Successive Information Processing Research Articles

Multiscale criticality measures as general-purpose gauges of proper brain function

The brain is universally regarded as a system for processing information. If so, any behavioral or cognitive dysfunction should lend itself to depiction in terms of information processing deficiencies. Information is characterized by recursive, hierarchical complexity. The brain accommodates this complexity by a hierarchy of large/slow and small/fast spatiotemporal loops of activity. Thus, successful information processing hinges upon tightly regulating the spatiotemporal makeup of activity, to optimally match the underlying multiscale delay structure of such hierarchical networks. Reduced capacity for information processing will then be expressed as deviance from this requisite multiscale character of spatiotemporal activity. This deviance is captured by a general family of multiscale criticality measures (MsCr). MsCr measures reflect the behavior of conventional criticality measures (such as the branching parameter) across temporal scale. We applied MsCr to MEG and EEG data in several telling degraded information processing scenarios. Consistently with our previous modeling work, MsCr measures systematically varied with information processing capacity: MsCr fingerprints showed deviance in the four states of compromised information processing examined in this study, disorders of consciousness, mild cognitive impairment, schizophrenia and even during pre-ictal activity. MsCr measures might thus be able to serve as general gauges of information processing capacity and, therefore, as normative measures of brain health.

Modeling of monitoring processes of structurally heterogeneous technological objects

The tasks of technological information capture, taken from industrial enterprise monitoring systems, and its further transfer to the level of management and decision-making are considered in the article. The problems arising at the stage of integration of isolated automation systems into a single information space of the enterprise have been analyzed. A model of the monitoring system of structurally heterogeneous technological objects has been proposed. It allows to estimate events’ probabilities of the following types: successful information processing, computing equipment downtime.

To catch a photon nondestructively

Quantum Optics With several techniques now available for generating single photons, coupled with their relative robustness and ability to be transmitted long distances, photons are ideal carriers of quantum information. However, determining the best methodol-ogy for detecting a single propagating photon without absorbing it (and destroying it) remains a work in progress. Xia et al. propose a cavity-free approach based on an induced nonlinear interaction. By co-propagating a weak probe beam with the signal beam containing the single photon in a nonlinear medium, they show theoretically that the phase of the probe beam should be shifted, conditional on the presence of the single photon. The proposed technique could offer a simpler route for implementing such quantum non-demolition detection strategies necessary for successful quantum information processing. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 , 023601 (2016).

Understanding Counterfactuality: A Review of Experimental Evidence for the Dual Meaning of Counterfactuals.

Cognitive and linguistic theories of counterfactual language comprehension assume that counterfactuals convey a dual meaning. Subjunctive‐counterfactual conditionals (e.g., ‘If Tom had studied hard, he would have passed the test’) express a supposition while implying the factual state of affairs (Tom has not studied hard and failed). The question of how counterfactual dual meaning plays out during language processing is currently gaining interest in psycholinguistics. Whereas numerous studies using offline measures of language processing consistently support counterfactual dual meaning, evidence coming from online studies is less conclusive. Here, we review the available studies that examine online counterfactual language comprehension through behavioural measurement (self‐paced reading times, eye‐tracking) and neuroimaging (electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging). While we argue that these studies do not offer direct evidence for the online computation of counterfactual dual meaning, they provide valuable information about the way counterfactual meaning unfolds in time and influences successive information processing. Further advances in research on counterfactual comprehension require more specific predictions about how counterfactual dual meaning impacts incremental sentence processing.

