Steady-state responses to concurrent melodies: source distribution, top-down, and bottom-up attention.

Humans can direct attentional resources to a single sound occurring simultaneously among others to extract the most behaviourally relevant information present. To investigate this cognitive phenomenon in a precise manner, we used frequency-tagging to separate neural auditory steady-state responses (ASSRs) that can be traced back to each auditory stimulus, from the neural mix elicited by multiple simultaneous sounds. Using a mixture of 2 frequency-tagged melody streams, we instructed participants to selectively attend to one stream or the other while following the development of the pitch contour. Bottom-up attention towards either stream was also manipulated with salient changes in pitch. Distributed source analyses of magnetoencephalography measurements showed that the effect of ASSR enhancement from top-down driven attention was strongest at the left frontal cortex, while that of bottom-up driven attention was dominant at the right temporal cortex. Furthermore, the degree of ASSR suppression from simultaneous stimuli varied across cortical lobes and hemisphere. The ASSR source distribution changes from temporal-dominance during single-stream perception, to proportionally more activity in the frontal and centro-parietal cortical regions when listening to simultaneous streams. These findings are a step forward to studying cognition in more complex and naturalistic soundscapes using frequency-tagging.

The angry versus happy recognition advantage: the role of emotional and physical properties.

Facial emotional expressions are pivotal for social communication. Their fast and accurate recognition is crucial to promote adaptive responses to social demands, for the development of functional relationships, and for well-being. However, the literature has been inconsistent in showing differentiated recognition patterns for positive vs. negative facial expressions (e.g., happy and angry expressions, respectively), likely due to affective and perceptual factors. Accordingly, the present study explored differences in recognition performance between angry and happy faces, while specifically assessing the role of emotional intensity and global/regional low-level visual features. 98 participants categorized angry and happy faces morphed between neutral and emotional across 9 levels of expression intensity (10-90%). We observed a significantly higher recognition efficiency (higher accuracy and shorter response latencies) for angry compared to happy faces in lower levels of expression intensity, suggesting that our cognitive resources are biased to prioritize the recognition of potentially harmful stimuli, especially when briefly presented at an ambiguous stage of expression. Conversely, an advantage for happy faces was observed from the midpoint of expression intensity, regarding response speed. However, when compensating for the contribution of regional low-level properties of distinct facial key regions, the effect of emotion was maintained only for response accuracy. Altogether, these results shed new light on the processing of facial emotional stimuli, emphasizing the need to consider emotional intensity and regional low-level image properties in emotion recognition analysis.

The impact of leadership on employee well-being: on-site compared to working from home.

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the way people work and there are several reasons to believe that working from home will become more common in the future. Yet more knowledge is needed on whether the effectiveness of leadership differs if the work is performed remotely compared to on-site work. PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to examine the place of work as a moderator for the effectiveness of leadership on employee well-being. METHOD: A survey was answered by 364 white-collar workers, employed by a larger Swedish municipality, who because of the covid-19-pandemic were offered to work from home. RESULTS: The employees working in their regular office perceived having more sufficient work equipment. No other differences were found in the investigated variables. Supportive leadership was associated with all investigated well-being variables in the hypothesised directions. Place of work did not moderate the relationship between Support leadership and the investigated well-being outcomes (Job satisfaction, Stress, General well-being). CONCLUSION: This study shows that there are few differences between employees working from home or working on-site during the Covid-19 pandemic. The supportive leadership of the closest manager seem to be important for well-being regardless of the worksite.

Auditory steady-state responses during and after a stimulus: Cortical sources, and the influence of attention and musicality.

