Mariana Babo-Rebelo, Anne Buot, Catherine Tallon-Baudry (2019), Neural responses to heartbeats distinguish self from other during imagination , NeuroImage, Volume 191, Pages 10-20.

Abstract:
Imagination is an internally-generated process, where one can make oneself or other people appear as protagonists of a scene. How does the brain tag the protagonist of an imagined scene as being oneself or someone else? Crucially, during imagination, neither external stimuli nor motor feedback are available to disentangle imagining oneself from imagining someone else. Here, we test the hypothesis that an internal mechanism based on the neural monitoring of heartbeats could distinguish between self and other. 23 participants imagined themselves (from a first-person perspective) or a friend (from a third-person perspective) in various scenarios, while their brain activity was recorded with magnetoencephalography and their cardiac activity was simultaneously monitored. We measured heartbeat-evoked responses, i.e. transients of neural activity occurring in response to each heartbeat, during imagination. The amplitude of heartbeat-evoked responses differed between imagining oneself and imagining a friend, in the precuneus and posterior cingulate regions bilaterally. Effect size was modulated by the daydreaming frequency scores of participants but not by their interoceptive abilities. These results could not be accounted for by other characteristics of imagination (e.g., the ability to adopt the perspective, valence or arousal), nor by cardiac parameters (e.g., heart rate) or arousal levels (e.g. arousal ratings, pupil diameter). Heartbeat-evoked responses thus appear as a neural marker distinguishing self from other during imagination.

Emily Buss, Christian Lorenzi, Laurianne Cabrera, Lori J. Leibold, and John H. Grose (2019), Amplitude modulation detection and modulation masking in school-age children and adults, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145, 2565, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5098950

Abstract:
Two experiments were performed to better understand on- and off-frequency modulation masking in normal-hearing school-age children and adults. Experiment 1 estimated thresholds for detecting 16-, 64- or 256-Hz sinusoidal amplitude modulation (AM) imposed on a 4300-Hz pure tone. Thresholds tended to improve with age, with larger developmental effects for 64- and 256-Hz AM than 16-Hz AM. Detection of 16-Hz AM was also measured with a 1000-Hz off-frequency masker tone carrying 16-Hz AM. Off-frequency modulation masking was larger for younger than older children and adults when the masker was gated with the target, but not when the masker was continuous. Experiment 2 measured detection of 16- or 64-Hz sinusoidal AM carried on a bandpass noise with and without additional on-frequency masker AM. Children and adults demonstrated modulation masking with similar tuning to modulation rate. Rate-dependent age effects for AM detection on a pure-tone carrier are consistent with maturation of temporal resolution, an effect that may be obscured by modulation masking for noise carriers. Children were more susceptible than adults to off-frequency modulation masking for gated stimuli, consistent with maturation in the ability to listen selectively in frequency, but the children were not more susceptible to on-frequency modulation masking than adults.

Roberto Casati, Patrick Cavanagh (2019), The Visual World of Shadows. MIT Press

Abstract:
How the perception of shadows, studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system.

In The Visual World of Shadows, Roberto Casati and Patrick Cavanagh examine how the perception of shadows, as studied by vision scientists and visual artists, reveals the inner workings of the visual system. Shadows are at once a massive problem for vision—which must distinguish them from objects or material features of objects—and a resource, signaling the presence, location, shape, and size of objects.

Casati and Cavanagh draw up an inventory of information retrievable from shadows, showing their amazing variety. They present an overview of the visual system, distinguishing between measurement and inference. They discuss the shadow mission, the work done by the visual brain to parse, and perhaps discard, the information from shadows; shadow ownership, the association of a shadow with the object that casts it; shadow labeling, the visual system's ability to tell shadows from nonshadows; and the shadow concept, our knowledge about shadows as a category. Casati and Cavanagh then apply the theoretical apparatus they have developed for shadows to other phenomena: illumination, reflection, and transparency. Finally, they examine the art of the shadow, paying tribute to artists' exploration of shadow, analyzing a series of artworks (reproduced in color) from a rich and fascinating art historical corpus.

de Cheveigné A, Nelken I (2019), Filters: When, Why, and How (Not) to Use Them, Neuron, 102(2):280-293, doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.02.039

Abstract:
Filters are commonly used to reduce noise and improve data quality. Filter theory is part of a scientist's training, yet the impact of filters on interpreting data is not always fully appreciated. This paper reviews the issue and explains what a filter is, what problems are to be expected when using them, how to choose the right filter, and how to avoid filtering by using alternative tools. Time-frequency analysis shares some of the same problems that filters have, particularly in the case of wavelet transforms. We recommend reporting filter characteristics with sufficient details, including a plot of the impulse or step response as an inset.

Gialluisi, A., Andlauer, T. F. M., Mirza-Schreiber, N., Moll, K., Becker, J., Hoffmann, P., … Ramus, F., … Schulte-Körne, G. (2019). Genome-wide association scan identifies new variants associated with a cognitive predictor of dyslexia. Translational Psychiatry, 9(1).

