Laboratorij za kognitivno nevroznanost

Oddelek za psihologijo, Univerza v Ljubljani

CogJC

V okviru laboratorija poteka revijalni klub za kognitivno nevroznanost - CogJC. Namen CogJC je podati okvir v katerem lahko člani in sodelavci laboratorija predstavijo in podrobneje prediskutirajo zanimive pregledne in empirične članke ter lastne raziskovalne ideje, načrte in izsledke. Predstavljalci so praviloma člani in sodelavci laboratorija ter občasni gostje.

Srečanja CogJC potekajo ob sredah s pričetkom ob pol peti uri v seminarju Nevrološke klinike. Kadar se srečanj udeležijo tuji študentje, gosti ali sodelavci, potekajo le-ta v angleščini, sicer v slovenščini.

Če želite prejemati obvestila o revijalnih klubih (ali se od njih odjaviti), nas o tem obvestite na cogjc@psy.ff.uni-lj.si

Kaja Hacin

Pozdravljeni!

Obveščamo vas, da bo CogJC, ki je bil napovedan za v torek, 12.5., prestavljen na en teden kasneje. Dobimo se torej v torek, 19.5., ob 16. uri na Filozofski fakulteti.

Kaja Hacin 12.5.2015

V torek, 12.5. 2015, bomo imeli nov sestanek CogJC. Dobimo se ob 16h na Filozofski fakulteti v sobi 133. Kaja Hacin nam bo predstavila socialno-kognitivne sposobnosti ter pozornost med socialnimi interakcijami pri otrocijh z motnjo avtističnega spektra. Lepo vabljeni!

Attention during social interaction in children with autism: Comparison to specific language impairment, typical development, and links to social cognition

Atypical social gaze is one of the earliest clinical markers for autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which is important as atypical attention to social information could have a cascading effect on social development. The aim of the study was to explore social gaze typicality in children with ASD comparing to children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical development (TD) during a real life interaction. Second aim was to explore the connection between social gaze and socio-cognitive abilities. All children took part in a semi-structured interaction that appeared realistic and engaging. During this social interaction the eye movements of participants were recorded using an eye-tracking device. In a separate testing session participants completed a battery of Theory of Mind tests. Children with ASD showed syndrome-specific atypicalities of social attention allocation. They showed reduced face gaze, especially to the eye region and they spent significantly greater percentage of time looking at the non-partner areas comparing to the SLI and TD group. Additionally, children with ASD and SLI had a deficit in explicit metalizing based on their performance on Theory of Mind test battery. The percentage of the time spent looking at the eyes during the real life interaction was found associated with Theory of Mind performance and therefore with explicit metalizing ability. With the analyze of eye movements during real life interaction and comparison of this data to the results of traditional measures of metalizing ability the authors tried to discuss the importance of the nature of experimental stimuli, the importance of comparison groups, and the relationship between gaze behaviour and other socio-cognitive abilities.

Hanley, M., Deborah, M. R., McCormack, T., Carty, C., Coyle, L., Crozier, N., Robinson, J. in McPhillips, M. (2014). Attention during social interaction in children with autism: Comparison to specific language impairment, typical development, and links to social cognition. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 8, 908 – 924.

Urška Smrke 14. april 2015

V torek, 14.4., bomo imeli sestanek CogJC, ki smo ga prejšnjič zaradi bolezni prestavili. Dobimo se ob 16h na Filozofski fakulteti v sobi 133. Urška Smrke nam bo predstavila, kako množični mediji vplivajo na agresivno vedenje. Lepo vabljeni!

The debate about the impact of media on violent behavior has been going on for a long time and many studies have been conducted to answer this question, while not a great number of experimental ones exist. Alia-Klein et al (2014) conducted a study in which different processing of violent media between aggressive and non-aggressive individuals was hypothesized. Authors expected reactions to violent media dependent on personality differences (trait aggression) between subjects and finding a reflection of source of variability in autonomic response and brain functioning. Pre-selected aggressive and non-aggressive subjects were exposed to three conditions: resting baseline condition, exposure to emotional media without elements of violence and exposure to violent media. Brain metabolic activity (Positron Emission Tomography), blood-pressure, behavioral responses were documented and mood ratings were collected in different conditions. Results revealed robust resting baseline differences between aggressive and non-aggressive group (lower relative glucose metabolism in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and greater glucose metabolism in other regions of default-mode network in aggressive individuals in comparison to non-aggressive group), and similar differences in brain results during watching violent media were found. Aggressive individuals reported being more inspired and determined, and less upset and nervous in comparison to non-aggressive group, while differences in systolic blood-pressure were also observed. Results showed differential coupling of blood-pressure and brain activation in orbitofrontal cortex and precuneus between groups. Authors discuss a correspondence between individual differences in trait aggression and brain, behavioral and autonomic reactivity to media violence. Methodological issues, results and implications of the study will be discussed in the presentation.

Alia-Klein, N., Wang, G.-J., Preston-Campbell, R. N., Moeller, S. J., Parvaz, M. A., Zhu, W., Jayne, C. M., Wong, C., Tomasi, D., Goldstein, R. Z., Fowler, J. S., & Volkow, N. D. (2014). Reactions to Media Violence: It’s in the Brain of the Beholder. PLoS ONE, 9(9), 1–10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0107260

Urška Smrke 18. marec 2015

V sredo, 18.3., bomo imeli naslednji sestanek CogJC. Dobimo se ob 15h na Filozofski fakulteti v sobi 133. Urška Smrke nam bo predstavila, kako množični mediji vplivajo na agresivno vedenje.
Lepo vabljeni!

The debate about the impact of media on violent behavior has been going on for a long time and many studies have been conducted to answer this question, while not a great number of experimental ones exist. Alia-Klein et al (2014) conducted a study in which different processing of violent media between aggressive and non-aggressive individuals was hypothesized. Authors expected reactions to violent media dependent on personality differences (trait aggression) between subjects and finding a reflection of source of variability in autonomic response and brain functioning.
Pre-selected aggressive and non-aggressive subjects were exposed to three conditions: resting baseline condition, exposure to emotional media without elements of violence and exposure to violent media. Brain metabolic activity (Positron Emission Tomography), blood-pressure, behavioral responses were documented and mood ratings were collected in different conditions. Results revealed robust resting baseline differences between aggressive and non-aggressive group (lower relative glucose metabolism in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and greater glucose metabolism in other regions of default-mode network in aggressive individuals in comparison to non-aggressive group), and similar differences in brain results during watching violent media were found. Aggressive individuals reported being more inspired and determined, and less upset and nervous in comparison to non-aggressive group, while differences in systolic blood-pressure were also observed. Results showed differential coupling of blood-pressure and brain activation in orbitofrontal cortex and precuneus between groups. Authors discuss a correspondence between individual differences in trait aggression and brain, behavioral and autonomic reactivity to media violence. Methodological issues, results and implications of the study will be discussed in the presentation.

Alia-Klein, N., Wang, G.-J., Preston-Campbell, R. N., Moeller, S. J., Parvaz, M. A., Zhu, W., Jayne, C. M., Wong, C., Tomasi, D., Goldstein, R. Z., Fowler, J. S., & Volkow, N. D. (2014). Reactions to Media Violence: It’s in the Brain of the Beholder. PLoS ONE, 9(9), 1–10. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0107260

Tisa Frelih 22. februar 2015

Dear all,

we kindly invite you to join us at CogJC, which will take place this Wednesday, February 125th, at 14:30 at in seminar of Neurology clinic, Zaloška 2, Ljubljana. Tisa Frelih will be presenting visual working memory and contralateral delay activity.

Visual working memory and contralateral delay activity

Studies of visual working memory (VWM) have been playing an important role in cognition research since individual differences in its capacity (even memory for simple stimuli such as colored squares) are strongly predictive of broad cognitive abilities. Our visual short-term memory system can maintain representations of only three to four objects at a time, and the capacity varies substantially across individuals.

With the help of electroencephalography (EEG) we can observe electrophysiological evidence for activity in humans that reflects the encoding and maintenance of items in VWM. Using human event-related potential (ERP) recordings, a large negative wave is observed over posterior electrode sites that are contralateral to the position of the remembered items. This activity called contralateral delay activity (CDA) persists during the retention period.

Early CDA studies showed that CDA is strongly modulated by the number of items in memory but reaches an asymptote once individual’s storage capacity is reached. Moreover, it also reflects how efficient the individual is at filtering out irrelevant information. Later studies have tried to further determine what aspect of VWM performance the CDA reflects. Results have shown that the CDA is not modulated by the perceptual requirements of the memory items, nor is it supposed to be determined by the number of locations of items to be remembered. So far various results are suggesting that CDA tracks the object identity information.

The design of our study aims at exploring to what extent the CDA reflects maintenance of spatial information and/or the integration of spatial and visual information in working memory. Specifically, the task of the subjects is to either remember the stimulus location, identity or integration of the two. Compared to previous studies, the stimuli is presented sequentially to be able to better control for what information the subject can/has to encode in working memory.

