 than the irrelevants under these controlled conditions. These findings suggest that caution should be taken in using the N2 as an index of concealed information in CITs. Furthermore, they are a reminder that results of CIT studies (not only with ERPs) performed without stimulus counterbalancing and suitable control conditions may be confounded by differential intrinsic properties of the stimuli employed.

The N170, not the P1, indexes the earliest time for categorical perception of faces, regardless of interstimulus variance.

A negative event-related potential (ERP) at occipito-temporal sites peaking around 150-170 ms after stimulus onset (N170) is typically larger for faces than other object categories. Most theories interpret this finding as due to face-selective processing in occipito-temporal and temporal cortex. However, a controversial account recently attributed the N170 effect to differences in interstimulus variance (ISV) among the images typically used for face and object conditions and proposed that the earlier P1 instead indexes the categorical processes generally attributed to the N170. This ERP study aimed to test this account definitively by using conditions in which the same face and object were shown repeatedly, eliminating both physical and perceptual ISV. Fourier amplitude spectra of faces and objects were matched to equate basic low-level visual properties that may affect early ERPs such as the P1. Results demonstrate that i) face selectivity of the N170 is largely preserved across many object categories after abolishing ISV, and ii) stimulus category does not modulate the P1. This conclusively refutes the ISV account while strongly supporting category as a critical factor driving N170 face selectivity.

Representations in mental imagery and working memory: evidence from different types of visual masks.

Although few studies have systematically investigated the relationship between visual mental imagery and visual working memory, work on the effects of passive visual interference has generally demonstrated a dissociation between the two functions. In four experiments, we investigated a possible commonality between the two functions: We asked whether both rely on depictive representations. Participants judged the visual properties of letters using visual mental images or pictures of unfamiliar letters stored in short-term memory. Participants performed both tasks with two different types of interference: sequences of unstructured visual masks (consisting of randomly changing white and black dots) or sequences of structured visual masks (consisting of fragments of letters). The structured visual noise contained elements of depictive representations (i.e., shape fragments arrayed in space), and hence should interfere with stored depictive representations; the unstructured visual noise did not contain such elements, and thus should not interfere as much with such stored representations. Participants did in fact make more errors in both tasks with sequences of structured visual masks. Various controls converged in demonstrating that in both tasks participants used representations that depicted the shapes of the letters. These findings not only constrain theories of visual mental imagery and visual working memory, but also have direct implications for why some studies have failed to find that dynamic visual noise interferes with visual working memory.

Is implicit Level-2 visual perspective-taking embodied? Spontaneous perceptual simulation of others' perspectives is not impaired by motor restriction.

Visual perspective taking may rely on the ability to mentally rotate one's own body into that of another. Here, we test whether participants' ability to make active body movements plays a causal role in visual perspective taking. We utilised our recent task that measures whether participants spontaneously represent another's visual perspective in a (quasi-)perceptual format that can drive own perceptual decision making. Participants reported whether alphanumeric characters, presented in different orientations, are shown in their normal or mirror-inverted form (e.g., "R" vs. "Я"). Between trials, we manipulated whether another person was sitting either left or right of the character and whether participants' movement was restricted with a chinrest or whether they could move freely. As in our previous research, participants spontaneously took the visual perspective of the other person, recognising rotated letters more rapidly when they appeared upright to the other person in the scene, compared with when they faced away from that person, and these effects increased with age but were (weakly) negatively related to schizotypy and not to autistic traits or social skills. Restricting participants' ability to make active body movements did not influence these effects. The results, therefore, rule out that active physical movement plays a causal role in computing another's visual perspective, either to create alignment between own and other's perspective or to trigger perspective taking processes. The postural adjustments people sometimes make when making judgements from another's perspective may instead be a bodily consequence of mentally transforming one's actual to an imagined position in space.

The hidden cost of a smartphone: The effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control from a behavioral and electrophysiological perspective.

