Pub Date : 2026-01-26Epub Date: 2025-10-29DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109307
Adriana R. Miller , Danielle S. Dickson , Rafał Jończyk , Daisy Lei , Gül E. Kremer , Zahed Siddique , Roger E. Beaty , Janet G. van Hell
Creative thinking is a vital skill for engineers. Prior work suggests that social dynamics—such as critical feedback from a high-authority figure—can influence the ideation process. Yet little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms through which feedback shapes creative thinking. In this study, engineering students completed a creative ideation task while EEG was recorded. Midway through the experiment, a professor gave the participant either supportive or unsupportive critical feedback on their performance. Supportive feedback was expected to positively influence creativity compared to unsupportive feedback: participants in the supportive feedback condition were predicted to show greater idea originality and fluency after receiving feedback, as well as a greater EEG power increase in the alpha frequency band (8–12 Hz) that is robustly associated with creativity. We found that after receiving feedback—whether supportive or unsupportive—participants produced fewer but more highly original responses and showed increased alpha power. These results indicate that feedback can cause engineers to generate fewer but more original ideas by driving alpha-band activity in the brain. In further analyses, we found decreased beta-band activity before feedback only in the unsupportive condition, possibly reflecting increased cognitive stress and internally directed attention required to adjust performance in the post-feedback phase.
{"title":"Critical feedback impacts creative ideation and brain oscillations","authors":"Adriana R. Miller , Danielle S. Dickson , Rafał Jończyk , Daisy Lei , Gül E. Kremer , Zahed Siddique , Roger E. Beaty , Janet G. van Hell","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109307","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109307","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Creative thinking is a vital skill for engineers. Prior work suggests that social dynamics—such as critical feedback from a high-authority figure—can influence the ideation process. Yet little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms through which feedback shapes creative thinking. In this study, engineering students completed a creative ideation task while EEG was recorded. Midway through the experiment, a professor gave the participant either supportive or unsupportive critical feedback on their performance. Supportive feedback was expected to positively influence creativity compared to unsupportive feedback: participants in the supportive feedback condition were predicted to show greater idea originality and fluency after receiving feedback, as well as a greater EEG power increase in the alpha frequency band (8–12 Hz) that is robustly associated with creativity. We found that after receiving feedback—whether supportive or unsupportive—participants produced fewer but more highly original responses and showed increased alpha power. These results indicate that feedback can cause engineers to generate fewer but more original ideas by driving alpha-band activity in the brain. In further analyses, we found decreased beta-band activity before feedback only in the unsupportive condition, possibly reflecting increased cognitive stress and internally directed attention required to adjust performance in the post-feedback phase.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109307"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145418272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-26Epub Date: 2025-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290
Yasmine Bassil , Anisha Kanukolanu , Emma Funderburg , Thackery Brown , Michael R. Borich
During human spatial navigation, individuals transform visuospatial information between egocentric (i.e., first-person, viewer-dependent, body-centered) and allocentric (i.e., third-person, viewer-independent, world-centered) representations for optimal understanding of the surrounding environment. To capture reference frame utilization in a laboratory setting, naturalistic, immersive, open-environment settings in virtual reality are used to mimic real-world navigation. However, few studies have paired navigation through immersive environments with robust, standardized, post-session testing of reference frame utilization. Here, a novel, immersive, city-like, naturalistic virtual reality environment (‘NavCity’) was developed and paired with an accompanying NavCity Allocentric Representation Assessment (NARA) to quantify naturalistic navigation ability and effects of repeated environmental exposure on the formation of allocentric reference frames within a singular experimental session. The NavCity task provides an open-source, standardized, editable, accessible, virtual reality paradigm for assessing naturalistic navigation ability, and the accompanying NARA serves to promote standardization of measures aiming to quantify allocentric knowledge recall. Our central hypothesis is that we will observe within-session improvement in navigation performance after repeated NavCity exposure, which will scale with stronger recall of allocentric representations. Results support this hypothesis and show that within-session NavCity improvements are associated with the assessment of formed allocentric representations tied to the navigated environment. Importantly, this study addresses the need for standardized assessments that measure transformations of first-person, egocentric navigation experiences to third-person, allocentric knowledge using an open-source, naturalistic tool. Immediate next steps are to characterize effects of aging on NavCity and NARA performance to provide understanding of aging-related deficits in allocentric reference frame utilization in older adults.
