The parietal cortex has a causal role in ambiguity computations in humans.

Humans often face the challenge of making decisions between ambiguous options. The level of ambiguity in decision-making has been linked to activity in the parietal cortex, but its exact computational role remains elusive. To test the hypothesis that the parietal cortex plays a causal role in computing ambiguous probabilities, we conducted consecutive fMRI and TMS-EEG studies. We found that participants assigned unknown probabilities to objective probabilities, elevating the uncertainty of their decisions. Parietal cortex activity correlated with the objective degree of ambiguity and with a process that underestimates the uncertainty during decision-making. Conversely, the midcingulate cortex (MCC) encodes prediction errors and increases its connectivity with the parietal cortex during outcome processing. Disruption of the parietal activity increased the uncertainty evaluation of the options, decreasing cingulate cortex oscillations during outcome evaluation and lateral frontal oscillations related to value ambiguous probability. These results provide evidence for a causal role of the parietal cortex in computing uncertainty during ambiguous decisions made by humans.

[The deveolpment of cognitive neuroscience in Chile]. / Aportes históricos de la neurociencia cognitiva y su emergencia en Chile.

Very little has been written about the national pioneer investigators and the formal institutions and channels of knowledge that have contributed to the consolidation of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. This article is a review based on scientific publications, magazine articles and interviews with neuroscientists that were key to the development of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. In particular, the review incorporates information about the different Chilean investigators, the universities where they completed their doctoral studies, and the institutions where they settled afterwards. The objective of this article is to describe the way in which neuroscientific knowledge extended in Chile and to give recognition to pioneering scientists. The information retrieved was processed through the reconstruction of an interaction network between local and foreign neuroscientists, as well as their universities and institutions of origin, that contributed to the development of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. A visual representation of these networks was elaborated. In addition, the scientists' academic training in Chile and abroad is summarized in a table. This analysis allows for a deeper comprehension of the socio-historical context in which cognitive neuroscience emerges and encourages a critical perspective of its development in Chile.

Aportes históricos de la neurociencia cognitiva y su emergencia en Chile

Very little has been written about the national pioneer investigators and the formal institutions and channels of knowledge that have contributed to the consolidation of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. This article is a review based on scientific publications, magazine articles and interviews with neuroscientists that were key to the development of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. In particular, the review incorporates information about the different Chilean investigators, the universities where they completed their doctoral studies, and the institutions where they settled afterwards. The objective of this article is to describe the way in which neuroscientific knowledge extended in Chile and to give recognition to pioneering scientists. The information retrieved was processed through the reconstruction of an interaction network between local and foreign neuroscientists, as well as their universities and institutions of origin, that contributed to the development of cognitive neuroscience in Chile. A visual representation of these networks was elaborated. In addition, the scientists' academic training in Chile and abroad is summarized in a table. This analysis allows for a deeper comprehension of the socio-historical context in which cognitive neuroscience emerges and encourages a critical perspective of its development in Chile.

Neural Dynamics of Improved Bimodal Attention and Working Memory in Musically Trained Children.

Attention and working memory (WM) are core components of executive functions, and they can be enhanced by training. One activity that has shown to improve executive functions is musical training, but the brain networks underlying these improvements are not well known. We aimed to identify, using functional MRI (fMRI), these networks in children who regularly learn and play a musical instrument. Girls and boys aged 10-13 with and without musical training completed an attention and WM task while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. Participants were presented with a pair of bimodal stimuli (auditory and visual) and were asked to pay attention only to the auditory, only to the visual, or to both at the same time. The stimuli were afterward tested with a memory task in order to confirm attention allocation. Both groups had higher accuracy on items that they were instructed to attend, but musicians had an overall better performance on both memory tasks across attention conditions. In line with this, musicians showed higher activation than controls in cognitive control regions such as the fronto-parietal control network during all encoding phases. In addition, facilitated encoding of auditory stimuli in musicians was positively correlated with years of training and higher activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left supramarginal gyrus, structures that support the phonological loop. Taken together, our results elucidate the neural dynamics that underlie improved bimodal attention and WM of musically trained children and contribute new knowledge to this model of brain plasticity.

Theta and Alpha Oscillation Impairments in Autistic Spectrum Disorder Reflect Working Memory Deficit.

A dysfunction in the excitatory-inhibitory (E/I) coordination in neuronal assembly has been proposed as a possible neurobiological mechanism of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the potential impact of this mechanism in cognitive performance is not fully explored. Since the main consequence of E/I dysfunction is an impairment in oscillatory activity and its underlying cognitive computations, we assessed the electroencephalographic activity of ASD and typically developing (TD) subjects during a working-memory task. We found that ASD subjects committed more errors than TD subjects. Moreover, TD subjects demonstrated a parametric modulation in the power of alpha and theta band while ASD subjects did not demonstrate significant modulations. The preceding leads to significant differences between the groups in both the alpha power placed on the occipital cortex and the theta power placed on the left premotor and the right prefrontal cortex. The impaired theta modulation correlated with autistic symptoms. The results indicated that ASD may present an alteration in the recruitment of the oscillatory activity during working-memory, and this alteration could be related to the physiopathology of the disorder.