Internal Representations Are Prioritized by Frontoparietal Theta Connectivity and Suppressed by alpha Oscillation Dynamics: Evidence from Concurrent Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation EEG and Invasive EEG.

Control over internal representations requires the prioritization of relevant information and suppression of irrelevant information. The frontoparietal network exhibits prominent neural oscillations during these distinct cognitive processes. Yet, the causal role of this network-scale activity is unclear. Here, we targeted theta-frequency frontoparietal coherence and dynamic alpha oscillations in the posterior parietal cortex using online rhythmic transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) in women and men while they prioritized or suppressed internally maintained working memory (WM) representations. Using concurrent high-density EEG, we provided evidence that we acutely drove the targeted neural oscillation and TMS improved WM capacity only when the evoked activity corresponded with the desired cognitive process. To suppress an internal representation, we increased the amplitude of lateralized alpha oscillations in the posterior parietal cortex contralateral to the irrelevant visual field. For prioritization, we found that TMS to the prefrontal cortex increased theta-frequency connectivity in the prefrontoparietal network contralateral to the relevant visual field. To understand the spatial specificity of these effects, we administered the WM task to participants with implanted electrodes. We found that theta connectivity during prioritization was directed from the lateral prefrontal to the superior posterior parietal cortex. Together, these findings provide causal evidence in support of a model where a frontoparietal theta network prioritizes internally maintained representations and alpha oscillations in the posterior parietal cortex suppress irrelevant representations.

A re-introduction of the psychodynamic approach to the standard clinical psychology curriculum.

OBJECTIVE: There is a strong evidence-base for a psychodynamic approach, supporting primary theoretical tenets as well as the treatment effectiveness. Additionally, there are increasing calls from the field for more individualized treatment for clients, and the lack of training in multiple orientations limits the ability of students in clinical psychology Ph.D. programs in the United States to personalize their treatments. The accumulated evidence-base for contemporary relational psychodynamic theory and therapy places it in good standing to return to the standard clinical psychology curriculum, along with other evidence-based approaches. METHODS: We use data from the Insider's Guide (which describes clinical Ph.D. programs in the United States) from three time points over 20 years to document the waning psychodynamic approach in clinical psychology programs. We review the scientific evidence for four primary tenets of a contemporary psychodynamic approach: three related to development-from healthy to psychopathological: (1) unconscious processes; (2) internal representations of self and other; (3) dimensional model of psychopathology, and a fourth tenet that builds on these three and is the foundation for a contemporary psychodynamic approach to psychotherapy: (4) therapeutic relationship as a primary mechanism of change. RESULTS/CONCLUSIONS: Based on the review of the evidence, we make specific recommendations for clinical psychology training programs about how to include a psychodynamic approach in the curriculum.

The Internal Representations Questionnaire: Measuring modes of thinking.

Does the format in which we experience our moment-to-moment thoughts vary from person to person? Many people claim that their thinking takes place in an inner voice and that using language outside of interpersonal communication is a regular experience for them. Other people disagree. We present a novel measure, the Internal Representation Questionnaire (IRQ) designed to assess people's subjective mode of internal representations, and to quantify individual differences in "modes of thinking" along multiple factors in a single questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis identified four factors: Internal Verbalization, Visual Imagery, Orthographic Imagery, and Representational Manipulation. All four factors were positively correlated with one another, but accounted for unique predictions. We describe the properties of the IRQ and report a test of its ability to predict patterns of interference in a speeded word-picture verification task. Taken together, the results suggest that self-reported differences in how people internally represent their thoughts relates to differences in processing familiar images and written words.

Longitudinal pathways from early maternal depression to children's dysregulated representations: a moderated mediation analysis of harsh parenting and gender.

