Visual motion, eye motion, and relative motion: A parametric fMRI study of functional specializations of smooth pursuit eye movement network areas

Comparing the performance of beamformer algorithms in estimating orientations of neural sources

The efficacy of transcranial electric stimulation (tES) to effectively modulate neuronal activity depends critically on the spatial orientation of the targeted neuronal population. Therefore, precise estimation of target orientation is of utmost importance. Different beamforming algorithms provide orientation estimates; however, a systematic analysis of their performance is still lacking. For fixed brain locations, EEG and MEG data from sources with randomized orientations were simulated. The orientation was then estimated (1) with an EEG and (2) with a combined EEG-MEG approach. Three commonly used beamformer algorithms were evaluated with respect to their abilities to estimate the correct orientation: Unit-Gain (UG), Unit-Noise-Gain (UNG), and Array-Gain (AG) beamformer. Performance depends on the signal-to-noise ratios for the modalities and on the chosen beamformer. Overall, the UNG and AG beamformers appear as the most reliable. With increasing noise, the UG estimate converges to a vector determined by the leadfield, thus leading to insufficient orientation estimates.

Normative tDCS over V5 and FEF reveals practice-induced modulation of extraretinal smooth pursuit mechanisms, but no specific stimulation effect

The neural networks subserving smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) provide an ideal model for investigating the interaction of sensory processing and motor control during ongoing movements. To better understand core plasticity aspects of sensorimotor processing for SPEM, normative sham, anodal or cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was applied over visual area V5 and frontal eye fields (FEF) in sixty healthy participants. The identical within-subject paradigm was used to assess SPEM modulations by practice. While no specific tDCS effects were revealed, within- and between-session practice effects indicate plasticity of top-down extraretinal mechanisms that mainly affect SPEM in the absence of visual input and during SPEM initiation. To explore the potential of tDCS effects, individual electric field simulations were computed based on calibrated finite element head models and individual functional localization of V5 and FEF location (using functional MRI) and orientation (using combined EEG/MEG) was conducted. Simulations revealed only limited electric field target intensities induced by the applied normative tDCS montages but indicate the potential efficacy of personalized tDCS for the modulation of SPEM. In sum, results indicate the potential susceptibility of extraretinal SPEM control to targeted external neuromodulation (e.g., personalized tDCS) and intrinsic learning protocols.

Neural mechanisms of background and velocity effects in smooth pursuit eye movements

Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) are essential to guide behaviour in complex visual environments. SPEM accuracy is known to be degraded by the presence of a structured visual background and at higher target velocities. The aim of this preregistered study was to investigate the neural mechanisms of these robust behavioural effects. N = 33 participants performed a SPEM task with two background conditions (present and absent) at two target velocities (0.4 and 0.6 Hz). Eye movement and BOLD data were collected simultaneously. Both the presence of a structured background and faster target velocity decreased pursuit gain and increased catch-up saccade rate. Faster targets additionally increased position error. Higher BOLD response with background was found in extensive clusters in visual, parietal, and frontal areas (including the medial frontal eye fields; FEF) partially overlapping with the known SPEM network. Faster targets were associated with higher BOLD response in visual cortex and left lateral FEF. Task-based functional connectivity analyses (psychophysiological interactions; PPI) largely replicated previous results in the basic SPEM network but did not yield additional information regarding the neural underpinnings of the background and velocity effects. The results show that the presentation of visual background stimuli during SPEM induces activity in a widespread visuo-parieto-frontal network including areas contributing to cognitive aspects of oculomotor control such as medial FEF, whereas the response to higher target velocity involves visual and motor areas such as lateral FEF. Therefore, we were able to propose for the first time different functions of the medial and lateral FEF during SPEM.

rTMS of the superior parietal lobule improves contrast discrimination but has no effect on the perception of distance between stimuli in the image plane

The superior parietal lobule (SPL) is a region of the brain that has been associated with a diverse range of high-level visual and cognitive functions. This suggested the possibility that it supports a lower-level function that is engaged by a wide range of experimental tasks. Analysis of tasks used in previous studies suggests that one such lower-level function might be the perception of the distance between stimuli in the image plane. In this study, we applied online high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the left SPL or the vertex in order to further investigate the role played by this region in the perceived visual separation between points. As a control task, we asked participants to detect the difference in contrast between two Gabor patches. The results failed to support the main hypothesis, but we unexpectedly found that rTMS to left SPL improved peripheral contrast discrimination. Previous studies have found that rTMS to the right frontal eye field, which has strong functional connectivity with the SPL, has the same effect, suggesting the two areas work together to influence early visual areas.