{"title":"Formation of allocentric representations after exposure to a novel, naturalistic, city-like, virtual reality environment","authors":"Yasmine Bassil , Anisha Kanukolanu , Emma Funderburg , Thackery Brown , Michael R. Borich","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109290","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>During human spatial navigation, individuals transform visuospatial information between <em>egocentric</em> (i.e., first-person, viewer-dependent, body-centered) and <em>allocentric</em> (i.e., third-person, viewer-independent, world-centered) representations for optimal understanding of the surrounding environment. To capture reference frame utilization in a laboratory setting, naturalistic, immersive, open-environment settings in virtual reality are used to mimic real-world navigation. However, few studies have paired navigation through immersive environments with robust, standardized, post-session testing of reference frame utilization. Here, a novel, immersive, city-like, naturalistic virtual reality environment (‘<em>NavCity’</em>) was developed and paired with an accompanying <em>NavCity</em> Allocentric Representation Assessment (NARA) to quantify naturalistic navigation ability and effects of repeated environmental exposure on the formation of allocentric reference frames within a singular experimental session. The <em>NavCity</em> task provides an open-source, standardized, editable, accessible, virtual reality paradigm for assessing naturalistic navigation ability, and the accompanying NARA serves to promote standardization of measures aiming to quantify allocentric knowledge recall. Our central hypothesis is that we will observe within-session improvement in navigation performance after repeated <em>NavCity</em> exposure, which will scale with stronger recall of allocentric representations. Results support this hypothesis and show that within-session <em>NavCity</em> improvements are associated with the assessment of formed allocentric representations tied to the navigated environment. Importantly, this study addresses the need for standardized assessments that measure transformations of first-person, egocentric navigation experiences to third-person, allocentric knowledge using an open-source, naturalistic tool. Immediate next steps are to characterize effects of aging on <em>NavCity</em> and NARA performance to provide understanding of aging-related deficits in allocentric reference frame utilization in older adults.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109290"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145225859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-26Epub Date: 2025-10-21DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109297
Yaxuan Meng , Sandra Kotzor , Aditi Lahiri
The internal structure of trimorphemic words and its potential impact on stem access have not as yet been explored in great depth. The combinatory possibilities of a single stem with two affixes can vary between left-branching unkindness or right-branching unhelpful. The non-linearity of the grouping leads to an obvious query regarding the decomposition of the complex words and the consequences this may have for lexical access of the stems. To address this question, we conducted a cross-modal priming experiment employing a combination of trimorphemic primes and stem targets across four conditions: semantic (indecisive - hesitate), form (extensive - tense), morphological left-branching (e.g. un-kind-ness > kind), and right-branching (e.g. un-help-ful > help). Behavioural results revealed facilitation in both left- and right-branching conditions, whereas no such effect was found in semantic and form conditions. The ERP analysis, however, revealed different patterns between the semantic and morphological conditions. Semantically related primes facilitated the targets, evidenced by an N400 attenuation. The two morphological conditions differed; facilitation effect was not detected in the morphological left-branching condition, whereas right-branching related primes inhibited access to the target, indicated by an increased N400 response compared to control primes. This asymmetry between the two morphological conditions suggests a difference in the speed and ease of lexical access in trimorphemic words which is affected by their internal structure with suffixes being less easily separable from the stem than prefixes.
