Publication Manual of the American Psychological AssociationThis guide was created for Dr. Tarner's PSY 236: Intro to Brain and Behavior, Fall 2023, by Kevin Moore.
Background: Accurate perception of visual contours is essential for seeing and differentiating objects in the environment. Both the ability to detect visual contours and the influence of perceptual context created by surrounding stimuli are diminished in people with schizophrenia (SCZ). The central aim of the present study was to better understand the biological underpinnings of impaired contour integration and weakened effects of perceptual context. Additionally, we sought to determine whether visual perceptual abnormalities reflect genetic factors in SCZ and are present in other severe mental disorders. Methods: We examined behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs) collected during the perception of simple linear contours embedded in similar background stimuli in 27 patients with SCZ, 23 patients with bipolar disorder (BP), 23 first-degree relatives of SCZ, and 37 controls. Results: SCZ exhibited impaired visual contour detection while BP exhibited intermediate performance. The orientation of neighboring stimuli (i.e. flankers) relative to the contour modulated perception across all groups, but SCZ exhibited weakened suppression by the perceptual context created by flankers. Late visual (occipital P2) and cognitive (centroparietal P3) neural responses showed group differences and flanker orientation effects, unlike earlier ERPs (occipital P1 and N1). Moreover, behavioral effects of flanker context on contour perception were correlated with modulation in P2 & P3 amplitudes. Conclusion: In addition to replicating and extending findings of abnormal contour integration and visual context modulation in SCZ, we provide novel evidence that the abnormal use of perceptual context is associated with higher-order sensory and cognitive processes.
Pokorny, V. J., Lano, T. J., Schallmo, M.-P., Olman, C. A., & Sponheim, S. R. (2021). Reduced influence of perceptual context in schizophrenia: Behavioral and neurophysiological evidence. Psychological Medicine, 51(5), 786–794. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291719003751
Our daily human life is filled with a myriad of joint action moments, be it children playing, adults working together (i.e., team sports), or strangers navigating through a crowd. Joint action brings individuals (and embodiment of their emotions) together, in space and in time. Yet little is known about how individual emotions propagate through embodied presence in a group, and how joint action changes individual emotion. In fact, the multi-agent component is largely missing from neuroscience-based approaches to emotion, and reversely joint action research has not found a way yet to include emotion as one of the key parameters to model socio-motor interaction. In this review, we first identify the gap and then stockpile evidence showing strong entanglement between emotion and acting together from various branches of sciences. We propose an integrative approach to bridge the gap, highlight five research avenues to do so in behavioral neuroscience and digital sciences, and address some of the key challenges in the area faced by modern societies.
Bieńkiewicz, M. M. N., Smykovskyi, A. P., Olugbade, T., Janaqi, S., Camurri, A., Bianchi-Berthouze, N., Björkman, M., & Bardy, B. G. (2021). Bridging the gap between emotion and joint action. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 131, 806–833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.08.014
Sleep after learning strengthens memory consolidation. According to the active system consolidation hypothesis, sleep supports the integration of newly acquired memories into cortical knowledge networks, presumably accompanied by a process of decontextualization of the memory trace (i.e., a gradual loss of memory for the learning context). However, the availability of contextual information generally facilitates memory recall and studies on the interaction of sleep and context on memory retrieval have revealed inconsistent results. Here, we do not find any evidence for a role of sleep in the decontextualization of newly learned declarative memories. In two separate studies, 104 healthy young adults incidentally learned words associated with a context. After a 12 h retention interval filled with either sleep or wakefulness, recall (Experiment 1) or recognition (Experiment 2) was tested with the same or different context. Overall, memory retrieval was significantly improved when the learning context was reinstated, as compared to a different context. However, this context effect of memory was not modulated by sleep vs. wakefulness. These findings argue against a decontextualization of memories, at least across a single night of sleep.
Jurewicz, K., Cordi, M. J., Staudigl, T., & Rasch, B. (2016). No evidence for memory decontextualization across one night of sleep. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00007
The word representation (as in 'neural representation'), and many of its related terms, such as to represent, representational and the like, play a central explanatory role in neuroscience literature. For instance, in 'place cell' literature, place cells are extensively associated with their role in 'the representation of space.' In spite of its extended use, we still lack a clear, universal and widely accepted view on what it means for a nervous system to represent something, on what makes a neural activity a representation, and on what is re-presented. The lack of a theoretical foundation and definition of the notion has not hindered actual research. My aim here is to identify how active scientists use the notion of neural representation, and eventually to list a set of criteria, based on actual use, that can help in distinguishing between genuine or non-genuine neural-representation candidates. In order to attain this objective, I present first the results of a survey of authors within two domains, place-cell and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) research. Based on the authors’ replies, and on a review of neuroscientific research, I outline a set of common properties that an account of neural representation seems to require. I then apply these properties to assess the use of the notion in two domains of the survey, place-cell and MVPA studies. I conclude by exploring a shift in the notion of representation suggested by recent literature.
Vilarroya, O. (2017). Neural representation A survey-based analysis of the notion. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01458
Musselman Library subscribes to two specific databases that will be especially useful for your research in this course.
PsycArticles is a relatively small database that searches fewer than 100 journals. The upside is that it almost exclusively contains journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), so the articles you find should be the exact kind of research you need. When searching, remember to use the following limiters on the left side of your results screen to filter out sources you know you don't want:
The image on the right shows where to find the different limiters and how you can use them to perform more targeted advanced searches.
PsycInfo searches upwards of 2,200 journals, so you will end up with a lot more results compared to the same search in PsycArticles. The only possible downside to starting with PsycInfo is that you might find interdisciplinary work that isn't, strictly speaking, from a psychology research journal.
Fortunately, PsycInfo and PsycArticles use a very similar layout, so you'll be able to use the same limiting features when refining your searches.