Neuronal activity in posterior parietal cortex area LIP is not sufficient for saccadic eye movement production

SensoriMind-Trans Net: EEG and sensorimotor-driven transformer for athlete potential evaluation

Introduction

In recent years, the integration of electroencephalogram (EEG) and somatosensory data in athlete potential evaluation has garnered increasing attention. Traditional research methods mainly rely on processing EEG signals or motion sensor data independently. While these methods can provide a certain level of performance assessment, they often overlook the synergy between brain activity and physical movement, making it difficult to comprehensively capture an athlete's potential. Moreover, most existing approaches employ shallow models, which fail to fully exploit the temporal dependencies and cross-modal interactions within the data, leading to suboptimal accuracy and robustness in evaluation results.

Methods

To address these issues, this paper proposes a Transformer-based model, SensoriMind-Trans Net, which combines EEG signals and somatosensory data. The model leverages a multi-layer Transformer network to capture the temporal dependencies of EEG signals and utilizes a somatosensory data feature extractor and cross-modal attention alignment mechanism to enhance the comprehensive evaluation of athletes' cognitive and motor abilities.

Results

Experiments conducted on four public datasets demonstrate that our model outperforms several existing state-of-the-art (SOTA) models in terms of accuracy, inference time, and computational efficiency.

Discussion

Showcasing its broad applicability in athlete potential evaluation. This study offers a new solution for athlete data analysis and holds significant implications for future multimodal sports performance assessment.

Balancing postural control and motor inhibition during gait initiation

This study examines the relationship between stopping a planned gait initiation due to sudden environmental changes and maintaining body stability. Using a gait initiation version of the Stop Signal Task (SST), we studied changes in anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs) during gait initiation and suppression. We found that trial-level variables, such as the time to start or stop stepping, interacted with biomechanical factors like the center of mass displacement relative to the base of support affecting performance. A critical biomechanical threshold was identified, beyond which stopping movement was unlikely. These findings highlight the strong link between limb action control and body equilibrium, offering a framework within a motor control paradigm. By integrating biomechanical elements, the model effectively simulates real-life scenarios, identifying key variables for studying neural correlations between action and postural control, and aiding in the development of injury prevention and rehabilitation tools for individuals with movement and posture impairments.

A Possible Neural Basis for Attentional Capture of Faces Revealed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Causal Pharmacological Inactivation in Macaques

In primates, the presence of a face in a visual scene captures attention and rapidly directs the observer's gaze to the face, even when the face is not relevant to the task at hand. Here, we explored a neural circuit that might potentially play a causal role in this powerful behavior. In our previous research, two monkeys received microinfusions of muscimol, a γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA)-receptor agonist, or saline (as a control condition) in separate sessions into individual or pairs of four inferotemporal face patches (middle and anterior lateral and fundal), as identified by an initial localizer experiment. Then, using fMRI, we measured the impact of each inactivation condition on responses in the other face patches relative to the control condition. In this study, we used the same method and measured the impact of each inactivation condition on responses in the FEF and the lateral intraparietal area, two regions associated with attentional processing, while face and nonface object stimuli were viewed. Our results revealed potential relationships between inferotemporal face patches and these two attention-related regions: The inactivation of the middle lateral and anterior fundal face patches had a pronounced impact on FEF, whereas the inactivation of the middle and anterior lateral face patches had a noticeable influence on LIP. Together, these initial exploratory findings document a circuit that potentially underlies the attentional capture of faces. Confirmation of the role of this circuit remains to be accomplished in the context of a paradigm that explicitly tests the attentional capture of faces.

Attentional spatial cueing of the stop-signal affects the ability to suppress behavioural responses

The ability to adapt to the environment is linked to the possibility of inhibiting inappropriate behaviours, and this ability can be enhanced by attention. Despite this premise, the scientific literature that assesses how attention can influence inhibition is still limited. This study contributes to this topic by evaluating whether spatial and moving attentional cueing can influence inhibitory control. We employed a task in which subjects viewed a vertical bar on the screen that, from a central position, moved either left or right where two circles were positioned. Subjects were asked to respond by pressing a key when the motion of the bar was interrupted close to the circle (go signal). In about 40% of the trials, following the go signal and after a variable delay, a visual target appeared in either one of the circles, requiring response inhibition (stop signal). In most of the trials the stop signal appeared on the same side as the go signal (valid condition), while in the others, it appeared on the opposite side (invalid condition). We found that spatial and moving cueing facilitates inhibitory control in the valid condition. This facilitation was observed especially for stop signals that appeared within 250ms of the presentation of the go signal, thus suggesting an involvement of exogenous attentional orienting. This work demonstrates that spatial and moving cueing can influence inhibitory control, providing a contribution to the investigation of the relationship between spatial attention and inhibitory control.