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Thomas F. Münte
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Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2014) 26 (10): 2310–2320.
Published: 01 October 2014
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Memory formation is a selective process in which reward contingencies determine which memory is maintained and which is forgotten. Sleep plays a pivotal role in maintaining information for the long term and has been shown to specifically benefit memories that are associated with reward. Key to memory consolidation during sleep is a neuronal reactivation of newly encoded representations. However, it is unclear whether preferential consolidation of memories associated with reward requires the reactivation of dopaminergic circuitry known to mediate reward effects at encoding. In a placebo-controlled, double-blind, balanced crossover experiment, we show that the dopamine D2-like receptor agonist pramipexole given during sleep wipes out reward contingencies. Before sleep, 16 men learned 160 pictures of landscapes and interiors that were associated with high or low rewards, if they were identified between new stimuli at retrieval 24 hr later. In the placebo condition, the participants retained significantly more pictures that promised a high reward. In the pramipexole condition, this difference was wiped out, and performance for the low reward pictures was as high as that for high reward pictures. Pramipexole did not generally enhance memory consolidation probably because of the fact that the dopaminergic agonist concurrently suppressed both SWS and REM sleep. These results are consistent with the concept that preferential consolidation of reward-associated memories relies on hippocampus-driven reactivation within the dopaminergic reward system during sleep, whereby during sleep reward contingencies are fed back to the hippocampus to strengthen specific memories, possibly, through dopaminergic facilitation of long-term potentiation.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2011) 23 (11): 3694–3702.
Published: 01 November 2011
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An initial stage of speech production is conceptual planning, where a speaker determines which information to convey first (the linearization problem). This fMRI study investigated the linearization process during the production of “before” and “after” sentences. In “after” sentences, a series of events is expressed in the order of event occurrence. In “before” sentences, however, the order of event mention is achieved by reversing the chronological order. We suggested that the linearization process may be supported by a neural network connecting the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) with the medial superior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal gyrus, and left angular gyrus/inferior parietal gyrus. Within this network, regions were more activated and interregional interactions were strongly enhanced for producing “before” than “after” sentences. The left MTG was also functionally connected with the left orbital inferior frontal gyrus, contributing to the retrieval of necessary world knowledge and linguistic knowledge. Connectivity between these two regions was not different between conditions.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2011) 23 (9): 2481–2493.
Published: 01 September 2011
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People are able to adapt their behavior to changing environmental contingencies by rapidly inhibiting or modifying their actions. Response inhibition is often studied in the stop-signal paradigm that requires the suppression of an already prepared motor response. Less is known about situations calling for a change of motor plans such that the prepared response has to be withheld but another has to be executed instead. In the present study, we investigated whether electrophysiological data can provide evidence for distinct inhibitory mechanisms when stopping or changing a response. Participants were instructed to perform in a choice RT task with two classes of embedded critical trials: Stop signals called for the inhibition of any response, whereas change signals required participants to inhibit the prepared response and execute another one instead. Under both conditions, we observed differences in go-stimulus processing, suggesting a faster response preparation in failed compared with successful inhibitions. In contrast to stop-signal trials, changing a response did not elicit the inhibition-related frontal N2 and did not modulate the parietal mu power decrease. The results suggest that compared with changing a response, additional frontal and parietal regions are engaged when having to inhibit a response.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2011) 23 (2): 362–373.
Published: 01 February 2011
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Effective adaptation to the demands of a changing environment requires flexible cognitive control. The medial and the lateral frontal cortices are involved in such control processes, putatively in close interplay with the BG. In particular, dopaminergic projections from the midbrain (i.e., from the substantia nigra [SN] and the ventral tegmental area) have been proposed to play a pivotal role in modulating the activity in these areas for cognitive control purposes. In that dopaminergic involvement has been strongly implicated in reinforcement learning, these ideas suggest functional links between reinforcement learning, where the outcome of actions shapes behavior over time, and cognitive control in a more general context, where no direct reward is involved. Here, we provide evidence from functional MRI in humans that activity in the SN predicts systematic subsequent trial-to-trial RT prolongations that are thought to reflect cognitive control in a stop-signal paradigm. In particular, variations in the activity level of the SN in one trial predicted the degree of RT prolongation on the subsequent trial, consistent with a modulating output signal from the SN being involved in enhancing cognitive control. This link between SN activity and subsequent behavioral adjustments lends support to theoretical accounts that propose dopaminergic control signals that shape behavior both in the presence and in the absence of direct reward. This SN-based modulatory mechanism is presumably mediated via a wider network that determines response speed in this task, including frontal and parietal control regions, along with the BG and the associated subthalamic nucleus.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2009) 21 (11): 2154–2171.