There is some evidence linking maternal depression, harsh parenting, and children's internal representations of attachment, yet, longitudinal examinations of these relationships and differences in the developmental pathways between boys and girls are lacking. Moderated mediation growth curves were employed to examine harsh parenting as a mechanism underlying the link between maternal depression and children's dysregulated representations using a nationally-representative, economically-vulnerable sample of mothers and their children (n = 575; 49% boys, 51% girls). Dysregulation representations were measured using the MacArthur Story Stem Battery at five years of age (M = 5.14, SD = 0.29). Harsh parenting mediated the association between early maternal depression and dysregulated representations for girls. Though initial harsh parenting was a significant mediator for boys, a stronger direct effect of maternal depression to dysregulated representations emerged over time. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for intervention efforts aimed at promoting early supportive parenting.

Memory retrieval effects as a function of differences in phenomenal experience.

Conscious experience and perception are restricted to a single perspective. Although evidence to suggest differences in phenomenal experience can produce observable differences in behavior, it is not well understood how these differences might influence memory. We used fMRI to scan n = 49 participants while they encoded and performed a recognition memory test for faces and words. We calculated a cognitive bias score reflecting individual participants' propensity toward either Visual Imagery or Internal Verbalization based on their responses to the Internal Representations Questionnaire (IRQ). Neither visual imagery nor internal verbalization scores were significantly correlated with memory performance. In the fMRI data, there were typical patterns of activation differences between words and faces during both encoding and retrieval. There was no effect of internal representation bias on fMRI activation during encoding. At retrieval, however, a bias toward visualization was positively correlated with memory-related activation for both words and faces in inferior occipital gyri. Further, there was a crossover interaction in a network of brain regions such that visualization bias was associated with greater activation for words and verbalization bias was associated with greater activation for faces, consistent with increased effort for non-preferred stimulus retrieval. These findings suggest that individual differences in cognitive representations affect neural activation across different types of stimuli, potentially affecting memory retrieval performance.

Visual Representations: Insights from Neural Decoding.

Patterns of brain activity contain meaningful information about the perceived world. Recent decades have welcomed a new era in neural analyses, with computational techniques from machine learning applied to neural data to decode information represented in the brain. In this article, we review how decoding approaches have advanced our understanding of visual representations and discuss efforts to characterize both the complexity and the behavioral relevance of these representations. We outline the current consensus regarding the spatiotemporal structure of visual representations and review recent findings that suggest that visual representations are at once robust to perturbations, yet sensitive to different mental states. Beyond representations of the physical world, recent decoding work has shone a light on how the brain instantiates internally generated states, for example, during imagery and prediction. Going forward, decoding has remarkable potential to assess the functional relevance of visual representations for human behavior, reveal how representations change across development and during aging, and uncover their presentation in various mental disorders.

Non-autistic adults can recognize posed autistic facial expressions: Implications for internal representations of emotion.

Autistic people report that their emotional expressions are sometimes misunderstood by non-autistic people. One explanation for these misunderstandings could be that the two neurotypes have different internal representations of emotion: Perhaps they have different expectations about what a facial expression showing a particular emotion looks like. In three well-powered studies with non-autistic college students in the United States (total N = 632), we investigated this possibility. In Study 1, participants recognized most facial expressions posed by autistic individuals more accurately than those posed by non-autistic individuals. Study 2 showed that one reason the autistic expressions were recognized more accurately was because they were better and more intense examples of the intended expressions than the non-autistic expressions. In Study 3, we used a set of expressions created by autistic and non-autistic individuals who could see their faces as they made the expressions, which could allow them to explicitly match the expression they produced with their internal representation of that emotional expression. Here, neither autistic expressions nor non-autistic expressions were consistently recognized more accurately. In short, these findings suggest that differences in internal representations of what emotional expressions look like are unlikely to play a major role in explaining why non-autistic people sometimes misunderstand the emotions autistic people are experiencing.

The effect of mode of presentation on Tower of Hanoi problem solving.

