Search Our Scientific Publications & Authors

Psych J 2021 Apr 12. Epub 2021 Apr 12.

School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.

Early screening and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) primarily rely on behavioral observations by qualified clinicians whose decision process can benefit from the combination of machine learning algorithms and sensor data. We designed a computerized visual-orienting task with gaze-related or non-gaze-related directional cues, which triggered participants' gaze-following behavior. Based on their eye-movement data registered by an eye tracker, we applied the machine learning algorithms to classify high-functioning children with ASD (HFA), low-functioning children with ASD (LFA), and typically developing children (TD). Read More

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 2021 Apr 12. Epub 2021 Apr 12.

Department of Psychology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Social Cognitive Neuroscience and Mental Health, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Eye gaze is very important for attentional orienting in social life. By adopting the event-related potential (ERP) technique, we explored whether attentional orienting of eye gaze is modulated by emotional congruency between facial expressions and the targets in a spatial cuing task. Faces with different emotional expressions (fearful/angry/happy/neutral) directing their eye gaze to the left or right were used as cues, indicating the possible location of subsequent targets. Read More

Neuroimage 2021 Apr 9:117967. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK; Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia.

The anisotropy of brain white matter microstructure manifests itself in orientational-dependence of various MRI contrasts, and can result in significant quantification biases if ignored. Understanding the origins of this orientation-dependence could enhance the interpretation of MRI signal changes in development, ageing and disease and ultimately improve clinical diagnosis. Using a novel experimental setup, this work studies the contributions of the intra- and extra-axonal water to the orientation-dependence of one of the most clinically-studied parameters, apparent transverse relaxation T. Read More

Front Psychol 2021 25;12:629046. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy.

In this paper, we provide a pragmatist conceptualization of affective habits as relatively flexible ways of channeling affectivity. Our proposal, grounded in a conception of sensibility and habits derived from John Dewey, suggests understanding affective scaffoldings in a novel and broader sense by re-orienting the debate from objects to interactions. We claim that habits play a positive role in supporting and orienting human sensibility, allowing us to avoid any residue of dualism between internalist and externalist conceptions of affectivity. Read More

Infant Ment Health J 2021 Apr 9. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Department of Psychology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

Infants who experience sensitive caregiving are at lower risk for numerous adverse outcomes. This is especially true for infants born preterm, leading them to be more susceptible to risks associated with poorer quality caregiving. Some research suggests that preterm and full-term infants differ on temperament, which may contribute to these findings. Read More

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc 2021 Mar 11;256:119663. Epub 2021 Mar 11.

Department of Physics, Swami Shradhanand College, University of Delhi, Delhi, Delhi 110036, India. Electronic address:

We review the theoretical status of intense laser induced orientation and alignment-a field of study which lies at the interface of intense laser physics and chemical dynamics and having potential applications such as high harmonic generation, nano-scale processing and control of chemical reactions. The evolution of the rotational wave packet and its dynamics leading to orientation and alignment is the topic of the present discussion. The major part of this article primarily presents an overview of recent theoretical progress in controlling the orientation and alignment dynamics of a molecule by means of shaped laser pulses. Read More

Arch Bronconeumol 2021 Mar 8. Epub 2021 Mar 8.

Sleep Unit, Pneumology Department, Hospital Universitario de Guadalajara, 19002 Guadalajara, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Enfermedades Respiratorias (CIBERES), 28029 Madrid, Spain; Medicine Department, Universidad de Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, 28871 Madrid, Spain.

Introduction: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a complex pathology with heterogeneity that has not been fully characterized to date. Our objective is to identify groups of patients with common clinical characteristics through cluster analysis that could predict patient prognosis, the impact of comorbidities and/or the response to a common treatment.

Methods: Cluster analysis was performed using the hierarchical cluster method in 2025 patients in the apnea-HUGU cohort. Read More

J Cogn Enhanc 2020 Sep 23;4(3):340-367. Epub 2020 Jan 23.