Since their release in 2007, smartphones and their use have seemingly become a fundamental aspect of life in western society. Prior literature has suggested a link between mobile technology use and lower levels of cognitive control when people engage in a cognitively demanding task. This effect is more evident for people who report higher levels of smartphone use. The current study examined the effects of smartphones notifications on cognitive control and attention. Participants completed the Navon Letter paradigm which paired visual (frequent and rare target letters) and auditory (smartphone and control sounds) stimuli. We found that overall, participants responded slower on trials paired with smartphone notification (vs. control) sounds. They also demonstrated larger overall N2 ERP and a larger N2 oddball effect on trials paired with smartphone (vs. control) sounds, suggesting that people generally exhibited greater levels of cognitive control on the smartphone trials. In addition, people with higher smartphone addiction proneness showed lower P2 ERP on trials with the smartphone (vs. control) sounds, suggesting lower attentional engagement. These results add to the debate on the effects of smartphones on cognition. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Verbal Lie Detection: Its Past, Present and Future.

This article provides an overview of verbal lie detection research. This type of research began in the 1970s with examining the relationship between deception and specific words. We briefly review this initial research. In the late 1980s, Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) emerged, a veracity assessment tool containing a list of verbal criteria. This was followed by Reality Monitoring (RM) and Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN), two other veracity assessment tools that contain lists of verbal criteria. We discuss their contents, theoretical rationales, and ability to identify truths and lies. We also discuss similarities and differences between CBCA, RM, and SCAN. In the mid 2000s, 'Interviewing to deception' emerged, with the goal of developing specific interview protocols aimed at enhancing or eliciting verbal veracity cues. We outline the four most widely researched interview protocols to date: the Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE), Verifiability Approach (VA), Cognitive Credibility Assessment (CCA), and Reality Interviewing (RI). We briefly discuss the working of these protocols, their theoretical rationales and empirical support, as well as the similarities and differences between them. We conclude this article with elaborating on how neuroscientists can inform and improve verbal lie detection.

Lying in the scanner: covert countermeasures disrupt deception detection by functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have documented differences between deceptive and honest responses. Capitalizing on this research, companies marketing fMRI-based lie detection services have been founded, generating methodological and ethical concerns in scientific and legal communities. Critically, no fMRI study has examined directly the effect of countermeasures, methods used by prevaricators to defeat deception detection procedures. An fMRI study was conducted to fill this research gap using a concealed information paradigm in which participants were trained to use countermeasures. Robust group fMRI differences between deceptive and honest responses were found without, but not with countermeasures. Furthermore, in single participants, deception detection accuracy was 100% without countermeasures, using activation in ventrolateral and medial prefrontal cortices, but fell to 33% with countermeasures. These findings show that fMRI-based deception detection measures can be vulnerable to countermeasures, calling for caution before applying these methods to real-world situations.

A Systematic Review of Neurofeedback for the Management of Motor Symptoms in Parkinson's Disease.

