Stimulus Modality Research Articles

The effects of diurnal variability and modality on false memories formation

ABSTRACT The main objective of the current study was to investigate the effect of time of day on visual and auditory, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM) distortions using a hybrid Deese-Roediger-McDermott procedure. In Experiment 1, we used semantically related words, whereas in Experiment 2 – words were characterized by phonological similarity. The results showed a relationship between modality and types of stimuli. In STM, more semantic errors were found in the evening for items presented visually and more errors following auditory presentation for phonologically similar words. In LTM, the analysis revealed a higher rate of semantic distortions in the evening hours for auditorily presented words. For words with phonological similarity, we observed more errors in the evening without the effect of modality. The results support the hypothesis that more reliance is placed on elaborative processing in the evening and more on maintenance processing in the morning; however, this is not modality invariant.

Effects of audible bandwidth and stimulus modality on emotional responses to sound

A wide range of emotional responses is typical and important for overall well-being. Adults with hearing loss demonstrate a reduced range of emotional responses to non-speech sounds; their ratings of valence to pleasant and unpleasant sounds are less extreme than those of their peers with normal hearing. The purpose of this project was to explore the role of two potential explanations, limited audible bandwidth and emotional processing differences. Adults with normal hearing and sensorineural hearing loss rated their emotional responses (valence and arousal) to non-speech, affective sounds and pictures (in combination and in isolation). To explore the potential contribution of audible bandwidth, adults with normal hearing rated stimuli that were full bandwidth and also bandpass limited. In addition, adults with hearing loss were specifically recruited to include heterogeneous hearing loss configurations. Differences in ratings between auditory and visual stimuli provide insight into whether reduced emotional responses for adults with hearing loss are specific to audition or generalize to visual stimuli. Results demonstrate the importance of audition and audible bandwidth as key factors in emotional responses to pleasant, non-speech stimuli. These findings have important implications for designing interventions to support the listening needs of adults with hearing loss.

Revisiting listener evaluations of creaky voice

In U.S. English, nonpathological creaky voice is a common and natural voice quality that contributes meaningful linguistic information. However, it is also a target of gender-based prejudice, with studies suggesting that speakers with creak sound less hirable and less pleasant. Unfortunately, the stimuli in these studies were often problematic (e.g., creak present in both creaky and modal stimuli; unusually high proportions of creak). To address these problems, we carefully selected naturallyproduced, low predictability sentences. Half of these contained creak on the final word (a common location for creak in both men and women speakers) and half did not. Listeners rated half of the sentences on a hirability scale and half on a pleasantness scale. They then completed an implicit association task regarding gender and career roles. Consistent with previous research, sentences with creak were rated as being produced by speakers who were less hirable than those without creak. Similar to previous findings, older listeners rated stimuli with creak as less pleasant than stimuli without creak. Implicit association scores did not predict ratings on either rating scale. Contrary to our expectations, less favorable evaluations of creak were found despite using naturallyproduced sentences with only sentence-final creak.

The impact of attentional demands on audiovisual integration depends on task-specific components.

Research investigating how attentional demands impacts audiovisual (AV) integration has used a variety of multisensory tasks and procedures to manipulate attentional demands, leading to very differing results. Also, the secondary tasks used to increase attentional demands draw on the sensory modalities already being investigated; for example, a visual distracter task may be used to increase attentional demands in an audiovisual integration task. It is therefore not clear whether the additional task interfered with sensory processing or with audiovisual integration. We used a Colavita task where participants are asked to report the modality of auditory, visual, and audiovisual stimuli to investigate whether increasing attentional demands would impact audiovisual integration. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used a concurrent foot-tapping task to show that increasing attentional demands by having participants completing a secondary task in a different modality interfered with sensory processing but did not affect audiovisual integration. In Experiments 3 and 4, we manipulated attentional demands by having participants respond to all stimuli or only to target stimuli and showed that audiovisual integration was only impacted when targets were infrequent: When participants responded to specific targets amongst five different distracters, they no longer produced more "visual-only" responses than "auditory-only" responses. Whether attentional demands can impact audiovisual integration does not seem unitary and instead seems to depend on task-specific components. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Mechanical and Heat Hyperalgesia upon Withdrawal From Chronic Intermittent Ethanol Vapor Depends on Sex, Exposure Duration, and Blood Alcohol Concentration in Mice