{"title":"Processing trimorphemic words: linearity and internal structure","authors":"Yaxuan Meng , Sandra Kotzor , Aditi Lahiri","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109297","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109297","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The internal structure of trimorphemic words and its potential impact on stem access have not as yet been explored in great depth. The combinatory possibilities of a single stem with two affixes can vary between left-branching <em>unkindness</em> or right-branching <em>unhelpful</em>. The non-linearity of the grouping leads to an obvious query regarding the decomposition of the complex words and the consequences this may have for lexical access of the stems. To address this question, we conducted a cross-modal priming experiment employing a combination of trimorphemic primes and stem targets across four conditions: semantic (<em>indecisive - hesitate</em>), form (<em>extensive - tense</em>), morphological left-branching (e.g. <em>un-kind-ness > kind</em>), and right-branching (e.g. <em>un-help-ful > help</em>). Behavioural results revealed facilitation in both left- and right-branching conditions, whereas no such effect was found in semantic and form conditions. The ERP analysis, however, revealed different patterns between the semantic and morphological conditions. Semantically related primes facilitated the targets, evidenced by an N400 attenuation. The two morphological conditions differed; facilitation effect was not detected in the morphological left-branching condition, whereas right-branching related primes inhibited access to the target, indicated by an increased N400 response compared to control primes. This asymmetry between the two morphological conditions suggests a difference in the speed and ease of lexical access in trimorphemic words which is affected by their internal structure with suffixes being less easily separable from the stem than prefixes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109297"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145355557","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-26Epub Date: 2025-11-03DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109313
Junchao Li , Ruiwang Huang , Ming Liu , Delong Zhang , Bishan Liang
Although numerous studies have primarily associated creativity with spontaneous thought and its corresponding neural networks, effective creativity entails much more than uninhibited ideation. It requires the capacity to filter out irrelevant information, maintain optimal attentional tuning, and strategically regulate and refine innovative outputs. We argue that a robust and adaptive executive control network (ECN), operating in concert with attentional networks, is essential for creativity. Accordingly, we hypothesized that high-creative individuals would exhibit enhanced top-down modulation from both the ECN and attention networks onto other brain networks. To test this hypothesis, we employed resting-state fMRI and Dependency Network Analysis (DEPNA) to examine differences in hierarchical influence patterns across multiple brain regions and networks between individuals with high and low creative abilities. Our analyses revealed that high-creative individuals, relative to their low-creative counterpart, exhibited increased influence of specific brain regions on inter-regional functional connectivity across multiple brain regions. These regions demonstrating augmented influence were predominantly localized within the ECN and ventral attention network (VAN), specifically the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral inferior frontal sulcus (IFS), and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Moreover, high-creative individuals displayed significantly greater influence of the ECN and the dorsal attention network (DAN) on other large-scale brain networks. These findings suggest top-down cognitive and attentional control may be crucial in facilitating creativity.