BACKGROUND: Neurofeedback has been proposed as a treatment for Parkinson's disease (PD) motor symptoms by changing the neural network activity directly linked with movement. However, the effectiveness of neurofeedback as a treatment for PD motor symptoms is unclear. AIM: To systematically review the literature to identify the effects of neurofeedback in people with idiopathic PD; as defined by measurement of brain activity; motor function; and performance. DESIGN: A systematic review. Included Sources and Articles: PubMed; MEDLINE; Cinhal; PsychoInfo; Prospero; Cochrane; ClinicalTrials.gov; EMBASE; Web of Science; PEDro; OpenGrey; Conference Paper Index; Google Scholar; and eThos; searched using the Population-Intervention-Comparison-Outcome (PICO) framework. Primary studies with the following designs were included: randomized controlled trials (RCTs), non-RCTs; quasi-experimental; pre/post studies; and case studies. RESULTS: This review included 11 studies out of 6197 studies that were identified from the literature search. Neuroimaging methods used were fMRI; scalp EEG; surface brain EEG; and deep brain EEG; where 10-15 Hz and the supplementary motor area were the most commonly targeted signatures for EEG and fMRI, respectively. Success rates for changing one's brain activity ranged from 47% to 100%; however, both sample sizes and success criteria differed considerably between studies. While six studies included a clinical outcome; a lack of consistent assessments prevented a reliable conclusion on neurofeedback's effectiveness. Narratively, fMRI neurofeedback has the greatest potential to improve PD motor symptoms. Two main limitations were found in the studies that contributed to the lack of a confident conclusion: (1) insufficient clinical information and perspectives (e.g., no reporting of adverse events), and (2) limitations in numerical data reporting (e.g., lack of explicit statistics) that prevented a meta-analysis. CONCLUSIONS: While fMRI neurofeedback was narratively the most effective treatment; the omission of clinical outcome measures in studies using other neurofeedback approaches limits comparison. Therefore, no single neurofeedback type can currently be identified as an optimal treatment for PD motor symptoms. This systematic review highlights the need to improve the inclusion of clinical information and more robust reporting of numerical data in future work. Neurofeedback appears to hold great potential as a treatment for PD motor symptoms. However, this field is still in its infancy and needs high quality RCTs to establish its effectiveness. Review Registration: PROSPERO (ID: CRD42020191097).

#EEGManyLabs: Investigating the replicability of influential EEG experiments.

There is growing awareness across the neuroscience community that the replicability of findings about the relationship between brain activity and cognitive phenomena can be improved by conducting studies with high statistical power that adhere to well-defined and standardised analysis pipelines. Inspired by recent efforts from the psychological sciences, and with the desire to examine some of the foundational findings using electroencephalography (EEG), we have launched #EEGManyLabs, a large-scale international collaborative replication effort. Since its discovery in the early 20th century, EEG has had a profound influence on our understanding of human cognition, but there is limited evidence on the replicability of some of the most highly cited discoveries. After a systematic search and selection process, we have identified 27 of the most influential and continually cited studies in the field. We plan to directly test the replicability of key findings from 20 of these studies in teams of at least three independent laboratories. The design and protocol of each replication effort will be submitted as a Registered Report and peer-reviewed prior to data collection. Prediction markets, open to all EEG researchers, will be used as a forecasting tool to examine which findings the community expects to replicate. This project will update our confidence in some of the most influential EEG findings and generate a large open access database that can be used to inform future research practices. Finally, through this international effort, we hope to create a cultural shift towards inclusive, high-powered multi-laboratory collaborations.

Perspective taking as virtual navigation? Perceptual simulation of what others see reflects their location in space but not their gaze.

Other peoples' (imagined) visual perspectives are represented perceptually in a similar way to our own, and can drive bottom-up processes in the same way as own perceptual input (Ward, Ganis, & Bach, 2019). Here we test directly whether visual perspective taking is driven by where another person is looking, or whether these perceptual simulations represent their position in space more generally. Across two experiments, we asked participants to identify whether alphanumeric characters, presented at one of eight possible orientations away from upright, were presented normally, or in their mirror-inverted form (e.g. "R" vs. "Я"). In some scenes, a person would appear sitting to the left or the right of the participant. We manipulated either between-trials (Experiment 1) or between-subjects (Experiment 2), the gaze-direction of the inserted person, such that they either (1) looked towards the to-be-judged item, (2) averted their gaze away from the participant, or (3) gazed out towards the participant (Exp. 2 only). In the absence of another person, we replicated the well-established mental rotation effect, where recognition of items becomes slower the more items are oriented away from upright (e.g. Shepard and Meltzer, 1971). Crucially, in both experiments and in all conditions, this response pattern changed when another person was inserted into the scene. People spontaneously took the perspective of the other person and made faster judgements about the presented items in their presence if the characters were oriented towards upright to them. The gaze direction of this other person did not influence these effects. We propose that visual perspective taking is therefore a general spatial-navigational ability, allowing us to calculate more easily how a scene would (in principle) look from another position in space, and that such calculations reflect the spatial location of another person, but not their gaze.