Ole Jonas Böken 10. december 2014

Dear all,

we kindly invite you to join us at CogJC, which will take place this Wednesday, December 10th, at 14:30 at in seminar of Neurology clinic, Zaloška 2, Ljubljana. Ole Jonas Böken will be presenting basics of graph theory and its application in neuroscience to help analyse complex networks.

Complex Network Analysis and the brain - an introduction into basic terms and concepts

The study of networks has dramatically expanded over the last decades in many scientific fields. Science is interested in the structure, behavior, and evolution of complex systems such as cells, brains, ecosystems, society or the global economy. To understand these systems it is important to not only understand individual components but also how they interact and what emergent properties arise out of these interactions. Therefore it is important to record, analyze and model the behavior of these systems that compose thousands or millions of components.
Graph theory is a mathematical method of networks to understand how single components interact and how they are organized in a network structure. The brain is a complex system par excellence with about 1011 single components (neurons) and about 1015 interconnections between them that are organized in complex patterns and networks. The understanding of these network structures could shed light on neuroanatomy (how the brain is structured), neurodevelopment (how network structure changes over lifetime; due to life events) and how disruption of a network leads to functional changes and how cognition emerges out of the interaction of single elements of the brain.
This week´s journal club will be an introduction into basic concepts of graph theory and how it is applied in neuroscience to understand the network structure of the brain. In addition the Human Connectome Project will be presented as an example of how science is trying to research the connection matrix of the human brain, to understand its structural network topology and how function arises out of the connections within that complex system.

Sporns, O., Tononi, G., & Kötter, R. (2005). The human connectome: A structural description of the human brain. PLoS computational biology, 1(4), e42. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010042

Stam, C.J., 2014. Connected Brains: a website on complex brain network research. December 2014. Retrieved December 5, 2014 from http://home.kpn.nl/stam7883/graph_introduction.html

Julia Sheffield 17. oktober 2014

V petek 17. oktobra bo ob 14h na Nevrološki kliniki (seminar - soba v kleti) potekal revijalni klub z gostjo iz tujine. Julia Sheffield, doktorska študentka iz Univerze v Saint Louisu bo predstavljala svoj članek o funckijski konektivnosti pri shizofreniji. Lepo vabljeni.

Nina Kovač June 11th, 2014

Dear all,

we kindly invite you to join us at the last CogJC in this academic year, which will take place this Wednesday, June 11th at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Nina Kovač will present an fMRI study about social-evaluative threat and neural underpinnings of self-protection strategies.

Protecting the Self: The Effect of Social-evaluative Threat on Neural Representations of Self

One of the most robust ways that people protect themselves from social-evaluative threat is by emphasizing the desirability of their personal characteristics, yet the neural underpinnings of this fundamental process are unknown.

The current fMRI study addresses this question by examining self-evaluations of desirability (in comparison with other people) as a response to threat. Participants judged how much personality traits described themselves in comparison with their average peer. These judgments were preceded by threatening or nonthreatening social-evaluative feedback. Self-evaluations made in response to threat significantly increased activation in a number of regions including the OFC, medial pFC, lateral pFC, amygdala, and insula. Individual differences in the extent to which threat increased desirability were significantly correlated with medial OFC activity.

This is the first study to examine the neural associations of a fundamental self-protection strategy: responding to threat by emphasizing the selfʼs desirability. Although neural research has separately examined self-evaluation processes from the regulation of social-evaluative threat, little is known about the interplay between the two. The findings build on this previous research by showing that regions, often associated with self-evaluation, are modulated by the degree to which people respond to threat by emphasizing their own desirability.

Hughes, B. L., & Beer, J. S. (2013). Protecting the self: the effect of social-evaluative threat on neural representations of self. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 25(4), 613-622.

Tuuli Pöllänen May 28th 2014

Dear all,

we kindly invite you to join us at CogJC the coming Wednesday, May 28th at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Tuuli Pöllänen will present available tools for behavioral research with specific emphasis on web based experiments, their advantages and challenges.

Web beased tools for behavioral research: advantages and challenges

A miscellaneous set of solutions exist for the problem of programming behavioral experiments, from readily available, extensive and customizable test batteries in a "custom" language (e.g. PEBL) to more loosely defined software that may provide a GUI as well as the option to program some of the code (e.g. Psychopy). Several more or less entirely graphical, commercial systems exist, as well as a large set of initially promising but nearly dead projects that have gotten left behind for a reason or another.

When it comes to web experiments, or experiments that the participant could run through a browser without having to download anything or going to a lab to participate, we have a much shorter list of options. With extensive search, I found just a couple of systems for creating web experiments (we'll have a closer look at WebExp, a mess of Java and XML - a project that to my disappointment has not seen an update for a few years now).

The plan for the presentation is to discuss open source options for programming languages and software for setting up behavioral experiments, with a particular focus on web experiments. We will discuss the statistical and psychometric characteristics of data collected through web experiments as well as the reliability and validity of web experiments as compared to lab-based or downloadable programmed experiments.

As preliminary literature I recommend Keller, F., Gunasekharan, S., Mayo, N., & Corley, M. (2009). Timing accuracy of web experiments: A case study using the WebExp software package.Behavior Research Methods, 41(1), 1-12., as I will also use it for the presentation.

Andraž Matkovič 21. maj 2014

We kindly invite you to join us at this week's CogJC, which will take place on Wednesday, 21st of May, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Andraž Matkovič, a student of psychology, will talk about neural mechanisms of cognitive training in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Please see the attached paper, and a short summary below.

Neural mechanisms of cognitive training in patients with chronic schizophrenia

Working memory deficit is a core neuropsychological dysfunction in schizophrenia. Cognitive remediation can improve cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia, however, little is know about brain mechanism underlying these changes. Haut et al. (2010) conducted a study which aimed to explore whether behavioral changes following cognitive training are the result of functional plasticity rather than of increased automated processing following repetitive practice. Participants were split in three groups: patients who underwent either cognitive remediation training (REM) which consisted of N-back tasks using different stimuli or cognitive behavioral social skills training (CBSST) and healthy control participants who received no treatment. Participants were tested pre- and post-training with word 2-back, picture 2-back and lexical decision task while undergoing fMRI scanning. Post-training testing results showed improved signal detection on N-back task in REM group in comparison with control and CBSST group; however no transfer was found for lexical decision task. Neuroimaging results of WM tasks have shown significant increases in activation of several regions in the REM group in comparison with other groups, including anterior cingulate, left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral frontopolar cortex. The results also hypothesis that change found in signal detection following training is due increased activity in prefrontal WM networks, rather than decreased activity which would indicate automated processing. In the presentation methodological issues and the results will be discussed in the light of other cognitive remediation studies.

Haut, K. M., Lim, K. O., & MacDonald, A. (2010). Prefrontal cortical changes following cognitive training in patients with chronic schizophrenia: effects of practice, generalization, and specificity. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35(9), 1850-1859.

dr. Barbora Cimrova 7. maj 2014

Please join us at our next CogJC that will happen this Wednesday at 17.30 at the Neurology Clinic (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). We will have a special guest from Bratislava, prof. Barbora Cimrova, who works at the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Comenius University. She will talk about anxiety and memory (please see the summary below and the attached article) as well as motor resonance and brain-computer interface based on motor resonance.

MEMORY MECHANISMS AND EMOTIONAL EVENTS B. Cimrova, F. Jagla, I. Riecansky Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences

Anxiety disorders belong to the most prevalent mental disorders and cause severe suffering to affected subjects. Unfortunately, pathophysiology of anxiety is still little understood. Biased cognition is considered to play a central role in the development of anxiety. We investigated the mechanisms of long-term memory to negative thread-arousing stimuli in subjects with high or low trait anxiety. In our experiment, subjects were presented horror and emotionally neutral film clips and were asked to recollect these movies one week later. During both sessions, electrodermal activity (EDA) and electroencephalogram (EEG) were measured. Compared to individuals with low anxiety, subjects in the high anxiety group used higher number of emotionally valenced words for describing the memories of the horror movie. There was no difference between groups in the number of emotional words used to report the memory of the neutral movie. No group difference was found in the total number of memories for either of the movies. In the low compared to high anxiety group, we found stronger positive association between EDA during horror watching and subjective ratings of emotional intensity of the memories to the horror film. During both watching and recalling the horror movie, the markers of physiological arousal, EDA and hemispheric asymmetry of EEG power in the alpha band over parieto-temporal scalp region, were lower in the high anxiety group compared to the low anxiety group. These findings indicate that relationship between bodily arousal and emotional memories is disrupted in anxious subjects.

Cimrova, B., RIEČANSKÝ, I., & Jagla, F. (2011). THE ROLE OF TRAIT ANXIETY IN EXPLICIT MEMORIES OF EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE. Studia Psychologica, 53(3).

Ditka Jeran 26. marec 2014

You are kindly invited to join us at this week's Cog JC, which will take place on Wednesday, 26th of March, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Ditka Jeran, a PhD student and a young researcher at University Medical Centre Ljubljana, will talk about her recent work on breathing-related cortical activity. Please see the attached papers, and a short summary below.