Published: 01 November 2009
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The meaning of a novel word can be acquired by extracting it from linguistic context. Here we simulated word learning of new words associated to concrete and abstract concepts in a variant of the human simulation paradigm that provided linguistic context information in order to characterize the brain systems involved. Native speakers of Spanish read pairs of sentences in order to derive the meaning of a new word that appeared in the terminal position of the sentences. fMRI revealed that learning the meaning associated to concrete and abstract new words was qualitatively different and recruited similar brain regions as the processing of real concrete and abstract words. In particular, learning of new concrete words selectively boosted the activation of the ventral anterior fusiform gyrus, a region driven by imageability, which has previously been implicated in the processing of concrete words.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008) 20 (12): 2153–2166.
Published: 01 December 2008
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An important issue in language learning is how new words are integrated in the brain representations that sustain language processing. To identify the brain regions involved in meaning acquisition and word learning, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Young participants were required to deduce the meaning of a novel word presented within increasingly constrained sentence contexts that were read silently during the scanning session. Inconsistent contexts were also presented in which no meaning could be assigned to the novel word. Participants showed meaning acquisition in the consistent but not in the inconsistent condition. A distributed brain network was identified comprising the left anterior inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45), the middle temporal gyrus (BA 21), the parahippocampal gyrus, and several subcortical structures (the thalamus and the striatum). Drawing on previous neuroimaging evidence, we tentatively identify the roles of these brain areas in the retrieval, selection, and encoding of the meaning.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008) 20 (9): 1595–1610.
Published: 01 September 2008
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An increase in cognitive control has been systematically observed in responses produced immediately after the commission of an error. Such responses show a delay in reaction time (post-error slowing) and an increase in accuracy. To characterize the neurophysiological mechanism involved in the adaptation of cognitive control, we examined oscillatory electrical brain activity by electroencephalogram and its corresponding neural network by event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging in three experiments. We identified a new oscillatory theta-beta component related to the degree of post-error slowing in the correct responses following an erroneous trial. Additionally, we found that the activity of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the right inferior frontal cortex, and the right superior frontal cortex was correlated with the degree of caution shown in the trial following the commission of an error. Given the overlap between this brain network and the regions activated by the need to inhibit motor responses in a stop-signal manipulation, we conclude that the increase in cognitive control observed after the commission of an error is implemented through the participation of an inhibitory mechanism.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2008) 20 (8): 1464–1477.
Published: 01 August 2008
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Reactive aggression following provocation is a frequent form of human social behavior. The neural basis of reactive aggression, especially its control, remains poorly understood, however. We conducted an event-related potential (ERP) study using a competitive reaction time task that elicits aggression through provocation. Participants were selected from a larger sample because of extreme scores in trait aggressiveness, yielding high and low trait aggressive groups. As each trial in the task is separated into a decision phase, during which the punishment level for the opponent is set, and an outcome phase, during which the punishment is applied or received, we were able to disentangle provocation-related and evaluation-related modulations of the ERPs during the aggressive interaction. Specifically, we observed an enhanced frontal negativity during the decision phase under high provocation that was positively correlated with the participants' ability to refrain from retaliation. This held true for high trait aggressive participants only, pointing to a higher need for inhibitory and control processes in these people when provoked. During the outcome phase, we detected a mediofrontal negativity in loss compared to win trials, resembling previous ERP findings to negative feedback stimuli, which have been linked to the evaluation of an outcome's valence. This mediofrontal negativity was differentially pronounced in aggressive and nonaggressive participants: Nonaggressive participants showed only a slightly smaller mediofrontal negativity in win than in loss trials, suggesting that for them punishing the opponent had a similar negative valence as being punished.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2007) 19 (7): 1104–1112.
