Examining predictive coding accounts of typical and autistic neurocognitive development.

Predictive coding has emerged as a prominent theoretical framework for understanding perception and its neural underpinnings. There has been a recent surge of interest in the predictive coding framework across the mind sciences. However, comparatively little of the research in this field has investigated the neural underpinnings of predictive coding in young neurotypical and autistic children. This paper provides an overview of predictive coding accounts of typical and autistic neurocognitive development and includes a review of the current electrophysiological evidence supporting these accounts. Based on the current evidence, it is clear that more research in pediatrics is needed to evaluate predictive coding accounts of neurocognitive development fully. If supported, these accounts could have wide-ranging practical implications for pedagogy, parenting, artificial intelligence, and clinical approaches to helping autistic children manage the barrage of everyday sensory information.

The development and structure of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study EEG protocol.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. Electroencephalography (EEG) is one of two brain imaging modalities central to the HBCD Study. EEG records electrical signals from the scalp that reflect electrical brain activity. In addition, the EEG signal can be synchronized to the presentation of discrete stimuli (auditory or visual) to measure specific cognitive processes with excellent temporal precision (e.g., event-related potentials; ERPs). EEG is particularly helpful for the HBCD Study as it can be used with awake, alert infants, and can be acquired continuously across development. The current paper reviews the HBCD Study's EEG/ERP protocol: (a) the selection and development of the tasks (Video Resting State, Visual Evoked Potential, Auditory Oddball, Face Processing); (b) the implementation of common cross-site acquisition parameters and hardware, site setup, training, and initial piloting; (c) the development of the preprocessing pipelines and creation of derivatives; and (d) the incorporation of equity and inclusion considerations. The paper also provides an overview of the functioning of the EEG Workgroup and the input from members across all steps of protocol development and piloting.

Combined Effects of Moderate Hypoxia and Sleep Restriction on Mental Workload.

Aircraft pilots face a high mental workload (MW) under environmental constraints induced by high altitude and sometimes sleep restriction (SR). Our aim was to assess the combined effects of hypoxia and sleep restriction on cognitive and physiological responses to different MW levels using the Multi-Attribute Test Battery (MATB)-II with an additional auditory Oddball-like task. Seventeen healthy subjects were subjected in random order to three 12-min periods of increased MW level (low, medium, and high): sleep restriction (SR, <3 h of total sleep time (TST)) vs. habitual sleep (HS, >6 h TST), hypoxia (HY, 2 h, FIO2 = 13.6%, ~3500 m vs. normoxia, NO, FIO2 = 21%). Following each MW level, participants completed the NASA-TLX subjective MW scale. Increasing MW decreases performance on the MATB-II Tracking task (p = 0.001, MW difficulty main effect) and increases NASA-TLX (p = 0.001). In the combined HY/SR condition, MATB-II performance was lower, and the NASA-TLX score was higher compared with the NO/HS condition, while no effect of hypoxia alone was observed. In the accuracy of the auditory task, there is a significant interaction between hypoxia and MW difficulty (F(2-176) = 3.14, p = 0.04), with lower values at high MW under hypoxic conditions. Breathing rate, pupil size, and amplitude of pupil dilation response (PDR) to auditory stimuli are associated with increased MW. These parameters are the best predictors of increased MW, independently of physiological constraints. Adding ECG, SpO2, or electrodermal conductance does not improve model performance. In conclusion, hypoxia and sleep restriction have an additive effect on MW. Physiological and electrophysiological responses must be taken into account when designing a MW predictive model and cross-validation.

Socioeconomic Inequalities Affect Brain Responses of Infants Growing Up in Germany.