The auditory steady-state response (ASSR) is an oscillatory brain response generated by periodic auditory stimuli and originates mainly from the temporal auditory cortices. Recent data show that while the auditory cortices are indeed strongly activated by the stimulus when it is present (ON ASSR), the anatomical distribution of ASSR sources involves also parietal and frontal cortices, indicating that the ASSR is a more complex phenomenon than previously believed. Furthermore, while the ASSR typically continues to oscillate even after the stimulus has stopped (OFF ASSR), very little is known about the characteristics of the OFF ASSR and how it compares to the ON ASSR. Here, we assessed whether the OFF and ON ASSR powers are modulated by the stimulus properties (i.e. volume and pitch), selective attention, as well as individual musical sophistication. We also investigated the cortical source distribution of the OFF ASSR using a melody tracking task, in which attention was directed between uniquely amplitude-modulated melody streams that differed in pitch. The ON and OFF ASSRs were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) on a group of participants varying from low to high degree of musical sophistication. Our results show that the OFF ASSR is different from the ON ASSR in nearly every aspect. While the ON ASSR was modulated by the stimulus properties and selective attention, the OFF ASSR was not influenced by any of these factors. Furthermore, while the ON ASSR was generated primarily from temporal sources, the OFF ASSR originated mainly from the frontal cortex. These findings challenge the notion that the OFF ASSR is merely a continuation of the ON ASSR. Rather, they suggest that the OFF ASSR is an internally-driven signal that develops from an initial sensory processing state (ON ASSR), with both types of ASSRs clearly differing in cortical representation and character. Furthermore, our results show that the ON ASSR power was enhanced by selective attention at cortical sources within each of the bilateral frontal, temporal, parietal and insular lobes. Finally, the ON ASSR proved sensitive to musicality, demonstrating positive correlations between musical sophistication and ASSR power, as well as with the degree of attentional ASSR modulation at the left and right parietal cortices. Taken together, these results show new aspects of the ASSR response, and demonstrate its usefulness as an effective tool for analysing how selective attention interacts with individual abilities in music perception.

Attentional modulation of the auditory steady-state response across the cortex.

Selective auditory attention allows us to focus on relevant sounds within noisy or complex auditory environments, and is essential for the processing of speech and music. The auditory steady-state response (ASSR) has been proposed as a neural measure for tracking selective auditory attention, even within continuous and complex soundscapes. However, the current literature is inconsistent on how the ASSR is influenced by selective attention, with findings based primarily on attention being directed to either ear rather than to sound content. In this experiment, a mixture of melody streams was presented to both ears identically (diotically) as we examined if selective auditory attention to sound content influences the ASSR. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we assessed the stream-specific ASSRs from three frequency-tagged melody streams when attention was directed between each melody stream, based on their respective pitch and timing. Our main results showed that selective attention enhances the ASSR power of an attended melody stream by 14% at a general sensor level. This ability to readily capture attentional changes in a stimuli-precise manner makes the ASSR a useful tool for studying selective auditory attention, especially in complex auditory environments. As a secondary aim, we explored the distribution of cortical ASSR sources and their respective attentional modulation using a distributed source model of the ASSR activity. Notably, we uncovered the existence of ASSR attentional modulation outside the temporal cortices. Across-subject averages of the attentional enhancement over the cortical surface suggest that frontal regions show up to ~80% enhancement, while temporal and parietal cortices were enhanced by 20-25%. Importantly, this work advocates a novel 'beyond the temporal cortex' perspective on ASSR modulation and also serves as a template for future studies to precisely pin-point which cortical sites are more susceptible to ASSR attentional modulation.

On-scalp MEG SQUIDs are sensitive to early somatosensory activity unseen by conventional MEG.

