Beyond empathy: Cognitive capabilities increase or curb altruism in middle childhood.

Altruistic behavior, which intentionally benefits a recipient without expectation of a reward or at a cost to the actor, is observed throughout the lifespan from everyday interactions to emergency situations. Empathy has long been considered a major driver of altruistic action, but the social information processing model supports the idea that other cognitive processes may also play a role in altruistic intention and behavior. Our aim was to investigate how visual analysis, attention, inhibitory control, and theory of mind capabilities uniquely contribute to predicting altruistic intention and behavior in a sample of 67 French children (35 girls and 32 boys; Mage = 9.92 ± 0.99 years) from Paris and neighboring suburbs. Using a Bayesian analysis framework, we showed that in younger grade levels visual analysis and selective attention are strong predictors of altruistic intention and that inhibitory control strongly predicts altruistic behavior in a dictator game. Processes underlying theory of mind, however, negatively predict altruistic behavior in the youngest grade. In higher grade levels, we found that stronger attention and inhibitory control predicts lower altruistic intention and behavior. Empathy was not found to predict altruistic intention or behavior. These results suggest that different cognitive capabilities are involved in altruistic intention and behavior and that their contribution changes throughout middle childhood as social constraints deepen and altruism calls on more complex reasoning.

An FMRI investigation of the cortical network underlying detection and categorization abilities in hemianopic patients.

The current study aims to investigate visual scene perception and its neuro-anatomical correlates for stimuli presented in the central visual field of patients with homonymous hemianopia, and thereby to assess the effect of a right or a left occipital lesion on brain reorganization. Fourteen healthy participants, three left brain damaged (LBD) patients with right homonymous hemianopia and five right brain damaged (RBD) patients with left homonymous hemianopia performed a visual detection task (i.e. "Is there an image on the screen?") and a categorization task (i.e. "Is it an image of a highway or a city?") during a block-designed functional magnetic resonance imaging recording session. Cerebral activity analyses of the posterior areas-the occipital lobe in particular-highlighted bi-hemispheric activation during the detection task but more lateralized, left occipital lobe activation during the categorization task in healthy participants. Conversely, in patients, the same network of activity was observed in both tasks. However, LBD patients showed a predominant activation in their right hemisphere (occipital lobe and posterior temporal areas) whereas RBD patients showed a more bilateral activation (in the occipital lobes). Overall, our preliminary findings suggest a specific pattern of cerebral activation depending on the task instruction in healthy participants and cerebral reorganization of the posterior areas following brain injury in hemianopic patients which could depend upon the side of the occipital lesion.

Emotional face recognition in autism and in cerebral visual impairments: In search for specificity.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by difficulties in the social domain, but also by hyper- and hypo-reactivity. Atypical visual behaviours and processing have often been observed. Nevertheless, several similar signs are also identified in other clinical conditions including cerebral visual impairments (CVI). In the present study, we investigated emotional face categorization in groups of children with ASD and CVI by comparing each group to typically developing individuals (TD) in two tasks. Stimuli were either non-filtered or filtered by low- and high-spatial frequencies (LSF and HSF). All participants completed the autism spectrum quotient score (AQ) and a complete neurovisual evaluation. The results show that while both clinical groups presented difficulties in the emotional face recognition tasks and atypical processing of filtered stimuli, they did not differ from one another. Additionally, autistic traits were observed in the CVI group and symmetrically, some visual disturbances were present in the ASD group as measured via the AQ score and a neurovisual evaluation, respectively. The present study suggests the relevance of comparing ASD to CVI by showing that emotional face categorization difficulties should not be solely considered as autism-specific but merit investigation for potential dysfunction of the visual processing neural network. These results are of interest in both clinical and research perspectives, indicating that systematic visual examination is warranted for individuals with ASD.

Making sense of blindsense: a reply to Phillips.

