Prolonged functional development of the parahippocampal place area and occipital place area.

Successful navigation of our surroundings is of high environmental relevance and involves processing of the visual scenery. Scene-processing undergoes a major behavioral improvement during childhood. However, possible neural changes that underlie this cognitive development in scene perception are understudied in comparison to other stimulus categories. We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scene localizer and behavioral recognition and memory tasks in 7-8-year-olds, 11-12-year-olds, and adults to test whether scene-selective areas-the parahippocampal place area (PPA), the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and the occipital place area (OPA)-show a change in volume and selectivity with age, and whether this change is correlated with behavioral perception and memory performance. We find that children have a smaller PPA and OPA than adults, while the size of RSC does not differ. Furthermore, selectivity for scenes in the PPA and the OPA, but not in the RSC, increases with age. This increase seems to be driven by both increasing responses to preferred stimuli and decreasing responses to non-preferred stimuli. Our findings extend previous knowledge about visual cortex development by unveiling the underlying mechanisms of age-related volume and selectivity increases in the scene network especially elucidating the poorly understood development of the OPA.

Representational similarity precedes category selectivity in the developing ventral visual pathway.

Many studies have investigated the development of face-, scene-, and body-selective regions in the ventral visual pathway. This work has primarily focused on comparing the size and univariate selectivity of these neural regions in children versus adults. In contrast, very few studies have investigated the developmental trajectory of more distributed activation patterns within and across neural regions. Here, we scanned both children (ages 5-7) and adults to test the hypothesis that distributed representational patterns arise before category selectivity (for faces, bodies, or scenes) in the ventral pathway. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found mature representational patterns in several ventral pathway regions (e.g., FFA, PPA, etc.), even in children who showed no hint of univariate selectivity. These results suggest that representational patterns emerge first in each region, perhaps forming a scaffold upon which univariate category selectivity can subsequently develop. More generally, our findings demonstrate an important dissociation between category selectivity and distributed response patterns, and raise questions about the relative roles of each in development and adult cognition.

Online webcam-based eye tracking in cognitive science: A first look.

Online experimentation is emerging in many areas of cognitive psychology as a viable alternative or supplement to classical in-lab experimentation. While performance- and reaction-time-based paradigms are covered in recent studies, one instrument of cognitive psychology has not received much attention up to now: eye tracking. In this study, we used JavaScript-based eye tracking algorithms recently made available by Papoutsaki et al. (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2016) together with consumer-grade webcams to investigate the potential of online eye tracking to benefit from the common advantages of online data conduction. We compared three in-lab conducted tasks (fixation, pursuit, and free viewing) with online-acquired data to analyze the spatial precision in the first two, and replicability of well-known gazing patterns in the third task. Our results indicate that in-lab data exhibit an offset of about 172 px (15% of screen size, 3.94° visual angle) in the fixation task, while online data is slightly less accurate (18% of screen size, 207 px), and shows higher variance. The same results were found for the pursuit task with a constant offset during the stimulus movement (211 px in-lab, 216 px online). In the free-viewing task, we were able to replicate the high attention attribution to eyes (28.25%) compared to other key regions like the nose (9.71%) and mouth (4.00%). Overall, we found web technology-based eye tracking to be suitable for all three tasks and are confident that the required hard- and software will be improved continuously for even more sophisticated experimental paradigms in all of cognitive psychology.

Differences in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus but no general disruption of white matter tracts in children with autism spectrum disorder.

One of the most widely cited features of the neural phenotype of autism is reduced "integrity" of long-range white matter tracts, a claim based primarily on diffusion imaging studies. However, many prior studies have small sample sizes and/or fail to address differences in data quality between those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical participants, and there is little consensus on which tracts are affected. To overcome these problems, we scanned a large sample of children with autism (n = 52) and typically developing children (n = 73). Data quality was variable, and worse in the ASD group, with some scans unusable because of head motion artifacts. When we follow standard data analysis practices (i.e., without matching head motion between groups), we replicate the finding of lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in multiple white matter tracts. However, when we carefully match data quality between groups, all these effects disappear except in one tract, the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). Additional analyses showed the expected developmental increases in the FA of fiber tracts within ASD and typical groups individually, demonstrating that we had sufficient statistical power to detect known group differences. Our data challenge the widely claimed general disruption of white matter tracts in autism, instead implicating only one tract, the right ILF, in the ASD phenotype.