Published: 01 July 2007
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Conflict monitoring theory holds that detection of conflicts in information processing by the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) results in processing adaptation that minimizes subsequent conflict. Applying an Eriksen f lanker task with four stimuli mapped onto two responses, we investigated whether such modulation occurs only after response-related or also after stimulus-related conflict, focusing on the N2 component of the event-related potential. Contrasting with previous findings, both stimulus- and response-related conflict elicited enhancement of the N2, suggesting that the ACC is sensitive to conflict at both the stimulus and the response level. However, neither type of conflict resulted in reduced conflict effects on the following trial when stimulus-response (S-R) sequence effects were controlled by excluding identical S-R repetition trials. Identical S-R repetitions were associated with facilitated processing, thus demonstrating that inclusion of these trials in the analysis may mimic results predicted by the conflict adaptation hypothesis.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2005) 17 (3): 422–433.
Published: 01 March 2005
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Bilingual individuals need effective mechanisms to prevent interference between their languages. Using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we present evidence for interference of phonological information from the nontarget language in German—Spanish bilinguals. A tacit picture-naming task was used in which bilinguals and monolinguals had to make speeded responses based on the first letter of the picture's name in the target language. In one condition, subjects were required to respond when the name began with a vowel and to withhold a response if it started with a consonant. Stimuli had been selected such that in half of the trials, the names in both languages necessitated the same response, whereas in the other half, responses were different for the two languages. For the bilinguals, the language in which the stimuli had to be named was changed after each block. Bilinguals showed phonological interference compared with monolingual performance, which was evident in their performance, ERPs, and fMRI patterns. Nonlanguage-specific brain areas such as the left middle prefrontal cortex were found to be crucial for the control of interference.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2005) 17 (2): 227–239.
Published: 01 February 2005
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German pronouns (er MALE/masculine , sie FEMALE/feminine ) that refer to a person are determined by the biological gender (MALE/FEMALE) and/or syntactic gender (masculine/feminine) of the person. Pronouns (er masculine , sie feminine ) that refer to a thing are determined by the syntactic gender of this thing (Garten [garden] masculine , Tasche [hand-bag] feminine ). The study aimed to investigate whether semantic integration, syntactic integration, or both are involved in establishing co-reference between pronoun and subject/antecedent in sentences. Here we focused on two event-related potential components: the SPS/P600, related to syntactic violation and reanalysis, and the N400 component, related to semantic integration problems. In one condition, a person was introduced as antecedent and later referred to by a pronoun, which either agreed in biological/syntactic gender or not (biological/syntactic gender violation). In a second condition, a thing was introduced as antecedent and the corresponding pronoun either agreed in syntactic gender or not (syntactic gender violation). Results at critical pronouns showed a P600 effect for incongruent compared with congruent pronouns in both conditions with a centro-parietal maximum. This effect was larger for the person compared to the thing condition. We interpreted this finding as reflecting a syntactic integration process that can be influenced by conceptual/semantic and syntactic information of the antecedent type. Furthermore, at the word following the pronoun, we observed an N400 for the thing but not for the person condition. We suggest, supported by the results of a control experiment, that this effect reflects continuous integration processes for things, whereas for persons the integration seems to be finished at pronoun position.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2002) 14 (3): 443–454.