The Tower of Hanoi (TOH) is a classic problem that can be solved via multiple strategies. This study used TOH to examine how mode of presentation of a problem influences strategy use and transfer. Undergraduate students (Experiment 1) or Prolific workers (Experiment 2) completed two TOH problems of varying difficulty (4-disk/5-disk). They were randomly assigned to different conditions in which problems were either high in internal representation (mental) or high in external representation (computer). Participants were better able to complete problems successfully when external representations were available but completed problems in fewer moves when relying on internal representations. In addition, participants spent more time between moves when solving problems mentally, suggesting that external representations encourage speed while internal representations promote accuracy when solving recursion problems. Lastly, both experiments provide evidence that first solving a problem mentally encouraged participants to use strategies similar to goal recursion on a second problem.

Moving Toward Understanding Autism: Visual-Motor Integration, Imitation, and Social Skill Development.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with a behavioral phenotype characterized by impaired development of social-communicative skills and excessive repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. Despite high phenotypic heterogeneity in ASD, a meaningful subpopulation of children with ASD (∼90%) show significant general motor impairment. More focused studies on the nature of motor impairment in ASD reveal that children with ASD are particularly impaired on tasks such as ball catching and motor imitation that require efficient visual-motor integration (VMI). Motor computational approaches also provide evidence for VMI impairment showing that children with ASD form internal sensorimotor representations that bias proprioceptive over visual feedback. Impaired integration of visual information to form internal representations of others' and the external world may explain observed impairments on VMI tasks and motor imitation of others. Motor imitation is crucial for acquiring both social and motor skills, and impaired imitation skill may contribute to the observed core behavioral phenotype of ASD. The current review examines evidence supporting VMI impairment as a core feature of ASD that may contribute to both impaired motor imitation and social-communicative skill development. We propose that understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying VMI impairment in ASD may be key to discovery of therapeutics to address disability in children and adults with ASD.

Friends' Closeness and Intimacy From Adolescence to Adulthood: Art Captures Implicit Relational Representations in Joint Drawing: A Longitudinal Study.

This longitudinal study, employing a mixed-methods explanatory design, explored the power of art to express aspects of one's inner world using the joint drawing technique, which allows for observation and treatment of implicit representations of relationships. At Time 1 (T1, 1977-1978), 200 adolescents created a joint drawing with either a good friend or with a classmate who was not a friend and filled out the Intimate Friendship Scale (IFS) in relation to their best friend. In 2014 (T2), 36 women and 21 men from the original cohort completed the IFS with regard to a good friend and with regard to their spouse. The drawings were analyzed qualitatively to define pictorial phenomena that may be indicative of closeness. The analysis was conducted in accordance with the phenomenological approach to art therapy and with the principles of thematic analysis. Fourteen pictorial phenomena were defined, and a scale was constructed to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which each phenomenon was present in the joint drawing. This yielded a closeness score for each drawing. Quantitatively, no correlations were found between intimacy as measured by IFS at T1 and at T2. In contrast, there was a correlation between the degree of closeness in the joint drawing at T1, and the IFS score with the partner in T2, suggesting continuity over the 36-year time span. This correlation was likewise found when examined separately among participants who drew with a friend. The multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) results showed a marginally significant effect for the interaction between closeness in drawing and drawing with a friend/non-friend - on IFS. An ANOVA showed that the IFS regarding the participant's best friend and their romantic partner at T2 was higher when the closeness in the drawing at T1 was higher. There was also a significant interaction between closeness in the drawings and the participant's IFS score regarding their best friend at T1. The differences between the joint drawing with the close friend and the non-friend are discussed. These findings, from a span of over 36 years, thus contribute to the validity of the IFS and the joint drawing technique when assessing closeness and intimacy.

Exploring Attachment and Internal Representations in Looked-After Children.