Online psychophysics: reaction time effects in cognitive experiments.

Using the Internet to acquire behavioral data is currently on the rise. However, very basic questions regarding the feasibility of online psychophysics are still open. Here, we aimed to replicate five well-known paradigms in experimental psychology (Stroop, Flanker, visual search, masked priming, attentional blink) in three settings (classical "lab", "web-in-lab", "web") to account for possible changes in technology and environment. Lab and web-in-lab data were both acquired in an in-lab setting with lab using "Gold Standard" methods, while web-in-lab used web technology. This allowed for a direct comparison of potential differences in acquisition software. To account for additional environmental differences, the web technology experiments were published online to participate from home (setting web), thereby keeping the software and experimental design identical and only changing the environmental setting. Our main results are: First, we found an expected fixed additive timing offset when using web technology (M = 37 ms, SD = 8.14) and recording online (M = 87 ms, SD = 16.04) in comparison to lab data. Second, all task-specific effects were reproduced except for the priming paradigm, which couldn't be replicated in any setting. Third, there were no differences in error rates, which are independent of the timing offset. This finding further supports the assumption of data equality over all settings. Fourth, we found that browser type might be influencing absolute reaction times. Together, these results contribute to the slowly but steadily growing literature that online psychophysics is a suitable complement - or even substitute - to lab data acquisition.

Domain-specific development of face memory but not face perception.

How does the remarkable human ability for face recognition arise over development? Competing theories have proposed either late maturity (beyond 10 years) or early maturity (before 5 years), but have not distinguished between perceptual and memory aspects of face recognition. Here, we demonstrate a perception-memory dissociation. We compare rate of development for (adult, human) faces versus other social stimuli (bodies), other discrete objects (cars), and other categories processed in discrete brain regions (scenes, bodies), from 5 years to adulthood. For perceptual discrimination, performance improved with age at the same rate for faces and all other categories, indicating no domain-specific development. In contrast, face memory increased more strongly than non-face memory, indicating domain-specific development. The results imply that each theory is partly true: the late maturity theory holds for face memory, and the early maturity theory for face perception.

Feature-based attention affects direction-selective fMRI adaptation in hMT+.

Functional magnetic resonance adaptation has been successfully used to reveal direction-selective responses in the human motion complex (hMT+). Here, we aimed at further investigating direction-selective as well as position-selective responses of hMT+ by looking at how these responses are affected by feature-based attention. We varied motion direction and position of 2 consecutive random-dot stimuli. Participants had to either attend to the direction or the position of the stimuli in separate runs. We show that direction selectivity in hMT+ as measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) adaptation was strongly influenced by task set. Attending to the motion direction of the stimuli lead to stronger direction-selective fMRI adaptation than attending to their position. Position selectivity, on the other hand, was largely unaffected by attentional focus. Interestingly, the change in the direction-selective adaptation profile across tasks could not be explained by inheritance from earlier areas. The response pattern in the early retinotopic cortex was stable across conditions. In conclusion, our results provide further evidence for the flexible coding of direction information in hMT+ depending on task demands.

Parent-child interactive behavior in a German sample of parents with and without a mental illness: model replication and adaption of the Coding Interactive Behavior system.

Studies using observational measures often fail to meet statistical standards for both reliability and validity. The present study examined the psychometric properties of the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) System within a German sample of parent-child dyads. The sample consisted of 149 parents with and without a mental illness and their children [n experimental group (EG) = 75, n control group (CG) = 74] who participated in the larger Children of Mentally Ill Parents at Risk Evaluation (COMPARE) study. The age of the children ranged from 3 to 12 years (M = 7.99, SD = 2.5). Exploratory factor analysis supported a five-factor model of the CIB with items describing 1) parental sensitivity/reciprocity, 2) parental intrusiveness, 3) child withdrawal, 4) child involvement, and 5) parent limit setting/child compliance. Compared to international samples, the model was reduced by two independent dyadic factors. Testing for predictive validity identified seven items with predictive power to differentiate parental group membership. The CIB factors did not seem to be sufficiently sensitive to illustrate differences in interaction within a sample of parents with various mental illnesses. To apply the CIB to the described sample or similar ones in the future, additional measurement instruments may be necessary.

Parenting stress in parents with and without a mental illness and its relationship to psychopathology in children: a multimodal examination.