Approximately half of patients with alcohol use disorder report pain and this can be severe during withdrawal. Many questions remain regarding the importance of biological sex, alcohol exposure paradigm, and stimulus modality to the severity of alcohol withdrawal-induced hyperalgesia. To examine the impact of sex and blood alcohol concentration on the time course of the development of mechanical and heat hyperalgesia, we characterized a mouse model of chronic alcohol withdrawal-induced pain in the presence or absence the alcohol dehydrogenase inhibitor, pyrazole. Male and female C57BL/6J mice underwent chronic intermittent ethanol vapor ± pyrazole exposure for 4 weeks, 4 d/wk to induce ethanol dependence. Hind paw sensitivity to the plantar application of mechanical (von Frey filaments) and radiant heat stimuli were measured during weekly observations at 1, 3, 5, 7, 24, and 48 hours after cessation of ethanol exposure. In the presence of pyrazole, males developed mechanical hyperalgesia after the first week of chronic intermittent ethanol vapor exposure, peaking at 48 hours after cessation of ethanol. By contrast, females did not develop mechanical hyperalgesia until the fourth week; this also required pyrazole and did not peak until 48 hours. Heat hyperalgesia was consistently observed only in females exposed to ethanol and pyrazole; this developed after the first weekly session and peaked at 1 hour. We conclude that Chronic alcohol withdrawal-induced pain develops in a sex-, time-, and blood alcohol concentration-dependent manner in C57BL/6J mice. PerspectiveAlcohol withdrawal-induced pain is a debilitating condition in individuals with AUD. Our study found mice experience alcohol withdrawal-induced pain in a sex and time course specific manor. These findings will aid in elucidating mechanisms of chronic pain and AUD and will help individuals remain abstinent from alcohol.

Differences in young children's emotional valence ratings of 180 stimuli

Words and pictures are often used as stimuli in studies of investigate relations between emotion and cognition. Selecting controlled stimuli for experimental design in this area represents a crucial issue. Only few standardized databases of pictures or words are available for children. None compile at the same time ratings for both lexical and visual stimuli. The present study provides a French child database for a corpus of 180 stimuli (90 words, 90 pictures, 90 combined words-pictures). These stimuli were rated on emotional valence (emotional: negative, positive, and non-emotional: neutral) by 178 French children differing in age (4, 5 and 6-year-old) and gender (boys, girls). Results showed age and gender differences in the children's ratings. With increase of age, the stimuli rated as positive decreased, and the stimuli rated as neutral increased. We found gender related differences in the valence ratings, 5 and 6-year-old girls shown more neutral ratings than did boys. We observed a significant difference in ratings between stimulus modalities. Children were more accurate while rating words and pictures than combined words-pictures in each age group and gender. The norms and the set of words and pictures are available in OSF (Center for Open Science), https://osf.io/zcge3/.

Sensorimotor synchronization with visual, auditory, and tactile modalities.

While it is well known that humans are highly responsive to rhythm, the factors that influence our ability to synchronize remain unclear. In the current study, we examined how stimulus modality and rhythmic deviation, along with the synchronizer's level of musicality, impacted sensorimotor synchronization (SMS). Utilizing a finger-tapping task and three sensory modalities (visual, auditory, and tactile), we manipulated rhythmic deviation by varying the temporal position, intensity, and availability of cues across four deviation levels. Additionally, to determine our participants' musical familiarity and aptitude, we administered the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index (Gold-MSI) questionnaire. We found that SMS to external rhythmic stimuli was significantly more precise for auditory and tactile than for visual sequences. Further, we found SMS consistency significantly decreased in all modalities with increased rhythmic deviation, suggesting rhythmic deviation directly relates to SMS difficulty. Moreover, a significant correlation was found between Gold-MSI scores and SMS consistency in the most rhythmically deviant level, such that the higher one's musical general sophistication score, the greater one's SMS ability. This held for all three modalities. Combined, these findings suggest that rhythmic synchronization performance is affected not only by the modality and rhythmic deviation of the stimuli but also by the musical general sophistication of the synchronizer.

