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PloS One 2024Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) has been used as a powerful tool to understand the mechanism underlying neural binding by investigating neural synchrony across different...
Phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) has been used as a powerful tool to understand the mechanism underlying neural binding by investigating neural synchrony across different frequency bands. This study examined the possibility that dysregulated alpha-gamma modulation may be crucially involved in aberrant brain functioning in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Magnetoencephalographic data were recorded from 13 adult participants with ASD and 16 controls. The time-coursed sources averaged over a primary visual area 1 and fusiform gyrus area were reconstructed with the minimum-norm estimate method. The alpha-gamma PAC was further calculated based on these sources. The statistical analysis was implemented based on the PAC and directed asymmetry index. The results showed the hyper-activity coupling for ASD at the no-face condition and revealed the importance of alpha-gamma phase modulation in detecting a face. Our data provides novel evidence for the role of the alpha-gamma PAC and suggests that the globe connectivity may be more critical during visual perception.
Topics: Humans; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Male; Adult; Magnetoencephalography; Female; Visual Perception; Young Adult; Brain Mapping; Case-Control Studies
PubMed: 38843176
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0303959 -
Journal of Sports Science & Medicine Jun 2024Perception is an essential component of children's psychological development, which is foundational to children's ability to understand and adapt to their external... (Meta-Analysis)
Meta-Analysis Review
Perception is an essential component of children's psychological development, which is foundational to children's ability to understand and adapt to their external environment. Perception is also a crucial tool for understand and navigating one's surroundings, enabling children to identify objects and react appropriately to settings or situations. Substantial evidence indicates that engaging in physical activity is beneficial for the development of children's perceptual abilities, as the two are closely intertwined. Still, more research is necessary to gain a full understanding of the impact of physical activity on children's perception. To further identify and quantify the effects of physical activity on a number of specific perceptions in children. Systematic review and meta-analysis. Searches were performed using five online databases (i.e., PubMed, SPORTDiscus, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library) for articles published up to and including June 2023 to identify eligible citations. A total of 12 randomized controlled trials, encompassing 1,761 children under the age of 12, were analyzed. Overall, physical activity as an intervention showed a notable effect on the development of children's perceptions. The meta-analysis indicated that participating in physical activity for 30 minutes around, daily, had a greater impact on children's visual perception and executive functioning than on their motor perception, body perception, and global self-worth (SMD = 1.33, 95% CI: 0.75, 1.91, p < 0.001). The effects of physical activity on children's perception performance varied by participant characteristics, with physical activity having better effects on body perception and overall self-worth in children who were obese or overweight. Furthermore, physical activity can also enhance executive function and attention in children with developmental coordination disorders. The effects of physical activity on children's perception performance varied according to the intervention time, with different activity durations resulting in different perception performances. Therefore, parents and educators must prioritize an appropriate length of physical activity time for children to ensure their optimal growth and development. Registration and protocol CRD42023441119.
Topics: Humans; Child; Exercise; Perception; Executive Function; Child Development; Visual Perception; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; Body Image
PubMed: 38841637
DOI: 10.52082/jssm.2024.289 -
Frontiers in Pharmacology 2024Musical hallucination is a rare perceptual phenomenon wherein individuals hear music in the absence of external auditory stimuli. This phenomenon occurs across diverse... (Review)
Review
Musical hallucination is a rare perceptual phenomenon wherein individuals hear music in the absence of external auditory stimuli. This phenomenon occurs across diverse medical conditions and can be triggered by some drugs. The underlying mechanism of drug-induced hallucination is unknown. This study explores drug-induced musical hallucination through a literature review, aiming to investigate its pathophysiology and potential treatment modalities. A literature search was conducted until January 2024 using databases PubMed, WorldCat, Google Scholar, and DOAJ, with keywords "drugs induced musical hallucination" or "drugs" combined with "musical hallucination." The search yielded 24 articles which met inclusion criteria, encompassing 27 cases. The average patient age was 58.3 years, with 67.9% females. Prevalent conditions among cases included hearing impairments, psychiatric disorders, cancers, and neurodegenerative conditions. Common trigger drugs comprised antidepressants, opioids, anti-Parkinson drugs, ketamine, and voriconazole. Musical hallucination descriptions varied widely, and 6 patients reported concurrent visual hallucinations. The onset of symptoms ranged from 75 min to 240 days. Treatment strategies included termination of trigger drugs, dosage reduction, alteration of administration routes or formula, switching to similar drugs, or addition of antidepressants, sedatives, or atypical antipsychotic medications. Musical hallucinations completely disappeared in 24/27 (88.9%) patients but continued in 3/27 (11.1%) patients. The current study concludes that drug-induced musical hallucination may arise from altering neurotransmitter/receptor balance and intricate interactions between trigger drugs and underlying conditions.