{"title":"Increased hierarchical influence of executive control and attention networks in the creative brain: A dependency network analysis","authors":"Junchao Li , Ruiwang Huang , Ming Liu , Delong Zhang , Bishan Liang","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109313","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109313","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although numerous studies have primarily associated creativity with spontaneous thought and its corresponding neural networks, effective creativity entails much more than uninhibited ideation. It requires the capacity to filter out irrelevant information, maintain optimal attentional tuning, and strategically regulate and refine innovative outputs. We argue that a robust and adaptive executive control network (ECN), operating in concert with attentional networks, is essential for creativity. Accordingly, we hypothesized that high-creative individuals would exhibit enhanced top-down modulation from both the ECN and attention networks onto other brain networks. To test this hypothesis, we employed resting-state fMRI and Dependency Network Analysis (D<sub>EP</sub>NA) to examine differences in hierarchical influence patterns across multiple brain regions and networks between individuals with high and low creative abilities. Our analyses revealed that high-creative individuals, relative to their low-creative counterpart, exhibited increased influence of specific brain regions on inter-regional functional connectivity across multiple brain regions. These regions demonstrating augmented influence were predominantly localized within the ECN and ventral attention network (VAN), specifically the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), bilateral inferior frontal sulcus (IFS), and right middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Moreover, high-creative individuals displayed significantly greater influence of the ECN and the dorsal attention network (DAN) on other large-scale brain networks. These findings suggest top-down cognitive and attentional control may be crucial in facilitating creativity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"220 ","pages":"Article 109313"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2026-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145452498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-08-30DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109233
Andrew Glennerster
Navigation means getting from here to there. Unfortunately, for biological navigation, there is no agreed definition of what we might mean by ‘here’ or ‘there’. Computer vision (‘Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping’, SLAM) uses a 3D world-based coordinate frame but that is a poor model for biological spatial representation. Another possibility is to use an image-based rather than a map-based representation. The image-based strategy is made simpler if the observer maintains fixation on a stationary point in the scene as they move. This strategy would require a system for relating different fixation points to one another as the observer moves through the environment. I describe how this can be done by, first, relating fixations to an egocentric representation of visual direction and, second, encoding egocentric representations in a coarse-to-fine hierarchy. The coarsest level of this hierarchy is, in some sense, a world-based frame as it does not vary with eye rotation or observer translation. This representation could be implemented as a ‘policy’, a term used in reinforcement learning to describe a set of states and associated actions, or a ‘graph’ that describes how images or sensory states can be connected by actions. I discuss some of the psychophysical evidence relating to these differing hypotheses about spatial representation and navigation. I argue that this evidence supports image-based rather than map-based representation.
{"title":"Navigating image space","authors":"Andrew Glennerster","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109233","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109233","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Navigation means getting from here to there. Unfortunately, for biological navigation, there is no agreed definition of what we might mean by ‘here’ or ‘there’. Computer vision (‘Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping’, SLAM) uses a 3D world-based coordinate frame but that is a poor model for biological spatial representation. Another possibility is to use an image-based rather than a map-based representation. The image-based strategy is made simpler if the observer maintains fixation on a stationary point in the scene as they move. This strategy would require a system for relating different fixation points to one another as the observer moves through the environment. I describe how this can be done by, first, relating fixations to an egocentric representation of visual direction and, second, encoding egocentric representations in a coarse-to-fine hierarchy. The coarsest level of this hierarchy is, in some sense, a world-based frame as it does not vary with eye rotation or observer translation. This representation could be implemented as a ‘policy’, a term used in reinforcement learning to describe a set of states and associated actions, or a ‘graph’ that describes how images or sensory states can be connected by actions. I discuss some of the psychophysical evidence relating to these differing hypotheses about spatial representation and navigation. I argue that this evidence supports image-based rather than map-based representation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109233"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144926755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-08-28DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109264
Lewis V. Ball , Eva Kimel , Vanessa G. Keller , Eloise Ward , Scott A. Cairney , Matthew H.C. Mak , Lu Li , Jennifer M. Rodd , M. Gareth Gaskell
The subordinate meaning of a homonym becomes temporarily more accessible after it is encountered, an effect termed word-meaning priming. Over the longer-term, word-meaning priming is better maintained across periods of sleep compared with wakefulness. This has been explained as sleep actively consolidating episodic memories related to recent linguistic events (Gaskell et al., 2019). Here, we tested this hypothesis by investigating whether word-meaning priming can be boosted following sleep using targeted memory reactivation (TMR), a technique of biassing specific memories for sleep-based consolidation by presenting information-associated sensory cues during sleep. In an exposure phase, 40 (of 80) homonyms were primed toward their subordinate meaning via a sentence, which was also associated with an auditory cue (the homonym) for TMR. Participants then took a ∼2 h nap, where half of the cues from exposure (memory cues) were replayed with the aim of strengthening the subordinate sentence meaning, along with 20 cues that had not been encountered previously (control cues). After sleep, there was an overall word-meaning priming effect, however there was no additional benefit of TMR on priming, nor did TMR benefit the recall of contextual information. Interestingly, there was an increased sleep spindle/beta band power response to memory cues relative to control cues, indicating cue-evoked memory reprocessing during sleep. These findings are consistent with a bounded role of sleep in actively consolidating linguistic-related memories.