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) has a unique capacity to resolve the spatio-temporal development of brain activity from non-invasive measurements. Conventional MEG, however, relies on sensors that sample from a distance (20-40 â€‹mm) to the head due to thermal insulation requirements (the MEG sensors function at 4 â€‹K in a helmet). A gain in signal strength and spatial resolution may be achieved if sensors are moved closer to the head. Here, we report a study comparing measurements from a seven-channel on-scalp SQUID MEG system to those from a conventional (in-helmet) SQUID MEG system. We compared the spatio-temporal resolution between on-scalp and conventional MEG by comparing the discrimination accuracy for neural activity patterns resulting from stimulating five different phalanges of the right hand. Because of proximity and sensor density differences between on-scalp and conventional MEG, we hypothesized that on-scalp MEG would allow for a more high-resolved assessment of these activity patterns, and therefore also a better classification performance in discriminating between neural activations from the different phalanges. We observed that on-scalp MEG provided better classification performance during an early post-stimulus period (10-20 â€‹ms). This corresponded to the electroencephalographic (EEG) component P16/N16 and was an unexpected observation as this component is usually not observed in conventional MEG. This finding shows that on-scalp MEG enables a richer registration of the cortical signal, indicating a sensitivity to what are potentially sources in the thalamo-cortical radiation. We had originally expected that on-scalp MEG would provide better classification accuracy based on activity in proximity to the P60m component compared to conventional MEG. This component indeed allowed for the best classification performance for both MEG systems (60-75%, chance 50%). However, we did not find that on-scalp MEG allowed for better classification than conventional MEG at this latency. We suggest that this absence of differences is due to the limited sensor coverage in the recording, in combination with our strategy for positioning the on-scalp MEG sensors. We show how the current sensor coverage may have limited our chances to register the necessary between-phalange source field dissimilarities for fair hypothesis testing, an approach we otherwise believe to be useful for future benchmarking measurements.

On-scalp MEG sensor localization using magnetic dipole-like coils: A method for highly accurate co-registration.

Source modelling in magnetoencephalography (MEG) requires precise co-registration of the sensor array and the anatomical structure of the measured individual's head. In conventional MEG, the positions and orientations of the sensors relative to each other are fixed and known beforehand, requiring only localization of the head relative to the sensor array. Since the sensors in on-scalp MEG are positioned on the scalp, locations of the individual sensors depend on the subject's head shape and size. The positions and orientations of on-scalp sensors must therefore be measured at every recording. This can be achieved by inverting conventional head localization, localizing the sensors relative to the head - rather than the other way around. In this study we present a practical method for localizing sensors using magnetic dipole-like coils attached to the subject's head. We implement and evaluate the method in a set of on-scalp MEG recordings using a 7-channel on-scalp MEG system based on high critical temperature superconducting quantum interference devices (high-Tc SQUIDs). The method allows individually localizing the sensor positions, orientations, and responsivities with high accuracy using only a short averaging time (≤ 2 â€‹mm, < 3° and < 3%, respectively, with 1-s averaging), enabling continuous sensor localization. Calibrating and jointly localizing the sensor array can further improve the accuracy of position and orientation (< 1 â€‹mm and < 1°, respectively, with 1-s coil recordings). We demonstrate source localization of on-scalp recorded somatosensory evoked activity based on co-registration with our method. Equivalent current dipole fits of the evoked responses corresponded well (within 4.2 â€‹mm) with those based on a commercial, whole-head MEG system.

Somatosensory responses to nothing: An MEG study of expectations during omission of tactile stimulations.

The brain builds up expectations to future events based on the patterns of past events. This function has been studied extensively in the auditory and visual domains using various oddball paradigms, but only little exploration of this phenomenon has been done in the somatosensory domain. In this study, we explore how expectations of somatosensory stimulations are established and expressed in neural activity as measured with magnetoencephalography. Using tactile stimulations to the index finger, we compared conditions with actual stimulation to conditions with omitted stimulations, both of which were either expected or unexpected. Our results show that when a stimulation is expected but omitted, a time-locked response occurs ∼135 ms subsequent to the expected stimulation. This somatosensory response to "nothing" was source localized to the secondary somatosensory cortex and to the insula. This provides novel evidence of the capability of the brain of millisecond time-keeping of somatosensory patterns across intervals of 3000 ms. Our results also show that when stimuli are repeated and expectations are established, there is associated activity in the theta and beta bands. These theta and beta band expressions of expectation were localized to the primary somatosensory area, inferior parietal cortex and cerebellum. Furthermore, there was gamma band activity in the right insula for the first stimulation after an omission, which indicates the detection of a new stimulation event after an expected pattern has been broken. Finally, our results show that cerebellum play a crucial role in predicting upcoming stimulation and in predicting when stimulation may begin again.

Spatio-temporal profile of brain activity during gentle touch investigated with magnetoencephalography.