Wexner Medical Center, The Ohio State University.

This review examines longitudinal studies of changes in components of attention following mindfulness training. A total of 57 retreat studies, non-randomized trials, and randomized controlled trials were identified. Employing the classical taxonomy proposed by Posner and Petersen (1990), outcome measures were broadly categorized based on whether they involved maintenance of an aroused state (alerting), selective prioritization of attention to target items (orienting), or assessed conflict monitoring (executive attention). Read More

Acta Psychol (Amst) 2021 Mar 31;216:103299. Epub 2021 Mar 31.

Lab. Neurogenómica Cognitiva, Coord. Psicobiología y Neurociencias, Fac. Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico. Electronic address:

Attention and working memory (WM) are under high genetic regulation. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the CNR1 gene, that encode for CB1R, have previously been shown to be related with individual differences in attentional control and WM. However, it remains unclear whether there is an allele-dosage or a dominant contribution of polymorphisms of CNR1 affecting attention and WM performance. Read More

J Immunother Cancer 2021 Apr;9(4)

Department of Experimental Medicine, University of Genova, Genova, Italy.

Background: High-risk neuroblastomas (HR-NBs) are rare, aggressive pediatric cancers characterized by resistance to therapy and relapse in more than 30% of cases, despite using an aggressive therapeutic protocol including targeting of GD2. The mechanisms responsible for therapy resistance are unclear and might include the presence of GD2neg/low NB variants and/or the expression of immune checkpoint ligands such as B7-H3.

Method: Here, we describe a multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) combining the acquisition of 10 nucleated singlets, Syto16pos CD45neg CD56pos cells, and the analysis of GD2 and B7-H3 surface expression. Read More

J Ultrason 2021 8;21(84):53-62. Epub 2021 Mar 8.

Department of Health Science (DISSAL), Università di Genova, Genova, Italy.

From the clinical point of view, a proper diagnosis of spigelian, inguinal and femoral hernias may be relevant for orienting the patient's management, as these conditions carry a different risk of complications and require specific approaches and treatments. Imaging may play a significant role in the diagnostic work-up of patients with suspected abdominal hernias, as the identification and categorization of these conditions is often unfeasible on clinical ground. Ultrasound imaging is particularly suited for this purpose, owing to its dynamic capabilities, high accuracy, low cost and wide availability. Read More

Front Psychol 2021 11;12:618606. Epub 2021 Mar 11.

Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada.

The gaze cueing effect is characterized by faster attentional orienting to a gazed-at than a non-gazed-at target. This effect is often enhanced when the gazing face bears an emotional expression, though this finding is modulated by a number of factors. Here, we tested whether the type of task performed might be one such modulating factor. Read More

eNeuro 2021 Mar 29. Epub 2021 Mar 29.

Graduate Program in Neuroscience, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Mammalian orienting behaviour consists of coordinated movements of the eyes, head, pinnae, vibrissae, or body to attend to an external stimulus. The present study aimed to develop a novel operant task using a touch-screen system to measure spatial attention. In this task, rats were trained to nose-poke a light stimulus presented in one of three locations. Read More

Atten Percept Psychophys 2021 Mar 30. Epub 2021 Mar 30.

Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada.

Multiple-object tracking (MOT) involves keeping track of the positions of multiple independent target items as they move among distractors. According to Pylyshyn (Cognition, 80, 127-158, 2001), the item individuation mechanism used in MOT is also used in visually guided touch. To test this, we compared single-task MOT (MOT alone) with dual-task MOT (MOT while touching items that changed colour), looking for interference: cases where single-task performance was worse than dual-task. Read More

Psychophysiology 2021 Mar 28:e13821. Epub 2021 Mar 28.

Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA.