Voluntary breathing requires activation of sensorimotor cortex. In EEG this is seen as a decrease in the power of alpha and beta oscillations time-locked to the beginning of inspiration, also called event-related desynchronization (ERD).

But what happens in the EEG when we breathe automatically or when we deliberately pay attention to breathing? Meditators develop a skill of efortless monitoring of their breathing which is believed to promote wellbeing. How does this skill change their breathing-related EEG?

I will present the results of our multichannel EEG study which was designed to answer these questions. Then we will discuss how to procede with statistical analysis. Your ideas, comments and help is most welcome.

Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in cognitive sciences, 12(4), 163-169.

Kilavik, B. E., Zaepffel, M., Brovelli, A., MacKay, W. A., & Riehle, A. (2013). The ups and downs of beta oscillations in sensorimotor cortex. Experimental neurology, 245, 15-26.

Kristijan Armeni 5. marec 2014

You are kindly invited to join us at this week's Cog JC, which will take place on Wednesday, 5th of March, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Kristijan Armeni, a student from the Department of Translation (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) will talk about the machine translation. Please see the attached papers, and a short summary below.

Eye-tracking measures as indicators of reading fluency for machine-translated texts

Recently, the use of eye-tracking was proposed as a complementary technique for evaluating the quality of machine-translated texts. It was found that eye-tracking measures such as gaze time and fixation count reflected the quality of sentences that were beforehand judged by human evaluators either as good or excellent. Similarly, eye-tracking measures showed effective at word level error analysis; the number of fixations, gaze time, and average gaze time were significantly higher for parts of texts marked as errors than for correct passages. In our study, we tested the proposed methodology on a statistical MT system for the English-Slovene language pair. It is well known that in machine-translated texts agreement errors are common for morphologically rich languages such as Slovene; the goal of our experiment was thus to find out whether this type of errors could influence reading fluency measures and fluency judgments. In the forthcoming journal club meeting, we will present the preliminary results of our study and then try to interpret them in the light of the original research question (eye-tracking as an MT evaluation tool). Finally, we will also look at concrete examples of eye-tracking recordings in order to address specific technical issues we encountered during the recording sessions and to seek possible solutions for future research.

Doherty, S., O’Brien, S., & Carl, M. (2010). Eye tracking as an MT evaluation technique. Machine translation, 24(1), 1-13.

Stymne, S., Danielsson, H., Bremin, S., Hu, H., Karlsson, J., Lillkull, A. P., & Wester, M. (2012). Eye Tracking as a Tool for Machine Translation Error Analysis. In LREC (pp. 1121-1126).

Maša Širnik and Aljaž Sluga 15. januar 2014

The first CogJC in 2014 will happen this Wednesday, at 16:30, at the Department of Neurology. Maša Širnik and Aljaž Sluga, students of Psychology, will talk about working memory and decision making. Please find the summary of their talks below and the attached articles.

Decision making and unconscious thought theory (Aljaž Sluga) What should we do when we are faced with a difficult decision? Is it best to think a lot, to engage in thorough deliberation? Not according to the Unconscious thought theory (UTT) which distinguishes between conscious and unconscious thought. Unconscious thought is defined as "object-relevant or task-relevant cognitive or affective thought processes that occur while conscious attention is directed elsewhere" (Dijksterhuis & Nordgren, 2006). According to UTT, unconscious thought has much higher capacity than conscious thought and is better at weighing the importance of different decision criteria, making it better equipped to deal with complex situations. In this talk I will introduce the UTT, summarize the relevant experimental results and theoretical arguments and present the results of two experiments we carried out.

Visual and spatial components of working memory (Maša Širnik) According to the most widely accepted model (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974), working memory is composed of four components. The component, responsible for storing and manipulating visual and spatial information is called visuospatial sketchpad and is further divided into separate visual and spatial subcomponents by a number of authors. In recent years Vogel et al. developed a visuospatial working memory task in which working memory load is assessed by means of EEG. One of the open questions is how much is successful performance on the task dependent on visual and spatial components of working memory. In order to answer this question we first need to identify tasks that selectively affect one component, but not the other. That was the goal of the study I'll be presenting.

We're looking forward to a lively discussion!

Best regards, CogJC team

Işıl Uluç 18. december 2013

The last Journal Club of this year will happen this Wednesday at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Işıl Uluç, a Cognitive Science student from the University of Vienna, will talk about lucid dreaming. See the abstract below and read the recomended article.

Lucid Dreaming: A Scientific Approach

Consciousness is a controversial topic for many disciplines. It is hard to define and understand consciousness and aspects of it. Some researchers try to understand consciousness with altered states of it. Lucid dreaming is one of those states and very intriguing because it involves both a state of consciousness and a dream state. Lucid dreaming is a dream state where the dreamer is conscious that s/he is dreaming, and on some occasions can change the aspects of the dream. After a heated debate and many objections, the phenomenon is behaviourally proved to be true by deliberate eye movements during REM dream. The current study seeks the neurological correlates of Lucid Dreaming. An EEG experiment is executed on 6 subjects that are trained to go lucid while they are dreaming. The study claims that controlled lucid dreams are correlated with significant changes in electrophysiology. I will present the findings of the attached study and discuss about the results and implications.

Voss, U., Holzmann, R., Tuin, I., Hobson, A. (2009). Lucid Dreaming: A State of Consciousness with Features of Both Waking and Non-Lucid Dreaming. SLEEP, 32 (9), 1191 - 1200.

Hana Hawlina & Sanja Roškar 11. december 2013

This week's Journal Club will take place this Wednesday (11th of December), at 16:30, at the Department of Neurology. Hana Hawlina and Sanja Roškar, students of Psychology at the University of Ljubljana, will talk about a well know Oddball task in regard to emotional processing. Please read the two relevant articles listed below and a short description of their talk.

Emotional Oddball

The exploration of the emotion–cognition relationship is facilitated by the use of electrophysiological markers such as the event-related potentials (ERPs), which are task dependent with a high temporal resolution. Research in this field has shown that emotionally intense situations elicit larger P300 and other late positivities than neutral ones. In our study, we aim to explore the attentional effects of emotionally salient images using a tri-stimulus oddball paradigm. In order to do so, we will observe P300 and its subcomponents (P3a, P3b) in four principal conditions, varying the role of emotional stimuli (target or distractor) and the relevance of emotional valence (whether the subject is instructed to pay attention to emotional valence or not).

Deplanque, S., Silvert, L., Hot, P., Sequeira, H. (2005). Event-related P3a and P3b in response to unpredictable emotional stimuli. Biological Psychology, 68, 107 - 120.

Rozenkrants, B., Polich, J. (2008). Affective ERP processing in a visual oddball task: Arousal, valence and gender. Clinical Neurophysiology, 119, 2260 - 2265.

Richard Dinga 27. november 2013

This week's Cognitive Journal Club will happen on Wednesday, 27th of November, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology. Richard Dinga, a Cognitive Science student from the University of Bratislava, will talk about the relation between attention and creativity and will present his experimental design. Please find the attached paper, on which his talk will be based on, and the abstract below.

Attention primes creativity, does creativity prime attention?

By findings of Friedman et al. [1] breadth focus of attention leads to higher creativity or in other words broad or narrow scope of perceptual attention engenders an analogously broad or narrow focus of conceptual attention, which in turn bolsters or undermines creative generation. By hypothesis this link should be bidirectional - creative/divergent/abstract thinking should affect breadth of attention on perceptual level. I will present this and related papers, theory behind it and it's implications as well as my experimental design for testing that bidirectional relationship.

[1] Forster, J., Werth, L., Friedman, R., & Fishbach, A. (2003). Attentional Priming Effects on Creativity. Creativity Research Journal.

Dayana Hristova 13. november 2013

Next CogJC is going to take place this Wednesday, 13th of November, at 16.30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Cognitive Science student from the University of Vienna, Dayana Hristova, will present the project "Predicting the decision difficulty for a human from the logical structure of the problem; a case study in chess decision making", which she is working on under the supervision of prof. Ivan Bratko. Please read her abstract below and the attached paper on estimating problem difficulty for humans, on which the presentation will be based on. Also, have a look at the abstract of the diploma thesis on ŠvicMiš - the skin conductance sensor Dayana will be using in her experiment.

Predicting the decision difficulty for a human from the logical structure of the problem; a case study in chess decision making

This study aims to connect psychophysiological and performance measures with the estimated difficulty of a chess position in order to test Guid and Bratko’s (2013) model of difficulty for humans. “Difficulty for humans” in this model is seen as triggered by task components such as problem’s logical structure and complexity- shape and scope of search trees.

In an experiment research participants will be given tactical chess positions to solve on a digital chess board. The selection of positions will be based on Guid’s and Bratko’s proposed measure of difficulty. Some of the positions will be taken from chesstempo.com data base, where they have received a difficulty rating based on the success rate of all users (on av. >400 people) who have tried to solve them. Participants’ performance will be recorded and galvanic skin response (GSR) will be measured through a ŠvicMiška- a computer mouse with electrical conductivity sensors.