The role of the SLC6A3 3' UTR VNTR in nicotine effects on cognitive, affective, and motor function

RATIONALE

Nicotine has been widely studied for its pro-dopaminergic effects. However, at the behavioural level, past investigations have yielded heterogeneous results concerning effects on cognitive, affective, and motor outcomes, possibly linked to individual differences at the level of genetics. A candidate polymorphism is the 40-base-pair variable number of tandem repeats polymorphism (rs28363170) in the SLC6A3 gene coding for the dopamine transporter (DAT). The polymorphism has been associated with striatal DAT availability (9R-carriers > 10R-homozygotes), and 9R-carriers have been shown to react more strongly to dopamine agonistic pharmacological challenges than 10R-homozygotes.

OBJECTIVES

In this preregistered study, we hypothesized that 9R-carriers would be more responsive to nicotine due to genotype-related differences in DAT availability and resulting dopamine activity.

METHODS

N=194 non-smokers were grouped according to their genotype (9R-carriers, 10R-homozygotes) and received either 2-mg nicotine or placebo gum in a between-subject design. Spontaneous blink rate (SBR) was obtained as an indirect measure of striatal dopamine activity and smooth pursuit, stop signal, simple choice and affective processing tasks were carried out in randomized order.

RESULTS

Reaction times were decreased under nicotine compared to placebo in the simple choice and stop signal tasks, but nicotine and genotype had no effects on any of the other task outcomes. Conditional process analyses testing the mediating effect of SBR on performance and how this is affected by genotype yielded no significant results.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, we could not confirm our main hypothesis. Individual differences in nicotine response could not be explained by rs28363170 genotype.

Replicability and reliability of the background and target velocity effects in smooth pursuit eye movements

When we follow a slowly moving target with our eyes, we perform smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM). Previous investigations point to significantly and robustly reduced SPEM performance in the presence of a stationary background and at higher compared to lower target velocities. However, the reliability of these background and target velocity effects has not yet been investigated systematically. To address this issue, 45 healthy participants (17 m, 28 f) took part in two experimental sessions 7 days apart. In each session, participants were instructed to follow a horizontal SPEM target moving sinusoidally between ±7.89° at three different target velocities, corresponding to frequencies of 0.2, 0.4 and 0.6 Hz. Each target velocity was presented once with and once without a stationary background, resulting in six blocks. The blocks were presented twice per session in order to additionally explore potential task length effects. To assess SPEM performance, velocity gain was calculated as the ratio of eye to target velocity. In line with previous research, detrimental background and target velocity effects were replicated robustly in both sessions with large effect sizes. Good to excellent test-retest reliabilities were obtained at higher target velocities and in the presence of a stationary background, whereas lower reliabilities occurred with slower targets and in the absence of background stimuli. Target velocity and background effects resulted in largely good to excellent reliabilities. These findings not only replicated robust experimental effects of background and target velocity at group level, but also revealed that these effects can be translated into reliable individual difference measures.

Two hours in Hollywood: A manually annotated ground truth data set of eye movements during movie clip watching

In this short article we present our manual annotation of the eye movement events in a subset of the large-scale eye tracking data set Hollywood2. Our labels include fixations, saccades, and smooth pursuits, as well as a noise event type (the latter representing either blinks, loss of tracking, or physically implausible signals). In order to achieve more consistent annotations, the gaze samples were labelled by a novice rater based on rudimentary algorithmic suggestions, and subsequently corrected by an expert rater. Overall, we annotated eye movement events in the recordings corresponding to 50 randomly selected test set clips and 6 training set clips from Hollywood2, which were viewed by 16 observers and amount to a total of approximately 130 minutes of gaze data. In these labels, 62.4% of the samples were attributed to fixations, 9.1% – to saccades, and, notably, 24.2% – to pursuit (the remainder marked as noise). After evaluation of 15 published eye movement classification algorithms on our newly collected annotated data set, we found that the most recent algorithms perform very well on average, and even reach human-level labelling quality for fixations and saccades, but all have a much larger room for improvement when it comes to smooth pursuit classification. The data set is made available at https://gin.g-node.org/ioannis.agtzidis/hollywood2_em.

Brain Activations During Optokinetic Stimulation in Acute Right-Hemisphere Stroke Patients and Hemispatial Neglect: An fMRI Study