Developmental Language Disorder Is Associated With Slower Processing Across Domains: A Meta-Analysis of Time-Based Tasks.

Individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) often exhibit slower processing on time-based tasks in comparison with age-matched peers. Processing speed has been linked to various linguistic skills and might serve as a global indicator of individual differences in language abilities. Despite an extensive literature on processing speed in DLD, it remains unclear whether slower processing is domain general or restricted to linguistic and/or auditory tasks. This meta-analysis used robust variance estimation to compare response/reaction times (RTs) of DLD and age-matched groups (N = 812 DLD, 870 neurotypical; M age [DLD] = 8.9 years, range: 4.3-22.7 years). Moderators included task (simple RT, choice RT, naming, congruent/baseline conditions of interference control tasks), stimulus type (linguistic/nonlinguistic), stimulus modality (auditory/nonauditory), and response modality (verbal/nonverbal). Age and publication year were covariates. The overall effect based on 46 studies and 144 estimates indicated longer mean RTs in DLD groups (g = .47, p < .001, 95% CI [.38, .55]). Moderator analyses indicated larger effects when tasks required verbal as opposed to nonverbal responses. No other moderators approached significance. All subgroup analyses were significant, indicating longer mean RTs in DLD groups across tasks, stimulus types, stimulus modalities, and response modalities. Individuals with DLD exhibit longer RTs across verbal and nonverbal tasks, which may contribute to observed difficulties in language, motor skills, and executive functioning. Simple processing speed measures should be included in screening for language delays but may not be suitable for differential diagnosis, given that slower processing may occur across multiple disorders. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21809355.

Understanding the Influence of Local Physical Stimuli on Chondrocyte Behavior.

Investigating the mechanobiology of chondrocytes is challenging due to the complex micromechanical environment of cartilage tissue. The innate zonal differences and poroelastic properties of the tissue combined with its heterogeneous composition create spatial- and temporal-dependent cell behavior, which further complicates the investigation. Despite the numerous challenges, understanding the mechanobiology of chondrocytes is crucial for developing strategies for treating cartilage related diseases as chondrocytes are the only cell type within the tissue. The effort to understand chondrocyte behavior under various mechanical stimuli has been ongoing over the last 50years. Early studies examined global biosynthetic behavior under unidirectional mechanical stimulus. With the technological development in high-speed confocal imaging techniques, recent studies have focused on investigating real-time individual and collective cell responses to multiple / combined modes of mechanical stimuli. Such efforts have led to tremendous advances in understanding the influence of local physical stimuli on chondrocyte behavior. In addition, we highlight the wide variety of experimental techniques, spanning from static to impact loading, and analysis techniques, from biochemical assays to machine learning, that have been utilized to study chondrocyte behavior. Finally, we review the progression of hypotheses about chondrocyte mechanobiology and provide a perspective on the future outlook of chondrocyte mechanobiology.

Verbal Recall in Aging: Effects of Stimulus Modality

Abstract Purpose: Free recall tasks target cognitive and linguistic processes such as episodic memory, lexical access, and retrieval. Consequently, the free recall paradigm is suitable for assessing memory deterioration caused by aging, which can be influenced by stimulus presentation modality. Hence, the present study aimed to determine if aging has an effect on visual and auditory recall abilities. Materials and Methods: Twenty young adults (mean age: 25.4 ± 0.99) and older adults (mean age: 63.3 ± 3.51) participated in the study. Participants performed a free recall task under two conditions – related and unrelated and two modalities – visual and auditory where they were instructed to recall as many items as possible with no specific order and time limit. Results: Free recall performance was calculated as the mean number of correctly recalled items. Although younger participants recalled a higher number of items, the performance across conditions and modality was variable. Conclusions: The findings of the present study revealed an age-related decline in the efficiency of episodic memory, which is crucial to remember recent events.