The accumulated data on: physiological arousal (as indicated by GSR); time needed to make a decision; accuracy (solutions are compared CRAFTY’s optimal solutions); will be analysed for statistical correlation with the predicted difficulty and with the chesstempo.com ranking. The expected results is that the modelled difficulty will also be reflected in the physiology (higher arousal) and in the performance of the participants (higher error rate; longer time for task completion).

For those of you, who do not have time to go into the paper and abstract, have a look at the following links:

Wiki-page on galvanic skin response:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_skin_response

http://chesstempo.com/ - the site where a part of the tactical positions for the experiment will be selected from [section training-> chess tactics].

We are looking forward to a thought provoking discussion!

Stephan Lechner 6. november 2013 ob 16.30

Next Cognitive Journal Club is to take place this Wednesday, 6th of November, at 16:30, at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Stephan Lechner, Cognitive Science student from the University of Vienna, will present the Global Workspace Theory and focus on empirical evidence that supports its claims and predicitons. Please see the abstract below, and the attached articles.

Empirical findings supporting the „Global Neuronal Workspace Theory“

According to Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) the brain is organized into two separate „computational“ spaces. First, there are separate, infomationally encapsulated modules that process highly specific types of information. These processes run unconsciously and occur parallel to one another. The second domain, the „Global Workspace“, in contrast, is a set of cortico-cortical and thalomo-cortical connections, that enables reciprocal communication between neurons that are widely distributed over the highly specialized modules. Unconscious processes compete over reaching into the highly restricted capacity of the global workspace, that will at any point just allow one global conscious state. GNWT is proposing that the content of this second domain is related to or identical with what we consciously experience and that conscious access equals global information availability.

A considerable amount of recent studies confirm many predictions that are derived from these ideas. In my presentation I will briefly go through the various postulates of GNWT and provide some of the confirmative findings from the literature. I then plan to discuss, in a little more detail, the methodology of one EEG study that makes use of retrograde masking tasks which are commonly used in experiments that try to tackle differences of activation between conscious and unconscious processing in the brain.

As preparation for discussion you can read Dehaene et al. 2011 (especially pp. 55-58 and pp.66-69) for the very basic ideas of GNWT and Del Cul et al. 2007 for the presented EEG study.

We are looking forward to a lively discussion!

CogJC team

Ruben Perellon Alfonso 23.oktober 2013

We are happy to announce that we are starting with a new season of CogJCs. The first journal club will take place this Wednesday, 23th of October, at 16:30, at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). This week's speaker will be Ruben Perellon Alfonso, Cognitive Science student from the University of Vienna, who will give us a short overview on video games research and focus on recent findings regarding the cognitive effects of gaming, and their potential for boosting learning and rehabilitation. Please see the attached paper from Bavelier at al. (2012) which reviews recent research on the cognitive effects of frequent action video-gaming.

Cognitive Effects of Playing Action Video Games

Traditionally, action video games (which frequently include a big deal of violence), such as shooter games, were studied only for its possible negative effects. Mainstream psychology regarded violent video games as inducing violent behavior, usually finding a more than doubtful direct correlation between the frequency of violent gaming and the occurrence of violent behaviors or the increase in moral and emphatic desensitization. During the last decade, research has shifted its focus from the violence component of action video games, towards the cognitive challenges and effects they produce. The growing body of evidence is consolidating around the notion that action games have a significant enhancing effect on cognitive functions such as visual attention, spacial cognition or decision making.

We are looking forward to a discussion!

If you are interested in presenting your work or topics of interest on CogJC, please contact us on cogjc@psy.ff.uni-lj.si.

Iago Rego Garcia 12. junij 2013

We would like to invite you to our last journal club before the summer, which will take place on Wednesday, 12th of June, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Iago Rego Garcia, medical student from the Autonomous University of Madrid, will talk about the visual working memory capacity in Rubik's cube speed solvers. Please see the attached paper, and a short summary below.

Do Rubik's cube speed solvers have a higher visual working memory capacity?

Visual working memory (VWM) is a system which lets us maintain the information about objects around us, so that they may be manipulated upon. It has been said to have a very limited capacity - a little less than 3 items on average. But it is also varies significantly across the population, being between 1,5 and 5. (Mc Collough et al., 2007). Contralateral Delayed Activity (CDA) is an EEG parameter, which consists of a negative shift of scalp-measured electrical potential at electrodes placed over one occipital lobe (processing the visual information) compared with the potential at electrodes above the contralateral occipital lobe (only receiving the visual input, but not processing). To measure it, the subjects perform a test which is explained in the attached paper (Vogel et al., 2004). We hypothesized that VWM resources are in high demand when solving Rubik's cube, especially when this task is performed at high speed. All the mental cube resolution methods/strategies are based on sequential identification of the color configuration, followed by performance of the correct algorithm, advancing towards the final resolution. To test the hypothesis that VWM is important for Rubik's cube speed-solving, we are currently recording CDA activity in several speed-solvers, and will then compare them with a matched control group. In addition, we will also test whether there is a correlation between cube solving speed and VWM capacity as reflected by individual ability to increase CDA activity at progressively greater VWM task demands.

Stephan Lechner 5. junij 2013

You are most welcome to join us at this week's Cog JC, which will happen on Wednesday, 5th of June, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Stephan Lechner (University of Vienna) will present the information integration theory of consciousness and its recent applications. A short summary follows.

According to the information integration theory (IIT) of consciousness, consciousness corresponds to a system's capacity to integrate information. Two main features have to be met so that consciousness can arise. 1) The system must have a large repertoire of possible states from which a small repertoire of actual states at a certain time can be differentiated. That means that a conscious system must be highly informative. 2) This large amount of information must additionally possess a structural organization which allows the information to be integrated into a unity or entity. Despite serving as a theoretical framework of how to conceive of consciousness from an analytic perspective, IIT can be validated by measuring functional connectivity with the methodology of combined TMS/EEG. Several phenomena that are in proximity to the problem of consciousness (REM and NREM sleep, anesthesia, schizophrenia) have been investigated in this regard. In this talk I will explain these two theoretical notions in depth and discuss their importance for the quest of describing the neural correlates of consciousness by pointing at selected, recent literature that was inspired by IIT.

Remark for those who read the attached literature: In the Tononi 2008 paper we will merely focus on the first part of the paper which deals with the “quantity” of consciousness (pp.216-224). The latter part which deals with the “quality” of consciousness, although interesting, will not be tackled in this talk.

Kristijan Armeni 29. maj 2013

You are kindly invited to join us at this week's Cog JC, which will take place on Wednesday, 29th of May, at 16:30 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Kristijan Armeni, a student from the Department of Translation (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana) will talk about the machine translation. Please see the attached paper, and a short summary below.

Influence of agreement errors on reading fluency in machine translated texts: eye movement analysis

Within the machine translation (MT) research community, the quality of MT output is an ongoing issue. A machine translated text still contains a considerable number of linguistic errors, which influence text readability. In two recent studies (Doherty & O’Brien, 2010 and Stymne et al., 2012), the use of eye-tracking has been proposed as a complementary MT evaluation technique. The application of such methodological tools relies on the assumptions taken from psycholinguistic studies claiming that eye movements reflect on-line comprehension processes during reading. The two studies have shown that certain eye-tracking measures could correlate with the general MT output quality and that the different types of errors could present different processing difficulties for readers. However, the interpretation of eye-tracking measures to infer the underlying cognitive processes and possible causes of disruptions in reading is far from being well-established (Staub & Rayner, 2007). In the forthcoming meeting, we will present our study that aims to further develop the categorization of errors and test the proposed methodology on the English-to-Slovene language pair. Given the fact that morphological richness of Slovene presents considerable difficulties for the statistical MT systems, we would like to pay a close attention to how this type of errors influences reading fluency.

We are looking forward to a vigorous discussion!

Kaja Vidmar and Asja Videčnik 22. maj 2013

We would like to invite you to join us at this week's Journal Club, which will take place at the Faculty of Arts (Filozofska fakulteta), Aškerčeva 2 in room 029, this Wednesday, 22nd of May, at 5 pm.

This week's CogJC will be joined with the PhD seminar of the Department of Psychology, in which two PhD candidates from the Experimental Psychology program will present their doctoral theses topics. Kaja Vidmar is going to talk about lies and the usage of face mimic within polygraph testing. Asja Videčnik will focus on cognitive vulnerability markers for unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. Please see the summaries of their presentations below.

Usage of Face Mimic within Polygraph Testing (Kaja Vidmar)

Almost every one of us has already said some little harmless lie. In the field of forensic psychology we are interested in bigger lies, mostly those with multiple implications with law and/or crime. In discovering of lies some people are more successful than others. However in reality, without learning how to recognize lies, we are no better than chance. This turned out to be true also for the people who are engaged in occupations in which they are often confronted with liars (eg. police, lawyers, customs officials) (Ekman, 1996). If we want to successfully recognize a lie, we need to observe people's emotions, bodily gestures, facial expressions and physiological changes, and through these channels reveal a lie with a greater success.

