Frontiers in Human Neuroscience最新文献

Background: Multiple studies have examined bimanual coordination in children with unilateral cerebral palsy (CP) with few in bilateral CP and none utilized electroencephalography (EEG). This study investigates brain activation underlying bimanual performance in individuals with bilateral CP and typical development (TD).

Methods: Twenty-six participants (13 CP; 13 TD) completed the Box and Block Test (BBT) and visually cued drumming tasks with each hand (unimanual) and then with both hands synchronously and asynchronously (bimanual). EEG and motion data were recorded during drumming tasks.

Results: Children with CP demonstrated bilateral impairments in drumming cadence and BBT, increased alpha and beta and decreased gamma EEG band activation in mainly non-dominant brain regions compared to TD. Bimanual tasks tended to show decreased performance and greater alpha and beta band activation than unimanual tasks for both groups. EEG activity and BBT correlations were positive in TD, but negative in CP.

Discussion: This study showed that children with CP had worse motor performance bilaterally and EEG activation differences from TD similar to previous unimanual findings in bilateral CP, however, a more complex bimanual task may have uncovered greater differences.

Conclusion: Evidence of bimanual deficits and EEG differences reinforces the need for greater research and clinical attention on upper limb function in bilateral CP.

This paper examines the extent to which large language models (LLMs) are able to perform tasks which require higher-order theory of mind (ToM)-the human ability to reason about multiple mental and emotional states in a recursive manner (e.g., I think that you believe that she knows). This paper builds on prior work by introducing a handwritten test suite-Multi-Order Theory of Mind Q&A-and using it to compare the performance of five LLMs of varying sizes and training paradigms to a newly gathered adult human benchmark. We find that GPT-4 and Flan-PaLM reach adult-level and near adult-level performance on our ToM tasks overall, and that GPT-4 exceeds adult performance on 6th order inferences. Our results suggest that there is an interplay between model size and finetuning for higher-order ToM performance, and that the linguistic abilities of large models may support more complex ToM inferences. Given the important role that higher-order ToM plays in group social interaction and relationships, these findings have significant implications for the development of a broad range of social, educational and assistive LLM applications.

Background: Basal ganglia hemorrhage (BGH) is a life-threatening neurosurgical emergency associated with substantial mortality and disability. Accurate postoperative prognosis assessment remains challenging due to multifactorial influences. Hemoglobin (HB), as the key determinant of oxygen delivery, may play a critical role in neurological recovery, yet the prognostic significance of perioperative HB fluctuations in BGH has not been fully elucidated.

Methods: A retrospective cohort of 213 surgically treated BGH patients from 2020 to 2023 was analyzed. Perioperative HB indices, including preoperative (Pre-HB), postoperative (Post-HB), and mean HB (Mean-HB) levels, were evaluated alongside clinical data. Functional outcome at 6 months was determined based on the modified Rankin Scale (mRS). Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression together with multivariate logistic regression models were utilized to screen for independent risk variables, followed by construction of a composite predictive model. Model discrimination, calibration, and evaluation of the model's clinical applicability were conducted using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, calibration plots, and decision curve analysis (DCA).

Results: Patients with poor prognosis exhibited significantly lower Pre-HB, Post-HB, and Mean-HB levels (all P < 0.05). Multivariate analysis confirmed these variables as independent predictors of adverse outcome. The proposed model provides a practical and data-driven tool that demonstrated good predictive performance (AUC = 0.84) in a single-center retrospective cohort. Calibration and DCA demonstrated good consistency and potential clinical applicability.

Conclusion: Perioperative declines in HB are independently associated with poor postoperative outcomes in BGH. The proposed HB-integrated model provides a reliable, dynamic tool for individualized risk prediction, facilitating precision perioperative management and optimized recovery strategies.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1698605.].

Background: The assessment of gender perception influenced by ambiguous facial cues in patients requiring emergency medical attention remains ambiguous. Pareidolia faces represent unconscious errors in facial recognition, wherein a wide array of visual attributes contribute to the interpretation of facial features. This study aims to explore the mechanisms underlying gender perception in individuals undergoing emergency medical treatment, employing an innovative digital pareidolia assessment to evaluate gender perception within the context of face pareidolia.

Methods: Fifty adult patients treated by a female physician in the green triage zone participated in the study. Target images consisted of face pareidolia images, while non-target images were scrambled. All images were standardized for size, tone, and light intensity. Patients instructed the pareidolia images and were asked if they discerned a face; if they answered 'No,' the next image was shown. If they saw a face, they identified the associated gender. Their responses and reaction times were systematically recorded digitally.

Results: Our findings revealed that, regardless of wait times, patients were significantly more likely to identify pareidolia faces as male rather than female, especially after being examined by a female physician. Additionally, male patients exhibited slightly longer reaction times than females when responding to pareidolia images.

Conclusion: The outcomes of this investigation provide critical insights into the influence of pareidolia on gender perception of faces in the emergency department setting. It underscores the notion that gender biases, which arise from both biological and sociocultural factors, can affect the dynamics of patient-physician interactions.