Poster Session III

W47. Human Superior Temporal Sulcus Subserves both Concrete and Abstract Social Cognition in Typical DevelopmentMbemba Jabbi*, Ranjani Prabhakaran, Victor Ekuta, Katherine Damme, Brett Cropp, Katherine Roe, Jonathan Shane Kippenhan, Philip Kohn, Alex Martin, Karen F. BermanNational Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MarylandBackground: Lesion, electrophysiological and imaging studies in humans and non-human primates implicate the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) in mediating visuospatial awareness (Karnath 2001) and visual social information processing (Haxby et al. 2000). Millisecond-resolved STS oscillatory signals are implicated in decoding the emotional meaning of dynamic facial cues (Jabbi et al. 2014), and dysfunctions of the STS are associated with social cognitive deficits in autism, fragile X syndrome, and schizophrenia. Although the ability to decipher concrete social signals is shown to predict more complex social cognitive skills such as understanding other people’s mental states and intentions and adapting accordingly during social interactions (Ihnen et al. 1998), a convergent neural mechanism linking concrete and abstract social cognitive processes has not been identified. Here, we hypothesized that the magnitude of right STS responsiveness to concrete dynamic emotional cues would predict the neural network underpinnings of abstract social cognition.Methods: Participants: Eighteen typically developing children, ages 5-17 years (mean age=14.35 years; nine females) participated in two fMRI experiments. In experiment1, videos displaying highly concrete depictions of disgusting, pleasant and emotionally neutral facial expressions of gustatory experiences (Jabbi et al. 2007) were presented in a randomized event-related design during fMRI. Participants were required to watch the videos. In experiment2, videos of highly abstract (Weisberg et al. 2012) social and non-social scenes (moving geometric shapes symbolizing social interactions or routine mechanical operations, respectively) were presented to the same participants in a randomized event-related design. For both experiments, participants responded to a post stimulus button prompt after each trial Statistical Analyses: After preprocessing (8mm smoothing) and normalization using statistical parametric mapping (SPM5), one-sample T contrasts were run in SPM5 at the first level to localize BOLD reactivity to observing a) facial expressions of gustatory disgust or pleasure>neutral expressions as the contrast of interest for the concrete condition; and b) socially attributable interaction of geometric shapes>mechanical interaction as the contrast of interest for the abstract condition. The first level contrasts of experiment1 were then analyzed at the second level using a random effects analysis. We extracted right STS regional BOLD response values (percentage change) for each individual as elicited by concrete social cognition, and used these values as predictors of the same individuals’ whole-brain BOLD responses to abstract social cues at the second-level.Results: Viewing of concrete social cues resulted in BOLD response in bilateral STS, frontolimbic regions (bilateral amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus, midbrain and brainstem), as well as visual cortical regions, with the global maximum of activation being registered in the right STS [at MNI coordinate X, Y, Z=54, −44, 20] at p<0.001. The magnitude of BOLD response signals observed during viewing of gustatory facial emotions in the right STS, was found to be strongly predictive of the magnitude of BOLD response observed during abstract social attribution in the temporoparietal including STS, visual cortical areas, parahippocampal gyrus, bilateral amygdala and anterior insula, dorsolateral, dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortices bilaterally at p<0.005 FDR corrected.Conclusions: Successful social information processing requires the intact functioning of a complex network of brain regions (Dolan, 2002; Adolphs 2010), but the neural signatures representing the human ability to decipher both concrete and abstract social signals remains largely undefined. Given the high prevalence of social cognitive dysfunctions such as autism and Fragile X syndrome coupled with a lack of well-defined neurobiological correlates of the associated social deficits, we took a novel developmental approach using the brain response patterns of the STS (a well-known social cognitive node) during concrete social cognition to predict regional BOLD response to abstract social cues. We showed that the magnitude of signal change in the right STS during concrete emotional processing was a strong predictor of the magnitude of an extensive network of sensorimotor and fronto-limbic regional response to abstract social cues in the same individuals. Such cross-task analyses, especially when combined with measures of social cognitive dysfunction in developmental cohorts, may hold promise for defining subtle network activation patterns that may serve as biomarkers for specific social cognitive dysfunctions in clinical populations such as autism spectrum disorder.Keywords: STS, Social Cognition, Developmental, fMRI.Disclosure: Nothing to Disclose.