PubMed: 38841376
DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1401237 -
Journal of Vision Jun 2024The primary symptom of visual snow syndrome (VSS) is the unremitting perception of small, flickering dots covering the visual field. VSS is a serious but poorly...
The primary symptom of visual snow syndrome (VSS) is the unremitting perception of small, flickering dots covering the visual field. VSS is a serious but poorly understood condition that can interfere with daily tasks. Several studies have provided qualitative data about the appearance of visual snow, but methods to quantify the symptom are lacking. Here, we developed a task in which participants with VSS adjusted parameters of simulated visual snow on a computer monitor until the simulation matched their internal visual snow. On each trial, participants (n = 31 with VSS) modified the size, density, update speed, and contrast of the simulation. Participants' settings were highly reliable across trials (intraclass correlation coefficients > 0.89), and they reported that the task was effective at stimulating their visual snow. On average, visual snow was very small (less than 2 arcmin in diameter), updated quickly (mean temporal frequency = 18.2 Hz), had low density (mean snow elements vs. background = 2.87%), and had low contrast (average root mean square contrast = 2.56%). Our task provided a quantitative assessment of visual snow percepts, which may help individuals with VSS communicate their experience to others, facilitate assessment of treatment efficacy, and further our understanding of the trajectory of symptoms, as well as the neural origins of VSS.
Topics: Humans; Adult; Male; Female; Visual Fields; Young Adult; Photic Stimulation; Middle Aged; Contrast Sensitivity; Perceptual Disorders; Visual Perception; Computer Simulation; Vision Disorders
PubMed: 38837169
DOI: 10.1167/jov.24.6.3 -
Molecular Autism Jun 2024Categorization and its influence on perceptual discrimination are essential processes to organize information efficiently. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Condition...
BACKGROUND
Categorization and its influence on perceptual discrimination are essential processes to organize information efficiently. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) are suggested to display enhanced discrimination on the one hand, but also to experience difficulties with generalization and ignoring irrelevant differences on the other, which underlie categorization. Studies on categorization and discrimination in ASC have mainly focused on one process at a time, however, and typically only used either behavioral or neural measures in isolation. Here, we aim to investigate the interrelationships between these perceptual processes using novel stimuli sampled from a well-controlled artificial stimulus space. In addition, we complement standard behavioral psychophysical tasks with frequency-tagging EEG (FT-EEG) to obtain a direct, non-task related neural index of discrimination and categorization.
METHODS
The study was completed by 38 adults with ASC and 38 matched neurotypical (NT) individuals. First, we assessed baseline discrimination sensitivity by administering FT-EEG measures and a complementary behavioral task. Second, participants were trained to categorize the stimuli into two groups. Finally, participants again completed the neural and behavioral discrimination sensitivity measures.
RESULTS
Before training, NT participants immediately revealed a categorical tuning of discrimination, unlike ASC participants who showed largely similar discrimination sensitivity across the stimuli. During training, both autistic and non-autistic participants were able to categorize the stimuli into two groups. However, in the initial training phase, ASC participants were less accurate and showed more variability, as compared to their non-autistic peers. After training, ASC participants showed significantly enhanced neural and behavioral discrimination sensitivity across the category boundary. Behavioral indices of a reduced categorical processing and perception were related to the presence of more severe autistic traits. Bayesian analyses confirmed overall results.
LIMITATIONS
Data-collection occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic.
CONCLUSIONS
Our behavioral and neural findings indicate that adults with and without ASC are able to categorize highly similar stimuli. However, while categorical tuning of discrimination sensitivity was spontaneously present in the NT group, it only emerged in the autistic group after explicit categorization training. Additionally, during training, adults with autism were slower at category learning. Finally, this multi-level approach sheds light on the mechanisms underlying sensory and information processing issues in ASC.
Topics: Humans; Male; Adult; Female; Electroencephalography; Young Adult; Autistic Disorder; Discrimination, Psychological; Learning; Photic Stimulation; Visual Perception; Autism Spectrum Disorder
PubMed: 38831439
DOI: 10.1186/s13229-024-00604-6 -
Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Jun 2024In the search for objective tools to quantify neural function in Rett Syndrome (RTT), which are crucial in the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials,...