Adaptive filtering to reduce global interference in non-invasive NIRS measures of brain activation: how well and when does it work?

In previous work we introduced a novel method for reducing global interference, based on adaptive filtering, to improve the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) of evoked hemodynamic responses measured non-invasively with near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Here, we address the issue of how to generally apply the proposed adaptive filtering method. A total of 156 evoked visual response measurements, collected from 15 individuals, were analyzed. The similarity (correlation) between measurements with far and near source-detector separations collected during the rest period before visual stimulation was used as indicator of global interference dominance. A detailed analysis of CNR improvement in oxy-hemoglobin (O(2)Hb) and deoxy-hemoglobin (HHb), as a function of the rest period correlation coefficient, is presented. Results show that for O(2)Hb measurements, 66% exhibited substantial global interference. For this dataset, dominated by global interference, 71% of the measurements revealed CNR improvements after adaptive filtering, with a mean CNR improvement of 60%. No CNR improvement was observed for HHb. This study corroborates our previous finding that adaptive filtering provides an effective method to increase CNR when there is strong global interference, and also provides a practical way for determining when and where to apply this technique.

Detecting concealed knowledge using a novel attentional blink paradigm.

Traditional concealed information paradigms rely on the idea that stimuli that are meaningful to a person (critical items) will draw attentional resources disproportionately, relative to stimuli that are not (irrelevant items), generating detectable differences on a suitable dependent variable (behavioral, psychophysiological, or neural). Here, we introduce a behavioral paradigm that could be used to reveal concealed information by exploiting the link between concealed information and attentional processes more directly. This novel paradigm is based on the attentional blink phenomenon in which detection of a stimulus reduces detection accuracy rates of subsequent target stimuli within a 200-500 ms time window. We hypothesized that a well-known face used as a critical item could capture attentional resources automatically, making it harder to detect the occurrence of a subsequently presented target face. The results confirmed this hypothesis, and showed that concealed knowledge of a famous face could be detected in 9 out of 12 individuals by looking for a relative dip in target detection accuracy after the presentation of a critical item.

Spontaneous Vicarious Perception of the Content of Another's Visual Perspective.

Visual perspective taking (VPT) is a core process of social cognition, providing humans with insights into what the environment looks like from another's point of view [1-4]. While VPT is often described as a quasi-perceptual phenomenon [5, 6], evidence for this proposal has been lacking. Here, we provide direct evidence that another's perspective can "stand in" for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making. In a variant of the classic mental rotation task, participants judged whether characters presented in different orientations were canonical or mirror inverted. In the absence of another person, we replicate the well-established positive linear relationship between recognition times and angle of orientation such that recognition becomes slower the more an item has to be mentally rotated into its canonical orientation [7]. Importantly, this relationship was disrupted simply by placing another individual in the scene. Items rotated away from the participant were recognized more rapidly the closer they appeared in their canonical orientation, not only to the participant, but also to this other individual, showing that another's visual perspective drives mental rotation and item recognition in a similar way as one's own visual perspective. The effects were large and replicated in the three independent studies. They were observed even when the other person was completely passive, enhanced when the participant was explicitly instructed to take the other person's perspective, but reduced when the persons in the scenes were replaced with objects. The content of another's perspective is therefore spontaneously derived, takes a quasi-perceptual form, and can stand in for one's own sensory input during perceptual decision making.

Alcohol, empathy, and morality: acute effects of alcohol consumption on affective empathy and moral decision-making.