BACKGROUND: This article explores the Story Stem Assessment Profile (SSAP), a narrative-based measure, for the assessment of internal representations in children between the ages of 4 and 11 years old. METHODS: The findings draw upon two samples of children comprising of a sample of looked-after children at Five Rivers Child Care (FR) (n = 42) and a community-based population (n = 42). The FR group identified were suggested to have a higher level of need, as defined by scores obtained from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and Relationship Problems Questionnaire (RPQ). RESULTS: Using the SSAP, the findings indicate the instrument's discriminant validity with strong differences being displayed between the two populations. Consistently children in the FR sample displayed more disorganized, avoidant and negative representations, whilst at the same time having significantly fewer representations characteristic of 'secure' attachment. CONCLUSION: The SSAP is successful in differentiating between 'low' and 'high' cohorts of children aged 4-11 years. The study provides strong support for the measure as a way of capturing internal and attachment representations, with further research to explore possible changes in these representations at follow-up being promising and intriguing. Continued research efforts at FR will allow for improved clinical formulations, increased understanding and therefore positive outcomes relating to the children in their care.

Dynamic Construction of Reduced Representations in the Brain for Perceptual Decision Behavior.

Over the past decade, extensive studies of the brain regions that support face, object, and scene recognition suggest that these regions have a hierarchically organized architecture that spans the occipital and temporal lobes [1-14], where visual categorizations unfold over the first 250 ms of processing [15-19]. This same architecture is flexibly involved in multiple tasks that require task-specific representations-e.g. categorizing the same object as "a car" or "a Porsche." While we partly understand where and when these categorizations happen in the occipito-ventral pathway, the next challenge is to unravel how these categorizations happen. That is, how does high-dimensional input collapse in the occipito-ventral pathway to become low dimensional representations that guide behavior? To address this, we investigated what information the brain processes in a visual perception task and visualized the dynamic representation of this information in brain activity. To do so, we developed stimulus information representation (SIR), an information theoretic framework, to tease apart stimulus information that supports behavior from that which does not. We then tracked the dynamic representations of both in magneto-encephalographic (MEG) activity. Using SIR, we demonstrate that a rapid (∼170 ms) reduction of behaviorally irrelevant information occurs in the occipital cortex and that representations of the information that supports distinct behaviors are constructed in the right fusiform gyrus (rFG). Our results thus highlight how SIR can be used to investigate the component processes of the brain by considering interactions between three variables (stimulus information, brain activity, behavior), rather than just two, as is the current norm.

The Multivariate Roles of Family Instability and Interparental Conflict in Predicting Children's Representations of Insecurity in the Family System and Early School Adjustment Problems.

This study examined the moderating role of family instability in relations involving destructive interparental conflict, children's internal representations of insecurity in the family system, and their early school maladjustment. Two hundred forty-three preschool children (M age = 4.60 years; 56 % girls) and their families participated in this multi-method (i.e., observations, structured interview, surveys) multi-informant (i.e., observer, parent, teacher), longitudinal study. Findings indicated that the mediational role of children's insecure family representations in the pathway between destructive interparental conflict and children's adjustment problems varied significantly depending on the level of family instability. Interparental conflict was specifically associated with insecure family representations only under conditions of low family instability. In supporting the role of family instability as a vulnerable-stable risk factor, follow up analyses revealed that children's concerns about security in the family were uniformly high under conditions of heightened instability regardless of their level of exposure to interparental conflict.

Filling gaps in visual motion for target capture.

A remarkable challenge our brain must face constantly when interacting with the environment is represented by ambiguous and, at times, even missing sensory information. This is particularly compelling for visual information, being the main sensory system we rely upon to gather cues about the external world. It is not uncommon, for example, that objects catching our attention may disappear temporarily from view, occluded by visual obstacles in the foreground. Nevertheless, we are often able to keep our gaze on them throughout the occlusion or even catch them on the fly in the face of the transient lack of visual motion information. This implies that the brain can fill the gaps of missing sensory information by extrapolating the object motion through the occlusion. In recent years, much experimental evidence has been accumulated that both perceptual and motor processes exploit visual motion extrapolation mechanisms. Moreover, neurophysiological and neuroimaging studies have identified brain regions potentially involved in the predictive representation of the occluded target motion. Within this framework, ocular pursuit and manual interceptive behavior have proven to be useful experimental models for investigating visual extrapolation mechanisms. Studies in these fields have pointed out that visual motion extrapolation processes depend on manifold information related to short-term memory representations of the target motion before the occlusion, as well as to longer term representations derived from previous experience with the environment. We will review recent oculomotor and manual interception literature to provide up-to-date views on the neurophysiological underpinnings of visual motion extrapolation.