Positive and Negative Cognitive Reactivity as Vulnerability to Depression and Bipolar Disorder (Asja Videčnik)

Both unipolar depression and bipolar disorder present a serious public health issue. Studies have identified a number of cognitive processes that are shared by both disorders, such as overgeneralized memory and selective attention to negative information, whereas others revealed clear differences between the two in respect to naturally occurring mood states. The disertation will focus on cognitive vulnerability markers for unipolar depression and bipolar disorder. Negative cognitive reactivity (CR) - the ease with which dysfunctional cognitions are (re)activated in response to low mood - has been show as such a marker for unipolar depression, however, there is no research on positive CR in either unipolar depression or bipolar disorder. Thus, the main focus of our study will be (a) measuring negative and positive CR in two clinical samples, (b) validation of a direct measure of cognitive vulnerability to depression (The Leiden Index of Depression Sensitivity-R (LEIDS-R) and (c) exploration of positive CR as a possible vulnerability marker for depression and bipolar disorder. The proposed study will include individuals with remitted bipolar disorder, individuals with remitted unipolar depression and healthy controls. All the subjects will complete a number of questionnaires, attend a short diagnostic interview and undergo low and elated mood induction.

Stephan Lechner and Ruben Perellon Alfonso 15. maj 2013

You are most welcome to join us at our next journal club, which will take place this Wednesday, 15th of May, at 4.30 pm at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana).

Stephan Lechner and Ruben Perellon Alfonso, Cognitive Science students from the University of Vienna, are going to talk about the effects of intention on inhibition in focal dystonia (please see the summary below). The talk will be centered around Bonnard et al. (2009) article (attached hereto). Additional information about dystonia can also be found in the Hallet (2011) paper.

Effects of Intention on Inhibition in Focal Dystonia: A combined TMS-EEG study

The aim of this project is to explore the effects of intention (assist Vs resist) in a TMS elicited central perturbation to the primary motor cortex (M1) in Focal Dystonia patients. In fact, recent research has shown that in healthy subjects, prior intention to a TMS delivery to the M1 can modulate cortical excitability (Bonnard et al., 2003 and 2009), and thus modify the motor output of the stimulated cortex (increasing or decreasing the MEP amplitude of the target muscle, depending on the condition). Dystonic patients are believed to have impaired inhibition at a spinal, brain stem, subcortical and cortical level. We will be able to test whether inhibition in M1 is impaired in Focal Dystonia, and whether there are specific differences between patients with and without sensory trick.

We are looking forward to a lively and thought provoking discussion!

Daniel Attia 8. maj 2013

After a week of holidays, we continue with our journal clubs. You are kindly invited to join us this Wednesday, 8th of May, at 16:30 hours at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Daniel Attia, a student of Cognitive Science from the University of Vienna, is going to talk about his future master thesis project about P3 generation. Please see the summary and the attached articles below .

Comparing P3 topographies resulting from different sensory modalities in oddball tasks: Testing the common pathway hypothesis of P3 generation

The P3 signal is considered to be one of the well-studied ERPs, still there are contradicting hypotheses about the generation and the character of this potential. The widely accepted view supposes it to be an endogenous potential, reflecting processes of stimuli evaluation and categorization. In our next journal club we will present a brief overview of the P3 potential (Polich 2007) to discuss afterwards our forthcoming project, which will be based on previous studies that have been made about the topography and neural generation of the P3 signal, suggesting it to be an endogenous potential with a common pathway for neural generation (Katayama 1999). Studies that were testing for different stimuli modalities (e.g. auditory oddball, visual oddball, somato-sensory oddball tasks) have been mainly done with only a small array of electrodes. Therefore, aim of our project will be to use a 128-channel-array to get a more detailed topography of the P3 scalp distribution for different sensory modalities and to test for its neural generation.

We are looking forward to a lively discussion!

Romylos Pantzakis 24. april 2013

You are most welcome to join us at our next journal club, which will take place this Wednesday, 24th of April, at 16:30 hours at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Romylos Pantzakis, a Cognitive Science student from the University of Vienna, is going to introduce us to his master thesis topic Tracking neural activity in a decision-making task (please see the summary below) and he is looking for a valuable feedback. For a lively and constructive discussion, please see the famous Libet's article (attached hereto) and have a look at the poster.

Tracking neural activity in a decision-making task: Comparing methods to predict choices and to assess the timing of their awareness.

In a both influential and controversial study three decades ago, Libet et al. concluded that there is neural activity - the so-called readiness potential of the EEG- preceding not only movement, but also the conscious awareness of the intention to move. During this session we will discuss some problematic aspects of his approach, together with a brief presentation of that experiment. Afterwards, I will present an alternative methodology, both in terms of EEG signal analysis and of the timing assessment of decision awareness. This methodology will be used in a forthcoming project, which is built upon a preliminary study carried out in our lab.

Stephan Lechner and Ruben Perellon Alfonso 17. april 2013

You are kindly invited to join us at this week's Cog JC, which will take place this Wednesday, 17th of April, at 17:00 at the Department of Neurology (University Medical Centre Ljubljana). Stephan Lechner and Ruben Perellon Alfonso, students of Cognitive Science from the University of Vienna, will be talking about the functional compensation in neurodegenerative disorders. Please see the summary below and the attached articles.

"Two disorders will be used as examples: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Parkinson's disease. Data from fMRI studies of ALS will be shown as an example of brain mechanisms for compensation of function through recruitment of additional brain areas during the course of neurodegeneration. Changes in early Parkinson's disease will be illustrated by the data from Maja Kojović's PhD study in which she used TMS methods. We will discuss how similar methods could be employed to improve understanding of pathophysiological changes in ALS."

We are looking forward to a thought-provoking discussion!

Aljaž Sluga 27. marec 2013

V tem tednu nadaljujemo s CogJC srečanji. Tokrat bo v sredo 27.3. s pričetkom ob 16:30 na Nevrološki kliniki Aljaž Sluga predstavljal vsebine vezane na oblikovanje raziskovalnega projekta vezanega na odločanje in intuicijo. Sledi kratka predstavitev teme.

V kolikšni meri ljudje pri odločanju upoštevamo informacije, ki so nam na voljo? V zadnjih petnajstih letih je veliko popularnost požel pristop Gigerenzerja idr., ki poudarja pomen preprostih, nekompenzatornih strategij. T.i. "hitre in varčne" hevristike pa naj ne bi bile le komputacijsko enostavnejše. Kot so pokazale računalniške simulacije, se v svetu, polnem naključnosti, mnogokrat obnesejo bolje kot kompleksnejše strategije, ki integrirajo množico informacij. Vprašanje pa je, kdaj in v kolikšni meri ljudje zares uporabljajo takšne hevristike. Posvetili se bomo primerjavi t.i. "take-the-best" hevristike, ki pri odločanju med dvema opcijama iskanje informacij ustavi po prvem atributu, ki med njima razločuje, pri čemer je vrstni red inšpekcije atributov določen z njihovo veljavnostjo (začenši z atributom z najvišjo veljavnostjo), in kompenzatornih strategij odločanja. Vprašali se bomo, kateri faktorji vplivajo na izbor strategije in kje lahko v vsem skupaj najdemo intuicijo.

CogJC bo tokrat še v slovenščini, zaradi tujih gostov naslednjič prehajamo na srečanja v angleščini.

Prisrčno vabljeni na predstavitev in diskusijo!

P.S.: Ne pozabite tudi na prvi Sinapsin izziv, tokrat o ibogainu (http://www.sinapsa.org/pro/seminarji/sinapsa_izziv_energetski_vidik_zasvojenosti), ki se prične ob 18:00 v vajalnici Pafi na Zaloški 4.

Barbara Dolenc 27. februar 2013

Naslednji CogJC se bo zgodil v sredo 27.2.2013 ob 17:00 v seminarju Nevrološke klinike v Ljubljani, Zaloška 2. Tokrat bo Barbara Dolenc predstavljala izsledke rezultatov zbranih v okviru doktorske naloge ter zasnovo nadaljevanja študije. Živahna diskusija zaželjena. Sledi kratka predstavitev, pripet pa je preprint članka z obstoječimi rezultati in članka, ki bo izhodišče za nadaljno diskusijo.

Sposobnost vzdrževanja zaporedja dražljajev oziroma dogodkov v delovnem spominu je podlaga za sposobnost zadovoljivega načrtovanja zaporedja akcij, pri katerem je natančni vrstni red dogodkov bistvenega pomena. Kodiranje vrstnega reda informacij v verbalnem delovnem spominu je bilo v preteklosti osrednja tema številnih raziskav, medtem ko vprašanje, kako se vrstni red informacij kodira v vidnem delovnem spominu, ostaja nerazrešeno. Ali so v tem primeru mehanizmi kodiranja podobni kot pri verbalnem delovnem spominu ali pa gre za drugačne vrste procesov? Na tokratnem revialnem klubu bomo na kratko povzeli raziskave, ki so tovrstni problem preučevale pri verbalnem delovnem spominu, ter predstavili naše do sedaj zbrane rezultate pri vidnem delovnem spominu. Odprli bomo nekaj vprašanj, ki so se pojavila ob prvih rezultatih, ter podali nekaj predlogov za njihovo rešitev, zato bo diskusija dobrodošla.

