This study investigates the neural and postural correlates of environmental perception using simultaneous EEG-posturography recordings in 34 participants viewing polluted, pleasant, and neutral landscapes. By combining spectral analysis and event-related potentials (ERPs), we identified three key findings: (1) Pleasant landscapes enhanced alpha (8–12 Hz) power in left posterior regions and beta (12–30 Hz) in parietal areas, while polluted scenes reduced delta/theta (1–8 Hz) activity, suggesting disrupted relaxation; (2) ERP analyses revealed pollution-induced amplification of both early (EPN) and late (P3) components, indicating sustained attentional capture; (3) Postural coupling showed that pollution-related theta power at P7 predicted sway instability, whereas faster P1 latency correlated with increased stability in pleasant scenes. These results demonstrate that polluted environments elicit a distinct neuro-postural profile characterized by stress-related spectral reduction and hypervigilant ERPs, while natural scenes promote neural patterns associated with visuomotor integration. • First simultaneous EEG-posturography evidence that polluted vs. natural landscapes differentially modulate brain-body interactions. • Pollution disrupts relaxation networks: Reduction of delta/theta (1-8 Hz) power correlates with postural instability, suggesting stress-related sensorimotor decoupling. • Nature enhances visuomotor integration: Faster P100 latency and increased parietal beta (12-30 Hz) predict improved postural stability in natural scenes. • Pollution induces hypervigilance: Amplified EPN/P300 components reveal sustained attentional capture by aversive environmental stimuli.

Association of maternal antenatal distress with child amygdala-prefrontal cortex functional connectivity at 2-3 years in a South African birth cohort study.

Cortical representation of quantification: The role of the left anterior temporal lobe.

Neural correlates of novel word learning in an immersive virtual reality environment

This scoping review examines neuroimaging and neurophysiology methodologies and findings related to lexico-semantic processing in multilingual individuals. To understand what functional neuroimaging and neurophysiology results have been associated with multilingual lexico-semantic processing and to what extent these findings converge, we analyzed 163 studies utilizing fMRI, fNIRS, EEG, and MEG, focusing on the paradigms employed, language assessment approaches, and reported neural correlates. Our review revealed that while lexico-semantic representations in the first language (L1) and second language (L2) become increasingly similar with greater L2 experience, this similarity is modulated by the specific lexico-semantic process under investigation. We highlight the differential role of language experience variables on lexico-semantic processes, including embodied processing. We incorporate studies of unimodal and bimodal signing bilinguals to move beyond the speech modality, combining research populations that have been typically reviewed separately, to summarize evidence on language experience and cross-modal transfer of lexico-semantic processes in multilinguals. Furthermore, we underscore a critical need for increased data and code transparency in the field to enhance reproducibility and facilitate a cumulative understanding of multilingual lexico-semantic processing. This review identifies key gaps in the literature and offers recommendations for future research to advance our understanding of how multilingualism shapes the neural organization of lexico-semantic knowledge.

Structural neuroimaging of the planning network in Inuit adolescents prenatally exposed to lead.

From a neurobiological standpoint, emotion regulation is a core neurocognitive process that supports psychological well-being and adaptive social functioning through coordinated interactions between cortical regulatory systems and subcortical affective circuits. Among regulation strategies, expressive suppression—the inhibition of outward emotional expression after an emotional response has already been initiated—has received increasing attention in affective neuroscience. Suppression is associated with top-down inhibitory control processes mediated by the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulate activity in limbic regions including the amygdala and insula that encode emotional salience and interoceptive states. Although suppression may facilitate short-term social coordination, frequent reliance on this strategy has been associated with increased physiological stress and elevated risk for anxiety and depressive symptoms. Neuroimaging and psychophysiological evidence suggest that suppression engages sustained activation of the anterior cingulate cortex and other cognitive control networks, reflecting the metabolic and cognitive demands of inhibiting behavioral expression while affective responses persist. These processes are further influenced by neuromodulatory systems involving serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid, which regulate emotional reactivity and inhibitory control. This study examines the neural architecture underlying expressive suppression using publicly available functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from the OpenNeuro dataset ds000108, which investigates prefrontal–subcortical pathways involved in emotion regulation tasks. The dataset includes 34 participants performing cognitive emotion regulation tasks involving negative image appraisal. Analysis focuses on functional activation patterns within prefrontal–limbic circuits implicated in emotional control. Results indicate that suppression and related regulatory processes recruit top-down inhibitory control networks involving the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which modulate activity in limbic structures such as the amygdala and insula. These interactions reflect dynamic prefrontal–subcortical pathways that influence emotional experience and behavioral expression. Neurochemical modulation via serotonin, dopamine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid likely contributes to variability in regulatory outcomes. Findings highlight how sustained recruitment of executive control networks during suppression may increase cognitive load and stress, while adaptive emotion regulation strategies rely on flexible engagement of distributed neural networks. These results support integrative models linking neural circuitry, culture, and psychological outcomes in emotion regulation. In turn, cultural context may shape the neural implementation and functional outcomes of suppression. In collectivist cultural environments, norms emphasizing emotional restraint may reinforce neural pathways associated with social monitoring and cognitive control, including circuits involving the medial prefrontal cortex. Conversely, individualistic cultures tend to prioritize expressive authenticity, promoting regulatory strategies such as cognitive reappraisal that engage earlier modulation of limbic responses. This paper synthesizes empirical findings from affective neuroscience and cultural psychology to examine the neural mechanisms, mental health correlates, and sociocultural modulation of expressive suppression. Particular attention is given to bicultural stress and identity conflict, which may increase reliance on suppression among individuals navigating multiple cultural frameworks. We conclude by discussing implications for culturally informed neuroscience and mental health interventions, emphasizing the importance of regulatory flexibility in the adaptive engagement of prefrontal–limbic networks.

