Attention System Research Articles

Catecholaminergic neuromodulation and selective attention jointly shape perceptual decision-making

Perceptual decisions about sensory input are influenced by fluctuations in ongoing neural activity, most prominently driven by attention and neuromodulator systems. It is currently unknown if neuromodulator activity and attention differentially modulate perceptual decision-making and/or whether neuromodulatory systems in fact control attentional processes. To investigate the effects of two distinct neuromodulatory systems and spatial attention on perceptual decisions, we pharmacologically elevated cholinergic (through donepezil) and catecholaminergic (through atomoxetine) levels in humans performing a visuo-spatial attention task, while we measured electroencephalography (EEG). Both attention and catecholaminergic enhancement improved decision-making at the behavioral and algorithmic level, as reflected in increased perceptual sensitivity and the modulation of the drift rate parameter derived from drift diffusion modeling. Univariate analyses of EEG data time-locked to the attentional cue, the target stimulus, and the motor response further revealed that attention and catecholaminergic enhancement both modulated pre-stimulus cortical excitability, cue- and stimulus-evoked sensory activity, as well as parietal evidence accumulation signals. Interestingly, we observed both similar, unique, and interactive effects of attention and catecholaminergic neuromodulation on these behavioral, algorithmic, and neural markers of the decision-making process. Thereby, this study reveals an intricate relationship between attentional and catecholaminergic systems and advances our understanding about how these systems jointly shape various stages of perceptual decision-making.

Edge time series components of functional connectivity and cognitive function in Alzheimer’s disease

Understanding the interrelationships of brain function as measured by resting-state magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological/behavioral measures in Alzheimer’s disease is key for advancement of neuroimaging analysis methods in clinical research. The edge time-series framework recently developed in the field of network neuroscience, in combination with other network science methods, allows for investigations of brain-behavior relationships that are not possible with conventional functional connectivity methods. Data from the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center sample (53 cognitively normal control, 47 subjective cognitive decline, 32 mild cognitive impairment, and 20 Alzheimer’s disease participants) were used to investigate relationships between functional connectivity components, each derived from a subset of time points based on co-fluctuation of regional signals, and measures of domain-specific neuropsychological functions. Multiple relationships were identified with the component approach that were not found with conventional functional connectivity. These involved attentional, limbic, frontoparietal, and default mode systems and their interactions, which were shown to couple with cognitive, executive, language, and attention neuropsychological domains. Additionally, overlapping results were obtained with two different statistical strategies (network contingency correlation analysis and network-based statistics correlation). Results demonstrate that connectivity components derived from edge time-series based on co-fluctuation reveal disease-relevant relationships not observed with conventional static functional connectivity.

Monitoring of environmental gases and calf health in Italian Mediterranean buffalo herd