Objective: Children of parents with a mental illness are at heightened risk to develop a mental illness themselves due to genetics and environmental factors. Although parenting stress (PS) is known to be associated with increased psychopathology in parents and children, there is no study investigating PS multimodally in a sample of parents with a mental illness. This study aims to compare PS of parents with and without a mental illness and further to examine the relationship between PS and psychopathology of children. Methods: Participants were parents with a mental illness and parents without a mental illness and their children aged four to sixteen years. We assessed PS multimodally using a questionnaire, parents' evaluation of children's behavior (relational schemas) and psychophysiological arousal of parents during free speech task. Results: Self-reported PS was increased, and evaluation of children's behavior was more negative and less positive in parents with a mental illness compared to parents without a mental illness. Children's psychopathology was associated with self-reported PS and relational schemas of parents. Regarding psychophysiological arousal, parents with a mental illness showed reduced reactivity in heart rate from baseline to free speech task in comparison to parents without a mental illness. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing intervention programs to reduce PS for parents and children. In particular, parents with a mental illness might benefit from specific intervention programs in order to interrupt the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders.

Empathy and psychopathology in children and adolescents: the role of parental mental illness and emotion regulation.

Objective: Although empathy is known to be a strength, recent studies suggest that empathy can be a risk factor for psychopathology under certain conditions in children. This study examines parental mental illness as such a condition. Further, it aims to investigate whether maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) mediates the relationship between empathy and psychopathological symptoms of children. Methods: Participants were 100 children of parents with a mental illness (55% female) and 87 children of parents without a mental illness (50% female) aged 6 - 16 years and their parents. Results: Greater cognitive empathy was related to more psychopathological symptoms in COPMI, but not in COPWMI. In addition, in COPMI maladaptive ER mediated this relationship. In contrast, greater affective empathy was associated with more psychopathological symptoms regardless of whether parents had a mental illness. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the importance of implementing preventive programs for COPMI that specifically target the reduction of maladaptive ER.

Facial emotion recognition in children of parents with a mental illness.

Objective: Facial emotion recognition (FER) is a fundamental social skill essential for adaptive social behaviors, emotional development, and overall well-being. FER impairments have been linked to various mental disorders, making it a critical transdiagnostic mechanism influencing the development and trajectory of mental disorders. FER has also been found to play a role in the transgenerational transmission of mental disorders, with the majority of research suggesting FER impairments in children of parents with a mental illness (COPMI). Previous research primarily concentrated on COPMI of parents with internalizing disorders, which does not cover the full spectrum of outpatient mental health service populations. Furthermore, research focuses on varying components of FER by using different assessment paradigms, making it challenging to compare study results. To address these gaps, we comprehensively investigated FER abilities in COPMI using multiple tasks varying in task characteristics. Methods: We included 189 children, 77 COPMI and 112 children of parents without a diagnosed mental illness (COPWMI), aged 6 to 16 years. We assessed FER using three tasks with varying task demands: an emotional Go/NoGo task, a morphing task, and a task presenting short video sequences depicting different emotions. We fitted separate two-level hierarchical Bayesian models (to account for sibling pairs in our sample) for reaction times and accuracy rates for each task. Good model fit was assured by comparing models using varying priors. Results: Contrary to our expectations, our results revealed no general FER deficit in COPMI compared to COPWMI. The Bayesian models fitted for accuracy in the morphing task and Go/NoGo task yielded small yet significant effects. However, Bayes factors fitted for the models suggested that these effects could be due to random variations or noise in the data. Conclusions: Our study does not support FER impairments as a general feature of COPMI. Instead, individual factors, such as the type of parental disorder and the timing of its onset, may play a crucial role in influencing FER development. Future research should consider these factors, taking into account the diverse landscape of parental mental disorders.

Using Light Meters to Investigate the Light-Myopia Association - A Literature Review of Devices and Research Methods.

With the increasing prevalence of myopia, evaluating its relationship with objective light exposure as a potential adjustable environmental factor in myopia development has been an emerging research field in recent years. From a thorough literature search, we identify ten wearable light meters from human studies on light exposure and myopia and present an overview of their parameters, thereby demonstrating the wide between-device variability and discussing its implications. We further identify 20 publications, including two reanalyses, reporting investigations of light-myopia associations with data from human subjects wearing light meters. We thoroughly review the publications with respect to general characteristics, aspects of data collection, participant population, as well as data analysis and interpretation, and also assess potential patterns regarding the absence or presence of light-myopia associations in their results. In doing so, we highlight areas in which more research is needed as well as several aspects that warrant consideration in the study of light exposure and myopia.