Positive affective touch plays a central role in social and inter-personal interactions. Low-threshold mechanoreceptive afferents, including slowly-conducting C-tactile (CT) afferents found in hairy skin, transmit such signals from gentle touch to the brain. Tactile signals are processed, in part, by the posterior insula, where it is the thought to be the primary target for CTs. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to assess brain activity evoked by gentle, naturalistic stroking touch on the arm delivered by a new MEG-compatible brush robot. We aimed to use high temporal resolution MEG to allow us to distinguish between brain responses from fast-conducting Aß and slowly-conducting CT afferents. Brush strokes were delivered to the left upper arm and left forearm of 15 healthy participants. We hypothesized that late brain responses, due to slow CT afference, would appear with a time shift between the two different locations on the arm. Our results show that gentle touch rapidly activated somatosensory, motor, and cingulate regions within the first 100 ms of skin contact, which was driven by fast-conducting mechanoreceptive afference, and that these responses were sustained during touch. Peak latencies in the posterior insula were shifted as a function of stimulus location and temporally-separate posterior insula activations were induced by Aß and CT afference that may modulate the emotional processing of gentle touch on hairy skin. We conclude that the detailed information regarding temporal and spatial brain activity from MEG provides new insights into the central processing of gentle, naturalistic touch, which is thought to underpin affective tactile interactions.

Communication quality between the medical team and the head coach/manager is associated with injury burden and player availability in elite football clubs.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated medical staff interpretations and descriptions of internal communication quality in elite football teams to determine whether internal communication was correlated with injuries and/or player availability at training and matches. METHODS: Medical staff from 36 elite football clubs across 17 European countries produced 77 reports at four postseason meetings to provide their perceptions of internal communications in their teams. They also recorded data on individual players' exposure to football and time-loss injuries. RESULTS: The injury burden and incidence of severe injuries were significantly higher in teams with low quality of communication between the head coach/manager and the medical team (scores of 1-2 on a 5-point Likert scale) compared with teams with moderate or high-quality scores (scores of 3-5; p=0.008 for both). Teams with low scores had 4%-5% lower training attendance (76% vs 83%, p=0.001) and less availability at matches (82% vs 88%, p=0.004) compared with teams with moderate or high communication quality scores. CONCLUSIONS: The quality of internal communication within a team was correlated with injury rates, training attendance and match availability.

The EU-Emotion Voice Database.

In this study, we report the validation results of the EU-Emotion Voice Database, an emotional voice database available for scientific use, containing a total of 2,159 validated emotional voice stimuli. The EU-Emotion voice stimuli consist of audio-recordings of 54 actors, each uttering sentences with the intention of conveying 20 different emotional states (plus neutral). The database is organized in three separate emotional voice stimulus sets in three different languages (British English, Swedish, and Hebrew). These three sets were independently validated by large pools of participants in the UK, Sweden, and Israel. Participants' validation of the stimuli included emotion categorization accuracy and ratings of emotional valence, intensity, and arousal. Here we report the validation results for the emotional voice stimuli from each site and provide validation data to download as a supplement, so as to make these data available to the scientific community. The EU-Emotion Voice Database is part of the EU-Emotion Stimulus Set, which in addition contains stimuli of emotions expressed in the visual modality (by facial expression, body language, and social scene) and is freely available to use for academic research purposes.

Is there a correlation between coaches' leadership styles and injuries in elite football teams? A study of 36 elite teams in 17 countries.

BACKGROUND: Do coaches' leadership styles affect injury rates and the availability of players in professional football? Certain types of leadership behaviour may cause stress and have a negative impact on players' health and well-being. AIM: To investigate the transformational leadership styles of head coaches in elite men's football and to evaluate the correlation between leadership styles, injury rates and players' availability. METHODS: Medical staff from 36 elite football clubs in 17 European countries produced 77 reports at four postseason meetings with a view to assessing their perception of the type of leadership exhibited by the head coaches of their respective teams using the Global Transformational Leadership scale. At the same time, they also recorded details of individual players' exposure to football and time-loss injuries. RESULTS: There was a negative correlation between the overall level of transformational leadership and the incidence of severe injuries (rho=-0.248; n=77; p=0.030); high levels of transformational leadership were associated with smaller numbers of severe injuries. Global Transformational Leadership only explained 6% of variation in the incidence of severe injuries (r2=0.062). The incidence of severe injuries was lower at clubs where coaches communicated a clear and positive vision, supported staff members and gave players encouragement and recognition. Players' attendance rates at training were higher in teams where coaches gave encouragement and recognition to staff members, encouraged innovative thinking, fostered trust and cooperation and acted as role models. CONCLUSIONS: There is an association between injury rates and players' availability and the leadership style of the head coach.