In buffalo breeding, calves require special attention and housing systems that provide thermal comfort, good air quality, brightness, and adequate space. Overcrowding, poor ventilation, high temperatures, or improper management of animals can result in increased concentrations of environmental gases such as ammonia (NH3), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), and hydrogen sulfide (H2 S), altered microclimate parameters, and worsened air quality. The increase in these gases can be problematic for the environment and the calves, whose stress levels can increase and adversely affect the buffalo calves´ nutrition, health, and physiological parameters. During the late spring and early summer season, gas monitoring was carried out in 7 buffalo calf housing spaces in the Campania region, and special measuring instruments were used to measure CO 2 (Portable indoor air quality CO2 meter, Extech instruments), H 2 S and NH3 (Pro gas badge, Industrial scientific) produced by calves. The recording of perceived data was performed continuously and over 15 minutes. Measurements were taken early in the morning before the morning milk feed, and the instruments were positioned at the height of the calves. The calves analysed are all housed in completely closed structures equipped with doors and windows, usually left open in the summer, and closed in the winter. Furthermore, the age range of the animals housed ranges from 0 to 90 days of life, during which the calf mainly takes on reconstituted milk and then is sent towards weaning in the last few weeks. The m 2 available per calf varies on each farm, and all the calves are housed individually. On average, the available space is approximately 100 cm x 1.40 cm. In all structures, the litter used is straw, mandatory for the first two weeks of the calf’s life. In addition, the “Health score” of 300 calves was also evaluated. Score 0 indicated no cough; normal serous discharge or a small amount of unilateral turbid discharge; normal eyes or a small amount of ocular discharge; normal ear, flick ear, or head shake; normal or semi-formed feces; forelimbs entirely covered by bedding when calf lying down. Score 1 indicates coughs on movement; bilateral, excessive, or mucopurulent mucus discharge; moderate or heavy ocular discharge; head tilt or unilateral/bilateral droop; loose or watery feces sifts through the bedding; partially visible or visible forelimbs when the calf is lying down. Each parameter has its score and is considered independent of the other. Finally, as regards the state of cleanliness of the litter, rather than in the calf score, the state of cleanliness of the litters was considered in the data collection regarding the management of the calf house, expressing a judgment such as: “The litter is: kept in good condition; fairly well kept; it is not kept in good condition”. The data collected show that in all calf housing spaces, the estimated NH3 concentrations were in the range of 0 ppm. Only in one particularly overcrowded, the maximum concentration was 1 ppm. For CO 2 levels, the values recorded also never exceeded 1,000 ppm, ranging from a minimum of 678 ppm to a maximum of 946 ppm, and the H 2 S values were 0 ppm in each one. In addition, all buffalo calves evaluated with the calf health score had a score of 0, indicating optimal health conditions. The monitored seven buffalo farms showed adequate attention to environmental conditions, and all the raised buffalo calves showed optimal health status.

Event Extraction with Spectrum Estimation Using Neural Networks Linear Methods

The timely extraction of event information from enormous amounts of textual data is a critical research problem. Event extraction using deep learning technology has gained academic attention as a result of the fast growth of deep learning. Event extraction requires costly, expert-level, high-quality human annotations. As a result, developing a data-efficient event extraction model that can be trained using only a few labelled samples has emerged as a key difficulty. Existing research work focuses mainly on the structured data with supervised models. The proposed work focuses on Movie Scene Event Extraction, a practical media analysis problem that seeks to extract structured events from unstructured movie screenplays. We suggest using the correlation between various argument roles in situations where different argument roles in a movie scene share similar qualities. This can be beneficial to the Movie Scene Argument Extraction (argument classification and identification) and film scene trigger extraction (Trigger recognition and classifying). In order to represent the relation between different roles in argument and their respective roles, we propose a Superior Concept of Role (SRC) as a top-level idea of a role that is based on the classic argument role, as well as an SRC-based Graph Attention System (GAT). To assess the efficacy of the model we designed, we constructed the dataset MovieSceneEvent to extract movies’ scene-related events. Additionally, we conducted tests on an existing dataset in order to compare results with different models. Results from the experiments like extraction of words, aspect keywords from the documents indicate that our model does better than other models. Furthermore, the information on the relationship between the argument roles helps improve the effectiveness of film scene extraction of events.

62 Repetition priming of novel geometric shapes is associated with cortical arousal in young adults but spatial attention in older adults