Naturalising Representational Content

This paper sets out a view about the explanatory role of representational content and advocates one approach to naturalising content - to giving a naturalistic account of what makes an entity a representation and in virtue of what it has the content it does. It argues for pluralism about the metaphysics of content and suggests that a good strategy is to ask the content question with respect to a variety of predictively successful information processing models in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience; and hence that data from psychology and cognitive neuroscience should play a greater role in theorising about the nature of content. Finally, the contours of the view are illustrated by drawing out and defending a surprising consequence: that individuation of vehicles of content is partly externalist.

P15-8 Neural connectivity during simultaneous and successive information processing assessed by sLORETA

P15-8 Neural connectivity during simultaneous and successive information processing assessed by sLORETA

Individual differences in aging and cognitive control modulate the neural indexes of context updating and maintenance during task switching

This study aimed to explore the combined influence of age and cognitive control on the behavioural and electrophysiological indicators of local, restart and mixing costs. Two groups of middle-aged (49–60 y.o., N = 40) and older (61–80 y.o., N = 40) adults were split according to their overall z-score in a composite of six neuropsychological measures of executive function. All participants performed a task-cueing version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) adapted for measuring event-related potentials, whereby tonal cues instructed to switch or repeat the task rule. A single-task condition with identical sensory and motor response demands was used to aid interpretation of behavioural and brain responses to cues and target events. Working memory updating of stimulus–response mappings, as putatively indexed by local switch costs and cue-locked P3 activity (350–460 msec post-cue onset), was preserved in both older and low control adults. In turn, low control adults showed larger restart costs and enhanced cue-locked P2 amplitudes (190–250 msec) in the task-switching condition only, suggesting lesser preparatory control in the presence of interference. Low control adults showed comparatively larger mixing costs and smaller cue-locked fronto-central slow negativities (500–700 msec), suggesting an inefficient online maintenance of task-set information over time. In contrast, target-locked brain responses were mostly sensitive to age-related effects, with older adults showing two well-known effects: (1) an “anterior shift” in target P3 activity (350–460 msec), and (2) an attenuation of fronto-central slow negativities in single-task and task-switching conditions, respectively. The additive association found between age and cognitive control for different behavioural indexes of task-switch costs suggests a differential influence of these factors upon two successive information processing stages: individual differences in cognitive control mainly influenced the neural indexes of preparatory task-set activation and maintenance, whereas age-related effects influenced the neural indexes of target response selection and task execution.

Activation of the caudal anterior cingulate cortex due to task‐related interference in an auditory Stroop paradigm

Successful information processing requires the focusing of attention on a certain stimulus property and the simultaneous suppression of irrelevant information. The Stroop task is a useful paradigm to study such attentional top-down control in the presence of interference. Here, we investigated the neural correlates of an auditory Stroop task using fMRI. Subjects focused either on tone pitch (relatively high or low; phonetic task) or on the meaning of a spoken word (high/low/good; semantic task), while ignoring the other stimulus feature. We differentiated between task-related (phonetic incongruent vs. semantic incongruent) and sensory-level interference (phonetic incongruent vs. phonetic congruent). Task-related interference activated similar regions as in visual Stroop tasks, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the presupplementary motor-area (pre-SMA). More specifically, we observed that the very caudal/posterior part of the ACC was activated and not the dorsal/anterior region. Because identical stimuli but different task demands are compared in this contrast, it reflects conflict at a relatively high processing level. A more conventional contrast between incongruent and congruent phonetic trials was associated with a different cluster in the pre-SMA/ACC which was observed in a large number of previous studies. Finally, functional connectivity analysis revealed that activity within the regions activated in the phonetic incongruent vs. semantic incongruent contrast was more strongly interrelated during semantically vs. phonetically incongruent trials. Taken together, we found (besides activation of regions well-known from visual Stroop tasks) activation of the very caudal and posterior part of the ACC due to task-related interference in an auditory Stroop task.