Metacognition of attention during tactile discrimination.

The ability to monitor the success of cognitive processing is referred to as metacognition. Studies of metacognition typically probe post-decision judgments of confidence, showing that we can report on the success of wide range of cognitive processes. Much less is known about our ability to monitor and report on the degree of top-down attention, an ability of paramount importance in tasks requiring sustained attention. However, it has been repeatedly shown that the degree and locus of top-down attention modulates alpha (8-14Hz) power in sensory cortices. In this study we investigated whether self-reported ratings of attention are reflected by sensory alpha power, independent from confidence and task difficulty. Subjects performed a stair-cased tactile discrimination task requiring sustained somatosensory attention. Each discrimination response was followed by a rating of their attention at the moment of stimulation, or their confidence in the discrimination response. MEG was used to estimate trial-by-trial alpha power preceding stimulation. Staircasing of task-difficulty successfully equalized performance between conditions. Both attention and confidence ratings reflected subsequent discrimination performance. Task difficulty specifically influenced confidence ratings. As expected, specifically attention ratings, but not confidence ratings, correlated negatively with contralateral somatosensory alpha power preceding tactile stimuli. Taken together, these results demonstrate that the degree of attention can be subjectively experienced and reported accurately, independent from task difficulty and knowledge about task performance.

The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set: A validation study.

The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is a newly developed collection of dynamic multimodal emotion and mental state representations. A total of 20 emotions and mental states are represented through facial expressions, vocal expressions, body gestures and contextual social scenes. This emotion set is portrayed by a multi-ethnic group of child and adult actors. Here we present the validation results, as well as participant ratings of the emotional valence, arousal and intensity of the visual stimuli from this emotion stimulus set. The EU-Emotion Stimulus Set is available for use by the scientific community and the validation data are provided as a supplement available for download.

Finding an emotional face in a crowd: emotional and perceptual stimulus factors influence visual search efficiency.

In this article, we examine how emotional and perceptual stimulus factors influence visual search efficiency. In an initial task, we run a visual search task, using a large number of target/distractor emotion combinations. In two subsequent tasks, we then assess measures of perceptual (rated and computational distances) and emotional (rated valence, arousal and potency) stimulus properties. In a series of regression analyses, we then explore the degree to which target salience (the size of target/distractor dissimilarities) on these emotional and perceptual measures predict the outcome on search efficiency measures (response times and accuracy) from the visual search task. The results show that both emotional and perceptual stimulus salience contribute to visual search efficiency. The results show that among the emotional measures, salience on arousal measures was more influential than valence salience. The importance of the arousal factor may be a contributing factor to contradictory history of results within this field.

In the grip of fear: dissociations in attentional processing of animal fearful individuals.

Using a modified attention paradigm we investigated specific attentional mechanisms in processing animal feared stimuli. In this paradigm arrays of four pictures were displayed and after its disappearance from view a probe (a letter, X or P) then followed unpredictably in the location of one of the four pictures. The results showed that discriminations of probes tended to be impeded by spider stimuli, compared to snake stimuli. This effect was potentiated by high anxiety but only for those individuals fearful of spiders, since no such effect was observed for snake fearful individuals. Moreover, the discrimination of the probes was not facilitated when presented after the feared stimuli. The implications of these findings are discussed as a function of the cognitive bias involved in specific fear.

Using facial emotional stimuli in visual search experiments: the arousal factor explains contradictory results.