This Perspective article discusses the emerging potential of transcranial ultrasound stimulation (TUS) as a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique for enhancing self-regulatory processes, particularly emotion and sleep regulation, in healthy individuals. Offering high spatial precision and the ability to target both cortical and deep brain regions, TUS uses focused ultrasound waves to induce acute and delayed effects on brain activity. We propose that combining TUS with neurofeedback methods and/or specific cognitive training exercises may capitalise on these neuroplastic effects, thereby augmenting and prolonging their impact to support lasting improvements in self-regulation. We focus on the domains of sleep and emotion regulation, where such an integrated approach may strengthen resilience and promote healthier functioning in the general population. Our aim is to highlight the potential of TUS-based integrated interventions for supporting mental health and well-being in non-clinical populations and to outline key directions for future research.

Background: Deep brain stimulation (DBS) significantly improves tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia for patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), but gait and speech remain inconsistent. These discrepancies underscore the need for a systematic, quantitative synthesis of existing data to clarify the impact of DBS across different motor domains.

Objective: To systematically evaluate the effects of DBS on motor symptoms in PD by analyzing UPDRS-III scores and conducting subgroup analyses based on stimulation target, stimulation type, and medication status.

Methods: A literature search was conducted to identify relevant studies on clinical trials and observational studies reporting pre- and post-DBS motor assessments in PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), Ovid MEDLINE, and Web of Science from inception to 15 December 2024.

Results: A total of 35 studies comprising 1,082 PD patients were included. The pooled analysis demonstrated a significant improvement in overall UPDRS-III scores post-DBS (WMD: = -1.09, 95% CI: -1.32 to -0.87, p < 0.05). Subgroup analyses showed consistent improvements across tremor, rigidity, akinesia, bradykinesia, dyskinesia, and axial symptoms, regardless of stimulation target or medication state. UPDRS Part IV scores also significantly improved, reflecting reduced motor complications. However, speech function remained unchanged, and UPDRS Part I scores initially showed no significant improvement, though significance emerged after removing sources of heterogeneity.

Conclusion: DBS significantly improves overall motor function, particularly tremor, rigidity, and bradykinesia. However, its effects on gait and speech remain inconsistent, which shows the need for further research to refine patient selection and optimize stimulation parameters. These findings provide valuable insights into the therapeutic impact of DBS in PD management.

Introduction: The application of motor imagery in human-computer interaction and rehabilitative medicine has attracted growing attention due to recent advances in brain-computer interface technologies. However, traditional EEG decoding paradigms based on fixed frequency-band segmentation often exhibit limited performance because they fail to capture individual variability in brain rhythms.

Methods: This work proposes an adaptive method that integrates the sparrow search algorithm (SSA) with Filter Bank Common Spatial Pattern (FBCSP) to optimize sub-band segmentation for motor imagery EEG decoding. SSA adaptively searches for optimal sub-band boundaries, enabling individualized frequency-band selection.

Results: Experiments on the BCI Competition IV 2a dataset under a cross-session evaluation protocol (training on session T, testing on session E) demonstrated that SSA-FBCSP effectively improves frequency-band adaptability. The SSA-FBCSP approach was further combined with Support Vector Machine (SVM), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), and k-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) classifiers to evaluate the influence of different downstream classifiers.

Conclusion: Among them, SSA-FBCSP-LDA achieved the best performance, outperforming the conventional uniform sub-band approach by 21.76% and reaching an average accuracy of 89.92%. The adaptively selected sub-bands closely matched the ERD/ERS distribution, confirming the method's effectiveness in frequency-band optimization. Compared with recent deep-learning-based MI-EEG models, the proposed technique offers a balance of accuracy, interpretability, and computational efficiency, providing a promising direction for personalized brain-computer interface systems.

The logopenic variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia (lvPPA) is marked by phonological short-term memory deficits that compromise repetition and communication. While previous interventions in PPA have primarily targeted lexical-semantic abilities, little is known about therapies that directly address phonological impairments, primarily through teletherapy. This first study investigated the efficacy of an intensive phonological short-term memory training program delivered via teletherapy in individuals with the lvPPA. The intervention aimed to improve repetition of trained items, promote generalization to untrained items, facilitate transfer to functional tasks, and ensure maintenance over time. In the present study, significant improvements were observed in both immediate and delayed repetition of trained items, with partial short-term generalization to untrained items, particularly for words in delayed tasks. No substantial generalization effects were observed for functional language tasks, including picture description and picture naming, suggesting that the intervention's impact may remain task specific. Individual trajectories revealed heterogeneous responses, potentially influenced by baseline cognitive profiles, spontaneous strategies, or fatigue. Mixed-effects models confirmed that interindividual factors explained a substantial portion of the variance. These findings support the feasibility and clinical relevance of remote phonological training in the lvPPA and underline the importance of early, personalized interventions. The study also raises the hypothesis that delayed repetition may facilitate internal rehearsal, enhancing generalization. Further research is needed to assess broader functional outcomes and optimize protocol scalability.