Orientation-selective functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation in primary visual cortex revisited.

The processing of orientations is at the core of our visual experience. Orientation selectivity in human visual cortex has been inferred from psychophysical experiments and more recently demonstrated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). One method to identify orientation-selective responses is fMRI adaptation, in which two stimuli-either with the same or with different orientations-are presented successively. A region containing orientation-selective neurons should demonstrate an adapted response to the "same orientation" condition in contrast to the "different orientation" condition. So far, human primary visual cortex (V1) showed orientation-selective fMRI adaptation only in experimental designs using prolonged pre-adaptation periods (∼40 s) in combination with top-up stimuli that are thought to maintain the adapted level. This finding has led to the notion that orientation-selective short-term adaptation in V1 (but not V2 or V3) cannot be demonstrated using fMRI. The present study aimed at re-evaluating this question by testing three differently timed adaptation designs. With the use of a more sensitive analysis technique, we show robust orientation-selective fMRI adaptation in V1 evoked by a short-term adaptation design.

Spectral pattern similarity analysis: Tutorial and application in developmental cognitive neuroscience.

The human brain encodes information in neural activation patterns. While standard approaches to analyzing neural data focus on brain (de-)activation (e.g., regarding the location, timing, or magnitude of neural responses), multivariate neural pattern similarity analyses target the informational content represented by neural activity. In adults, a number of representational properties have been identified that are linked to cognitive performance, in particular the stability, distinctiveness, and specificity of neural patterns. However, although growing cognitive abilities across childhood suggest advancements in representational quality, developmental studies still rarely utilize information-based pattern similarity approaches, especially in electroencephalography (EEG) research. Here, we provide a comprehensive methodological introduction and step-by-step tutorial for pattern similarity analysis of spectral (frequency-resolved) EEG data including a publicly available pipeline and sample dataset with data from children and adults. We discuss computation of single-subject pattern similarities and their statistical comparison at the within-person to the between-group level as well as the illustration and interpretation of the results. This tutorial targets both novice and more experienced EEG researchers and aims to facilitate the usage of spectral pattern similarity analyses, making these methodologies more readily accessible for (developmental) cognitive neuroscientists.

Audiovisual functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation reveals multisensory integration effects in object-related sensory cortices.

Information integration across different sensory modalities contributes to object recognition, the generation of associations and long-term memory representations. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation to investigate the presence of sensory integrative effects at cortical levels as early as nonprimary auditory and extrastriate visual cortices, which are implicated in intermediate stages of object processing. Stimulation consisted of an adapting audiovisual stimulus S(1) and a subsequent stimulus S(2) from the same basic-level category (e.g., cat). The stimuli were carefully balanced with respect to stimulus complexity and semantic congruency and presented in four experimental conditions: (1) the same image and vocalization for S(1) and S(2), (2) the same image and a different vocalization, (3) different images and the same vocalization, or (4) different images and vocalizations. This two-by-two factorial design allowed us to assess the contributions of auditory and visual stimulus repetitions and changes in a statistically orthogonal manner. Responses in visual regions of right fusiform gyrus and right lateral occipital cortex were reduced for repeated visual stimuli (repetition suppression). Surprisingly, left lateral occipital cortex showed stronger responses to repeated auditory stimuli (repetition enhancement). Similarly, auditory regions of interest of the right middle superior temporal gyrus and sulcus exhibited repetition suppression to auditory repetitions and repetition enhancement to visual repetitions. Our findings of crossmodal repetition-related effects in cortices of the respective other sensory modality add to the emerging view that in human subjects sensory integrative mechanisms operate on earlier cortical processing levels than previously assumed.

Myelin development in visual scene-network tracts beyond late childhood: A multimethod neuroimaging study.