Objective:Repetition priming is a form of implicit memory in which prior exposure to a stimulus facilitates the subsequent processing of that stimulus. While explicit memory has consistently been shown to decline with age, the effect of age on implicit memory remains unresolved. Most studies examining age-related effects on priming have utilized words or pictures of real objects with pre-existing representations that may differentially involve implicit and explicit memory processes across age groups. Repetition priming may also be influenced by attentional processes during encoding that are differentially affected by age. In a previous study using word-stem completion, we found that individual differences in cortical arousal, but not spatial attention, influenced the magnitude and temporal dynamics of conceptual priming in healthy older adults. The objective of this study is to investigate whether cortical arousal and spatial attention play differential roles in the magnitude and temporal dynamics of repetition priming in young and older adults using novel shapes that do not have pre-existing representations within memory.Participants and Methods:Healthy young (n=25, M age=19.4) and older adults (n=54, M age=70.0) completed a perceptual repetition priming task that was followed by a recognition memory test and an alerting/spatial orienting task from which behavioral measures of cortical arousal and spatial attention were derived. Older adults also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests. In the perceptual priming task, participants made a speeded judgment on whether novel nonverbal shapes had “closed” or “open” perimeters. Each shape was presented twice: half following the first presentation (immediate repetition) and half after three intervening items (delayed repetition). Participants were then shown closed and open versions of each shape and asked to identify which version was presented in the previous task. In the alerting/orienting task, participants made a speeded response to the location of a visual target; on a subset of trials, either nonspatial alerting or spatial orienting cues were presented 300ms prior to the target.Results:Response times were slower and judgment accuracy greater in older adults (ps<0.05). However, the groups showed comparable levels of immediate and delayed repetition priming along with chance levels of recognition memory accuracy. Cortical arousal was reduced (p<0.001) and costs associated with spatial attention were larger (p<0.01) in the older adults. Despite comparable priming, cortical arousal and spatial attention were differentially related to priming across groups. In the young group, lower cortical arousal was associated with greater delayed priming (r=-.47, p=0.017) and slower decay rate (r=.44, p=0.03). In the older group, higher cost of spatial orienting was associated with greater immediate priming (r=.40, p=0.003) and faster decay rate (r=.29, p=0.03). Better category fluency performance was also associated with greater immediate priming (r=.32, p=0.035) and faster decay rate (r=.34, p=0.025) in older adults.Conclusions:These findings suggest that different attentional systems support repetition priming across age groups. Priming is modulated by the efficiency of cortical arousal in young adults, but by the costs of spatial attention in older adults with reduced cortical arousal, consistent with a shift from bottom-up to top-down attentional processes and broader attentional scope with age.

Attentional control systems for emergent strategic issues in the post-Chandlerian world

Scholars have recently emphasized a need to advance the attention-based view to account for a new “post-Chandlerian” environment wherein firms organized along Chandlerian m-form lines are increasingly unable to cope with rapid and discontinuous changes and strategic issues that can emerge anywhere in the organization. This article works to make such an advance by drawing on the underdeveloped idea of attentional control—that is direction of members’ attention—within the attention-based view. The article develops the concept of attentional control systems and, as its core contribution, proposes that firms can use issue-specific emergent attentional control systems to address emergent strategic issues that are characteristic of post-Chandlerian environments. Key components of these systems include emergent, issue-specific communication channels, reconfigured roles, and interactive control practices. These three interrelated attentional control mechanisms enable attentional dynamism and high-quality attention to be directed toward emergent strategic issues, thus mediating effective strategic decision-making as well as resource commitment and ultimately enhancing strategic adaptation.

‘’The Science Behind Raj Yoga Meditation-A Narrative Review’’

On invitation to write an article on Yoga here we decided to write on science of Raj yoga meditation (RM). Normally besides the classic asana-based meditations there are 3 kinds of meditations i) Contemplation/ Concentration based ii) Mindful based iii) Love kind of meditation. Despite so much scepticism the western world found results with meditation and according to them Mindful based meditation is the true one as they get results of increased Concentration, attention with them. Nevertheless, here we have focused on description of science behind RM. Here thus we have detailed a narrative review. The authors performed an extensive search on various platforms like PubMed; Google scholar; Web of Science; Embassy; Cochrane review library utilizing the MeSH terms; “Raj yoga meditation (RM)”; “Cognitive brain”; “attention systems ‘’emotional brain’ ’anandamide; coronary artery disease (CAD); drug addiction; obesity; neuropsychiatric disorders to assess the efficacy of RM in treatment of various diseases” from 2000 till date in 2023. We have detailed anandamide as it is the basic hormone liberated subsequent to bliss and helps in treatment of substance use disorders( SUD) .Further the basis of different neurotransmitters like serotonin, vasopressin ,GABA etc are detailed for laymen along with professionals to get insight into RM as well as its benefits which can aid in positive thinking and power of belief that I can do it can help one attain the impossible as I am possible. So much so that if 2 group of patients are told one that you will develop stomach cancer after 5 yrs, the one told of cancer actually develops it while say 2 patients knee surgery for pain both given anaesthesia one operated other also feels relief of pain despite no surgery with the power of mind, hence the role of positive thinking has kept a lot of cancer patients alive despite given a prognosis of 6mths life.