Developmental changes in functional neural networks are sensitive to environmental influences. This EEG study investigated how infant brain responses relate to the social context that their families live in. Event-related potentials of 255 healthy, awake infants between six and fourteen months were measured during a passive auditory oddball paradigm. Infants were presented with 200 standard tones and 48 randomly distributed deviants. All infants are part of a longitudinal study focusing on families with socioeconomic and/or cultural challenges (Bremen Initiative to Foster Early Childhood Development; BRISE; Germany). As part of their familial socioeconomic status (SES), parental level of education and infant's migration background were assessed with questionnaires. For 30.6% of the infants both parents had a low level of education (≤10 years of schooling) and for 43.1% of the infants at least one parent was born abroad. The N2-P3a complex is associated with unintentional directing of attention to deviant stimuli and was analysed in frontocentral brain regions. Age was utilised as a control variable. Our results show that tone deviations in infants trigger an immature N2-P3a complex. Contrary to studies with older children or adults, the N2 amplitude was more positive for deviants than for standards. This may be related to an immature superposition of the N2 with the P3a. For infants whose parents had no high-school degree and were born abroad, this tendency was increased, indicating that facing multiple challenges as a young family impacts on the infant's early neural development. As such, attending to unexpected stimulus changes may be important for early learning processes. Variations of the infant N2-P3a complex may, thus, relate to early changes in attentional capacity and learning experiences due to familial challenges. This points towards the importance of early prevention programs.

Aberrant hyperfocusing in schizophrenia indicated by elevated theta phase-gamma amplitude coupling.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate electroencephalographic (EEG) markers of aberrant hyperfocusing, a novel framework of impaired selective attention, in schizophrenia patients by using theta phase-gamma amplitude coupling (TGC). METHODS: Fifty-four schizophrenia patients and 73 healthy controls (HCs) underwent EEG recording during an auditory oddball paradigm. For the standard and target conditions, TGC was calculated using the source signals from 25 brain regions of interest (ROIs) related to attention networks and sensory processing; TGC values were then compared across groups and conditions using two-way analysis of covariance. Correlations of altered TGC with performance on the Trail Making Test Parts A and B (TMT-A/B), were explored. RESULTS: Compared to HCs, schizophrenia patients showed elevated TGC in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus in the standard condition but not in the target condition. Correlation analyses revealed that the TGC in the left IFG was positively correlated with the TMT-A/B completion times. CONCLUSIONS: Aberrant hyperfocusing, as reflected by elevated TGC in attention-related brain regions, was related to behavioral performance on the TMT-A/B in schizophrenia patients. SIGNIFICANCE: This study suggests that TGC is a electrophysiological marker for aberrant hyperfocusing of attentional processes that may result in cognitive impairments in schizophrenia patients.

The distress context of social calls evokes a fear response in the bat Pipistrellus abramus.

Bats primarily use sound information, including echolocation, for social communication. Bats under stressful conditions, for example when confronted by a predator, will emit aggressive social calls. The presentation of aggressive social calls, including distress calls (DCs), is known to increase heart rate (fH), but how this change in fH is related to the bat's sound perception and how this evokes behaviors such as the fear response is unknown. Herein, we show that the perception of a distress context induces freezing behavior as a fear response in bats. We found that bats responded by freezing and displayed increased fH when they were presented with a conspecific donor bat in a distress situation evoked by gentle poking with a cotton swab. In addition, when we presented two types of auditory oddball paradigms with different probabilities of DCs and echolocation calls (ECs), the bats' fH increased when DCs were presented as deviant or control stimuli within standard ECs but did not increase when DCs were presented as standard stimuli. These results suggest that the situational context created by the frequency of sound presentation, rather than simply a single sound feature, induces fH increases and freezing as fear responses in bats.

Regional brain activity of resting-state fMRI and auditory oddball ERP with multimodal approach in individuals with internet gaming disorder.

Background and aims: Resting-state brain activity may be associated with the ability to perform tasks; however, a multimodal approach involving resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERPs) has not been widely used to investigate addictive disorders. Methods: We explored resting-state fMRI and auditory oddball ERP values from 26 with internet gaming disorder (IGD) patients and 27 age- and intelligence quotient-matched healthy controls (HCs). To assess the characteristics of resting-state fMRI, we calculated regional homogeneity (ReHo), amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF); we also calculated the P3 component of the ERPs. Results: Compared with HCs, the individuals with IGD exhibited significant decreases in ReHo and fALFF values in the left inferior occipital gyrus, increased ReHo and ALFF values in the right precuneus, increased ALFF in the left superior frontal gyrus, and lower P3 amplitudes in the midline centro-parietal area during the auditory ERP task. Furthermore, the regional activity of resting-state fMRI in the right inferior temporal gyrus and the occipital regions were positively correlated with the P3 amplitudes in IGD patients, whereas ReHo values of the left hippocampus and the right amygdala were negatively correlated with P3. Discussion and conclusions: Our results suggest that IGD patients have difficulty interacting effectively with cognitive function and sensory processing, although its interpretations need some cautions. The findings in this study will broaden the overall understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie IGD pathophysiology.