Objective. Leftward optokinetic stimulation (OKS) is a promising therapeutic approach for right-hemisphere stroke patients with left hemispatial neglect. We questioned whether the putative neural basis is an activation of frontoparietal brain regions involved in the control of eye movements and spatial attention. Methods. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activations during OKS in acute right-hemisphere stroke patients (RHS, n = 19) compared with healthy control subjects (HC, n = 9). Based on neuropsychological testing we determined the ipsilesional attention bias in all RHS patients, 11 showed manifest hemispatial neglect. Results. In HC subjects, OKS in either direction led to bilateral activation of the visual cortex (V1-V4), frontal (FEF) and supplementary (SEF) eye fields, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), basal ganglia, and thalamus. RHS patients' activations were generally reduced compared with HC. Nevertheless, leftward OKS bilaterally activated the visual cortex (V1-V4), FEF, SEF, IPS, and thalamus. The neural response to OKS was negatively correlated with patients' behavioral impairment: The greater the individual attention bias/neglect the weaker the brain activations. Conclusion. In RHS patients, leftward OKS activates frontoparietal regions (FEF, IPS) that are spared from structural brain damage and functionally involved in both oculomotor control and spatial attention. This may provide a neural basis for the known therapeutic effects of OKS on hemispatial neglect. In acute stroke stages, reduced activation levels correlating with neglect severity indicate functional downregulation of the underlying dorsal attention network. Therefore, chronic RHS patients with less severe neglect after recovery of network disturbances may be more suitable candidates for OKS rehabilitation.

Spatial confluence of psychological and anatomical network constructs in the human brain revealed by a mass meta-analysis of fMRI activation

It is well-known that the brain's activity is organized into networks but it is unclear how many networks exist. Additionally, there is also a risk of ambiguity since different names for the same network are frequently reported in the literature. In this study, we employed a mass meta-analysis of fMRI data associated with network constructs originating from both psychology and neuroscience. Based on the results from the meta-analysis, we derived a spatial similarity map between all construct terms, showing that the brain's networks cluster hierarchically into several levels. The results presented are useful as a first step in developing a unified terminology for large-scale brain network and a platform for a queryable network atlas.

Distinct neural correlates of time-on-task and transient errors during a visuomotor tracking task after sleep restriction

Sleep loss leads to both time-on-task slowing of responsiveness and increased frequency of transient response errors. The consequences of such errors during real-world visuomotor tasks, such as driving, are serious and life threatening. To investigate the neuronal underpinning of time-on-task and transient errors during a visuomotor tracking task following sleep restriction, we performed fMRI on 20 healthy individuals when well-rested and when sleep-restricted while they performed a 2-D pursuit-tracking task. Sleep restriction to 4-h time-in-bed was associated with significant time-on-task decline in tracking performance and an increased number of transient tracking errors. Sleep restriction was associated with time-on-task decreases in BOLD activity in task-related areas, including the lateral occipital cortex, intraparietal cortex, and primary motor cortex. In contrast, thalamic, anterior cingulate, and medial frontal cortex areas showed overall increases irrespective of time-on-task after sleep-restriction. Furthermore, transient errors after sleep-restriction were associated with distinct transient BOLD activations in areas not involved in tracking task per se, in the right superior parietal cortex, bilateral temporal cortex, and thalamus. These results highlight the distinct cerebral underpinnings of sustained and transient modulations in alertness during increased homeostatic drive to sleep. Ability to detect neuronal changes associated with both sustained and transient changes in performance in a single task allowed us to disentangle neuronal mechanisms underlying two important aspects of sustained task performance following sleep loss.

Brain activations underlying different patterns of performance improvement during early motor skill learning

BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION

Motor learning plays a central role in daily life and in neurorehabilitation. Several forms of motor learning have been described, among which motor skill learning, i.e. reaching a superior level of performance (a skill) through a shift of the speed/accuracy trade-off. During the first stage of learning a visuomotor skill, we observed differential patterns of evolution of the speed/accuracy trade-off in normal subjects. Half of the subjects rapidly achieved successful motor skill learning with an early shift of the speed/accuracy trade-off leading to a superior level of performance (shift pattern). The other subjects attained only minimal global improvement due to a converse evolution of speed and accuracy (i.e. a respect of the speed/accuracy trade-off: fit pattern). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to explore the neural substrates underlying these differential patterns during the first stage of motor skill learning in normal subjects.

METHODS

Twenty right-handed normal subjects performed an implicit visuomotor learning task with their non-dominant hand. The task ("circuit game") consisted in learning to navigate a pointer along a circuit as quickly and accurately as possible using a fMRI-compatible mouse. Velocity, accuracy, and performance indexes were used to characterise the motor learning pattern (shift/fit) and to perform fMRI correlation analysis in order to find the neural substrate associated with the shift and fit patterns during early motor skill learning.

RESULTS

Nine subjects showed a fit pattern (fitters), and eleven, a shift pattern ("shifters"). fMRI analyses at whole group level (ANOVA) and at sub-group level demonstrated that the supplementary motor area (SMA) was more activated in "shifters" than in the "fitters" groups and that the BOLD activation within the SMA correlated significantly with the on-line shift of the speed/accuracy trade-off in the "shifters" group.

CONCLUSION

Despite identical instructions and experimental conditions, during the first stage of motor skill learning normal subjects spontaneously adopted different patterns that can be differentiated based on distinct fMRI activation patterns. In this implicit visuomotor task, the SMA proper was the key area underlying the achievement of early successful motor skill learning, i.e. on-line shift of the speed/accuracy trade-off.