Perifoveal and peripheral attentional modulation on order perception.

The present study demonstrates that spatial attention modulates temporal order perception differently in the perifoveal and peripheral regions, with a more pronounced effect in the left peripheral visual field, suggesting a dissociation in attentional systems for event timing at the sub-second level.

An Infrared Small Target Detection Method Based on Attention Mechanism.

The human visual attention system plays an important role in infrared target recognition because it can quickly and accurately recognize infrared small targets and has good scene adaptability. This paper proposes an infrared small target detection method based on an attention mechanism, which consists of three modules: a bottom-up passive attention module, a top-down active attention module, and decision feedback equalization. In the top-down active attention module, given the Gaussian characteristics of infrared small targets, the idea of combining knowledge-experience Gaussian shape features is applied to implement feature extraction, and quaternion cosine transform is performed to achieve multi-dimensional fusion of Gaussian shape features, thereby achieving complementary fusion of multi-dimensional feature information. In the bottom-up passive attention module, considering that the difference in contrast and motion between the target and the background can attract attention easily, an optimal fast local contrast algorithm and improved circular pipeline filtering are adopted to find candidate target regions. Meanwhile, the multi-scale Laplacian of the Gaussian filter is adopted to estimate the optimal size of the infrared small target. The fast local contrast algorithm based on box filter acceleration and structure optimization is employed to extract local contrast features, and candidate target regions can be obtained by using an adaptive threshold. Besides, the mean gray, target size, Gaussian consistency, and circular region constraint are used in pipeline filtering to extract motion regions, and the false-alarm rate is reduced effectively. Finally, decision feedback equalization is adopted to obtain real targets. Experiments are conducted on some real infrared images involving complex backgrounds with sea, sky, and ground clutters, and the experimental results indicate that the proposed method can achieve better detection performance than conventional baseline methods, such as RLCM, ILCM, PQFT, MPCM, and ADMD. Also, mathematical proofs are provided to validate the proposed method.

Improving conventional household greensand treatment for efficient Mn(II) removal from drinking water

Geogenic contaminants pose a global threat to ensuring access to safe drinking water. Manganese (Mn) is a naturally-occurring redox-active element which in its reduced form, Mn(II), is a widespread groundwater contaminant. Prolonged consumption of water containing high levels of Mn has been linked to adverse effects on memory, attention, motor skills, and nervous system function, particularly in vulnerable groups including pregnant individuals and young children. In addition, Mn can lead to aesthetic issues such as altered taste, clogging, and damage to plumbing systems. While Mn has historically been regulated as an aesthetic concern, a mounting body of evidence linking health issues to Mn exposure through drinking water has heightened the challenges of using groundwater to meet drinking water needs. Recently, Health Canada established a health guideline which set a maximum acceptable concentration for total Mn in drinking water of 120 μg/L. Greensand (GS) filters are commonly used in conventional drinking water treatment systems for Mn(II) removal due to their cost-effectiveness and high exchange capacity. However, under certain conditions conventional GS systems may have a low Mn(II) removal efficiency (Galangashi et al. 2021) and encounter challenges related to Mn leaching (Outram et al. 2018), resulting in failure to meet health-related standards. Furthermore, GS filters typically undergo regeneration using potassium permanganate (KMnO4), a mild oxidant that results in the release of additional Mn waste byproducts during the regeneration of the filter. Recent research suggests that Mn-containing materials can effectively activate peroxymonosulfate (PMS) and produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) that facilitate contaminant degradation. This study aims to investigate whether PMS may be used to improve greensand treatment systems and enhance Mn(II) removal from drinking water. Batch experiments were performed to test the Mn(II) removal efficiency across a range of PMS concentrations (0-500 μM) and GS mass (0.1-3 g). Aqueous Mn concentrations were measured over time using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). Solid-phase reaction products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The mechanisms of Mn oxidation were identified by quenching experiments and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. The activation of PMS by greensand significantly increased the removal efficiency of Mn(II) compared to the conventional method (e.g., 96.83(±3.77)% at PMS = 500 µM vs. 5.77(±11.1)% at PMS = 0 µM). Our results attribute the mechanism underlying increased Mn removal in our improved treatment method to advanced oxidation processes that involve free radicals (e.g., hydroxyl radical (·OH) and sulfate radical (SO4·-)) and non-free radical pathways, with Mn oxides as the main oxidation products. This study provides a new treatment method for more efficient Mn(II) removal while simultaneously reducing Mn wastes produced during the regeneration cycle which allows for a more sustainable and holistic management of invaluable groundwater resources.

