Interaction between top-down decision-driven congruency effect and bottom-up input-driven congruency effect is correlated with conscious awareness.

In a conventional (Stroop) priming paradigm, it was well documented that objective prime-target incongruency delays response time (RT) to target compared to prime-target congruent condition. Recent evidence suggests that incongruency between the target and subjectively reported prime identity also delays RT over and above the classic congruency effect. When the prime is rendered invisible, the former effect is fundamentally a bottom-up (BU) stimulus-driven congruency effect and the latter a top-down (TD) guess-driven congruency effect. An influential theory of consciousness, global neuronal workspace theory, postulates that the long-lasting simultaneous and reciprocal interaction between TD decision network and BU input network is preserved during conscious processing and disabled during unconscious processing. Current study is focused on testing this theoretical postulation using two behavioral experiments. Our results showed that indeed TD-congruency and BU-congruency produced additive RT effects on prime-invisible trials, which implies that TD and BU prime representations are activated in independent neuronal populations. Meanwhile, an underadditive interaction effect was observed as prime visibility rose, which is a signature that TD and BU prime representations recruited overlapping neuronal populations during conscious perception. In addition, we suggest that current behavioral paradigm might be a financially friendly alternative to detect the presence of representational overlap in the brain between a wide range of mental representations, such as expectation, prediction, conscious/unconscious perception, and conscious/unconscious working memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

[Analysis of clinical and genetic characteristics of 20 cases of children with Silver Russell syndrome].

OBJECTIVE: To improve the accuracy of the diagnosis of the disease on the basis of the clinical features and genetic characteristics of patients with Silver Russell syndrome (SRS). METHOD: Patients diagnosed with SRS by Price criteria in 2006 to 2011 were reviewed for their clinical manifestations, physical signs, laboratory examinations and treatments. RESULT: Twenty cases with SRS were 0.08-12.17 yr old. Fifteen were male and 5 were female. The clinical characteristics included more than 80% of cases had postnatal growth retardation 100% (20/20), craniofacial dysmorphism 100% (20/20), small for gestation age 95% (19/20), asymmetry and thinning of the face and/or limbs 90% (18/20), fifth finger clinodactyly 80% (16/20), BMI < -2 SDS 80% (16/20). Their height was obviously lagging behind in the bone age. HD SDS/average of bone retardation was 3.08. The two patients with the chief complaint of external genital abnormalities would have aggressive surgical treatment and they did not use the growth hormone (GH) treatment. Only six patients had used the GH treatment. GH treatment at a dose of 0.1 IU/(kg·d) used in 2 cases achieved a growth velocity (GV) 8 - 11 cm/yr but in another 2 cases < 5 cm/yr. In genetic study, 6 patients were found to have 11p15 low methylation, 1 had low and high methylation, 1 had duplication, no relation between clinical and methylation of 11p15 was found. CONCLUSION: There were great variations of clinical features in SRS characterized by small for gestation age and/or postnatal growth retardation, craniofacial dysmorphism, asymmetry of the face and/or limbs or ultrafine limbs, fifth finger clinodactyly. Severely low BMI was seen and height was obviously lagging behind in the bone age. The findings of laboratory tests and imaging of SRS were not specific. Some of SRS had 11p15 imprinting defects. The treatment of SRS is mainly symptomatic.