We recently published the results of a study on the occurrence of blindsight among eight, post-stroke homonymous hemianopic (HH) patients (Garric et al., 2019), in whom we measured blindsight through forced-choice tasks and assessed perceptual experiences by a new awareness scale, the Sensation Awareness Scale (SAS). Within the cohort, we found different profiles of dissociation between objective and subjective performance. Importantly, we were able to describe several cases of a dissociation phenomenon that we named blindsense, whereby patients exhibited marked subjective sensitivity in their blind hemifield despite being unable to discriminate the different stimuli. Following publication of our article (Garric et al., 2019), Prof. Ian Phillips (Phillips, 2019) wrote a Commentary in which he questioned the methodology we used to measure and analyze objective and subjective perception in our HH patients. As opposed to our original interpretation of our results to describe the new profile of blindsense, based on a non-visual experience hypothesis (Kentridge, 2015), Prof. Phillips re-evaluated the different blindsight profiles that we identified in our study through the lens of a degraded conscious vision hypothesis (Overgaard, Fehl, Mouridsen, Bergholt, & Cleeremans, 2008). In the present response, we explain that, although we agree that dichotomous visual scales lead to highly conservative responses and mask conscious perceptual experience of patients, we still support the notion that nuanced report protocols can enable more-sensitive measurements of perceptual experiences in the hemianopic, so-called blind visual field. Furthermore, we affirm that the additional awareness-scale phenomenal levels that such protocols enable are more consistent with patients' experiences and lead patients to provide more liberal responses when describing their subjective perceptions.

Neuroanatomic correlates of visual hallucinations in poststroke hemianopic patients.

OBJECTIVES: Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is the most frequent visual-field defect after a stroke. Some of these patients also have visual hallucinations, the origin and frequency of which remain largely unknown. The aims of this work were to determine the occurrence of visual hallucinations among poststroke hemianopic patients in function of the location (Brodmann areas) of the brain lesion, as determined by MRI, and to study the neuroanatomic correlates of these hallucinations by nature, frequency, and type. METHODS: One hundred sixteen patients with HH who had had a stroke in the posterior region, including the occipital lobe, participated in the study. We evaluated the frequency and nature of visual hallucinations with the Questionnaire for Hallucinations in Homonymous Hemianopia. The volume of each patient's brain lesion was modeled in 3 dimensions. RESULTS: Of 116 patients with an HH from a cortical infarction, 85 were excluded due to confounding factors associated with hallucinations. In the final cohort of 31 patients matched for lesion location and etiology, 58% had experienced hallucinations. A significant inverse correlation between lesion size and the frequency of visual hallucinations emerged. The presence of visual hallucinations in poststroke hemianopic patients requires a relatively small lesion that includes, at the very least, loss of the striate cortex but that spares Brodmann area 19, 20, and 37. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that visual hallucinations might be due to complex interactions between damaged areas and intact areas of the visual cortex. We discuss these findings regarding models of perception and of visual recognition. Our results also have implications for the clinical care of patients with HH who have had a stroke.

Adaptation and prolonged inhibition as a main cause of motion-induced blindness.

Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is one of the most enigmatic perceptual disappearance phenomena. Here we suggest that MIB may be caused by the combined effects of two distinct adaptation processes: one shared with two other non-MIB configurations and entailing a response-gain reduction, and a second, MIB-specific transient-to-sustained incremental inhibition causing a contrast-gain reduction. Response-gain reduction is evidenced by brightness-tracking experiment where the 1-minute brightness time course of an MIB target is compared to the time courses of the same target superimposed on a static mask (SM) and on no mask at all (absent mask; AM). MIB and SM yield about the same brightness time courses with a faster initial drop and reaching a lower plateau than AM. While the frequency of phenomenal suppressions and their duration are very much reduced under SM and AM conditions, they increase as for MIB within the first 5-15 s of inspection and level off thereafter. Contrast-gain reduction over time is evidenced in a detection experiment showing that MIB target thresholds are higher and increase more steeply with inspection time than AM or SM thresholds. The interplay between these noisy adaptation and prolonged inhibition processes may well account for MIB's specificity.

Dissociation between objective and subjective perceptual experiences in a population of hemianopic patients: A new form of blindsight?