Direct evidence for proactive suppression of salient-but-irrelevant emotional information inputs.

It has long been debated whether emotional information inherently captures attention. The mainstream view suggests that the attentional processing of emotional information is automatic and difficult to be controlled. Here, we provide direct evidence that salient-but-irrelevant emotional information inputs can be proactively suppressed. First, we demonstrated that both negative and positive emotional distractors (fearful and happy faces) induced attentional capture effects (i.e., more attention allocated to emotional distractors than neutral distractors) in the singleton-detection mode (Experiment 1), but attentional suppression effects (i.e., less attention allocated to emotional distractors than neutral distractors) in the feature-search mode that strengthened task motivation (Experiment 2). The suppression effects in the feature-search mode disappeared when emotional information was disrupted through face inversion, showing that the suppression effects were driven by emotional information rather than low-level visual factors (Experiment 3). Furthermore, the suppression effects also disappeared when the identity of emotional faces became unpredictable (Experiment 4), suggesting that the suppression was highly dependent on the predictability of emotional distractors. Importantly, we reproduced the suppression effects using eye-tracking methods and found that there was no attentional capture by emotional distractors before the appearance of the attentional suppression effects (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that irrelevant emotional stimuli that have the potential to cause distraction can be proactively suppressed by the attention system. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The effect of motivational and instructional self-talk on attentional control under noise distraction.

Inhibition is the key factor of attentional control (AC). Basketball players are typically exposed to noise from the audience or opposing teams while competing. These distractions disrupt the attentional systems, ultimately compromise the athletes' inhibition ability and directly affect their performance on the court. Hence, effective AC strategies are crucial. Two studies were demonstrated to investigate the effects of noise distractions on attentional control and the moderating effect of self-talk. In Study 1, 36 participants undertook the Stroop task, showing an increased error rate with noise distraction. Thirty-nine national second-level basketball players participated in Study 2, where they engaged in the Antisaccade task under both quiet and noise-distraction conditions, employing different self-talk strategies. Results showed that instructional self-talk reduced the antisaccade error rate in quiet conditions, while motivational self-talk increased the error rate under noise distractions. These findings suggests that noise distraction reduces AC. In competition scenarios, basketball players are required to appropriately implement self-talk strategies to improve AC and prevent potential counterproductive effects.

Comparative Materiovigilance Program for US, Europe, Japan, India and Proposed Reporting Mechanism for Indian Scenario

Medical devices are thought to be a blessing for the healthcare system because they are tools that can save lives. Apart from therapeutic potential, these devices have lot of negative side effects. It took a strong cohort attentive system to control such negative impacts. As a result, materiovigilance was introduced. Materiovigilance is the investigation and monitoring of incidents brought on by the use of medical devices. It controls adverse events (AE) and brings about international harmony. These goals are kept in mind when the principles, viewpoints, and materiovigilance techniques in the USA, Europe, China, Japan, Australia, Canada, and India are contrasted. It is crucial to make this comparison to comprehend the shortcomings of the current regulatory frameworks in the nations described above. Additionally, it will give the regulatory authorities a complete picture so they can alter any existing legislation as necessary. In the present study, an ideal proposed model of medical devices for its approval has been explained easily

Cognitive Archeology and the Attentional System: An Evolutionary Mismatch for the Genus Homo.