For more than two decades, visual search experiments using pictures of emotional faces as stimuli have generated contradictory results. Evidence of a superior detection of angry faces compared to happy faces have been mixed with an equal amount of evidence in the opposite direction. In this article, we review this literature, and examine the hypothesis that the neglected stimulus factor of emotional arousal may explain these contradictory results. Through an extensive reanalysis of results from our own laboratory as well as from other researchers, we show that the arousal factor systematically influences the outcome of the reviewed visual search experiments, and may thus provide a key to the historical contradictions within this research field.

Change competence: An integrative literature review.

BACKGROUND: Organizations are in a state of continual evolution, driven by the relentless shifts in their external environments. Numerous theories have been proposed to understand the essential skills and capabilities for successful organizational change. Yet, there remains a gap in capturing a holistic view necessary to fully comprehend the dynamics of competence in today's rapidly changing landscape. OBJECTIVE: This research aims to explore and consolidate the concept of 'competence' in the context of organizational change processes. METHODS: Employing an integrative literature review approach, a total of 3,230 studies were screened. Out of these, 32 studies were selected based on strict relevance and quality criteria, providing a robust foundation for the analysis. RESULTS: The findings reveal a multi-layered nature of organizational change, highlighting that the nature and prerequisites of change vary significantly across different organizational levels. By applying a competence lens, we discern how required competence during change are not uniform but rather vary depending on whether they are applied in an operational or strategic context. This demonstrates a nuanced, level-dependent variability in change competence across the organizational hierarchy. CONCLUSION: We conceptualize 'change competence' as a dual-faceted construct. It encompasses both the capacity to leverage existing organizational competence and the adeptness to develop new competence, thereby meeting the evolving demands imposed by both internal and external drivers of change. This comprehensive understanding paves the way for more effective strategies in managing organizational change.

The Swedish National Facility for Magnetoencephalography Parkinson's disease dataset.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by a loss of dopamine and dopaminergic cells. The consequences hereof are widespread network disturbances in brain function. It is an ongoing topic of investigation how the disease-related changes in brain function manifest in PD relate to clinical symptoms. We present The Swedish National Facility for Magnetoencephalography Parkinson's Disease Dataset (NatMEG-PD) as an Open Science contribution to identify the functional neural signatures of Parkinson's disease and contribute to diagnosis and treatment. The dataset contains whole-head magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings from 66 well-characterised PD patients on their regular dose of dopamine replacement therapy and 68 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. NatMEG-PD contains three-minute eyes-closed resting-state MEG, MEG during an active movement task, and MEG during passive movements. The data includes anonymised MRI for source analysis and clinical scores. MEG data is rich in nature and can be used to explore numerous functional features. By sharing these data, we hope other researchers will contribute to advancing our understanding of the relationship between brain activity and disease state or symptoms.

Oscillatory and non-oscillatory features of the magnetoencephalic sensorimotor rhythm in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is associated with changes in neural activity in the sensorimotor alpha and beta bands. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated the role of spontaneous neuronal activity within the somatosensory cortex in a large cohort of early- to mid-stage PD patients (N = 78) on Parkinsonian medication and age- and sex-matched healthy controls (N = 60) using source reconstructed resting-state MEG. We quantified features of the time series data in terms of oscillatory alpha power and central alpha frequency, beta power and central beta frequency, and 1/f broadband characteristics using power spectral density. Furthermore, we characterised transient oscillatory burst events in the mu-beta band time-domain signals. We examined the relationship between these signal features and the patients' disease state, symptom severity, age, sex, and cortical thickness. PD patients and healthy controls differed on PSD broadband characteristics, with PD patients showing a steeper 1/f exponential slope and higher 1/f offset. PD patients further showed a steeper age-related decrease in the burst rate. Out of all the signal features of the sensorimotor activity, the burst rate was associated with increased severity of bradykinesia, whereas the burst duration was associated with axial symptoms. Our study shows that general non-oscillatory features (broadband 1/f exponent and offset) of the sensorimotor signals are related to disease state and oscillatory burst rate scales with symptom severity in PD.