BACKGROUND
In the search for objective tools to quantify neural function in Rett Syndrome (RTT), which are crucial in the evaluation of therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials, recordings of sensory-perceptual functioning using event-related potential (ERP) approaches have emerged as potentially powerful tools. Considerable work points to highly anomalous auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in RTT. However, an assumption of the typical signal-averaging method used to derive these measures is "stationarity" of the underlying responses - i.e. neural responses to each input are highly stereotyped. An alternate possibility is that responses to repeated stimuli are highly variable in RTT. If so, this will significantly impact the validity of assumptions about underlying neural dysfunction, and likely lead to overestimation of underlying neuropathology. To assess this possibility, analyses at the single-trial level assessing signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), inter-trial variability (ITV) and inter-trial phase coherence (ITPC) are necessary.
METHODS
AEPs were recorded to simple 100 Hz tones from 18 RTT and 27 age-matched controls (Ages: 6-22 years). We applied standard AEP averaging, as well as measures of neuronal reliability at the single-trial level (i.e. SNR, ITV, ITPC). To separate signal-carrying components from non-neural noise sources, we also applied a denoising source separation (DSS) algorithm and then repeated the reliability measures.
RESULTS
Substantially increased ITV, lower SNRs, and reduced ITPC were observed in auditory responses of RTT participants, supporting a "neural unreliability" account. Application of the DSS technique made it clear that non-neural noise sources contribute to overestimation of the extent of processing deficits in RTT. Post-DSS, ITV measures were substantially reduced, so much so that pre-DSS ITV differences between RTT and TD populations were no longer detected. In the case of SNR and ITPC, DSS substantially improved these estimates in the RTT population, but robust differences between RTT and TD were still fully evident.
CONCLUSIONS
To accurately represent the degree of neural dysfunction in RTT using the ERP technique, a consideration of response reliability at the single-trial level is highly advised. Non-neural sources of noise lead to overestimation of the degree of pathological processing in RTT, and denoising source separation techniques during signal processing substantially ameliorate this issue.
Topics: Humans; Rett Syndrome; Adolescent; Female; Evoked Potentials, Auditory; Child; Young Adult; Electroencephalography; Auditory Perception; Reproducibility of Results; Acoustic Stimulation; Male; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; Adult
PubMed: 38831410
DOI: 10.1186/s11689-024-09544-x -
Scientific Reports May 2024Voriconazole is a second-generation azole used to treat serious fungal infections. Visual hallucinations constitute a representative adverse event caused by...
Association between voriconazole-induced visual hallucination and dopamine in an analysis of the food and drug administration (FDA) adverse event reporting system database.
Voriconazole is a second-generation azole used to treat serious fungal infections. Visual hallucinations constitute a representative adverse event caused by voriconazole. However, its mechanism of action remains unclear. In patients with schizophrenia or Parkinson's disease, the frequency of visual hallucinations is associated with brain dopamine levels. This study investigated the frequency of visual hallucinations in patients treated with voriconazole alone or in combination with dopaminergic medicines or dopamine antagonists, using data collected from the Food and Drug Administration Adverse event Reporting System (FAERS). The frequency of visual hallucinations with voriconazole alone and in combination with a dopaminergic medicine (levodopa) or dopamine antagonists (risperidone and chlorpromazine) was compared using data from the FAERS between 2004 and 2023, using the reporting odds ratio (ROR) with relevant 95% confidence intervals (CI). The reference group comprised patients who had been administered voriconazole without dopaminergic medication or dopamine antagonists. Of the patients, 22,839, 90,810, 109,757, 6,435, 20, 83, and 26, respectively were treated with voriconazole, levodopa, risperidone, chlorpromazine, voriconazole plus levodopa, voriconazole plus risperidone, and voriconazole plus chlorpromazine. The occurrence of visual hallucinations increased when used in combination with levodopa (ROR = 12.302, 95% CI = 3.587-42.183). No increase in incidence was associated with the concomitant use of dopamine antagonists (risperidone, ROR = 1.721, 95% CI = 0.421-7.030; chlorpromazine, ROR = none, 95% CI = none). Dopaminergic medicine may increase the risk of visual hallucinations in patients treated with voriconazole. Whether voriconazole positively modulates dopamine production warrants further investigation using a translational research approach.