Anja Čuš 13. februar 2013

Tokrat namesto Politikinega Zabavnika preseneča CogJC, ki se po dolgem premoru zopet obuja iz spanja. V pomladnem semestru bomo skušali oživeti redna sredina srečanja CogJC. Prvič se snidemo to sredo ob petih v (kletnem) seminarju Nevrološke klinike v Ljubljani, Zaloška c. 2. Na revijalnem klubu bo Anja Čuš predstavljala vsebine na katerih snujemo raziskavo epizodičnega spomina pri pacientih z resekcijo v medio-temporalnem korteksu. Sledi kratek opis in literatura.

fMR slikanje je v zadnjih letih omogočilo natančnejšo lokalizacijo procesov, odgovornih za formiranje novih spominov. Povezovanje možganskih področij z različnimi procesi presega umestitev verbalnega in neverbalnega spomina v različni hemisferi in izhajajoč iz večprocesnih modelov poskuša najti vlogo posameznih struktur znotraj bolj omejenega področja, ključnega za tvorjenje spominov. Na CogJC bodo predstavljene glavne značilnosti dveh skupin spominskih fMR paradigem. Prve se uporabljajo za ugotavljanje lokalizacije oz. reorganizacije spominskih funkcij pri bolnikih z epilepsijo temporalnega režnja in pridobivajo vse večji pomen pri ocenjevanju tveganja za spominski upad po odstranitvi mesialnih temporalnih struktur zaradi zdravljenja epilepsije. Druga vrsta paradigem izhaja iz hipoteze, da imajo posamezna področja znotraj mesialnega temporalnega režnja različno vlogo pri tvorjenju spomina in se med seboj na specifičen način dopolnjujejo.

P.S.: Za tiste, ki ste bili rojeni prepozno in niste odraščali z zgodbami in stripi iz Politikinega Zabavnika: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politikin_Zabavnik

fMR tečaj 22. junij 2012

Tretje predavanje v seriji o fMR bo potekalo ta petek 22.6.2012 na Filozofski fakulteti v predavalnici 102 s pričetkom ob 15:00. Pregledali bomo postopek analize fMRI od preprocesiranja do statističnega zaključevanja.

fMR tečaj 14. junij 2012

V tem tednu nadaljujemo s serijo predavanj o funkcijski magnetni resonanci. V prejšnjem tednu smo se posvetili osnovam delovanja magnetne resonance ter vprašanju vira signala, ki ga s fMR beležimo. Predavanje v tem tednu bo posvečeno pregledu eksperimentalnih in analitičnih pristopov v uporabi fMR.

Predavanje v tem tednu bo v četrtek 14. junija v predavalnici 426 Filozofske fakultete s pričetkom ob 15:30.

fMR tečaj 1. junij 2012

Delo v CogJC je v zadnjem času zastalo zaradi obremenjenosti s tekočimi raziskovalnimi projekti. Ta teden, v petek 1. junija bomo v sklopu podiplomskega študija eksperimentalne psihologije pričeli s krajšo serijo predavanj na temo funkcijskega slikanja možganov s pomočjo funkcijske magnetne resonance (fMR). Namen predavanj bo podati osnovno razumevanje metode, različnih raziskovalnih paradigm in pristopov k analizi podatkov. Ta teden se bomo posvetili predstavitvi osnov magnetne resonance, signala, ki ga beležimo v fMR in poglavitnih eksperimentalnih pristopov. Prisrčno vabljeni ob 16:00 v predavalnico 34 na Filozofski fakulteti.

Simon Brezovar 11. april 2012

Po dolgem premoru se ta teden ponovno srečamo na CogJC. Sestanek bo potekal v sredo 11. aprila ob 18:00 v seminarju Nevrološke klinike. Na sestanku bo Simon Brezovar predstavljal in prediskutiral preliminarne rezultate študije vidne pozornosti. Izhodišče študije je članek Li et al. (2010; Role of frontal and parietal cortices in the control of bottom-up and top-down attention in humans). Diskusija bo zanimiva tako z vsebinskega vidika kot z vidika metodoloških izzivov in pasti EEG raziskovanja.

Prisrčno vabljeni!

Dejan Georgiev 25. januar 2012

CogJC this week will take place today at 6pm in the seminar of the Neurology clinic Ljubljana. Dejan Georgiev will present a paper related to the Vogel EEG working memory paradigm that is aimed at testing some of the alternative hypotheses in regards to the source of contralateral delay activity - more specificaly, could it reflect preceptual requirements or number of positions held in memory. I hope you will be able to attend despite the late invitation.

Rene Seiger and Jure Bon 11. januar 2012

We are kicking off new year with the first CogJC of the year this week at 18:00 in the Neurology Clinic Seminar. Rene Seiger and Jure Bon will present theoretical background and methodological questions related to the protocol for the planned meditation study. The key question they will address is the effect of different types of meditations on attention and cognitive control, as measured by changes in P3 components. The presentation will be based on the attached paper from Cahn and Polich and a review paper by Lutz, arguing for the need to distinguish between meditative practices and a proposal for their classification. As allways, both Jure and Rene are looking forward to a lively discussion.

Michael Kecht 14. december 2011

This week we are continuing the debate related to Oddball paradigm and P300 ERP. Michael Kech et al. will be presenting the topic of "How robust is the individual P300 signal?". The emphasis will be on one side on how to make sure that unintended effects do not affect results and on the other side, what effects and their underlying mechanisms can we observe using Oddball paradigm.

I hope the presentation will again serve as a starting point for a fruitful discussion.

The bases are provided by two papers: Seidl, Nicham & Hauser (2000; A taurine and affeine-containing drink stimulates cognitive performance and well-being) and Polich (2007; Updating P300: An integrative theory of P3a and P3b)

Looking forward to seeing you in the seminar of the Neurology clinic at 6pm this Wednesday, December 14th.

SiNAPSA Seminar 23. november 2011

Due to SiNAPSA Seminar there will be no CogJC today. Please find information about the seminar today in the leafleat available at:

http://www.sinapsa.org/enevron/media/attachments/a30-Seminar%20Nov%202011.pdf

Barbora Mináriková and Michel Kecht 16. november 2011

CogJC this week will take place on Wednesday, November 16th in the seminar of the Neurology clinic at 6pm. This week Barbora Mináriková and Michel Kecht will be giving an overview of placebo related studies and a plan for their own study in a talk titled "On the current knowledge about inherent ergogenic and nootropic enhancers". The talk will be in most part based on the four papers attached, of which Review by Miller et al 2010 and the Study about Muscle Fatigue by Pollo et al. are the most important.

Barbora and Michael are looking forward to constructive comments to their plans and a lively discussion.

In part the discussion has already started last week and in the anticipation of the event Jurij Dreo has contributed a few thoughts on the topic as well as a selection of papers. For those that would like to be prepared for the debate, these are included in a separate zip file.

Looking forward to an exciting meeting this Wednesday!

Jurij Dreo 9. november 2011

CogJC this week will take place on Wednesday at 6pm in the seminar of Neurology clinic. The topic this week is oddball paradigm, the differences in the many possible varieties of the task (visual / auditory, active / passive) and the effects on the observed P300 ERP component. The topic will be presented by Jurij Dreo and based on the provided papers. The key papers are 1 and 2. These are short and easy to read and will serve as a starting point for a discussion on what task to use for future research projects. Paper 3 provides some further more detailed comparisons. Paper 4 is a general overview for those interested in more basic information about the P300 ERP component.

Dejan Georgiev 2. november 2011

CogJC this week will take place in the seminar of the Neurology clinic at 18:00. Dejan Georgiev will be presenting the paper by Possin et al. (2008) on spatial and object memory in Parkinson disease.

Looking forward to a lively discussion!

Lea Kristan 26. oktober 2011

This week CogJC will take place on Wednesday at 17:00 in the seminar of the Neurology clinic in Ljubljana. Lea Kristan will be presenting a paper by Pacchetti et al. "Active music therapy in Parkinson's disease: An integrative method for motor and emotional rehabilitation". As she is planning a thesis in this field of research, she is hoping for a lively discussion.

Grega Repovš 19. oktober 2011

Cognitive Journal Club (CogJC) will start with its regular meetings this Wednesday at 6pm in seminar of Neurology clinic, Zaloška 2, Ljubljana. The primary aim of this meeting will be to give a short (re)introduction to CogJC, review the tentative topics we will cover, and prepare a preliminary schedule of presentations for the next few weeks.

To kick off the season, inspire and set the ideals to meet in future presentations and discussion, we will start with the classic paper by Jonh Platt from 1964 on Strong inference. The paper is not long and easy to read, so please do take time to go through it before the meeting.

As a number of foreign MeCogSci students are joining us this semester the meetings will take place in English.

Looking forward to seeing you again!