The visual scene-network-comprising the parahippocampal place area (PPA), retrosplenial cortex (RSC), and occipital place area (OPA)-shows a prolonged functional development. Structural development of white matter that underlies the scene-network has not been investigated despite its potential influence on scene-network function. The key factor for white matter maturation is myelination. However, research on myelination using the gold standard method of post-mortem histology is scarce. In vivo alternatives diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and myelin water imaging (MWI) so far report broad-scale findings that prohibit inferences concerning the scene-network. Here, we combine MWI, DWI tractography, and fMRI to investigate myelination in scene-network tracts in middle childhood, late childhood, and adulthood. We report increasing myelin from middle childhood to adulthood in right PPA-OPA, and trends towards increases in the left and right RSC-OPA tracts. Investigating tracts to regions highly connected with the scene-network, such as early visual cortex and the hippocampus, did not yield any significant age group differences. Our findings indicate that structural development coincides with functional development in the scene-network, possibly enabling structure-function interactions.

Memory specificity is linked to repetition effects in event-related potentials across the lifespan.

The specificity with which past experiences can be remembered varies across the lifespan, possibly due to differences in how precisely information is encoded. Memory formation can be investigated through repetition effects, the common finding that neural activity is altered when stimuli are repeated. However, whether differences in this indirect measure of memory formation relate to lifespan differences in memory specificity has not yet been established. In the present study, we examined repetition effects in event-related potentials and their relation to recognition. During incidental encoding, children (aged 7-9 years), young adults (18-30 years), and older adults (65-76 years) viewed repeated object images from different categories. During subsequent recognition, we distinguished memory for the specific items versus the general categories. We identified repetition suppression in all age groups, and repetition enhancement for adults. Furthermore, individual item recognition performance comprising lure discrimination was positively associated with the magnitude of the neural repetition effects, which did not differ between groups, indicating common neural mechanisms of memory formation. Our findings demonstrate that neural repetition effects reflect the formation of highly specific memory representations and highlight their significance as a neural indicator of individual differences in episodic memory encoding across the lifespan.

Imagery of a moving object: the role of occipital cortex and human MT/V5+.

Visual imagery--similar to visual perception--activates feature-specific and category-specific visual areas. This is frequently observed in experiments where the instruction is to imagine stimuli that have been shown immediately before the imagery task. Hence, feature-specific activation could be related to the short-term memory retrieval of previously presented sensory information. Here, we investigated mental imagery of stimuli that subjects had not seen before, eliminating the effects of short-term memory. We recorded brain activation using fMRI while subjects performed a behaviourally controlled guided imagery task in predefined retinotopic coordinates to optimize sensitivity in early visual areas. Whole brain analyses revealed activation in a parieto-frontal network and lateral-occipital cortex. Region of interest (ROI) based analyses showed activation in left hMT/V5+. Granger causality mapping taking left hMT/V5+ as source revealed an imagery-specific directed influence from the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Interestingly, we observed a negative BOLD response in V1-3 during imagery, modulated by the retinotopic location of the imagined motion trace. Our results indicate that rule-based motion imagery can activate higher-order visual areas involved in motion perception, with a role for top-down directed influences originating in IPL. Lower-order visual areas (V1, V2 and V3) were down-regulated during this type of imagery, possibly reflecting inhibition to avoid visual input from interfering with the imagery construction. This suggests that the activation in early visual areas observed in previous studies might be related to short- or long-term memory retrieval of specific sensory experiences.

Cross-category adaptation reveals tight coupling of face and body perception.

Faces and bodies are arguably the visual stimuli most relevant for human social interactions. Only recently, however, has research begun to reveal the interaction between face and body perception. Here we report on a recent study by Ghuman and colleagues and other behavioral and neuroimaging investigations that, taken together, provide compelling evidence for a tight coupling of face and body perception.

Head motion during fMRI tasks is reduced in children and adults if participants take breaks.

Head motion remains a challenging confound in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of both children and adults. Most pediatric neuroimaging labs have developed experience-based, child-friendly standards concerning e.g. the maximum length of a session or the time between mock scanner training and actual scanning. However, it is unclear which factors of child-friendly neuroimaging approaches are effective in reducing head motion. Here, we investigate three main factors including (i) time lag of mock scanner training to the actual scan, (ii) prior scan time, and (iii) task engagement in a dataset of 77 children (aged 6-13) and 64 adults (aged 18-35) using a multilevel modeling approach. In children, distributing fMRI data acquisition across multiple same-day sessions reduces head motion. In adults, motion is reduced after inside-scanner breaks. Despite these positive effects of splitting up data acquisition, motion increases over the course of a study as well as over the course of a run in both children and adults. Our results suggest that splitting up fMRI data acquisition is an effective tool to reduce head motion in general. At the same time, different ways of splitting up data acquisition benefit children and adults.