Cognitive neuroscience articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Past experience with environmental regularities can influence attentional priority. Here the authors show that when observers have learned to expect information in certain locations during a visual search task, such otherwise hidden attentional biases can be visualized through neural responses evoked by the presentation of sudden task-irrelevant visual input (‘pings’).

    • Dock H. Duncan
    • , Dirk van Moorselaar
    •  & Jan Theeuwes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Respiration modulates neural oscillations, but its link to aperiodic brain activity is not known. With a multi-centre human MEG and EEG study, here the authors show that fluctuations of aperiodic brain activity are phase-locked to the respiratory cycle.

    • Daniel S. Kluger
    • , Carina Forster
    •  & Joachim Gross

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural coding of tactile processing and movement planning in the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) is not well understood. Here, the authors show a distinction between anatomical and spatial location coding in the anterior and posterior PPC respectively during sensory processing, and that the PPC dynamically integrates this information with task requirements to derive a movement goal in space during motor planning.

    • Janina Klautke
    • , Celia Foster
    •  & Tobias Heed

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How hippocampal area CA1 and the entorhinal cortex preserve temporal memories over long timescales is not known. Here, the authors show using 7T fMRI, that temporal context memory for scene images is predicted by the re-expression of CA1 and entorhinal cortex activity patterns during subsequent encounters over a period of months.

    • Futing Zou
    • , Guo Wanjia
    •  & Sarah DuBrow

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural dynamics underlying speech comprehension are not well understood. Here, the authors show that phonemic-to-lexical processing is localized to a large region of the temporal cortex, and that segmentation of the speech stream occurs mostly at the level of diphones.

    • Xue L. Gong
    • , Alexander G. Huth
    •  & Frédéric E. Theunissen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How brain networks process dynamic naturalistic stimuli is not well understood. Here, the authors use machine learning algorithms to show that brain states in the default network capture the semantic aspects of an unfolding narrative during movie watching.

    • Enning Yang
    • , Filip Milisav
    •  & Danilo Bzdok

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Human decision confidence displays a number of biases and has been shown to dissociate from decision accuracy. Here, by using neural network and Bayesian models, the authors show that these effects can be explained by the statistics of sensory inputs.

    • Taylor W. Webb
    • , Kiyofumi Miyoshi
    •  & Hakwan Lau

  • Article
    | Open Access

    People are thought to engage a retrieval brain state when they bring to mind past experiences. Here, using multivariate pattern classification analyses across experimental paradigms, the author shows that internal attention is a central process of the retrieval state.

    • Nicole M. Long

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural processes underlying the prediction of unfolding external dynamics are not well understood. Here, the authors combine magnetoencephalography and naturalistic dynamic stimuli and show predictive neural representations of observed actions which are hierarchical in nature.

    • Ingmar E. J. de Vries
    •  & Moritz F. Wurm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains unclear whether autism spectrum disorder is characterized by changes in predictive mechanisms. Here, the authors show that, in both neurotypical and autistic adults, priors influence percepts at the behavioral and neural levels and are hierarchically encoded in the brain.

    • Laurie-Anne Sapey-Triomphe
    • , Lauren Pattyn
    •  & Johan Wagemans

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The authors examine how the brain processes actions performed by humans and events involving objects. Their findings suggest that a common neural code is used in the brain’s action observation network to represent event information, regardless of animacy.

    • Seda Karakose-Akbiyik
    • , Alfonso Caramazza
    •  & Moritz F. Wurm

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neuroanatomical basis of consciousness is not fully understood. Here the authors show that a global state of consciousness might not depend on a specific brain region or location in Euclidean space; rather, it is linked to a low-dimensional dynamic pattern in topological space, as shown through the analysis of different experimental paradigms, imaging techniques, and species.

    • Ang Li
    • , Haiyang Liu
    •  & Bing Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of behavioural training in combination with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are not well understood. Here, the authors combine cognitive training with tDCS, showing a modulation of prefrontal white and grey matter microstructure, and increased prefrontal functional connectivity.

    • Daria Antonenko
    • , Anna Elisabeth Fromm
    •  & Agnes Flöel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The ventromedial prefrontal-cortex (vmPFC) encodes expected value signals that contribute to choices. Here the authors show that during decision-making the human ventromedial prefrontal cortex contains a task-context representation that arbitrates between simultaneously active representations of expected values in the current versus other task contexts.

    • Nir Moneta
    • , Mona M. Garvert
    •  & Nicolas W. Schuck

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Better understanding of a trade-off between the speed and accuracy of decision-making is relevant for mapping biological intelligence to machines. The authors introduce a brain-inspired learning algorithm to uncover dependencies in individual fMRI networks with features of neural activity and predict inter-individual differences in decision-making.

    • Michael Schirner
    • , Gustavo Deco
    •  & Petra Ritter

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the brain achieves context-dependent, flexible categorization remains poorly understood. By looking at neural ensemble formation, this study finds that distinct beta rhythms signal categorical decisions, and category-selective neurons synchronize at those frequencies.