同音同义词的从属意义在遇到后会暂时变得更容易理解，这种效应被称为词义启动效应。从长期来看，与清醒相比，词义启动在睡眠期间能更好地维持。这被解释为睡眠积极巩固与最近语言事件相关的情景记忆（Gaskell et al., 2019）。在这里，我们通过使用目标记忆再激活（TMR）来调查是否可以在睡眠后增强词义启动来验证这一假设。TMR是一种通过在睡眠中呈现与信息相关的感官线索来偏置特定记忆以巩固睡眠的技术。在暴露阶段，80个同音同义词中的40个通过一个句子被提示其从属意义，这也与TMR的听觉提示（同音同义词）有关。然后，参与者小睡2个小时，其中一半来自暴露的线索（记忆线索）被重播，目的是加强从属句子的意义，同时还有20个以前没有遇到过的线索（控制线索）。睡眠后，有一个整体的单词-含义启动效应，但TMR对启动没有额外的好处，也没有对上下文信息的回忆有好处。有趣的是，与对照线索相比，睡眠纺锤波/ β波段功率对记忆线索的反应增加，这表明在睡眠期间线索诱发的记忆再加工。这些发现与睡眠在积极巩固语言相关记忆中的有限作用是一致的。
{"title":"No evidence for a targeted memory reactivation effect on word-meaning priming","authors":"Lewis V. Ball , Eva Kimel , Vanessa G. Keller , Eloise Ward , Scott A. Cairney , Matthew H.C. Mak , Lu Li , Jennifer M. Rodd , M. Gareth Gaskell","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109264","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109264","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The subordinate meaning of a homonym becomes temporarily more accessible after it is encountered, an effect termed word-meaning priming. Over the longer-term, word-meaning priming is better maintained across periods of sleep compared with wakefulness. This has been explained as sleep actively consolidating episodic memories related to recent linguistic events (Gaskell et al., 2019). Here, we tested this hypothesis by investigating whether word-meaning priming can be boosted following sleep using targeted memory reactivation (TMR), a technique of biassing specific memories for sleep-based consolidation by presenting information-associated sensory cues during sleep. In an exposure phase, 40 (of 80) homonyms were primed toward their subordinate meaning via a sentence, which was also associated with an auditory cue (the homonym) for TMR. Participants then took a ∼2 h nap, where half of the cues from exposure (memory cues) were replayed with the aim of strengthening the subordinate sentence meaning, along with 20 cues that had not been encountered previously (control cues). After sleep, there was an overall word-meaning priming effect, however there was no additional benefit of TMR on priming, nor did TMR benefit the recall of contextual information. Interestingly, there was an increased sleep spindle/beta band power response to memory cues relative to control cues, indicating cue-evoked memory reprocessing during sleep. These findings are consistent with a bounded role of sleep in actively consolidating linguistic-related memories.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109264"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144963071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-08-28DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109265
Damien S. Fleur , Esra C.S. de Groot , Bert Bredeweg , Wouter van den Bos
Metacognition, the ability to reflect and regulate one's cognitive processes, has been shown to play a role in various aspects of life, particularly in academic settings. While important steps have been made in uncovering the neural basis of metacognition for highly specific domains (such as perceptual and mnemonic decision-making), little is known about how these findings relate to general forms of metacognition relevant in education. In this study, we use a data-driven approach to (i) identify brain regions associated with metacognition in education, and (ii) investigate the issue of domain-generality and to what extent these brain regions overlap with regions involved in metacognition in the context of specific decision-making tasks used in cognitive neuroscience. Individual differences in grey-matter volume in the precuneus and neighbouring brain regions were associated with education-related metacognitive knowledge and regulation. We also found overlaps between task-related mnemonic metacognitive abilities and education-related metacognitive knowledge, for example in in the superior frontal cortex. There were also regions specifically associated with metacognition in education, such as the banks of the superior temporal sulcus. Together, our findings suggest a link between lab-setting, domain-specific metacognitive abilities and real-life metacognition in the context of education.