Integrative activity of neural networks may code virtual spaces with internal representations.

It was shown recently in neuroimaging that spatial differentiation of brain activity provides novel information about brain function. This confirms the integrative organisation of brain activity, but given present technical limitations of neuroimaging approaches, the exact role of integrative activity remains unclear. We trained a neural network to integrate information using random numbers so as to imitate the "centre-periphery" pattern of brain activity in neuroimaging. Only the hierarchical organisation of the network permitted the learning of fast and reliable integration. We presented images to the trained network and, by spatial differentiation of the network activity, obtained virtual spaces with the presented images. Thus, our study established the necessity of the hierarchical organisation of neural networks for integration and demonstrated that the role of neural integration in the brain may be to create virtual spaces with internal representations of the objects.

Affective and contextual values modulate spatial frequency use in object recognition.

Visual object recognition is of fundamental importance in our everyday interaction with the environment. Recent models of visual perception emphasize the role of top-down predictions facilitating object recognition via initial guesses that limit the number of object representations that need to be considered. Several results suggest that this rapid and efficient object processing relies on the early extraction and processing of low spatial frequencies (LSF). The present study aimed to investigate the SF content of visual object representations and its modulation by contextual and affective values of the perceived object during a picture-name verification task. Stimuli consisted of pictures of objects equalized in SF content and categorized as having low or high affective and contextual values. To access the SF content of stored visual representations of objects, SFs of each image were then randomly sampled on a trial-by-trial basis. Results reveal that intermediate SFs between 14 and 24 cycles per object (2.3-4 cycles per degree) are correlated with fast and accurate identification for all categories of objects. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between affective and contextual values over the SFs correlating with fast recognition. These results suggest that affective and contextual values of a visual object modulate the SF content of its internal representation, thus highlighting the flexibility of the visual recognition system.

Body schema building during childhood and adolescence: a neurosensory approach.

In order to perceive and act in its environment, the individual's body and its interactions with the sensory and social environment are represented in the brain. This internal representation of the moving body segments is labeled the body schema. Throughout life, body schema develops based on the sensory information used by the moving body and by its interactions with the environment including other people. Internal representations including body schema and representations of the outside world develop with learning and actions throughout ontogenesis and are constantly updated based on different sensory inputs. The aim of this review is to present some concepts and experimental data about body schema, internal representations and updating process during childhood and adolescence, as obtained using a neurosensory approach. From our developmental studies, it was possible to explore the slow maturation of the sensorimotor representations by examining the anticipatory control. By manipulating proprioceptive and visual information, which are at the heart of the construction of body schema, we wished to highlight notable differences between adolescents and young adults on both a postural and perceptual level, which confirms the late maturation of multisensory integration for central motor control.

Functional neurological disorders: imaging.

Functional neurological disorders, also known as conversion disorder, are unexplained neurological symptoms. These symptoms are common and can be associated with significant consequences. This review covers the neuroimaging literature focusing on functional motor symptoms including motor functioning and upstream influences including self-monitoring and internal representations, voluntariness and arousal and trauma.

Social support and cardiovascular responding to laboratory stress: moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support.

The objective of the present study was to examine moderating effects of gender role identification, sex, and type of support on the buffering role of social support on cardiovascular responses. We hypothesized that (a) gender role identification, more than sex, would moderate the effect of social support and (b) to obtain optimal attenuating effects of social support, type of support provided should match type of support preferred in terms of one's gender role identification. That is, feminine participants would benefit more from relatively direct support, whereas masculine participants would benefit more from indirect support. Healthy participants (N = 100) performed a psychological stressor in the presence of a friend, after mental activation of a friend, or alone. Results revealed no moderating effects of gender role identification whether or not in combination with type of support. Nevertheless, results demonstrated an attenuating effect of mental support on heart rate and cardiac output in men. It is concluded that pathways linking social relationships and health may differ between women and men.