Executive functions

…be the scaffold on which many higher executive functions are built. However, it remains unclear whether humans are uniquely persistent or, instead, if this capacity is widely conserved across species. This question is all the more important because we regularly use animals, like mice or monkeys, as models for humans experiencing neurobiological conditions in which persistence is compromised. Here, we compared humans with mice and monkeys in harmonised

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a multisystemic neurodegenerative disease primarily affecting the motor system. Up to 50 % of patients may experience at least subtle cognitive impairment. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between respiratory insufficiency and cognitive impairment in ALS patients. Cognitive assessment, clinical and demographic information were retrieved for 75 patients with ALS from the medical records of the Institute of Clinical Neurophysiology, University Medical Centre Ljubljana. All patients underwent clinical examination, including respiratory

The level of cognitive functions related to mathematical ability declines in the aging process. Moreover, studies show that dysfunction in numerical abilities can be a predictor of dementia. One of the numerical competence that can be studied in this area is the numerosity estimation ability, which is the basis for more complex mathematical operations, such as addition or multiplication. The purpose of the study was to test the relationship between different areas of cognitive functioning and selected numerical competence. The study participants were 72 elderly people (M = 71.00, SD = 4.90), w

By its very nature, incarceration restricts autonomy as it regulates all aspects of daily life. Prisons represent a unique social environment characterized by bullying, violence and reduced social interactions. Ample studies highlighted that incarceration has negative psychological and social effects on inmates, both in the short and long terms. Research is moving from a “criminal” brain to a “prison” brain perspective, showing that prison negatively impacts several cognitive processes, especially regarding recidivism.This project investigates the relationship between imprisonment and executiv

…deficits, particularly impaired executive functions, are often not addressed. In this study, we aim to investigate the effectiveness of HBK-15, a multimodal compound known for its rapid antidepressant-like effect, in reducing cognitive flexibility deficits in mice.We used male Balb/c mice. To assess the effect on cognitive flexibility, we used touchscreen-based two-choice pairw

Executive function impairments are a common symptom of many psychiatric pathologies. They are correlated with impaired dopaminergic transmission originating from the midbrain within the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and subcortical areas such as the nucleus accumbens (NAc). This mesocorticolimbic dopamine transmission is believed to be a key modulator of goal-directed behaviors and reward processing through its action on dopaminoceptive neurons expressing either D1 (D1R) or D2 receptors (D2R) in those target structures. However, the precise mechanisms by which this transmission enables an i

Cognitive functions, including memory, perception, learning, attention, language abilities, problem solving, and decision making, are impaired in a range of neurodegenerative, neurodevelopmental, and neuropsychiatric diseases. Current therapeutic options are limited to the pharmacological and behavioral therapies. Neuromodulation therapies that target specific neural activities and brain areas require robust electrophysiological biomarkers that indicate cognitive performance in clinically validated tests. To identify specific cortical areas and spectral activities that indicate behavioral diff

Executive functions are cognitive processes that allow us to plan, monitor and execute our goals. Using fMRI, we investigated how early deafness influences crossmodal plasticity and the organisation of executive functions in the adult human brain. Results from a range of visual executive function tasks (working memory, task switching, planning, inhibition) show that deaf individuals specifically recruit superior temporal “auditory” regions during task switching. Neural activity in auditory regions predicts behavioural performance during task switching in deaf individuals, highlighting the func

Executive functions refer to a collection of mental processes such as attention, planning and problem solving, supported by a frontoparietal distributed brain network. These functions are essential for everyday life. Specifically in the context of patients with brain tumours there is a need to preserve them in order to enable good quality of life for patients. During surgeries for the removal of a brain tumour, the aim is to remove as much as possible of the tumour and at the same time prevent damage to the areas around it to preserve function and enable good quality of life for patients. In m

…should be included in the pantheon of executive functions. In this talk, I will briefly review our lab's work characterizing the roles of lateral prefrontal and parietal regions in relational thinking. I will then discuss structural and functional predictors of individual differences and developmental chan

It is well established that the opportunity to compare learning stimuli in a novel word learning/extension task elicits a larger number of conceptually relevant generalizations than standard no-comparison conditions. I will present results suggesting that the effectiveness of comparison depends on factors such as semantic distance, number of training items, dimension distinctiveness and interactions with age. I will address these issues in the case of familiar and unfamiliar object nouns and relational nouns. The alignment strategies followed by children during learning and at test (i.e., when

…and neuro-cognitive factors (Executive Functions and brain injury). I the

Humans continuously need to learn to make good choices – be it using a new video-conferencing set up, figuring out what questions to ask to successfully secure a reliable babysitter, or just selecting which location in a house is least likely to be interrupted by toddlers during work calls. However, the goals we seek to attain – such as using zoom successfully – are often vaguely defined and previously unexperienced, and in that sense cannot be known by us as being rewarding. We hypothesized that learning to make good choices in such situations nevertheless leverages reinforcement learning pro

…comprehension: world knowledge and executive functions. Here I will provide evidence in support of the second view. Beyond paradigms that manipulate task difficulty (e.g., number and types of distractors and semantic distance between domains) we will provide eye-tracking data that describes differences in the way children and adults compare the base and target domains in analogy problems. We will follow the same approach with ageing people. This latter population pr