{"title":"Neural correlates of metacognition in education: a machine learning approach","authors":"Damien S. Fleur , Esra C.S. de Groot , Bert Bredeweg , Wouter van den Bos","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109265","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109265","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Metacognition, the ability to reflect and regulate one's cognitive processes, has been shown to play a role in various aspects of life, particularly in academic settings. While important steps have been made in uncovering the neural basis of metacognition for highly specific domains (such as perceptual and mnemonic decision-making), little is known about how these findings relate to general forms of metacognition relevant in education. In this study, we use a data-driven approach to (i) identify brain regions associated with metacognition in education, and (ii) investigate the issue of domain-generality and to what extent these brain regions overlap with regions involved in metacognition in the context of specific decision-making tasks used in cognitive neuroscience. Individual differences in grey-matter volume in the precuneus and neighbouring brain regions were associated with education-related metacognitive knowledge and regulation. We also found overlaps between task-related mnemonic metacognitive abilities and education-related metacognitive knowledge, for example in in the superior frontal cortex. There were also regions specifically associated with metacognition in education, such as the banks of the superior temporal sulcus. Together, our findings suggest a link between lab-setting, domain-specific metacognitive abilities and real-life metacognition in the context of education.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109265"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144963090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-09-20DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109273
Hatice Zora , Helena Bowin , Mattias Heldner , Tomas Riad , Peter Hagoort
In Swedish, words are associated with either of two pitch contours labelled as Accent 1 and Accent 2. At least one of them is taken to be phonologically and cognitively marked. Besides encoding lexical tonal distinctions, these accents reflect intonational prominence. Drawing on data from psychometric and electroencephalographic (EEG) measures, we scrutinized the functional load of the accents for the processing of linguistic input, and explored any potential processing differences between Accent 1 and Accent 2. Experimental stimuli consisted of one hundred sets of auditory dialogues, where test words were accented either appropriately or inappropriately within their respective contexts. Native speakers of Central Swedish were tasked with judging the correctness of sentences containing the test words, actively in the psychometric paradigm and passively in the EEG paradigm. Psychometric data from forty participants revealed that accent violations exerted a statistically significant negative impact on correctness judgements. Both Accent 1 and Accent 2 violations were deemed as incorrect by the listeners, indicating that listeners use both of them to arrive at the correct interpretation of the linguistic input. Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference in the perceived correctness of violations depending on the accent pattern. Accent 2 violations received a lower rating for correctness in comparison to Accent 1 violations, suggesting that listeners show more sensitivity to accent violations in Accent 2 words than in Accent 1 words. EEG data from twenty participants were in accordance with the psychometric data, and documented larger negative ERP responses, observed at both early and later latencies, to Accent 2 violations compared to Accent 1 violations, reflecting neurocognitive difficulty associated with the processing of linguistic input. Put differently, the application of wrong accent pattern for Accent 2 words resulted in higher costs for spoken communication than Accent 1 words, which is in line with the notion that Accent 2 is marked both phonologically and cognitively in Central Swedish. This pattern of results provides evidence that the brain not only extracts and utilizes pitch accents for a coherent interpretation of the linguistic input but also treats them differently depending on their phonological and cognitive markedness.