Published: 01 April 2002
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The ERP repetition priming paradigm has been shown to be sensitive to the processing differences between regular and irregular verb forms in English and German. The purpose of the present study is to extend this research to a language with a different inflectional system, Spanish. The design (delayed visual repetition priming) was adopted from our previous study on English, and the specific linguistic phenomena we examined are priming relations between different kinds of stem (or root) forms. There were two experimental conditions: In the first condition, the prime and the target shared the same stem form, e.g., “ando—andar” [I walk—to walk], whereas in the second condition, the prime contained a marked (alternated) stem, e.g., “duermo— dormir” [I sleep—to sleep]. A reduced N400 was found for unmarked (nonalternated) stems in the primed condition, whereas marked stems showed no such effect. Moreover, control conditions demonstrated that the surface form properties (i.e., the different degree of phonetic and ortho-graphic overlap between primes and targets) do not explain the observed priming difference. The ERP priming effect for verb forms with unmarked stems in Spanish is parallel to that found for regularly inflected verb forms in English and German. We argue that effective priming is possible because prime target pairs such as “ando—andar” access the same lexical entry for their stems. By contrast, verb forms with alternated stems (e.g., “duermo”) constitute separate lexical entries, and are therefore less powerful primes for their corresponding base forms.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (2001) 13 (4): 510–522.
Published: 15 May 2001
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A central question in psycholinguistic research is when various types of information involved in speaking (conceptual/ semantic, syntactic, and phonological information) become available during the speech planning process. Competing theories attempt to distinguish between parallel and serial models. Here, we investigated the relative time courses of conceptual and syntactic encoding in a tacit picture-naming task via event-related brain potential (ERP) recordings. Participants viewed pictures and made dual-choice go/no-go decisions based on conceptual features (whether the depicted item was heavier or lighter than 500 g) and syntactic features (whether the picture's German name had feminine or masculine syntactic gender). In support of serial models of speech production, both the lateralized readiness potential, or LRP (related to response preparation), and the N200 (related to response inhibition) measures indicated that conceptual processing began approximately 80 msec earlier than syntactic processing.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (1997) 9 (3): 318–329.
Published: 01 May 1997
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Event-related brain potentials (EMS) were recorded while normal German subjects read either simple declarative sen- tences made up from real German words, or sentences that contained German pseudo-words instead of nouns and verbs. The verb (pseudo-verb) of the sentences disagreed in number with the subject noun (pseudo-noun) in 50% of the sentences. The subjects had the task either to read the sentences for an interspersed memory test (memory condition, pseudeword sentences only) or to make a syntactic judgment after each real-word/pseudo-word sentence. While in the real-word condition a late and widespread positivity resembling the previously described syntactic positive shift was found for the disagreeing verbs, a negativity with an onset latency of about 300 msec was seen for the disagreeing pseudo-verbs. In the pseudo-word conditions no positivity followed the initial negativity. This dissociation of negative and positive waves occurring in response to morphosyntactic mismatches by the pseudo/real-word manipulation suggests that the positive shift is a concomitant of a recomputation routine initiated to account for the number incongruency. This routine is based upon the semantics of the sentence and therefore is not observed in the pseudo-word conditions. The earlier negativity, on the other hand, appears to be a more direct index of morphosyntactic incongruency.
Journal Articles
Publisher: Journals Gateway
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (1993) 5 (3): 335–344.
Published: 01 July 1993
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In psycholinguistic research, there has been considerable interest in understanding the interactions of difFerent types of linguistic information during language processing. For example, does syntactic information interact with semantic or pragmatic information at an early stage of language processing, or only at later stages in order to resolve ambiguities of language? Developing reliable measures of language processes such as syntax and semantics is important to address many of these theoretical issues in psycholinguistics. In the present study, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from healthy young subjects while they read pairs of words presented one word at a time. The ERPs for the second word of each pair were compared as a function of whether the preceding word was or was not (1) semantically related (i.e., synonyms; “semantic condition”) or (2) grammatically correct (“syntactic condition”). In the semantic condition the ERPs obtained to words preceded by nonsemantically related words elicited an N400 component that was maximal over centroparietal scalp regions. In contrast, in the syntactic condition the ERPs obtained to words preceded by grammatically incorrect articles or pronouns yielded a negativity with a later onset, and a frontopolar, left hemisphere scalp maximum. This replicates our previous findings of a syntactic negativity in a word pair design that was performed in the German language. Further, the present data provide scalp distributional information, which suggests that the syntactic negativity represents brain processes that are dissociable from the centroparietal N400 component. Thus, these findings provide strong evidence for a separate negative polarity ERP component that indexes syntactic aspects of language processing.