The development of the relationship between auditory and visual neural sensitivity and autonomic arousal from 6 m to 12 m.

The differential sensitivity hypothesis argues that environmental sensitivity has the bivalent effect of predisposing individuals to both the risk-inducing and development-enhancing influences of early social environments. However, the hypothesis requires that this variation in environmental sensitivity be general across domains. In this study, we focused on neural sensitivity and autonomic arousal to test domain generality. Neural sensitivity can be assessed by correlating measures of perceptual sensitivity, as indexed by event-related potentials (ERP) in electrophysiology. The sensitivity of autonomic arousal can be tested via heart rate changes. Domain generality was tested by comparing associations in perceptual sensitivity across auditory and visual domains, and associations between sensitivity in sensory domains and heart rate. We contrasted ERP components in auditory (P3) and visual (P1, N290 and P4) detection-of-difference tasks for N = 68 infants longitudinally at 6 and 12 months of age. Domain generality should produce correlated individual differences in sensitivity across the two modalities, with higher levels of autonomic arousal associating with increased perceptual sensitivity. Having controlled for multiple comparisons, at 6 months of age, the difference in amplitude of the P3 component evoked in response to standard and deviant tones correlated with the difference in amplitude of the P1 N290 and P4 face-sensitive components evoked in response to fearful and neutral faces. However, this correlation was not found at 12 months of age. Similarly, autonomic arousal correlated with neural sensitivity at 6 months but not at 12 months. The results suggest bottom-up neural perceptual sensitivity is domain-general across auditory and visual domains and is related to autonomic arousal at 6 months but not at 12 months of age. We interpret the development of the association of these markers of ES within a neuroconstructivist framework and with respect to the concept of interactive specialisation. By 12 months of age, more experience of visual processing may have led to top-down endogenous attention mechanisms that process visual information in a way that no longer associates with automatic auditory perceptual sensitivity.

Effects of transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on P300 magnitudes and salivary alpha-amylase during an auditory oddball task.

Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) is a non-invasive neurostimulation technique that is thought to modulate noradrenergic activity. Previous studies have demonstrated inconsistent effects of taVNS on noradrenergic activity, which is possibly due to insufficient statistical power, suboptimal stimulation parameter settings, and data collection procedures. In this preregistered within-subject experiment, 44 healthy participants received taVNS and sham (earlobe) stimulation during two separate experimental sessions. Stimulation intensity was individually calibrated to the maximum level below pain. During each session, participants received the stimulation continuously ten minutes before an auditory novelty oddball task till the end of the experimental session. The P3b component of the event-related potential served as a marker of phasic noradrenergic activity, whereas P3a magnitude was explored as an index of dopaminergic activity. Salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) was measured as an index of tonic noradrenergic activity before and at the end of the stimulation. The taVNS and sham conditions did not differ in P3a or P3b magnitudes, nor sAA secretion. These findings call into question whether taVNS, administered continuously at high, nonpainful stimulation intensities, reliably augments noradrenergic activity via the vagus nerve.

Regional variations distinguish auditory from visual evoked potentials in healthy 4 week old piglets.