Neural correlates of retrieval practice with feedback in foreign vocabulary learning: An fNIRS study.

Perseveration - repeating one action when others would generate larger rewards - is a common behavior, but neither its purpose nor neuronal mechanisms are understood. Here we demonstrate a neural correlate and causal role of dorsal prefrontal cortex, specifically anterior secondary motor cortex (MOs) in perseveration in mice performing a dynamic reward learning task. An auditory go cue signaled mice to turn a wheel either left or right, with the reward probability of each action switching in blocks. Mice perseverated, gaining suboptimal reward, but were faster when making repeated choices. Neuropixels recordings found neurons whose activity correlated with perseveration and predicted rapid reaction times, almost exclusively in anterior MOs. Optogenetically inhibiting this region during the choice period reduced perseveration and slowed reactions. In contrast, inactivating medial prefrontal cortex at choice time had no effect, but inactivating it after reward delivery impaired learning. In this task, therefore, anterior MOs reflects a perseverative decision variable, and is necessary for mediating the effect of this decision variable on choice and reaction time.

Sensorimotor transformation, the process of converting sensory input signals into a movement command, is essential for mediating goal-directed movements. Neural correlates of sensorimotor transformation were assessed in the delay period activity of superior colliculus (SC) neurons recorded simultaneously in three male monkeys generating saccades to visual targets. We applied dimensionality reduction on the SC population response and used a proximity index to quantify the relative, probabilistic closeness of the evolving delay period activity to the visual- and motor-dominant subspaces associated with the sensation and action states. Here, we show that sensorimotor transformation is achieved through a drift in population activity from a visual-like to a motor-like representation during the delay period, with transient visual resets following microsaccades. Also, the proximity index was correlated to reaction time throughout the delay period, suggesting a similar movement preparation mechanism is conserved across the skeletomotor and oculomotor systems.

Neural correlates of late talking: A systematic review of electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies.

This study aimed to investigate brain microstructural alterations in children with basic-type intermittent exotropia (IXT) using mean apparent propagator magnetic resonance imaging (MAP-MRI) and to analyze their correlations with clinical signs. MRI was performed on individuals with basic-type IXT and healthy controls using a 3T Siemens scanner with a 64-channel head coil. Three-dimensional T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted images were acquired. MAP-MRI parametric maps were reconstructed using the Laplace-constrained algorithm, with diffusion tensor imaging maps serving as a reference. Voxel-wise analysis and deterministic fiber tractography were conducted to investigate microstructural changes of cortical regions and visual pathway in basic-type IXT. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was performed to assess the discriminative performance of the MAP-MRI metrics. The correlations between MAP-MRI metrics in significant brain regions and clinical signs were also analyzed. Seventy-eight individuals with basic-type IXT and 96 healthy controls were enrolled. MAP-MRI revealed extensive microstructural alterations in brain regions associated with binocular vision and oculomotor control, as well as cognition and emotion regulation (P < 0.01 at both the voxel and cluster levels). Receiver operating characteristic analysis demonstrated that MAP-MRI metrics exhibited excellent discriminative performance, with the highest area under the curve of 0.986. In addition, MAP-MRI metrics were correlated with disease severity and disease duration (P < 0.05). MAP-MRI identified widespread microstructural alterations and their associations with clinical signs, providing valuable insights into the neural correlates underlying impaired binocular vision and oculomotor control in children with basic-type IXT. MAP-MRI metrics have the potential to serve as noninvasive imaging biomarkers for detecting IXT-related microstructural changes.