SiNAPSA Seminar 15. junij 2011

Ta teden se CogJC umika Sinapsinem seminarju, ki bo potekal danes v seminarju Nevrološke klinike s pričetkom ob 18:00. Podrobnosti seminarju so dostopne na spletni strani:

http://www.sinapsa.org/pro/seminarji/From_phrenology_to_the_study_of_brain_integration

Poleg seminarja ste ta teden tudi prisrčno vabljeni na predstavitev napredka doktorske naloge Barbare Dolenc, ki bo potekala v petek ob 15:30 na Oddelku za psihologijo. Barbara bo predstavila nekatera teoretična izhodišča in praktične izzive EEG študije vzdrževanja zaporedja v vidnem delovnem spominu.

Dejan Georgiev 1. junij 2011

Ta teden bo v sredo, 1. 6. s pričetkom ob 17:00 Dejan Georgijev predstavil osnove furierjeve transformacije, wavelet analize, analize neodvisnih komponent (ICA) in analize osnovnih komponent (PCA) ter njihove uporabe v EEG. Pri predstavitvi se bo naslanjal na poglavje 8 iz knjige "Quantitative EEG, Event-related potentials and neurotherapy".

Tečaj o programskih orodjih 18. maj 2011

Zaradi odpovedi načrtovane predstavitve bomo ta teden v sredo 18. maja v okviru CogJC izvedli prvi del dvodelnega tečaja o programskih orodjih za pripravo kognitivnih eksperimentov ter analizo in prikaz zbranih rezultatov. S srečanjem bomo pričeli ob 17:00 na Nevrološki kliniki. Drugi del tečaja bo potekal predvidoma v petek 27. maja s pričetkom ob 15:30 na Filozofski fakulteti.

Predviden program tečaja:

I. Del — Programska oprema za vodenje eksperimentov

V prvem delu se bomo seznanili z uporabo programskih paketov E-Prime in PXLab ter osnovami uporabe programskega jezika Python. V okviru srečanja bomo:

  • s pomočjo programskega jezika Python pripravili psevdo-naključno zapredje dražljajev,
  • pripravili skripto za izvedbo Stroopove preizkušnje v okolju PXLab,
  • pripravili skripto za izvedbo naloge delovnega spomina v okolju E-Prime.

Namen srečanja ni spoznati vse podrobnosti predstavljenih orodij temveč pridobiti kratek praktičen vpogled in osnovne informacije na podlagi katerih boste lahko sami nadaljevali učenje za delo z omenjenimi orodji.

Za uspešno praktično delo priporočam, da s seboj prinesite svoje prenosne računalnike ter nanje instalirate ustrezno programsko opremo.

Python
Python je del standardne programske opreme na Mac OS X računalnikih. Za Windows je brezplačna instalacija na voljo na strani: <http://www.python.org/download/<. Za uporabo na srečanju so relevantne verzije od 2.5.2 do 2.7.1.

PXLab
PXLab je brezplačen programski paket za vodenje eksperimentov pisan v Java programskem jeziku in uspešno teče tako na Windows kot Mac računalnikih. Za uporabo na srečanju pretočite datoteke in si preberite navodila za instalacijo na spletni strani: http://www.pxlab.de/.

E-Prime
E-Prime je komercialni paket za razvoj vedenjskih preizkušenj v Windows okolju, ki ga rutinsko uporabljamo za vodenje EEG eksperimentov. Njegova redna uporaba je možna le z ustreznim USB ključkom, delo na srečanju pa je možno tudi z instalacijo demo verzije paketa (http://www.pstnet.com/demos/eprime/RequestDemo.aspx). Če uporabljate Mac OS X, lahko E-Prime zaganjate s pomočjo enega od paketov za virtualizacijo:

II . Del — Programska orodja za analizo in vizualizacijo rezultatov

V drugem delu se bomo seznanili z orodji in triki, ki omogočajo učinkovito analizo večjega števila podatkov. V okviru tega srečanja bomo:

  • uporabili standardna UNIX / POSIX orodja za hitro združevanje in filtriranje podatkov,
  • spoznali "regular expressions" za učinkovito iskanje in zamenjavo podatkov,
  • pripravili R skripto za analizo podatkov,
  • uporabili paket "ggplot2" za pregledovanje in prikaz zbranih rezultatov.

Enako kot za prvo srečanje je tudi tokrat priporočjivo, da prinesete svoje računalnike z instalirano programsko opremo. Za delo boste potrebovali:

UNIX / POSIX orodja
Gre za standardni nabor terminalskih programskih orodij. Le-ta so standardni del Mac OS X ter drugih izvedenk UNIX in Linux operacijskih sistemov. Za uporabo v Windows okolju sledite informacijam podanih na http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX#POSIX_for_Windows. Dodatne uporabne povezave:

**Dober text editor*
Za programiranje in urejanje podatkov je potreben dober program za pisanje in urejanje txt datotek. Dober program omogoča branje datotek v različnih kodnih sistemih (ascii, utf-8, iso-latin-2 …) in podpira iskanje in zamenjavo s pomočjo uporabe "regular expressions". Dodatna prednost je avtomatično barvanje besedila glede na sintakso programskega jezika. Za Mac OS priporočam brezplačni TextWrangler (http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/) ali plačljivi TextMate (http://macromates.com/). Za Windows so (upam) uporabni:

Programsko okolje R
R je brezplačno programsko okolje za statistične analize s številnimi dodatnimi paketi. Instalacijske datoteke so dostopne na spletni strani: http://www.r-project.org/

Paket ggplot2
ggplot2 je paket za programsko okolje R, ki omogoča enostavno izdelavo kvalitetnih slik. Instalirate ga s pomočjo "Package Installer", ki je dostopen pod "Packages & Data" menujem v R.

Python
(glej informacije za prvo srečanje).

Splošno

Pomembno je, da že pred srečanjem poskrbite za instalacijo ter preverite, da programska oprema deluje. Zaradi pomanjkanja časa morebitnih težav z instalacijo programske opreme ne bomo mogli reševati na srečanju. Na srečanjih bomo delali na pripravljenih primerih in podatkih. Če imate lastne podatke s katerimi bi radi delali, ste dobrodošli, da jih prinesete s seboj.

Matjaž Mihelčič 11. maj 2011

V sredo 11. maja 2011 ob 18:00 bo na Nevrološki kliniki v okviru CogJC Matjaž Mihelčič predstavil vsebine vezane na disleksijo. Srečanje bo potekalo v slovenščini, sledi pa kratek opis vsebine v angleščini.

Optometric intervention in dislexia

Although dislexia is per definiton "A cognitive disorder characterized by an impaired ability to comprehend written and printed words or phrases despite intact vision", in optometric practice in dislexic patients visual deficits as poor accommodative or binocular function are occasionally found. In this case, subjects can benefit from prescription of proper correction or visual therapy.

Another point in assisting dislexics is in modifying the presentation of the text presented in order to change the excitability of the visual stimulus-processing pathways. As dislexia (and Meares-Irlen Syndrome in particular) is associated with relatively inconsistent magnocellular and dorsal visual pathways, translucent coloured overlays are used to enhance the function of these two consecutive channels compared to the function of parvocellular and ventral visual pathways. According to the literature, the colour which would assist each single dislexic person is mostly inpredictable, but can reliably be tested out. Another approach to modify the match of both pathways is in penalising the parvo / ventral pathway in blurring the text or lowering the contrast.

Simon Brezovar 20. april 2011

CogJC bo potekal ta teden v sredo 20. aprila s pričetkom ob 18:00 v prostorih nevrološke klinike. Ta teden Simon Brezovar predstavlja vsebine vezane na njegovo doktorsko nalogo. Podal je slednji opis:

Na jutrišnjem CogJC-ju bom predstavil članek, ki se osredotoča na klasično dihotomizacijo sistema pozornosti na top-down ter bottom-up procese, problematiko te delitve pa skuša osvetliti z vidika kognitivne nevroznanosti. Študija prikazuje rezultate ERP eksperimenta, s katerim so želeli ugotoviti, ali predstavljajo top-down ter bottom-up procesi dva sistema, ki delujeta neodvisno eden od drugega ali pa delujeta kot integrirana celota. Ob predstavitvi članka bi se rad navezal tudi na njegovo relevantnost (oziroma vizualne pozornosti na splošno) za moje doktorsko delo, zatorej bom pred začetkom predstavitve predstavil tudi krajši splošni uvod, na koncu pa pustil prostor za razpravo v širšem kontekstu.