Disgust-Eliciting Pathogen Threats and Salivary Immune Responses

Abstract. This study aimed to examine the effects of different sensory modality presentations of disgusting stimuli on aspects of immunity (behavioral and physiological) and affect in men and women. Sixty-four college students participated, and all participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups based on sensory modality stimuli type (visual or olfactory) and manipulation (experimental or control). Results indicated that olfactory stimuli were rated as more disgusting than visual stimuli. When collapsed across sensory modality, females tended to self-report greater disgust sensitivity than males. Overall, there was a significant negative association between disgust ratings and changes in resting heart rate (HR). Baseline salivary immunoglobulin A (SIgA) concentration was significantly positively correlated with disgust ratings in men. Our findings suggest that the behavioral and physiological immune systems are indeed coordinated, but future studies are needed to examine the extent to which multisensory disgusting cues influence immune system responses as a function of gender.

Exploring how visual working memory performance differs with response type

Visual working memory (VWM) holds visual information in mind to achieve task goals. Performance varies based on factors such as stimulus modality and distractor number. Several different tasks have been used to measure VWM, each resulting in differing estimates of capacity. Our goal was to examine how task demands can influence neurocognitive measures of VWM during early childhood. We administered two tasks to 4- and 5-year-olds that were identical during visual encoding and maintenance, only differing in type of response required during recall. In the change detection task (CD), a visual stimulus was compared with a VWM representation. In the cued-recall task (CR) a VWM representation was verbally labeled. Six canonical colors were used (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple). Neural data were collected from bilateral frontal, temporal, and parietal regions using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). VWM capacity was estimated to be higher in the change detection task (k4=2.48, k5=2.54) compared to the cued recall task (k4=1.13, k5=1.84) (p < .001). A network of frontal, temporal, and parietal regions was engaged across tasks. When comparing the tasks, CR showed increased activation in both the left supramarginal gyrus, F(1,35) = 11.642, p = 0.002, and the right superior parietal cortex, F(1,35) = 7.915, p = 0.008. Further, higher activation was observed for 5-year-olds during CR in right supramarginal gyrus, F(1,34) = 8.295, p = 0.007. During the CD task, right inferior frontal gyrus showed increased activation at set size two, F(2,64) = 3.643, p = 0.032, which is around capacity for this task. Thus, the CR task was observed to be more difficult than the CD task, and 5-year-olds showed increased activation in right parietal cortex during the CR task. These data suggest that children improve at engaging compensatory neural mechanisms during more challenging tasks involving the labelling of VWM representations.

Brain modeling for control: A review

Neurostimulation technologies have seen a recent surge in interest from the neuroscience and controls communities alike due to their proven potential to treat conditions such as epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, and depression. The provided stimulation can be of different types, such as electric, magnetic, and optogenetic, and is generally applied to a specific region of the brain in order to drive the local and/or global neural dynamics to a desired state of (in)activity. For most neurostimulation techniques, however, an underlying theoretical understanding of their efficacy is still lacking. From a control-theoretic perspective, it is important to understand how each stimulus modality interacts with the inherent complex network dynamics of the brain in order to assess the controllability of the system and develop neurophysiologically relevant computational models that can be used to design the stimulation profile systematically and in closed loop. In this paper, we review the computational modeling studies of 1) deep brain stimulation, 2) transcranial magnetic stimulation, 3) direct current stimulation, 4) transcranial electrical stimulation, and 5) optogenetics as five of the most popular and commonly used neurostimulation technologies in research and clinical settings. For each technology, we split the reviewed studies into 1) theory-driven biophysical models capturing the low-level physics of the interactions between the stimulation source and neuronal tissue, 2) data-driven stimulus-response models which capture the end-to-end effects of stimulation on various biomarkers of interest, and 3) data-driven dynamical system models that extract the precise dynamics of the brain’s response to neurostimulation from neural data. While our focus is particularly on the latter category due to their greater utility in control design, we review key works in the former two categories as the basis and context in which dynamical system models have been and will be developed. In all cases, we highlight the strength and weaknesses of the reviewed works and conclude the review with discussions on outstanding challenges and critical avenues for future work.