RATIONALE: Hypothetical moral dilemmas, pitting characteristically utilitarian and non-utilitarian outcomes against each other, have played a central role in investigations of moral decision-making. Preferences for utilitarian over non-utilitarian responses have been explained by two contrasting hypotheses; one implicating increased deliberative reasoning, and the other implicating diminished harm aversion. In recent field experiments, these hypotheses have been investigated using alcohol intoxication to impair both social and cognitive functioning. These studies have found increased utilitarian responding, arguably as a result of alcohol impairing affective empathy. OBJECTIVES: The present research expands existing investigations by examining the acute effects of alcohol on affective empathy and subsequent moral judgments in traditional vignettes and moral actions in virtual reality, as well as physiological responses in moral dilemmas. METHODS: Participants (N = 48) were administered either a placebo or alcohol in one of two dosages; low or moderate. Both pre- and post intervention, participants completed a moral action and moral judgment task alongside behavioural measures of affective empathy. RESULTS: Higher dosages of alcohol consumption resulted in inappropriate empathic responses to facial displays of emotion, mirroring responses of individuals high in trait psychopathy, but empathy for pain was unaffected. Whilst affective empathy was influenced by alcohol consumption in a facial responding task, both moral judgments and moral actions were unaffected. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that facets, beyond or in addition to deficits in affective empathy, might influence the relationship between alcohol consumption and utilitarian endorsements.

Visual mental imagery and perception produce opposite adaptation effects on early brain potentials.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a rapid adaptation paradigm to determine whether visual perception and visual mental imagery of faces recruit the same early perceptual processes. The early effect of face and object adaptors, either perceived or visualized, on test stimuli, was assessed by measuring the amplitude of the N170/VPP complex, typically much larger for faces than for other object categories. Faces elicited a robust N170/VPP complex, localized to posterior ventrolateral occipitotemporal cortex. Both visualized and perceived adaptors affected the N170/VPP complex to test faces from 120 ms post-stimulus, reflecting effects on neural populations supporting early perceptual face categorization. Critically, while perceived adaptors suppressed the amplitude of the N170/VPP, visualized adaptors enhanced it. We suggest that perceived adaptors affect neural populations in the neocortex supporting early perceptual processing of faces via bottom-up mechanisms, whereas visualized adaptors affect them via top-down mechanisms. Similar enhancement effects were found on the N170/VPP complex to non-face objects, suggesting such effects are a general consequence of visual imagery on processing of faces and other object categories. These findings support image-percept equivalence theories and may explain, in part, why visual percepts and visual mental images are not routinely confused, even though both engage similar neural populations in the visual system.

Elucidating the neural correlates of egoistic and moralistic self-enhancement.

Self-enhancement is the biasing of one's view of oneself in a positive direction. The brain correlates of self-enhancement remain unclear though it has been reported that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) may be important for producing self-enhancing responses. Previous studies have not examined whether the neural correlates of self-enhancement depend on the particular domain in which individuals are enhancing themselves. Both moralistic and egoistic words were presented to participants while transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the MPFC, precuneus or in a sham orientation. Participants were asked to make decisions as to the words describing themselves, some of which were positive and some of which were negative. It was found the MPFC TMS significantly disrupted egoistic self-enhancement when TMS was delivered to the MPFC. Judgments involving moralistic words were not influenced by TMS. These data provide further evidence that MPFC is involved in self-enhancement, and that the role of MPFC may be selective in this regard.

Training generalized spatial skills.

Spatial transformation skills are an essential aspect of cognitive ability. These skills can be improved by practice, but such improvement has usually been specific to tasks and stimuli. The present study investigated whether intensive long-term practice leads to change that transcends stimulus and task parameters. Thirty-one participants (14 male, 17 female) were tested on three cognitive tasks: a computerized version of the Shepard-Metzler (1971) mental rotation task (MRT), a mental paper-folding task (MPFT), and a verbal analogies task (VAT). Each individual then participated in daily practice sessions with the MRT or the MPFT over 21 days. Postpractice comparisons revealed transfer of practice gains to novel stimuli for the practiced task, as well as transfer to the other, nonpracticed spatial task. Thus, practice effects were process based, not instance based. Improvement in the nonpracticed spatial task was greater than that in the VAT; thus, improvement was not merely due to greater ease with computerized testing.