Objective.Evoked potentials (EP), measured using electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings provide an opportunity to monitor cognitive dysfunctions after neurological diseases or traumatic brain injury (TBI). The 4 week old piglet is an established model of paediatric TBI; therefore, healthy piglets were studied to establish feasibility of obtaining responses to auditory and visual stimuli. A secondary aim was to input the EEG data into a piglet computational model to localize the brain sources related to processing. We tested the hypotheses: (1) visual, auditory-standard, and auditory-target stimuli elicit responses, (2) there is an effect of stimulus type, day tested, and electrode region on EPs from EEG, (3) there is an effect of stimulus type, day tested, and brain region on localized sources from a computational model.Approach.Eleven 4 week old female piglets were fitted with a 32-electrode net and presented with a simple white light stimulus and an auditory oddball click train (70 standard; 30 target tones).Main results.N1 andP2 amplitudes were consistently observed for all stimulus types. Significant interaction effects between brain region and stimulus for EP and current density demonstrate that cognitive responses are specific to each modality with auditory localizing to the temporal region and visual to the occipital regions. There was a day effect where larger responses were found on the first day than day 2 and 3 and may be due to the novelty of the stimulus on the first day. Visual stimuli had largerP1 amplitudes and earlier latencies (P1,N1) than auditory which coincides with current density results at 50 ms where larger activations were observed for visual. At 85 ms, auditory had significantly larger current densities coincident with larger and longerN1 amplitudes and latencies than visual.Significance.Auditory and visual processing were successfully and consistently obtained in a porcine model and can be evaluated as a diagnostic assessment for TBI.

P300 Following Four Voluntarily Regulated Yoga Breathing Practices and Breath Awareness.

Attention was influenced by yoga breathing in previously published research. Each yoga breathing practice uniquely modifies specific breath characteristics. Differences in the study designs, assessment methods and interventions resulted in difficulty in comparing effects between yoga breathing practices. This study aimed (i) to compare four yoga breathing practices on attention using an auditory oddball task and (ii) to determine cardiac autonomic activity associated with attention using heart rate variability. P300 event related potential was recorded simultaneously with heart rate variability before and after 18-minute periods each of (i) high frequency yoga breathing (with increased breath frequency), (ii) bellows yoga breathing (with increased depth of respiration), (iii) alternate nostril yoga breathing (with alternate nostril patency), (iv) bumblebee yoga breathing (with prolonged exhale), (v) breath awareness (with attention to the breath) and (vi) quiet seated rest as control in 38 yoga experienced males (average age ± SD; 24.08 ± 4.01 years). The six sessions were on separate, randomly allocated days. The P300 peak amplitude recorded at Pz was significantly increased after four yoga breathing practices (Bonferroni adjusted post-hoc tests, repeated measures ANOVA). No significant changes were noted in heart rate variability following yoga breathing or control sessions. These findings suggest that the four yoga breathing practices increase the attentional neural resources engaged for this auditory oddball task, irrespective of the characteristic of breath uniquely regulated in the four yoga breathing practices.

Bilingualism Alters the Neural Correlates of Sustained Attention.

The present study examined whether monolingual and bilingual language experience -- including first and second language proficiency, exposure, and age of acquisition -- modify the neural mechanisms of attention during nonverbal sound discrimination. English monolinguals and Korean-English bilinguals performed an auditory two-stimulus oddball task while their EEG was recorded. Participants heard a series of two different tones (high pitch tone versus low pitch tone), one of which occurred less frequently (deviant trials) than the other (standard trials), and were asked to mentally count the number of infrequent tones. We found that in the early time window, bilinguals had larger amplitudes than monolinguals in response to both standard and deviant trials, suggesting that bilinguals initially increased attention to identify which of the two tones they heard. In the later time window, however, bilinguals had a smaller ERP effect (deviant minus standard trials) relative to monolinguals, suggesting that bilinguals used fewer cognitive resources for the infrequent stimuli at later stages of processing. Furthermore, across the entire sample, increased exposure to the native language led to larger early, middle, and late ERP effects. These results suggest that native language exposure shapes perceptual processes involved in detection and monitoring. Knowing more than one language may alter sustained attentional processes, with implications for perception and learning.

Tonic and phasic effects of reward on the pupil: implications for locus coeruleus function.