Multi-sensory feedback improves spatially compatible sensori-motor responses

To interact with machines, from computers to cars, we need to monitor multiple sensory stimuli, and respond to them with specific motor actions. It has been shown that our ability to react to a sensory stimulus is dependent on both the stimulus modality, as well as the spatial compatibility of the stimulus and the required response. However, the compatibility effects have been examined for sensory modalities individually, and rarely for scenarios requiring individuals to choose from multiple actions. Here, we compared response time of participants when they had to choose one of several spatially distinct, but compatible, responses to visual, tactile or simultaneous visual and tactile stimuli. We observed that the presence of both tactile and visual stimuli consistently improved the response time relative to when either stimulus was presented alone. While we did not observe a difference in response times of visual and tactile stimuli, the spatial stimulus localization was observed to be faster for visual stimuli compared to tactile stimuli.

Hierarchical organization of objects in scenes is reflected in mental representations of objects

The arrangement of objects in scenes follows certain rules (“Scene Grammar”), which we exploit to perceive and interact efficiently with our environment. We have proposed that Scene Grammar is hierarchically organized: scenes are divided into clusters of objects (“phrases”, e.g., the sink phrase); within every phrase, one object (“anchor”, e.g., the sink) holds strong predictions about identity and position of other objects (“local objects”, e.g., a toothbrush). To investigate if this hierarchy is reflected in the mental representations of objects, we collected pairwise similarity judgments for everyday object pictures and for the corresponding words. Similarity judgments were stronger not only for object pairs appearing in the same scene, but also object pairs appearing within the same phrase of the same scene as opposed to appearing in different phrases of the same scene. Besides, object pairs with the same status in the scenes (i.e., being both anchors or both local objects) were judged as more similar than pairs of different status. Comparing effects between pictures and words, we found similar, significant impact of scene hierarchy on the organization of mental representation of objects, independent of stimulus modality. We conclude that the hierarchical structure of visual environment is incorporated into abstract, domain general mental representations of the world.

Attention to attention in aphasia – elucidating impairment patterns, modality differences and neural correlates

It is increasingly acknowledged that patients with aphasia following a left-hemisphere stroke often have difficulties in other cognitive domains. One of these domains is attention, the very fundamental ability to detect, select, and react to the abundance of stimuli present in the environment. Basic and more complex attentional functions are usually distinguished, and a variety of tests has been developed to assess attentional performance at a behavioural level. Attentional performance in aphasia has been investigated previously, but often only one specific task, stimulus modality, or type of measure was considered and usually only group-level analyses or data based on experimental tasks were presented. Also, information on brain-behaviour relationships for this cognitive domain and patient group is scarce.We report detailed analyses on a comprehensive dataset including patients' performance on various subtests of two well-known, standardised neuropsychological test batteries assessing attention. These tasks allowed us to explore: 1) how many patients show impaired performance in comparison to normative data, in which tasks and on what measure; 2) how the different tasks and measures relate to each other and to patients’ language abilities; 3) the neural correlates associated with attentional performance.Up to 32 patients with varying aphasia severity were assessed with subtests from the Test of Attentional Performance (TAP) as well as the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA). Performance was compared to normative data, relationships between attention measures and other background data were explored with principal component analyses and correlations, and brain-behaviour relationships were assessed by means of voxel-based correlational methodology.Depending on the task and measure, between 3 and 53 percent of the patients showed impaired performance compared to normative data. The highest proportion of impaired performance was noted for complex attention tasks involving auditory stimuli. Patients differed in their patterns of performance and only the performance in the divided attention tests was (weakly) associated with their overall language impairment. Principal components analyses yielded four underlying factors, each being associated with distinct neural correlates.We thus extend previous research in characterizing different aspects of attentional performance within one sample of patients with chronic post stroke aphasia. Performance on a broad range of attention tasks and measures was variable and largely independent of patients’ language abilities, which underlines the importance of assessing this cognitive domain in aphasic patients. Notably, a considerable proportion of patients showed difficulties with attention allocation to auditory stimuli. The reasons for these potentially modality-specific difficulties are currently not well understood and warrant additional investigations.

Lack of evidence for participation of TMEM150C in sensory mechanotransduction.