Cortical competition during language discrimination

How do human listeners differentiate one language from another? In this study we examine the contributions of acoustic and linguistic cues to successful language discrimination. In particular, we report findings that reveal patterns of cortical competition as a function of the competition between prosodic, phonological, and lexical semantic information during language discrimination. We manipulated four types of stimuli in the listening environment: synthesized speech with rhythmic information, synthesized speech with rhythmic plus intonational information, natural speech from Japanese and Italian, and natural speech from Chinese and English. Our study shows that, depending on the amount and the kind of cues available, the listener recruits different areas of the brain for the same language task. Furthermore, brain activations do not monotonically multiply as a function of the complexity of the cues available, but are the outcomes of cue competition as a function of cue validity for the discrimination task. These findings show how acoustic and linguistic cues lead to cortical competition and how cortical activities adapt to the task demand for successful information processing.

Sustained attention is favored by progesterone during early luteal phase and visuo-spatial memory by estrogens during ovulatory phase in young women

Studies examining the influence of the menstrual cycle on cognitive function have been highly contradictory. The maintenance of attention is key to successful information processing, however how it co-vary with other cognitive functions and mood in function of phases of the menstrual cycle is not well know. Therefore, neuropsychological performance of nine healthy women with regular menstrual cycles was assessed during ovulation (OVU), early luteal (EL), late luteal (LL) and menstrual (MEN) phases. Neuropsychological test scores of sustained attention, executive functions, manual coordination, visuo-spatial memory, verbal fluency, spatial ability, anxiety and depression were obtained and submitted to a principal components analysis (PCA). Five eigenvectors that accounted the 68.31% of the total variance were identified. Performance of the sustained attention was grouped in an independent eigenvector (component 1), and the scores on verbal fluency and visuo-spatial memory were grouped together in an eigenvector (component 5), which explained 17.69% and 12.03% of the total variance, respectively. The component 1 (p<0.034) and the component 5 (p<0.003) showed significant variations during the menstrual cycle. Sustained attention showed an increase in the EL phase, when the progesterone is high. Visuo-spatial memory was increased, while that verbal fluency was decreased during the OVU phase, when the estrogens levels are high. These results indicate that sustained attention is favored by early luteal phase progesterone and do not covaried with any other neuropsychological variables studied. The influence of the estrogens on visuo-spatial memory was corroborated, and covaried inversely with verbal fluency.

Tunable retina encoders for retina implants: why and how

Current research towards retina implants for partial restoration of vision in blind humans with retinal degenerative dysfunctions focuses on implant and stimulation experiments and technologies. In contrast, our approach takes the availability of an epiretinal multi-electrode neural interface for granted and studies the conditions for successful joint information processing of both retinal prosthesis and brain. Our proposed learning retina encoder (RE) includes information processing modules to simulate the complex mapping operation of parts of the 5-layered neural retina and to provide an iterative, perception-based dialog between RE and human subject. Alternative information processing technologies in the learning RE are being described, which allow an individual optimization of the RE mapping operation by means of iterative tuning with learning algorithms in a dialog between implant wearing subject and RE. The primate visual system is modeled by a retina module (RM) composed of spatio-temporal (ST) filters and a central visual system module (VM). RM performs a mapping 1 of an optical pattern P1 in the physical domain onto a retinal output vector R1(t) in a neural domain, whereas VM performs a mapping 2 of R1(t) in a neural domain onto a visual percept P2 in the perceptual domain. Retinal ganglion cell properties represent non-invertible ST filters in RE, which generate ambiguous output signals. VM generates visual percepts only if the corresponding R1(t) is properly encoded, contains sufficient information, and can be disambiguated. Based on the learning RE and the proposed visual system model, a novel retina encoder (RE*) is proposed, which considers both ambiguity removal and miniature eye movements during fixation. Our simulation results suggest that VM requires miniature eye movements under control of the visual system to retrieve unambiguous patterns P2 corresponding to P1. For retina implant applications, RE* can be tuned to generate optimal ganglion cell codes for epiretinal stimulation.