Topics: Humans; Voriconazole; Hallucinations; United States; United States Food and Drug Administration; Male; Female; Aged; Middle Aged; Dopamine; Levodopa; Adult; Antifungal Agents; Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems; Chlorpromazine; Risperidone; Dopamine Antagonists; Parkinson Disease; Young Adult; Adolescent; Databases, Factual
PubMed: 38822123
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-63504-y -
Scientific Reports May 2024Numerous efforts have been made to test the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning in healthy children and adult populations. However, only a small number of studies have... (Randomized Controlled Trial)
Randomized Controlled Trial
Numerous efforts have been made to test the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning in healthy children and adult populations. However, only a small number of studies have tested this theory in children with cognitive-motor disorders, such as developmental coordination disorder (DCD). The present study aims to examine the individual and additive effects of a visual illusion and self-controlled practice on a golf putting task in children at risk for DCD based on the OPTIMAL theory. Forty children at risk for DCD (mean age = 8.57 ± 1.05 years) were randomly assigned to four experimental groups (1-small visual illusion + self-controlled practice; 2-big visual illusion + self-controlled practice; 3-small visual illusion + yoked; 4-big visual illusion + yoked). Following 12 pretest trials of a golf putting task, the participants completed 5 blocks of 12 trials of practice on the first day. A retention test (12 trials) and a transfer dual-task test (12 trials) were conducted on the second day. The results indicated that in retention test the big visual illusion + self-controlled practice group was significantly better than the small visual illusion + yoked group (p = 0.01), while there was not any other significant difference between groups at retention test as well as between all groups at practice phase and transfer test (p > 0.05 for all comparisons). In other words, an additive effect has been observed just in the retention test but not the practice phase as well as transfer test. In general, the results of this study support the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning in children at risk for DCD and suggests to all educators who work with these children to use the combination of the visual illusion with self-controlled practice to improve the motor learning of children at risk for DCD.
Topics: Humans; Motor Skills Disorders; Child; Male; Female; Illusions; Learning; Motor Skills; Psychomotor Performance
PubMed: 38816488
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-63387-z -
Biological Psychology Jul 2024The perception of biological motion is an important social cognitive ability. Models of biological motion perception recognize two processes that contribute to the...
The perception of biological motion is an important social cognitive ability. Models of biological motion perception recognize two processes that contribute to the perception of biological motion: a bottom-up process that binds optic-flow patterns into a coherent percept of biological motion and a top-down process that binds sequences of body-posture 'snapshots' over time into a fluent percept of biological motion. The vast majority of studies on autism and biological motion perception have used point-light figure stimuli, which elicit biological motion perception predominantly via bottom-up processes. Here, we investigated whether autism is associated with deviances in the top-down processing of biological motion. For this, we tested a sample of adults scoring low vs high on autism traits on a recently validated EEG paradigm in which apparent biological motion is combined with frequency tagging (Cracco et al., 2022) to dissociate between two percepts: 1) the representation of individual body postures, and 2) their temporal integration into movements. In contrast to our hypothesis, we found no evidence for a diminished temporal body posture integration in the high-scoring group. We did, however, find a group difference that suggests that adults scoring high on autism traits have a visual processing style that focuses more on a single percept (i.e. either body postures or movements, contingent on saliency) compared to adults scoring low on autism traits who instead seemed to represent the two percepts included in the paradigm in a more balanced manner. Although unexpected, this finding aligns well with the autism literature on perceptual stability.
Topics: Humans; Motion Perception; Male; Female; Adult; Autistic Disorder; Young Adult; Electroencephalography; Photic Stimulation; Posture
PubMed: 38815896
DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2024.108820 -
ELife May 2024In the 'double-drift' illusion, local motion within a window moving in the periphery of the visual field alters the window's perceived path. The illusion is strong even...
In the 'double-drift' illusion, local motion within a window moving in the periphery of the visual field alters the window's perceived path. The illusion is strong even when the eyes track a target whose motion matches the window so that the stimulus remains stable on the retina. This implies that the illusion involves the integration of retinal signals with non-retinal eye-movement signals. To identify where in the brain this integration occurs, we measured BOLD fMRI responses in visual cortex while subjects experienced the double-drift illusion. We then used a combination of univariate and multivariate decoding analyses to identify (1) which brain areas were sensitive to the illusion and (2) whether these brain areas contained information about the illusory stimulus trajectory. We identified a number of cortical areas that responded more strongly during the illusion than a control condition that was matched for low-level stimulus properties. Only in area hMT+ was it possible to decode the illusory trajectory. We additionally performed a number of important controls that rule out possible low-level confounds. Concurrent eye tracking confirmed that subjects accurately tracked the moving target; we were unable to decode the illusion trajectory using eye position measurements recorded during fMRI scanning, ruling out explanations based on differences in oculomotor behavior. Our results provide evidence for a perceptual representation in human visual cortex that incorporates extraretinal information.
Topics: Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Motion Perception; Female; Male; Visual Cortex; Adult; Illusions; Eye Movements; Young Adult; Photic Stimulation; Brain Mapping; Brain
PubMed: 38809774
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.76803