The membrane protein TMEM150C has been proposed to form a mechanosensitive ion channel that is required for normal proprioceptor function. Here, we examined whether expression of TMEM150C in neuroblastoma cells lacking Piezo1 is associated with the appearance of mechanosensitive currents. Using three different modes of mechanical stimuli, indentation, membrane stretch, and substrate deflection, we could not evoke mechanosensitive currents in cells expressing TMEM150C. We next asked if TMEM150C is necessary for the normal mechanosensitivity of cutaneous sensory neurons. We used an available mouse model in which the Tmem150c locus was disrupted through the insertion of a LacZ cassette with a splice acceptor that should lead to transcript truncation. Analysis of these mice indicated that ablation of the Tmem150c gene was not complete in sensory neurons of the dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Using a CRISPR/Cas9 strategy, we made a second mouse model in which a large part of the Tmem150c gene was deleted and established that these Tmem150c-/- mice completely lack TMEM150C protein in the DRGs. We used an ex vivo skin nerve preparation to characterize the mechanosenstivity of mechanoreceptors and nociceptors in the glabrous skin of the Tmem150c-/- mice. We found no quantitative alterations in the physiological properties of any type of cutaneous sensory fiber in Tmem150c-/- mice. Since it has been claimed that TMEM150C is required for normal proprioceptor function, we made a quantitative analysis of locomotion in Tmem150c-/- mice. Here again, we found no indication that there was altered gait in Tmem150c-/- mice compared to wild-type controls. In summary, we conclude that existing mouse models that have been used to investigate TMEM150C function in vivo are problematic. Furthermore, we could find no evidence that TMEM150C forms a mechanosensitive channel or that it is necessary for the normal mechanosensitivity of cutaneous sensory neurons.

Predictive encoding of pure tones and FM-sweeps in the human auditory cortex.

Expectations substantially influence perception, but the neural mechanisms underlying this influence are not fully understood. A prominent view is that sensory neurons encode prediction error with respect to expectations on upcoming sensory input. Although the encoding of prediction error has been previously demonstrated in the human auditory cortex (AC), previous studies often induced expectations using stimulus repetition, potentially confounding prediction error with neural habituation. These studies also measured AC as a single population, failing to consider possible predictive specializations of different AC fields. Moreover, the few studies that considered prediction error to stimuli other than pure tones yielded conflicting results. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to systematically investigate prediction error to subjective expectations in auditory cortical fields Te1.0, Te1.1, Te1.2, and Te3, and two types of stimuli: pure tones and frequency modulated (FM) sweeps. Our results show that prediction error is elicited with respect to the participants' expectations independently of stimulus repetition and similarly expressed across auditory fields. Moreover, despite the radically different strategies underlying the decoding of pure tones and FM-sweeps, both stimulus modalities were encoded as prediction error in most fields of AC. Altogether, our results provide unequivocal evidence that predictive coding is the general encoding mechanism in AC.

Trigeminal‐mediated headshaking: A diagnostic challenge

Trigeminal‐mediated headshaking: A diagnostic challenge

Constraints of attention, stimulus modality, and feature similarity in working memory.

Two of the most important concepts in working memory that differentiate many theories are the role of attention and similarity between items. Investigators have debated whether there is a central, general resource of attention, and whether interference between items depends mostly on their modality and type of code (i.e., verbal/acoustic versus visual/spatial coding) or upon multiple dimensions of feature similarity even within a modality. Here, we examine results from three experiments in which the features of items to be remembered differed for visual objects in color or orientation, or for acoustic objects in noise duration or tone pitch. There were one or two of these sets on a trial and, when there were two sets, the similarity between their features varied: there were sets in different modalities, sets with different feature types within a modality, or sets of the same feature type. One-set trials consistently produced superior performance. For two-set trials, dissimilarity of the sets mattered only when both sets had to be attended, compared with attention to only one set. Feature differences within a modality mattered at least as much as between-modality differences. The findings conflict with what would be expected if modality were the sole organizing principle and support a working memory model in which a capacity-limited attention is constrained by the feature similarity of task-relevant items.