The locus coeruleus (LC), a nucleus in the pons of the brainstem, plays a significant role in attention and cognitive control. Here, we use an adapted auditory oddball paradigm and measured the pupil dilation response, to provide a marker of LC activity in humans. In Experiment 1, we show event-related pupil responses to rare auditory events which were further elevated by task relevant. In Experiment 2, by asking participants to silently count the number of oddballs, we demonstrated that the task-relevance elevation was not a result of the generation or execution of the manual response. In Experiment 3, we observed two separate effects of reward on the pupil response. First, we found an overall increase in pupil area in the high compared to the low-reward blocks: a sustained effect reminiscent of the tonic changes that occur in LC. Second, we found elevated event-related pupil responses to behaviourally relevant stimuli in the high-reward condition compared with the low-reward condition, consistent with phasic changes in LC in response to a stimulus. These results highlight the complexity of the relationship between the pupil response and reward, and the inferred role of LC in both top-down and bottom-up cognitive control.

Schizophrenia induces abnormal frequency-dependent patterns of dynamic brain network reconfiguration during an auditory oddball task.

Objective.Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder that has been shown to disturb the dynamic top-down processing of sensory information. Various imaging techniques have revealed abnormalities in brain activity associated with this disorder, both locally and between cerebral regions. However, there is increasing interest in investigating dynamic network response to novel and relevant events at the network level during an attention-demanding task with high-temporal-resolution techniques. The aim of the work was: (i) to test the capacity of a novel algorithm to detect recurrent brain meta-states from auditory oddball task recordings; and (ii) to evaluate how the dynamic activation and behavior of the aforementioned meta-states were altered in schizophrenia, since it has been shown to impair top-down processing of sensory information.Approach.A novel unsupervised method for the detection of brain meta-states based on recurrence plots and community detection algorithms, previously tested on resting-state data, was used on auditory oddball task recordings. Brain meta-states and several properties related to their activation during target trials in the task were extracted from electroencephalography data from patients with schizophrenia and cognitively healthy controls.Main results.The methodology successfully detected meta-states during an auditory oddball task, and they appeared to show both frequency-dependent time-locked and non-time-locked activity with respect to the stimulus onset. Moreover, patients with schizophrenia displayed higher network diversity, and showed more sluggish meta-state transitions, reflected in increased dwell times, less complex meta-state sequences, decreased meta-state space speed, and abnormal ratio of negative meta-state correlations.Significance.Abnormal cognition in schizophrenia is also reflected in decreased brain flexibility at the dynamic network level, which may hamper top-down processing, possibly indicating impaired decision-making linked to dysfunctional predictive coding. Moreover, the results showed the ability of the methodology to find meaningful and task-relevant changes in dynamic connectivity and pathology-related group differences.

Reward magnitude enhances early attentional processing of auditory stimuli.

Reward associations are known to shape the brain's processing of visual stimuli, but relatively less is known about how reward associations impact the processing of auditory stimuli. We leveraged the high-temporal resolution of electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the influence of low- and high-magnitude stimulus-reward associations in an auditory oddball task. We associated fast, correct detection of certain auditory target stimuli with larger monetary rewards, and other auditory targets with smaller rewards. We found enhanced attentional processing of the more highly rewarded target stimuli, as evidenced by faster behavioral detection of those stimuli compared with lower-rewarded stimuli. Neurally, higher-reward associations enhanced the early sensory processing of auditory targets. Targets associated with higher-magnitude rewards had higher amplitude N1 and mismatch negativity (MMN) ERP components than targets associated with lower-magnitude rewards. Reward did not impact the latency of these early components. Higher-reward magnitude also decreased the latency and increased the amplitude of the longer-latency P3 component, suggesting that reward also can enhance the final processing stages of auditory target stimuli. These results provide insight into how the sensory and attentional neural processing of auditory stimuli is modulated by stimulus-reward associations and the magnitude of those associations, with higher-magnitude reward associations yielding enhanced auditory processing at both early and late stages compared with lower-magnitude reward associations.

Deviants Are Detected Faster at the End of Verse-Like Sound Sequences.

Songs and poems from different traditions show a striking formal similarity: lines are flexible at the beginning and get more regular toward the end. This suggests that the free-beginning/strict-end pattern stems from a cognitive bias shared among humans. We propose that this is due to an increased sensitivity to deviants later in the line, resulting from a prediction-driven attention increase disrupted by line breaks. The study tests this hypothesis using an auditory oddball task where drum strokes are presented in sequences of eight, mimicking syllables in song or poem lines. We find that deviant strokes occurring later in the line are detected faster, mirroring the lower occurrence of deviant syllables toward the end of verse lines.