Brain evolution is a key topic in evolutionary anthropology. Unfortunately, in this sense the fossil record can usually support limited anatomical and behavioral inferences. Nonetheless, information from fossil species is, in any case, particularly valuable, because it represents the only direct proof of cerebral and behavioral changes throughout the human phylogeny. Recently, archeology and psychology have been integrated in the field of cognitive archeology, which aims to interpret current cognitive models according to the evidence we have on extinct human species. In this article, such evidence is reviewed in order to consider whether and to what extent the archeological record can supply information regarding changes of the attentional system in different taxa of the human genus. In particular, behavioral correlates associated with the fronto-parietal system and working memory are employed to consider recent changes in our species, Homo sapiens, and a mismatch between attentional and visuospatial ability is hypothesized. These two functional systems support present-moment awareness and mind-wandering, respectively, and their evolutionary unbalance can explain a structural sensitivity to psychological distress in our species.

Controlling the input: How one-year-old infants sustain visual attention.

Traditionally, the exogenous control of gaze by external saliencies and the endogenous control of gaze by knowledge and context have been viewed as competing systems, with late infancy seen as a period of strengthening top-down control over the vagaries of the input. Here we found that one-year-old infants control sustained attention through head movements that increase the visibility of the attended object. Freely moving one-year-old infants (n=45) wore head-mounted eye trackers and head motion sensors while exploring sets of toys of the same physical size. The visual size of the objects, a well-documented salience, varied naturally with the infant's moment-to-moment posture and head movements. Sustained attention to an object was characterized by the tight control of head movements that created and then stabilized a visual size advantage for the attended object for sustained attention. The findings show collaboration between exogenous and endogenous attentional systems and suggest new hypotheses about the development of sustained visual attention.

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SELECTIVE AUDITORY ATTENTION DURING DICHOTIC LISTENING WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF COMPLEXITY: AN FMRI STUDY

A group of 20 healthy subjects (11 males and 9 females) performed a selective auditory attention task in a dichotic listening paradigm with different levels of perceptual load. Analysis of brain activation patterns measured with fMRI during selective listening to fusion speech with distractors of varying strengths revealed statistically significant sex differences in the topography of cortical activity. “Female male” effects dominated in the left superior temporal gyrus and the left pre and postcentral gyrus; while the most pronounced “male female” effects were found in the left islet, shell and frontal lobule. Statistically significant effects were also obtained by comparing activation patterns according to the level of task complexity: It was shown that masking with a female speaker’s voice caused greater activation of additional high-level information processing areas. The findings indicate the presence of sexual dimorphism in the organization of the selective auditory attention system.

Understanding Collective Intelligence: Investigating the Role of Collective Memory, Attention, and Reasoning Processes

As society has come to rely on groups and technology to address many of its most challenging problems, there is a growing need to understand how technology-enabled, distributed, and dynamic collectives can be designed to solve a wide range of problems over time in the face of complex and changing environmental conditions—an ability we define as “collective intelligence.” We describe recent research on the Transaction Systems Model of Collective Intelligence (TSM-CI) that integrates literature from diverse areas of psychology to conceptualize the underpinnings of collective intelligence. The TSM-CI articulates the development and mutual adaptation of transactive memory, transactive attention, and transactive reasoning systems that together support the emergence and maintenance of collective intelligence. We also review related research on computational indicators of transactive-system functioning based on collaborative process behaviors that enable agent-based teammates to diagnose and potentially intervene to address developing issues. We conclude by discussing future directions in developing the TSM-CI to support research on developing collective human-machine intelligence and to identify ways to design technology to enhance it.

Aberrant reward learning, but not negative reinforcement learning, is related to depressive symptoms: an attentional perspective.