After a post-chiasmatic lesion, some patients may retain unconscious visual function, known as blindsight, in their contralesional visual field. Despite the importance of blindsight in the study of consciousness, little is known about the nature of patients' experience in their hemianopic field. To address this knowledge gap, we measured blindsight, and assessed the perceptual experience in the contralesional visual field, of seventeen homonymous hemianopic (HH) patients. To ensure that the stimuli were shown in a "blind" sector of the visual field, we selected a subgroup of eight complete-HH patients, as determined by automatic perimetry. Firstly, we measured blindsight through a forced-choice task in which the patients had to identify letters displayed on a screen. Secondly, we compared the patients' binary responses ("Something was presented" vs "Nothing was presented") to responses on a new, five-level scale, the Sensation Awareness Scale (SAS), which we designed to include visual as well as non-visual answers (e.g., "I felt something"). Interestingly, only one of the eight complete-HH patients met the criteria for blindsight. More importantly, our SAS enabled us to identify a previously unreported dissociation, which we have named blindsense, in four of the eight complete-HH patients. Specifically, these four patients exhibited better-than-chance sensitivity to the presence of a stimulus on the subjective scale, despite being unable to identify the stimulus during the forced-choice task. Our findings highlight the importance of awareness-assessment methods to investigate perceptual experiences in the contralesional visual field and suggest a low incidence of blindsight in post-stroke HH patients.

Sensory and decisional factors in motion-induced blindness.

The processes underlying motion-induced blindness (MIB) are widely debated. Ultimately, however, they must reduce to a sensitivity drop and/or to an upward shift of the decision criterion. The first possibility was tested by assessing the detection threshold for a contrast (or luminance) increment applied to the MIB target under its visible and suppressed phases. This was performed over a whole range of reference target contrasts (yielding the standard Threshold vs. Contrast [TvC] function) with a 2AFC staircase procedure. The second possibility was tested with a Yes/No procedure, allowing the assessment of both the sensitivities (d') and decision criteria (c) yielded by four contrast increments applied to a fixed reference target contrast (the psychometric function). The 2AFC procedure yielded a global upward shift of the TvC function of about 5.3 dB (a factor of 1.84) under the suppressed phase. The Yes/No procedure yielded a commensurate d' drop (of about 0.8 sigma) under the suppressed phase with no change in the slope of the psychometric function and an upward shift of c of about 0.7 sigma. The presently observed vertical shift (in log-log coordinates) of the TvC function in the suppressed phase is indicative of a divisive inhibition occurring after the transducing stage. The invariance of the psychometric function slope under the visible and suppressed MIB phases supports this conclusion. The present experiments cannot settle the issue of whether the upward shift of the decision criteria is yet another cause of the MIB or a consequence of its underlying inhibitory process. Instead, they make clear that MIB (and perhaps other unstable perceptual phenomena) is associated with both sensory and decisional processes.

Criteria interactions across visual attributes.

Judgmental interference in dual tasks has been demonstrated in conditions where the detection or discrimination of different contrast increments applied to two stimuli presented simultaneously or in sequence. The present work demonstrates such interference for changes along two distinct visual features, namely contrast and orientation, when simultaneously applied to the same or to two distinct objects (Gabor-patches). The interference reveals itself in the use of quasi-equal decision criteria for both dimensions, in conflict with an optimal behavior requiring that criteria be proportional to the sensitivities for the distinct changes. The quasi-equality of the criteria assessed for contrast and orientation changes implies the equality of the internal noises characterizing the respective detection process, hence suggesting that they are limited at the decision level. Among the conceptual consequences of this limitation are the existence of a meta-attribute decisional dimension (tantamount to that of a "central executive system") and the questionable merits of probability summation over spatial channels. In addition, the data show a significant sensitivity drop in the dual- with respect to the single-task conditions, all the more so when the modulated features belong to two objects rather than to the same object. While the sensitivity drop in dual tasks is the standard trademark of distributed attention, it is argued that decisional interference is yet another aspect of it.