Researchers typically distinguish between two mechanisms of attentional selection in vision: overt and covert attention. A commonplace assumption is that overt eye movements are automatically preceded by shifts of covert attention during visual search. Although the N2pc component is a putative index of covert attentional orienting, little is currently known about its relationship with overt eye movements. Read More

Front Psychol 2021 9;12:638822. Epub 2021 Mar 9.

School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.

Attention has been theorized as a system comprising three networks that can be estimated reliably by the attention network test (ANT); the three networks are defined as alerting, orienting, and conflict control. The present study aims to identify the attention networks that are crucial for elite shooting and archery athletes and to examine whether mindfulness training can improve elite athletes' attention networks. We compared the performances in ANT between 62 elite athletes (27 F/35 M, 23. Read More

Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2021 Mar 22. Epub 2021 Mar 22.

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, 1355 Oxford Street, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2, Canada. Electronic address:

Attention is a pivotal cognitive function and efforts to understand its properties and operations are fundamental. Building upon the best known taxonomy of attention put forward by Posner and Petersen (1990), the Attention Network Test (ANT; Fan et al., 2001) was designed to efficiently provide scores that reflect the efficacy of alerting, orienting and executive control. Read More

Front Psychiatry 2021 4;12:606296. Epub 2021 Mar 4.

Department of Psychology, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea.

Individuals with high shape/weight concern (SWC) place disproportionate emphasis on shape and weight in evaluating their self-worth, making them more vulnerable to body-related cues. Binge eaters (BE), who are obsessed with devouring high-calorie foods, would show severe symptomatology, especially when they have clinically high SWC. The present study attempted to elucidate how SWC influences binging based on attentional patterns toward high-calorie food cues. Read More

J Pain 2021 Mar 20. Epub 2021 Mar 20.

IIMPACT in Health, University of South Australia, North Tce, Adelaide, 5001. Electronic address:

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether auditory prepulse inhibition (PPI) and/or prepulse facilitation (PPF) were altered in people with fibromyalgia (FM) when compared with controls. Eyeblink responses were recorded from 29 females with FM and 27 controls, while they listened to three blocks of auditory stimuli that delivered pulses with either PPI or PPF. Using a linear mixed model, our main findings were that there was a GROUP*CONDITION interaction (F = 4. Read More

Psychiatr Q 2021 Mar 22. Epub 2021 Mar 22.

Alfred Health, Child and Youth Mental Health Service, 999 Nepean Hwy, Moorabbin, VIC, 3189, Australia.

The COVID pandemic required significant changes in the provision of youth mental health services during the period of lockdown/stay at home orders. Things which were identified as changing significantly during this period included: service via telehealth; working from home, split teams (to reduce infection risk), and social (physical) distancing. An online survey of clinicians was conducted involving both closed and open ended questions. Read More

Q J Exp Psychol (Hove) 2021 Apr 13:17470218211007388. Epub 2021 Apr 13.

Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary.

In recent years, there has been a heated debate about how to interpret findings that seem to show that humans rapidly and automatically calculate the visual perspectives of others. In this study, we investigated the question of whether automatic interference effects found in the dot-perspective task are the product of domain-specific perspective-taking processes or of domain-general "submentalising" processes. Previous attempts to address this question have done so by implementing inanimate controls, such as arrows, as stimuli. Read More

Atten Percept Psychophys 2021 Mar 9. Epub 2021 Mar 9.

Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.

People are constantly exposed to high-energy blue light as they spend considerable amounts of time reading and browsing materials on electronic products like computers and cellphones. Recent studies suggest that the stimulation of intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs)-a newly discovered type of photoreceptor shown to be particularly sensitive to blue light-activates brain regions related to eye movements and attentional orienting (e.g. Read More

World J Psychiatry 2021 Mar 19;11(3):73-86. Epub 2021 Mar 19.

The Department of Clinical Psychology and National Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders and Beijing Key Laboratory of Mental Disorders, Beijing An'Ding Hospital, Capital Medical University, and Center of Schizophrenia, Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders, Beijing 100089, China.