    • Elie Rassi
    • , Yi Zhang
    •  & Saskia Haegens

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Movies are complex, continuous stimuli that are characterized by visual and semantic novelty. Here, by leveraging intracranial recordings from 23 humans, the authors find that responses to novelty across film cuts and saccades are widespread in the brain.

    • Maximilian Nentwich
    • , Marcin Leszczynski
    •  & Lucas C. Parra

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Filtering or gating relevant information into working memory has been attributed to the striatum. Here, the authors reveal neocortical filtering mechanisms, namely, rapid changes in oscillatory theta networks, that predict fast and flexible human behavior.

    • Elizabeth L. Johnson
    • , Jack J. Lin
    •  & David Badre

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Not much is known about how intrinsic timescales, which characterize the dynamics of endogenous fluctuations in neural activity, change during cognitive tasks. Here, the authors show that intrinsic timescales of neural activity in the primate visual cortex change during spatial attention. Experimental data were best explained by a network model in which timescales arise from spatially arranged connectivity.

    • Roxana Zeraati
    • , Yan-Liang Shi
    •  & Tatiana A. Engel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How humans distinguish perception from mental imagery is not well understood. Here, the authors show that reality judgements are based on the intensity of a mixture of imagined and real signals.

    • Nadine Dijkstra
    •  & Stephen M. Fleming

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The cerebral cortex has ongoing electrical activities with rich and complex patterns in space and time. Here, the authors use optical voltage imaging in mice and computational methods, relating these complexities to different levels of wakefulness.

    • Yuqi Liang
    • , Junhao Liang
    •  & Changsong Zhou

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear how cognitive computations are performed on sensory information. Here, neural evidence from working memory tasks suggests that the physical dimensions of cortical networks are used to update the status of sensory representations.

    • Mikael Lundqvist
    • , Scott L. Brincat
    •  & Pawel Herman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the brain computes the value of complex stimuli such as visual art remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use computational models and fMRI to show that this process involves an integration over low- and high-level features across visual, parietal, and frontal cortical areas.

    • Kiyohito Iigaya
    • , Sanghyun Yi
    •  & John P. O’Doherty

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In the posterior cortex, which is involved in decision making, the strength and area specificity of choice signals are highly variable. Here the authors show that the representation of choice in the posterior area of the mouse brain is orthogonal to that of sensory and movement-related signals, with modulations determined by task features and cognitive demands.

    • Javier G. Orlandi
    • , Mohammad Abdolrahmani
    •  & Andrea Benucci

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It remains unclear how the Stroop effect occurs and gets resolved in the human brain. Here, the authors show that a functional loop involving the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum may play a critical role during word-color perception.

    • Moe Okayasu
    • , Tensei Inukai
    •  & Koji Jimura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In decision circuits, inhibitory neurons signal animal choices. Here, the authors show that choice-selective inhibition can stabilize the circuit dynamics or promote competition depending on inhibitory output connections, affecting choice behavior.

    • James P. Roach
    • , Anne K. Churchland
    •  & Tatiana A. Engel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Absence seizures impair consciousness by an unknown neuronal mechanism. Here, the authors find that a rat absence seizure model’s behavior and hemodynamics recapitulate previously reported characteristics of human absence seizures, and uncover four distinct patterns of neuronal activity in cortex and thalamus during consciousness-impairing seizures.

    • Cian McCafferty
    • , Benjamin F. Gruenbaum
    •  & Hal Blumenfeld

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dimensions of consciousness such as wakefulness or awareness are well established but have not been mapped to the brain. Here, the authors show that dimensions of consciousness are encoded in the functional geometry of the cortex.

    • Zirui Huang
    • , George A. Mashour
    •  & Anthony G. Hudetz

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Behavioral feedback is critical for learning, but it is often not available. Here, the authors introduce a deep learning model in which the cerebellum provides the cerebrum with feedback predictions, thereby facilitating learning, reducing dysmetria, and making several experimental predictions.

    • Ellen Boven
    • , Joseph Pemberton
    •  & Rui Ponte Costa

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Grammar learning requires memory for temporally organised, rule-based patterns in speech. Here, the authors use event-related potentials to show that 6 to 8 month-old infants can form memory of dependencies between nonadjacent elements in sentences of an unknown language, regardless of whether they nap or stay awake after encoding.

    • Manuela Friedrich
    • , Matthias Mölle
    •  & Angela D. Friederici

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The neural mechanisms determining the speed of decisions and movements in the human brain remain poorly understood. Here, the authors reveal that the subthalamic nucleus causally controls decision and movement speed independently for each hemisphere.

    • Damian M. Herz
    • , Manuel Bange
    •  & Peter Brown

  • Article
    | Open Access

    How the human visual system leverages the rich structure in object motion for perception remains unclear. Here, Bill et al. propose a theory of how the brain could infer motion relations in real time and offer a unifying explanation for various perceptual phenomena.

    • Johannes Bill
    • , Samuel J. Gershman
    •  & Jan Drugowitsch

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