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Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci 2020 Sep 10. Epub 2020 Sep 10.

Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome and CLNS@SAPIENZA, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rome, Italy.

Neurophysiological studies show that during tasks tapping cognitive control (like the Flanker task), midfrontal theta (MFϴ) oscillations are associated with conflict and error processing and neural top- down modulation of perceptual processing. What remains unknown is whether perceptual encoding of category-specific stimuli (e.g. Read More

Nat Commun 2020 06 16;11(1):3059. Epub 2020 Jun 16.

Transmissible Cancer Group, Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Autonomous replication and segregation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) creates the potential for evolutionary conflict driven by emergence of haplotypes under positive selection for 'selfish' traits, such as replicative advantage. However, few cases of this phenomenon arising within natural populations have been described. Here, we survey the frequency of mtDNA horizontal transfer within the canine transmissible venereal tumour (CTVT), a contagious cancer clone that occasionally acquires mtDNA from its hosts. Read More

Mem Cognit 2020 08;48(6):994-1006

Goethe Universität, Frankfurt, Germany.

Recent research on the dynamics between attentional and memory processes have outlined the idea that applying control in a conflicting situation directly leads to enhanced episodic memory of the processed information. However, in spite of a small subset of studies supporting this claim, the majority of the evidence in the field seems to support the opposite pattern. In this study, we used a face-word Stroop task to enforce different control modes either from trial to trial or in an item-specific manner. Read More

Psychophysiology 2020 04 13;57(4):e13524. Epub 2020 Jan 13.

Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Cognitive control is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and adapt behavior in the service of long-term goals. Recent theories have proposed that the integral negative emotions elicited by conflict are critical for the adaptive adjustment of cognitive control. However, evidence for the negative valence of conflict in cognitive control tasks mainly comes from behavioral studies that interrupted trial sequences, making it difficult to directly test the link between conflict-induced affect and subsequent increases in cognitive control. Read More

Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2019 May 17;72(5):1119-1130. Epub 2018 Jul 17.

2 Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie (CLLE)-Laboratoire Travail et Cognition (LTC), Toulouse University, Toulouse, France.

Conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimulus information leads to impairment in response speed and accuracy. For instance, in the colour-word Stroop paradigm, participants respond slower and less accurately to the print colour of incongruent colour words (e.g. Read More