Extremes of Body Mass Index (BMI) spectrum have been linked to impaired executive functions, including inhibitory control. While altered neural responses are documented in overweight and obese individuals, less is known about the full BMI spectrum, particularly in underweight adults. This study examined behavioral and neural correlates of reactive inhibition across four BMI groups (underweight, normal-weight, overweight, obese) in 87 young adults (Mage = 22.82, SD = 4.18). Participants performed a Go/NoGo task in neutral and food-related contexts while EEG was recorded. Analyses focused on N2d and P3d components. No behavioral differences emerged between groups. However, P3d amplitudes (but not N2d) showed significant BMI-related modulation (F(3,83) = 2.76, p = 0.047), driven by larger amplitudes in overweight participants compared to underweight and normal-weight individuals. Curve estimation analysis revealed a significant quadratic relationship between BMI and P3d amplitude (R2 = 0.073, p = 0.041), which provided a superior fit compared to the linear model (R2 = 0.061, p = 0.021). Elevated BMI is associated with increased neural recruitment during inhibition, suggesting a compensatory mechanism to maintain behavioral performance. The quadratic pattern suggests that this compensatory efficiency reaches a plateau or begins to stabilize beyond the overweight range. These findings highlight the importance of indexing neural inhibitory markers to identify cognitive vulnerabilities in weight regulation.

Problematic pornography use (PPU) is increasingly conceptualized as a behavioral addiction, yet the cognitive mechanisms underlying this condition remain poorly understood. Prior studies suggest that pornographic cues may impair working memory by capturing attention and diverting cognitive resources. This study aimed to investigate how pornographic distraction affects working memory performance and its neural correlates in individuals at risk for PPU, in comparison with healthy controls. A total of 68 heterosexual male college students (34 at risk for PPU, 34 controls) performed a letter 2-back working memory task while viewing pornographic, positive, or neutral images presented as background distractors. Behavioral measures (reaction times and accuracy) and electrophysiological responses (event-related potentials, specifically P300 amplitude) were recorded and analyzed. Individuals at risk for PPU showed a trend toward slower responses in the pornographic condition, while accuracy was generally lower in this condition compared to the neutral one. Event-related potential results showed larger P300 amplitudes in the PPU-risk group in response to pornographic stimuli, which is consistent with enhanced attentional engagement. Notably, reaction times positively correlated with P300 amplitudes only in the pornographic condition, indicating that longer response times were associated with greater neural reactivity to distracting sexual cues. Overall, the findings provide suggestive evidence that pornographic stimuli may disrupt working memory-related processing in individuals with elevated PPU tendencies, possibly reflecting increased attentional allocation to sexually salient information. This cognitive vulnerability may be relevant to the maintenance and progression of PPU.

Linking brain and behavior in ADHD traits: A partial least squares analysis reveals somatosensory-motor dysconnectivity as a key neural basis.

Humans are naturally attuned to emotionally salient sounds, such as screams signaling danger, which trigger survival-related responses. In sound-sensitivity disorders, such as misophonia and hyperacusis, everyday sounds provoke intense emotional and behavioral reactions. Misophonia is typically triggered by specific sounds, such as chewing, whereas hyperacusis involves hypersensitivity to sounds above certain intensity thresholds. Because these disorders share overlapping symptoms and frequently co-occur, disentangling their neural bases is essential for improving diagnosis and treatments. We recruited 91 young adults categorized into four groups: misophonia, hyperacusis, comorbid misophonia and hyperacusis, and controls. We conducted task-based fMRI, where participants listened to 90 emotionally valenced sounds from the International Affective Digitized Sounds-2 database and rated their valence during scanning. Whole-brain functional activation and seed-to-voxel functional connectivity analyses revealed both distinct and overlapping pattern of neural correlates associated with these disorders. The misophonia group, regardless of comorbid hyperacusis (relative to controls), showed hyperactivation in visual association areas and reduced connectivity between salience and visual networks during unpleasant versus neutral sound processing. This suggests atypical cross-modal sensory involvement. The hyperacusis group exhibited reduced connectivity between salience hubs and frontal control regions compared to misophonia and controls, indicating impaired top-down regulation. In contrast, this connectivity was preserved in misophonia for generally unpleasant sounds, suggesting intact regulation. The comorbid group showed neural patterns associated with both disorders. Overall, these findings reveal overlapping and disorder-specific neural patterns across sound tolerance profiles. Future research should combine neural and behavioral data to refine mechanistic models and guide targeted interventions.