Background: Illness anxiety disorder (IAD) is a common, distressing, and debilitating condition with the key feature being a persistent conviction of the possibility of having one or more serious or progressive physical disorders. Because eye movements are guided by visual-spatial attention, eye-tracking technology is a comparatively direct, continuous measure of attention direction and speed when stimuli are oriented. Researchers have tried to identify selective visual attention biases by tracking eye movements within dot-probe paradigms because dot-probe paradigm can distinguish these attentional biases more clearly. Read More

Front Hum Neurosci 2021 3;15:541369. Epub 2021 Mar 3.

Department of Psychology, Psychology Clinical Neuroscience Center, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, United States.

Variable responses to transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) protocols across individuals are widely reported, but the reasons behind this variation are unclear. This includes tDCS protocols meant to improve attention. Attentional control is impacted by top-down and bottom-up processes, and this relationship is affected by state characteristics such as anxiety. Read More

Brain Inform 2021 Mar 21;8(1). Epub 2021 Mar 21.

Neuroscience and Development Group, Arts and Science, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK.

In this study, the relationship of orienting of attention, motor control and the Stimulus- (SDN) and Goal-Driven Networks (GDN) was explored through an innovative method for fMRI analysis considering all voxels in four experimental conditions: standard target (Goal; G), novel (N), neutral (Z) and noisy target (NG). First, average reaction times (RTs) for each condition were calculated. In the second-level analysis, 'distracted' participants, as indicated by slower RTs, evoked brain activations and differences in both hemispheres' neural networks for selective attention, while the participants, as a whole, demonstrated mainly left cortical and subcortical activations. Read More

J Neurosci 2021 Mar 18. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

Department of Neurophysiology and Chronobiology, Institute of Zoology and Biomedical Research, Jagiellonian University, 9 Gronostajowa street, 30-387 Krakow, Poland

Dopaminergic (DA) neurons of the midbrain are involved in controlling animals' orienting and approach toward relevant external stimuli. The firing of DA neurons is regulated by many brain structures; however, the sensory input is provided predominantly by the ipsilateral superior colliculus (SC). It is suggested that SC also innervates the contralateral rostromedial tegmental nucleus (RMTg)-the main inhibitory input to DA neurons. Read More

Cognition 2021 Mar 16;211:104638. Epub 2021 Mar 16.

James Marshall Chair of Psychology, Department of Psychology and The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel. Electronic address:

Perceptual conscious experiences result from non-conscious processes that precede them. We document a new characteristic of the cognitive system: the speed with which visual meaningful stimuli are prioritized to consciousness over competing noise in visual masking paradigms. In ten experiments (N = 399) we find that an individual's non-conscious visual prioritization speed (NVPS) is ubiquitous across a wide variety of stimuli, and generalizes across visual masks, suppression tasks, and time. Read More

Sci Rep 2021 Mar 18;11(1):6201. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

I2P-Portucalense Institute for Psychology, Portucalense University, Porto, Portugal.

Attention is a complex cognitive process that selects specific stimuli for further processing. Previous research suggested the existence of three attentional networks: alerting, orienting and executive. However, one important topic is how to enhance the efficiency of attentional networks. Read More

Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2021 Mar 15;126:43-56. Epub 2021 Mar 15.

University of Parma, Department of Medicine and Surgery, Neuroscience Unit, Italy.

In non-human primates, at the junction of the prefrontal with the premotor cortex, there is a sector designated as frontal eye field (FEF), involved in controlling oculomotor behavior and spatial attention. Evidence for at least two FEFs in humans is at the basis of the still open issue of the possible homologies between the macaque and the human frontal oculomotor system. In this review article we address this issue suggesting a new view solidly grounded on evidence from the last decade showing that, in macaques, the FEF is at the core of an oculomotor domain in which several distinct areas, including areas 45A and 45B, provide the substrate for parallel processing of different aspects of oculomotor behavior. Read More