Aberrant reward functioning is implicated in depression. While attention precedes behavior and guides higher-order cognitive processes, reward learning from an attentional perspective - the effects of prior reward-learning on subsequent attention allocation - has been mainly overlooked. The present study explored the effects of reward-based attentional learning in depression using two separate, yet complimentary, studies. In study 1, participants with high (HD) and low (LD) levels of depression symptoms were trained to divert their gaze toward one type of stimuli over another using a novel gaze-contingent music reward paradigm - music played when fixating the desired stimulus type and stopped when gazing the alternate one. Attention allocation was assessed before, during, and following training. In study 2, using negative reinforcement, the same attention allocation pattern was trained while substituting the appetitive music reward for gazing the desired stimulus type with the removal of an aversive sound (i.e. white noise). In study 1 both groups showed the intended shift in attention allocation during training (online reward learning), while generalization of learning at post-training was only evident among LD participants. Conversely, in study 2 both groups showed post-training generalization. Results were maintained when introducing anxiety as a covariate, and when using a more powerful sensitivity analysis. Finally, HD participants showed higher learning speed than LD participants during initial online learning, but only when using negative, not positive, reinforcement. Deficient generalization of learning characterizes the attentional system of HD individuals, but only when using reward-based positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement.

A Serious Game to Self-Regulate Heart Rate Variability as a Technique to Manage Arousal Level Through Cardiorespiratory Biofeedback: Development and Pilot Evaluation Study.

Heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) is an established intervention for increasing heart rate variability (HRV) in the clinical context. Using this technique, participants become aware of their HRV through real-time feedback and can self-regulate it. The aim of this study was 2-fold: first, to develop a serious game that applies the HRVB technique to teach participants to self-regulate HRV and, second, to test the app with participants in a pilot study. An HRVB app called the FitLab Game was developed for this study. To play the game, users must move the main character up and down the screen, avoiding collisions with obstacles. The wavelength that users must follow to avoid these obstacles is based on the user's basal heart rate and changes in instantaneous heart rate. To test the FitLab Game, a total of 16 participants (mean age 23, SD 0.69 years) were divided into a control group (n=8) and an experimental group (n=8). A 2 × 2 factorial design was used in each session. Participants in the experimental condition were trained in breathing techniques. Changes in the frequency and time domain parameters of HRV and the game's performance features were evaluated. Significant changes in the average RR intervals and root mean square of differences between adjacent RR intervals (RMSSD) were found between the groups (P=.02 and P=.04, respectively). Regarding performance, both groups showed a tendency to increase the evaluated outcomes from baseline to the test condition. The results may indicate that playing different levels leads to an improvement in the game's final score by repeated training. The tendency of changes in HRV may reflect a higher activation of the mental system of attention and control in the experimental group versus the control group. In this context, learning simple, voluntary strategies through a serious game can aid the improvement of self-control and arousal management. The FitLab Game appears to be a promising serious game owing to its ease of use, high engagement, and enjoyability provided by the instantaneous feedback.

Investigating the heterogeneity within the somatosensory-motor network and its relationship with the attention and default systems.

The somatosensory-motor network (SMN) not only plays an important role in primary somatosensory and motor processing but is also central to many disorders. However, the SMN heterogeneity related to higher-order systems still remains unclear. Here, we investigated SMN heterogeneity from multiple perspectives. To characterize the SMN substructures in more detail, we used ultra-high-field functional MRI to delineate a finer-grained cortical parcellation containing 430 parcels that is more homogenous than the state-of-the-art parcellation. We personalized the new parcellation to account for individual differences and identified multiscale individual-specific brain structures. We found that the SMN subnetworks showed distinct resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) patterns. The Hand subnetwork was central within the SMN and exhibited stronger RSFC with the attention systems than the other subnetworks, whereas the Tongue subnetwork exhibited stronger RSFC with the default systems. This two-fold differentiation was observed in the temporal ordering patterns within the SMN. Furthermore, we characterized how the distinct attention and default streams were carried forward into the functions of the SMN using dynamic causal modeling and identified two behavioral domains associated with this SMN fractionation using meta-analytic tools. Overall, our findings provided important insights into the heterogeneous SMN organization at the system level and suggested that the Hand subnetwork may be preferentially involved in exogenous processes, whereas the Tongue subnetwork may be more important in endogenous processes.