{"title":"Functional roles of Swedish pitch accents and their phonological and cognitive markedness","authors":"Hatice Zora , Helena Bowin , Mattias Heldner , Tomas Riad , Peter Hagoort","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109273","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109273","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In Swedish, words are associated with either of two pitch contours labelled as Accent 1 and Accent 2. At least one of them is taken to be phonologically and cognitively marked. Besides encoding lexical tonal distinctions, these accents reflect intonational prominence. Drawing on data from psychometric and electroencephalographic (EEG) measures, we scrutinized the functional load of the accents for the processing of linguistic input, and explored any potential processing differences between Accent 1 and Accent 2. Experimental stimuli consisted of one hundred sets of auditory dialogues, where test words were accented either appropriately or inappropriately within their respective contexts. Native speakers of Central Swedish were tasked with judging the correctness of sentences containing the test words, actively in the psychometric paradigm and passively in the EEG paradigm. Psychometric data from forty participants revealed that accent violations exerted a statistically significant negative impact on correctness judgements. Both Accent 1 and Accent 2 violations were deemed as incorrect by the listeners, indicating that listeners use both of them to arrive at the correct interpretation of the linguistic input. Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference in the perceived correctness of violations depending on the accent pattern. Accent 2 violations received a lower rating for correctness in comparison to Accent 1 violations, suggesting that listeners show more sensitivity to accent violations in Accent 2 words than in Accent 1 words. EEG data from twenty participants were in accordance with the psychometric data, and documented larger negative ERP responses, observed at both early and later latencies, to Accent 2 violations compared to Accent 1 violations, reflecting neurocognitive difficulty associated with the processing of linguistic input. Put differently, the application of wrong accent pattern for Accent 2 words resulted in higher costs for spoken communication than Accent 1 words, which is in line with the notion that Accent 2 is marked both phonologically and cognitively in Central Swedish. This pattern of results provides evidence that the brain not only extracts and utilizes pitch accents for a coherent interpretation of the linguistic input but also treats them differently depending on their phonological and cognitive markedness.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109273"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145125167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-10-03DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291
Guanghui Zhai , Yang Feng , Xin Ling , Jiahui Su , Yifan Liu , Yiwei Li , Yunpeng Jiang , Xia Wu
Human attention is a limited resource increasingly taxed by continuous, socially embedded media streams, but how habitual short-video use shapes core attentional operations and their neural substrates remains unclear. Here we distinguish active from passive short video usage and examine whether they differentially relate to the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and to large-scale resting-state network connectivity. Our results demonstrate that frequent active short video usage predicts reduced alerting efficiency and the functional connectivity between right ventral prefrontal cortex (PFCv) and right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) mediates this association, attenuating the direct effect and implicating interactions between default mode network (DMN) and control network. While orienting exhibits a modest interaction among different usages in which higher passive usage confers greater orienting only among low-active users, and executive control shows no reliable association. These findings extend resource-control accounts of attention to the short-video context by identifying a specific, right-lateralized coupling between brain networks that links active usage to diminished alerting. Mechanistically, we identify a right-lateralized default-control coupling that mediates the link between active short video usage and reduced alerting, isolating a modifiable resting-state pathway. These results provide actionable metrics for intervention and platform design to mitigate attentional costs in high-exposure users, informing evidence-based guidance for education and policy.