Differences between the recognition of known and unknown patterns

Recognition of unknown meaningless figures was investigated in psychophysical experiment with the aim to clarify which stage of known figure recognition, facture extraction or extracted facture matching with the long-term memory representations, involves successive information processing. Five groups of test figures, consisting of four, five, six, seven, and eight horizontal and vertical line-segments, were composed. Each trial consisted of the following sequence: test figure for 10 ms; individually determined interstimulus interval; masking figure; delay of definite duration (8 values between 200 and 4700 ms); three figures for comparison. The task for subject was to find and indicate which one of three figures corresponds to the test figure. Recognition probability of unknown figures did not depend on the number of figure clements. This fact, together with the previously obtained reverse dependence of the recognition probability of known figures on their complexity, cd to the conclusion that the extraction of factures is the simultaneous process while the matching of extracted features with the long-term memory representations is the successive process. Retention of information in the short-term memory up to 5 s had no effect on the task performance.

The Role of the Auditor in Planning a Successful Information Processing Automation Project

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsTimothy BraithwaiteTimothy Braithwaite is manager of total quality programs for Validity Corporation, Landover MD. Prior to this he held several positions in information systems security and control related positions with US government agencies, including director of information services for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of the US Treasury Department and Manager of the Systems Security and Privacy Department of the US Defense Department Computer Institute. While he held the latter position Braithwaite was a special consultant to the US Privacy Protection Study Commission. He also is a member of the faculty of the University of Maryland and lectures regularly at the US National Defense University. Braithwaite holds an MA in government and public administration from the American University and a BBA from Rockhurst College, Kansas City MO.

Reading comprehension and information processing strategies

ABSTRACTThe present study investigated the relationship between the reading comprehension and information processing strategies of relatively fluent oral readers of Oriya orthography. The study was necessary, because Oriya orthography has some significant differences from English orthography and these differences could bear implications for the reading strategies and processes. Hence, it was envisaged that findings in the field of reading research using English orthography may not hold good for the readers of Oriya orthography.One hundred students of grade V were taken as subjects in the present study. Reading comprehension tasks simultaneous and successive information processing tasks and a nonverbal measure of intelligence were administered to all the subjects.Results show that good comprehenders were relatively more intelligent than the poor comprehenders. So far as their performance on simultaneous and successive information processing strategies were concerned good cornprehenders were better off on both types of coding tasks and these differences were found to be statistically significant even after the effect of intelligence was partialled out. However, no differential proficiency on either of these coding strategies was observed neither for the good nor for the poor comprehender group.

Simultaneous and successive processing in reading disabled children.

A group of 105 reading disabled children were administered a battery of tests which assessed simultaneous and successive information processing skills, language and reading processes, and reading achievement. Principal component analyses were carried out in each of the domains, yielding simultaneous and successive processing factors in the information processing domain; miscue, comprehension, and flow factors in the language domain; and miscue, word recognition, and word analysis factors in the reading process domain. Interpretation of these findings and of the relationships between domains indicates that these reading disabled children employed simultaneous processing in reading tasks that normally require successive processing. Analysis of the relationships between these three domains and reading achievement indicates that the expected relationships between the appropriate use of simultaneous and successive processing and reading achievement emerge, but that the factor identified as the inappropriate use of simultaneous processing is less positively related to achievement. These results are discussed in terms of the two probable causes of the overuse of simultaneous processing, a deficit in successive processing, and an inclination not to use it. Suggestions are offered for the design of remedial instruction.

Successive and Simultaneous Processing: A Note on Interpretation

Interpretations of successive and simultaneous information processing styles are often obscured by confounding influences due to stimulus-response modality components of tasks. Associated implications are discussed in terms of clinical and research situations.

Hemisphere specialization of the animal brain for information processing principles.

The experiments were performed on white rats. Different techniques for forming conditioned reflexes were used. Hemisphere cortex inactivation was carried out by means of spreading depression. The right hemisphere was shown to dominate for space perception, simultaneous information processing, concrete characteristics perception, and deductive processing; the left hemisphere was shown to dominate for time perception, successive information processing, abstract characteristics perception, and inductive processing. A hypothesis of induction and deduction being the main factors determining function lateralization in the hemispheres of the animal brain was put forward.