Anja Čuš 6. april 2011

Ta teden se ponovno sestanemo v sredo 6. 4. ob 18:00 na Nevrološki kliniki. Anja Čuš bo predstavljala širši teoretični okvir in empirični članek vezan na vlogo posamičnih struktur medialnega temporalnega korteksa v različnih funkcijskih komponentah epizodičnega spomina. Sledi Anjin opis:

Rezultati funkcijskih slikovnih študij na zdravih osebah govorijo v prid umeščenosti različnih komponent epizodičnega spomina v različne medialne temporalne strukture. Ugotavljajo, da aktivacija hipokampusa in parahipokampalnega korteksa med vkodiranjem informacij napoveduje kasnejši priklic kontekstualnih podrobnosti dražljaja (tj. recollection - priklic), medtem ko aktivacija peririnalnega korteksa napoveduje kasnejšo prepoznavo samega dražljaja (tj. familiarity – poznanost). V skladu s tem nekateri avtorji opisujejo okvaro priklica in ohranjenost poznanosti pri izoliranih hipokampalnih okvarah. Po drugi strani so izolirane lezije peririnalnega korteksa izjemno redke. Bowles idr. poročajo o pacientki, pri kateri je bil v namene nevrokirurškega zdravljenja epilepsije odstranjen peririnalni korteks, hipokampus pa ohranjen. Na podlagi štirih eksperimentov poskušajo dokazati, da je lahko ob prizadetem spominu za dražljaj(poznanost) spomin za kontekst dražljaja (priklic) ohranjen.

Jure Bon 30. marec 2011

CogJC ta teden bo potekal v sredo 30. marca s pričetkom ob 18:00 na Nevrološki kliniki v Ljubljani. Na srečanju bo Jure Bon predstavil pregledni članek o posebnostih EEG oscilacij v shizofreniji. V uvod je Jure zapisal:

"Oscilacije EEG signala v različnih frekvenčnih spektrih in njihova sinhronizacija morda odražajo mehanizem komunikacije v lokalnih nevronskih skupkih in širše distribuiranih omrežjih v možganih. Različne višje živčne funkcije so odvisne od koordinirane aktivnosti v širših omrežjih in se povezujejo s sinhrono aktivnostjo v različnih frekvenčnih spektrih EEG signala. Obstaja tudi vse več dokazov, da se pri nevropsihiatričnih boleznih, ki vključujejo motnje kognicije in vedenja, pojavljajo motnje oscilatorne aktivnosti. Na revijalnem klubu bi v nekaj srečanjih prediskutirali nekatere metodološke in vsebinske članke s tega področja. To sredo bi začeli s preglednim člankom Uhlhaas 2010, ki govori o pomenu motenj v sinhronizaciji oscilacij za razumevanje patofiziologije shizofrenije."

Matic Kadliček 23. marec 2011

Next CogJC will take place on Wednesday, March 23rd at 6 pm at the Neurology clinic. The topic this week will be group-individual differences in hindsight bias ("i-knew-it-all-along" effect) and will be presented by Matic Kadliček. Matic has provided us with two papers on the topic and the following description:

A Comparison of Hindsight Bias in Groups and Individuals: The Moderating Role of Plausibility (Choi & Choi, 2010)

This recent study demonstrates that hindsight is stronger in groups when the outcome is less plausible (certainties usually don't produce this effect). The bias in groups persisted in spite of a de-biasing technique (considering alternative outcomes) known to dampen the effect.

We Knew It All Along: Hindsight Bias in Groups (Stahlberg, Eller, Maass & Frey, 1995)

The aim of this often cited article was to test four different explanations for the occurrence of the hindsight bias. The study consisted of two experiments of which the first used a counterfactual research paradigm (a single measurement) that eliminated the self-presentation and group polarization explanations for the phenomena. The second experiment used a recall design (two measurements; foresight vs. hindsight) to test the memory impairment view and the response bias view. Amongst the four, the latter stood out as the best explanation for the results.

Since these two articles may present the core of the experimental design for my bachelor's project, I'm looking forward to a fruitful debate, primarily focusing on methodological issues of my proposed experiment and some possible expansions.

Simon Brezovar 9. marec 2011

CogJC will take place on Wednesday, March 9th at 6pm at the Neurology clinic. The topic this week will be presented by Simon Brezovar. A short discription follows:

Risk of brain lesions and cognitive impairment in high altitude mountain climbers

In the Proceedings of the 1995 Hypoxia Symposium, neurologist Roger Simon encapsulated the effects of hypoxia on the brain of unacclimatized individuals abruptly exposed to low oxygen: "At sea level when the [inhaled] pO2 is decreased to 75 percent of normal, complex task performance is altered; at 65 percent, short-term memory is impaired; at 50 percent, judgment is altered; unconsciousness occurs with the pO2 between 30 percent and 40 percent of normal." These percentages correspond approximately to 2450 m, 3650 m, 5500 m, and 8500 m. The responses of well-acclimatized individuals would, of course, be substantially different.

Besides a few anecdotal and brief reports there has been no systematic study involving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies that could reveal potential risk of brain lesions in mountain climbers. There is also a lack of studies that would systematically investigate the influence of low oxygen level on cognitive functions, such as (working) memory, decision-making, language and other cognitive abilities. In the following Cognitive Journal Club, I will present two papers addressing some of the issues involved.

The aim of the first paper (Fayed et. al, 2006) was to examine potential neuroanatomical differences between mountain climbers taking part in in 4 different high altitude expeditions without supplementary oxygen, and healthy subjects living at sea level without any high altitude experiences. The second paper by Yan et al. (2011) presents a fMRI study comparing verbal working memory performance of 28 high-altitude residents and 30 sea level residents.

Matjaž Mihelčič 2. marec 2011

CogJC will take place on Wednesday, March 2nd at 6pm at Neurology clinic. The topic will be:

Accomodation and pupillary response in the reading of texts with varying cognitive demand

The topic will be presented by Matjaž Mihelčič, who completed a Master thesis on the topic and is planning to extend the research on the topic for his doctoral work. Matjaž will be presenting his work and a paper in preparation. For related publication see: Davies et al. (2005).

Anja Čuš 23. februar 2011

This Wednesday (6pm, Neurology clinic) Anja Čuš will be presenting two related papers looking into functional segregation of the medial temporal lobe and the related model of episodic memory. A short description follows …

Episodic memory and functional segregation of temporal lobe

A central function of memory is to permit an organism to distinguish between stimuli that have been previously encountered and those that are novel. Although the medial temporal lobe (which includes the hippocampus and surrounding perirhinal, parahippocampal, and entorhinal cortices) is known to be crucial for recognition memory, controversy remains regarding how the specific subregions within the medial temporal lobe contribute to recognition. The authors used event-related functional MRI to examine the relation between activation in distinct medial temporal lobe subregions during memory formation and the ability (i) to later recognize an item as previously encountered (item recognition) and (ii) to later recollect specific contextual details about the prior encounter (source recollection). Results suggest that the subregions within the medial temporal lobe subserve distinct, but complementary, learning mechanisms.

Dejan Georgijev 9. februar 2011

The next CogJC is to happen on February 9th at 18:00 at Neurology Clinic. We will be staying within the topic of Working memory, revisiting the CDA (Contralateral Delay Activity) EEG paradigm and the way it can be applied to the study of clinical groups. Specifically, Dejan Georgijev will be presenting a paper by Lee et all (2010; Visual working memory deficits in patients with Parkinson’s disease are due to both reduced storage capacity and impaired ability to filter out irrelevant information, Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awq197). We'll be making a critical overview of the methods and findings, identifying ways in which the study can be improved.

Christina Manouilidou 26. januar 2011

As announced last week, Christina will continue with the topic of verbal working memory focusing on a more specific research possibilities involving the use of TMS. The meeting will again take place at Neurology clinic seminar this Wednesday at 18:00. A short description follows:

"The aim of the presentation is to discuss a possible methodological tool (TMS) in order to investigate the hypothesis of whether language processing uses the same verbal working memory resources as other verbal tasks. The idea is to use TMS in two possible ways: one is to create a "virtual" lesion in healthy participants in areas associated with verbal working memory and more specifically with the articulatory rehearsal of the phonological loop (BA44); the second is to try to make up for the damaged articulatory rehearsal in patients with lesions in BA44 by stimulating other areas of the brain that could also be associated with articulatory rehearsal, such as the cerebellum."

Christina Manouilidou 19. januar 2011

After a long break CogJC metings are starting again. We'll open up the new season with two presentations by Christina Manouilidou. At the first meeting on the coming Wednesday, January 19th, Christina will present an overview of the current uderstanding of the relation between working memory and sentence comprehension along with possible behavioral and EEG research strategies used to address the open questions. Next Wednesday, January 26th, she'll follow up with a short empirical paper employing TMS to address the same research questions.

Sentence comprehension and Working memory

When it comes to sentence comprehension and working memory there are two main views: 1) verbal working memory is a resource for sentence comprehension as it is for other verbal tasks, i.e. sentence comprehension goes through phonological loop with the articulatory rehearsal playing a key role; 2) verbal working memory is a resource for sentence comprehension but sentence processing resources are distinct and independent from the resources used for other verbal tasks. The aim of the presentation is to explore these two views and more importantly the role of the phonological loop in sentence comprehension by looking at language performance of brain-damaged populations, and more specifically Broca’s patients. I’d like to propose a research line which involves the use of behavioral, EEG and TMS measurements to assess the performance of Broca’s patients in the comprehension of syntactically complex sentences.The suggested article sets the background on language comprehension and working memory. Findings from other studies will be discussed.