Abstract:
Developmental dyslexia (DD) is one of the most prevalent learning disorders, with high impact on school and psychosocial development and high comorbidity with conditions like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, and anxiety. DD is characterized by deficits in different cognitive skills, including word reading, spelling, rapid naming, and phonology. To investigate the genetic basis of DD, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of these skills within one of the largest studies available, including nine cohorts of reading-impaired and typically developing children of European ancestry (N = 2562–3468). We observed a genome-wide significant effect (p 1 × 10−8) on rapid automatized naming of letters (RANlet) for variants on 18q12.2, within MIR924HG (micro-RNA 924 host gene; rs17663182 p = 4.73 × 10−9), and a suggestive association on 8q12.3 within NKAIN3 (encoding a cation transporter; rs16928927, p = 2.25 × 10−8). rs17663182 (18q12.2) also showed genome-wide significant multivariate associations with RAN measures (p = 1.15 × 10−8) and with all the cognitive traits tested (p = 3.07 × 10−8), suggesting (relational) pleiotropic effects of this variant. A polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis revealed significant genetic overlaps of some of the DD-related traits with educational attainment (EDUyears) and ADHD. Reading and spelling abilities were positively associated with EDUyears (p ~ [10−5–10−7]) and negatively associated with ADHD PRS (p ~ [10−8−10−17]). This corroborates a long-standing hypothesis on the partly shared genetic etiology of DD and ADHD, at the genome-wide level. Our findings suggest new candidate DD susceptibility genes and provide new insights into the genetics of dyslexia and its comorbities.

Kayeon Kim, Josef Ladenbauer, Mariana Babo-Rebelo, Anne Buot, Katia Lehongre, Claude Adam, Dominique Hasboun, Virginie Lambrecq, Vincent Navarro, Srdjan Ostojic and Catherine Tallon-Baudry (2019), Resting-State Neural Firing Rate Is Linked to Cardiac-Cycle Duration in the Human Cingulate and Parahippocampal Cortices Journal of Neuroscience, 39 (19) 3676-3686

Abstract:
Stimulation and functional imaging studies have revealed the existence of a large network of cortical regions involved in the regulation of heart rate. However, very little is known about the link between cortical neural firing and cardiac-cycle duration (CCD). Here, we analyze single-unit and multiunit data obtained in humans at rest, and show that firing rate covaries with CCD in 16.7% of the sample (25 of 150). The link between firing rate and CCD was most prevalent in the anterior medial temporal lobe (entorhinal and perirhinal cortices, anterior hippocampus, and amygdala), where 36% (18 of 50) of the units show the effect, and to a lesser extent in the mid-to-anterior cingulate cortex (11.1%, 5 of 45). The variance in firing rate explained by CCD ranged from 0.5 to 11%. Several lines of analysis indicate that neural firing influences CCD, rather than the other way around, and that neural firing affects CCD through vagally mediated mechanisms in most cases. These results show that part of the spontaneous fluctuations in firing rate can be attributed to the cortical control of the cardiac cycle. The fine tuning of the regulation of CCD represents a novel physiological factor accounting for spontaneous variance in firing rate. It remains to be determined whether the “noise” introduced in firing rate by the regulation of CCD is detrimental or beneficial to the cognitive information processing carried out in the parahippocampal and cingulate regions.

Andrew King, Léo Varnet, Christian Lorenzi (2019), Accounting for masking of frequency modulation by amplitude modulation with the modulation filter-bank concept, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Volume 145, Issue 4, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5094344

Abstract:
Frequency modulation (FM) is assumed to be detected through amplitude modulation (AM) created by cochlear filtering for modulation rates above 10 Hz and carrier frequencies (fc) above 4 kHz. If this is the case, a model of modulation perception based on the concept of AM filters should predict masking effects between AM and FM. To test this, masking effects of sinusoidal AM on sinusoidal FM detection thresholds were assessed on normal-hearing listeners as a function of FM rate, fc, duration, AM rate, AM depth, and phase difference between FM and AM. The data were compared to predictions of a computational model implementing an AM filter-bank. Consistent with model predictions, AM masked FM with some AM-masking-AM features (broad tuning and effect of AM-masker depth). Similar masking was predicted and observed at fc = 0.5 and 5 kHz for a 2 Hz AM masker, inconsistent with the notion that additional (e.g., temporal fine-structure) cues drive slow-rate FM detection at low fc. However, masking was lower than predicted and, unlike model predictions, did not show beating or phase effects. Broadly, the modulation filter-bank concept successfully explained some AM-masking-FM effects, but could not give a complete account of both AM and FM detection.