{"title":"The sacrifice of alerting in active short video users: Evidence from executive control and default mode network functional connectivity","authors":"Guanghui Zhai , Yang Feng , Xin Ling , Jiahui Su , Yifan Liu , Yiwei Li , Yunpeng Jiang , Xia Wu","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109291","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Human attention is a limited resource increasingly taxed by continuous, socially embedded media streams, but how habitual short-video use shapes core attentional operations and their neural substrates remains unclear. Here we distinguish active from passive short video usage and examine whether they differentially relate to the alerting, orienting, and executive components of attention and to large-scale resting-state network connectivity. Our results demonstrate that frequent active short video usage predicts reduced alerting efficiency and the functional connectivity between right ventral prefrontal cortex (PFCv) and right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) mediates this association, attenuating the direct effect and implicating interactions between default mode network (DMN) and control network. While orienting exhibits a modest interaction among different usages in which higher passive usage confers greater orienting only among low-active users, and executive control shows no reliable association. These findings extend resource-control accounts of attention to the short-video context by identifying a specific, right-lateralized coupling between brain networks that links active usage to diminished alerting. Mechanistically, we identify a right-lateralized default-control coupling that mediates the link between active short video usage and reduced alerting, isolating a modifiable resting-state pathway. These results provide actionable metrics for intervention and platform design to mitigate attentional costs in high-exposure users, informing evidence-based guidance for education and policy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109291"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145233019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-15Epub Date: 2025-09-04DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109270
Zachariah R. Cross , Amanda Santamaria , Scott W. Coussens , Mark J. Kohler
Sleep neurophysiology undergoes significant changes across the lifespan, which coincide with age-related differences in memory, particularly for emotional information. However, the mechanisms that underlie these effects remain poorly understood. One potential mechanism is the aperiodic component, which reflects "neural noise", differs across age, and is predictive of perceptual and cognitive processes. In this study, we investigated how intrinsic (i.e., resting-state) aperiodic neural activity modulates sleep-based emotional memory consolidation across the human lifespan. In a within-subjects, repeated measures design, forty-two participants aged 7–72 years (M = 26.60, SD = 17.45; 26 female) completed a learning and baseline recognition emotional memory task before a 2hr afternoon sleep opportunity and an equivalent period of wake. Recognition accuracy was also assessed post-delay. We found that aperiodic slopes follow a u-shaped trajectory across the lifespan: slopes flatten from childhood to young adulthood, before steepening thereafter, with this effect most prominent in frontal regions. Age-related differences in aperiodic slopes also explained interindividual differences in emotional memory consolidation, with less age-related flattening of slopes associated with stronger consolidation of negative stimuli post-sleep but not post-wake. Lastly, independent of aperiodic activity, age-related differences in NREM oscillatory activity predicted emotional memory consolidation. These findings suggest that the efficiency of sleep-based emotional memory consolidation is modulated by age-related differences in aperiodic neural and NREM oscillatory activities, providing novel insights into the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning emotional memory across the lifespan.
{"title":"Effects of aperiodic neural activity on sleep-based emotional memory consolidation across the lifespan","authors":"Zachariah R. Cross , Amanda Santamaria , Scott W. Coussens , Mark J. Kohler","doi":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109270","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2025.109270","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Sleep neurophysiology undergoes significant changes across the lifespan, which coincide with age-related differences in memory, particularly for emotional information. However, the mechanisms that underlie these effects remain poorly understood. One potential mechanism is the aperiodic component, which reflects \"neural noise\", differs across age, and is predictive of perceptual and cognitive processes. In this study, we investigated how intrinsic (i.e., resting-state) aperiodic neural activity modulates sleep-based emotional memory consolidation across the human lifespan. In a within-subjects, repeated measures design, forty-two participants aged 7–72 years (<em>M</em> = 26.60, <em>SD</em> = 17.45; 26 female) completed a learning and baseline recognition emotional memory task before a 2hr afternoon sleep opportunity and an equivalent period of wake. Recognition accuracy was also assessed post-delay. We found that aperiodic slopes follow a u-shaped trajectory across the lifespan: slopes flatten from childhood to young adulthood, before steepening thereafter, with this effect most prominent in frontal regions. Age-related differences in aperiodic slopes also explained interindividual differences in emotional memory consolidation, with less age-related flattening of slopes associated with stronger consolidation of negative stimuli post-sleep but not post-wake. Lastly, independent of aperiodic activity, age-related differences in NREM oscillatory activity predicted emotional memory consolidation. These findings suggest that the efficiency of sleep-based emotional memory consolidation is modulated by age-related differences in aperiodic neural and NREM oscillatory activities, providing novel insights into the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning emotional memory across the lifespan.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":19279,"journal":{"name":"Neuropsychologia","volume":"219 ","pages":"Article 109270"},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2025-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145008329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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