Subjective SES is Associated with Children's Neurophysiological Response to Auditory Oddballs.

Language and reading acquisitions are strongly associated with a child's socioeconomic status (SES). There are a number of potential explanations for this relationship. We explore one potential explanation-a child's SES is associated with how children discriminate word-like sounds (i.e., phonological processing), a foundational skill for reading acquisition. Magnetoencephalography data from a sample of 71 children (aged 6 years and 11 months-12 years and 3 months), during a passive auditory oddball task containing word and nonword deviants, were used to test "where" (which sensors) and "when" (at what time) any association may occur. We also investigated associations between cognition, education, and this neurophysiological response. We report differences in the neural processing of word and nonword deviant tones at an early N200 component (likely representing early sensory processing) and a later P300 component (likely representing attentional and/or semantic processing). More interestingly we found "parental subjective" SES (the parents rating of their own relative affluence) was convincingly associated with later responses, but there were no significant associations with equivalized income. This suggests that the SES as rated by their parents is associated with underlying phonological detection skills. Furthermore, this correlation likely occurs at a later time point in information processing, associated with semantic and attentional processes. In contrast, household income is not significantly associated with these skills. One possibility is that the subjective assessment of SES is more impactful on neural mechanisms of phonological processing than the less complex and more objective measure of household income.

Revealing the mechanisms behind novel auditory stimuli discrimination: An evaluation of silent functional MRI using looping star.

Looping Star is a near-silent, multi-echo, 3D functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique. It reduces acoustic noise by at least 25dBA, with respect to gradient-recalled echo echo-planar imaging (GRE-EPI)-based fMRI. Looping Star has successfully demonstrated sensitivity to the cerebral blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response during block design paradigms but has not been applied to event-related auditory perception tasks. Demonstrating Looping Star's sensitivity to such tasks could (a) provide new insights into auditory processing studies, (b) minimise the need for invasive ear protection, and (c) facilitate the translation of numerous fMRI studies to investigations in sound-averse patients. We aimed to demonstrate, for the first time, that multi-echo Looping Star has sufficient sensitivity to the BOLD response, compared to that of GRE-EPI, during a well-established event-related auditory discrimination paradigm: the "oddball" task. We also present the first quantitative evaluation of Looping Star's test-retest reliability using the intra-class correlation coefficient. Twelve participants were scanned using single-echo GRE-EPI and multi-echo Looping Star fMRI in two sessions. Random-effects analyses were performed, evaluating the overall response to tones and differential tone recognition, and intermodality analyses were computed. We found that multi-echo Looping Star exhibited consistent sensitivity to auditory stimulation relative to GRE-EPI. However, Looping Star demonstrated lower test-retest reliability in comparison with GRE-EPI. This could reflect differences in functional sensitivity between the techniques, though further study is necessary with additional cognitive paradigms as varying cognitive strategies between sessions may arise from elimination of acoustic scanner noise.

Brain Network Analysis of EEG Recordings Can Be Used to Assess Cognitive Function in Teenagers With 15q13.3 Microdeletion Syndrome.

15q13.3 microdeletion syndrome causes a spectrum of cognitive disorders, including intellectual disability and autism. We assessed the ability of the EEG analysis algorithm Brain Network Analysis (BNA) to measure cognitive function in 15q13.3 deletion patients, and to differentiate between patient and control groups. EEG data was collected from 10 individuals with 15q13.3 microdeletion syndrome (14-18 years of age), as well as 30 age-matched healthy controls, as the subjects responded to Auditory Oddball (AOB) and Go/NoGo cognitive tasks. It was determined that BNA can be used to evaluate cognitive function in 15q13.3 microdeletion patients. This analysis also significantly differentiates between patient and control groups using 5 scores, all of which are produced from ERP peaks related to late cortical components that represent higher cognitive functions of attention allocation and response inhibition (P < 0.05).