Lebreton M, Bacily K, *Palminteri S, *Engelmann JB (2019), Contextual influence on confidence judgments in human reinforcement learning. PLoS Computational Biology. *co-last authors

Abstract
The ability to correctly estimate the probability of one’s choices being correct is fundamental to optimally re-evaluate previous choices or to arbitrate between different decision strategies. Experimental evidence nonetheless suggests that this metacognitive process—confidence judgment- is susceptible to numerous biases. Here, we investigate the effect of outcome valence (gains or losses) on confidence while participants learned stimulus-outcome associations by trial-and-error. In two experiments, participants were more confident in their choices when learning to seek gains compared to avoiding losses, despite equal difficulty and performance between those two contexts. Computational modelling revealed that this bias is driven by the context-value, a dynamically updated estimate of the average expected-value of choice options, necessary to explain equal performance in the gain and loss domain. The biasing effect of context-value on confidence, revealed here for the first time in a reinforcement-learning context, is therefore domain-general, with likely important functional consequences. We show that one such consequence emerges in volatile environments, where the (in)flexibility of individuals’ learning strategies differs when outcomes are framed as gains or losses. Despite apparent similar behavior- profound asymmetries might therefore exist between learning to avoid losses and learning to seek gains.

Hugo Peyre, Nicolas Hoertel, Jonathan Y.Bernard, Chloe Rouffignac, Anne Forhan, Marion Taine, Barbara Heude, Franck Ramus, on behalf of the EDEN Mother–Child Cohort Study Group (2019), Sex differences in psychomotor development during the preschool period: A longitudinal study of the effects of environmental factors and of emotional, behavioral, and social functioning, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 178, Pages 369-384

Abstract:
We sought to determine the extent to which sex differences in psychomotor development during the preschool period can be explained by differential exposure to environmental factors and/or differences in emotional, behavioral, or social functioning. Children from the EDEN mother–child cohort were assessed for language, gross motor, and fine motor skills at 2, 3, and 5–6 years of age using parental questionnaires and neuropsychological tests. Structural equation models examining the associations between sex and language, gross motor, and fine motor skills at 2, 3, and 5–6  years were performed while adjusting for a broad range of pre- and postnatal environmental factors as well as emotional, behavioral and socialization difficulties. Girls (n = 492) showed better fine motor skills than boys (n = 563) at 2 years (Cohen’s d = 0.67 in the fully adjusted models), at 3 years (d = 0.72), and to a lesser extent at 5–6 years (d = 0.29). Girls also showed better language skills at 2 years (d = 0.36) and 3 years (d = 0.37) but not at 5–6 years (d = 0.04). We found no significant differences between girls and boys in gross motor skills at 2, 3, or 5–6 years. Similar results were found in the models unadjusted and adjusted for pre- and postnatal environmental factors as well as emotional, behavioral, and socialization difficulties. Our findings are consistent with the idea that sex differences in fine motor and language skills at 2 and 3 years of age are not explained by differential exposure to environmental factors or by sex differences in emotional, behavioral, or social functioning.

Lyn Tieu, Philippe Schlenker, Emmanuel Chemla (2019), Linguistic inferences without words, PNASDOI : 10.1073/pnas.1821018116

Abstract:
Contemporary semantics has uncovered a sophisticated typology of linguistic inferences, characterized by their conversational status and their behavior in complex sentences. This typology is usually thought to be specific to language and in part lexically encoded in the meanings of words. We argue that it is neither. Using a method involving “composite” utterances that include normal words alongside novel nonlinguistic iconic representations (gestures and animations), we observe successful “one-shot learning” of linguistic meanings, with four of the main inference types (implicatures, presuppositions, supplements, homogeneity) replicated with gestures and animations. The results suggest a deeper cognitive source for the inferential typology than usually thought: Domain-general cognitive algorithms productively divide both linguistic and nonlinguistic information along familiar parts of the linguistic typology.

Communiqué de presse du CNRS
Communiqué de presse de l'Université de New-York

Vilarem E, Armony JL, Grèzes J. (2019), Action opportunities modulate attention allocation under social threat. Emotion

Abstract:
When entering a subway car affording multiple targets for action, how do we decide, very quickly, where to sit, particularly when in the presence of a potential danger? It is unclear, from existing motor and emotion theories, whether our attention would be allocated toward the seat on which we intend to sit on or whether it would be oriented toward an individual that signals the presence of potential danger. To address this question, we explored spontaneous action choices and attention allocation in a realistic context, where a threat-related signal (an angry or fearful individual) and the target for action in that situation could compete for attentional priority. Results showed that participants chose the actions that avoided angry individuals and were more confident when approaching those with a fearful expression. In addition, covert and overt measures of attention showed a stronger avoidance effect for angry, compared to fearful, individuals. Crucially, these effects of anger and fear on attention allocation required the presence of action possibilities in the scene. Taken together, our findings show that in a realistic context offering competing action possibilities, threat-related distractors shape both action selection and attention allocation accordingly to their social function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

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