Individual differences in second-language (L2) proficiency are expected to influence how listeners parse and represent continuous speech, yet their neural signatures under naturalistic conditions remain unclear. We investigated this question using task-based fMRI during continuous speech listening. A total of 43 healthy participants completed four listening runs synchronized with MRI acquisition via PsychoPy(Peirce 2007), with eyes open throughout scanning. To promote sustained attention and comprehension, participants provided a native-language oral recall after each run. Based on behavioral proficiency scores, participants were grouped into low- (LP, n = 14), moderate- (MP, n = 14), and high-proficiency (HP, n = 15) groups. We evaluated three temporal information-encoding frameworks derived from BOLD dynamics: direct temporal series, functional connectivity (FC), and self-information weighted inter-subject correlation (ISC-W). Using a 10 × 5-fold nested cross-validation scheme, we tested both categorical classification (Support Vector Machines) for discrete proficiency groups (LP, MP, HP) and continuous multivariate regression (Ridge/Lasso) for continuous proficiency scores. Furthermore, we applied ROI-based ANOVA and univariate Neural Correlation Analysis (NCA) to identify key brain regions, evaluating significance via nonparametric permutation testing (1000 permutations) and False Discovery Rate (FDR) correction. Results indicated that while categorical classification yielded numerical trends—with ISC-W performing best—it did not reach statistical significance under stringent permutation testing. However, multivariate continuous regression using ISC-W features successfully predicted continuous proficiency scores with statistical significance (p &lt; 0.05). Exploratory ROI analysis highlighted the bilateral orbital inferior frontal gyrus (IFG_orb_bilat) as a highly sensitive region. These findings suggest that L2 proficiency is best represented as a distributed, continuous neural variable, and that self-information weighting effectively filters background noise to capture cognitive variance. Methodologically, this study provides a reproducible pipeline integrating information-theoretic feature construction with rigorous whole-brain nonparametric inference.

Recent research has revealed similarities between visual mental imagery and visual perception. Visual imagery is supported by cortical feedback involving multiple visual areas, including the primary visual cortex, and functionally interacts with perception. This has led to the assumption that imagery is "perception in reverse," with feedback connections driving action potentials in early visual areas. However, evidence on feedback mechanisms is mixed, often exerting modulation (often as negative gain control) in sensory areas. Here, we examine and interpret the current understanding of feedback mechanisms related to visual imagery, integrating this with its functional effects and neural correlates. Finally, we put forward a new hypothesis, along with testable predictions, proposing that imagery reshapes spontaneous neural activity rather than producing spiking in early visual areas. This new framework explains many of the properties of visual imagery while providing a better general understanding of feedback and brain function. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural underpinnings of verbal memory encoding and recognition impairments in individuals with clinically stable mood or schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

The distinction between reactive and proactive balance control mechanisms in terms of age-related structural neural correlates is still scarce. From a biomechanical perspective, reactive stepping is a rapid response to sudden loss of stability, whereas proactive self-induced stepping requires anticipatory postural adjustments and longer duration. This study aims to explore how cortical and sub-cortical gray matter volume correlates with variables of reactive and proactive stepping responses among older and young adults; and whether these stepping responses can be distinguished from one another in terms of their structural neural correlates (i.e., cortical and sub-cortical gray matter volume). Twenty-six older adults and nine young adults underwent structural MRI brain scanning. Self-induced stepping variables were derived from ground reaction force data, while kinematic parameters of reactive stepping, including step thresholds, were obtained using a three-dimensional motion capture system. Age-related differences in ground reaction force measures, stepping kinematics, and gray-matter volume in ten regions of interest were examined, followed by partial correlation analyses. Age-related impairments in reactive and proactive stepping performance were accompanied by significantly smaller gray-matter volume among older adults across all regions of interest (p≤0.003), except for the brainstem (p=0.026; post-correction significance level: p<0.005). Partial correlation analyses including both older and young adults revealed significant associations whereby longer balance recovery durations and lower stepping thresholds were associated with lower gray-matter volume in prefrontal and cortical regions, and in the putamen and amygdala (r=-0.41 to -0.60, p≤0.037; and r=0.38 to 0.43, p≤0.048, respectively). In self-induced stepping performance, longer preparation and step durations were significantly associated with lower pre-central, cerebellar and amygdala gray-matter volume (r=-0.51 - -0.56, p≤0.006). Age-related differences in reactive stepping deficits were primarily associated with lower gray-matter volume in prefrontal, cortical, putamen, and amygdala regions, whereas self-induced stepping impairments were associated with precentral, cerebellar, and amygdala gray matter volumes. These findings suggest distinct neural substrates underlying reactive versus self-initiated balance control. Further investigation needs to explore whether intervention programs in older adults may change gray matter volume in these regions.