DSpace Repository :: Browsing by Author "Kausel, Leonie"

Browsing by Author "Kausel, Leonie"

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A multimodal interface for speech perception: the role of the left superior temporal sulcus in social cognition and autism
(2024) Kausel, Leonie; Michon, Maëva; Soto-Icaza, Patricia; Aboitiz, Francisco
Multimodal integration is crucial for human interaction, in particular for social communication, which relies on integrating information from various sensory modalities. Recently a third visual pathway specialized in social perception was proposed, which includes the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) playing a key role in processing socially relevant cues and high-level social perception. Importantly, it has also recently been proposed that the left STS contributes to audiovisual integration of speech processing. In this article, we propose that brain areas along the right STS that support multimodal integration for social perception and cognition can be considered homologs to those in the left, language-dominant hemisphere, sustaining multimodal integration of speech and semantic concepts fundamental for social communication. Emphasizing the significance of the left STS in multimodal integration and associated processes such as multimodal attention to socially relevant stimuli, we underscore its potential relevance in comprehending neurodevelopmental conditions characterized by challenges in social communication such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Further research into this left lateral processing stream holds the promise of enhancing our understanding of social communication in both typical development and ASD, which may lead to more effective interventions that could improve the quality of life for individuals with atypical neurodevelopment.
A Technocratic Oath
(2022) Álamos, Florencia; Kausel, Leonie; Baselga-Garriga, Clara; Ramos, Paulina; Aboitiz, Francisco; Uribe-Etxebarria, Xabier; Yuste, Rafael
In the last decades, novel neurotechnologies are enabling the collecting and analyzing of neuronal data as well as the targeted alteration of brain activity. While this progress has the potential to help many patients with neurological or mental diseases, it also raises significant ethical and societal consequences, putting the mental privacy, identity and agency of citizens potentially at risk. As one approach to provide ethical guidelines to novel neurotechnologies, we propose a “Technocratic Oath,” as a pledge of simple, fundamental ethical core principles to be adopted by Neurotechnology developers and the industry. Our proposed Technocratic Oath is anchored on seven ethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, dignity, privacy and transparency. The Technocratic Oath is modelled after the Hippocratic Oath, a pledge taken by all physicians as they enter the medical profession. While legally non-binding, the professional weight of the Hippocratic Oath has historically led to responsible practices in the world of medicine. Similarly, the Technocratic Oath could help establish and propagate a core of ethical principles to ensure responsible innovation and to protect the fundamental human rights of patients and consumers
Conceptualization, Tasks and Neurobiological Correlates of Self-Regulation in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review of the Literature (2015-2020)
(2022) Larraín-Valenzuela, Josefina; Mardones, Francisca; Ansoleaga, Elisa; Kausel, Leonie
Background: Self-regulation is a complex capacity that favors the modification of behavior in accordance with environmental demands. Objective: This article aims to review the scientific literature that conceptualizes self-regulation, analyze its potential latent dimensions, identify the instruments used to measure this construct and the empirical findings associated with its neurobiological correlates. Methods: A systematic review of the scientific literature published between 2015 and 2020. We include 29 empirical studies on children and adolescents self-regulatory capacity after combining the words self-regulation with cognition, brain and neurosciences. Results: Most of the articles included are from North America. A PICOS analysis was performed to increase understanding of self-regulatory capacity. Two dimensions of self-regulation are identified, contributing to a more global conceptualization of the concept of self-regulation; A cognitive dimension associated with executive functions, effortful control and inhibitory control, among others, and a dimension associated with personality, including traits such as irritability, impulsivity, openness and hyperactivity. Next, the instruments used to measure self-regulation are described, followed by a report of the important neurobiological findings, specifically, activation of the anterior cingulate cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Conclusion: Self-regulatory capacity is associated with a complex functioning that favors adaptive behavior and has neurobiological correlates.
Lateral prefrontal activity as a compensatory strategy for deficits of cortical processing in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(2017) Zamorano, Francisco; Aboitiz, Francisco; Carrasco, Ximena; López, Vladimir; Hurtado, José M.; Stecher, Ximena; Larraín, Josefina; Kausel, Leonie; Billeke, Pablo
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most common neuropsychiatric disorder in childhood and is characterized by a delay of cortical maturation in frontal regions. In order to investigate interference control, which is a key function of frontal areas, a functional MRI study was conducted on 17 ADHD boys and 17 typically developing (TD) boys, while solving the multi source interference task (MSIT). This task consists of two conditions, a "congruent condition" and an "incongruent condition". The latter requires to inhibit information that interferes with task-relevant stimuli. Behavioral results showed that ADHD subjects committed more errors than TD children. In addition, TD children presented a larger MSIT effect -a greater difference in reaction times between the incongruent and the congruent conditions- than ADHD children. Associated to the MSIT effect, neuroimaging results showed a significant enhancement in the activation of the right lateral prefrontal cortex (rlPFC) in ADHD than in TD subjects. Finally, ADHD subjects presented greater functional connectivity between rlPFC and bilateral orbitofrontal cortex than the TD group. This difference in connectivity correlated with worse performance in both groups. Our results could reflect a compensatory strategy of ADHD children resulting from their effort to maintain an adequate performance during MSIT.
Lateral Prefrontal Theta Oscillations Reflect Proactive Cognitive Control Impairment in Males With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(2020-06) Zamorano, Francisco; Kausel, Leonie; Albornoz, Carlos; Lavin, Claudio; Figueroa-Vargas, Alejandra; Stecher, Ximena; Aragón-Caqueo, Diego; Carrasco, Ximena; Aboitiz, Francisco; Billeke, Pablo
ttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common neuropsychiatric disorder in which children present prefrontal cortex (PFC) related functions deficit. Proactive cognitive control is a process that anticipates the requirement of cognitive control and crucially depends on the maturity of the PFC. Since this process is important to ADHD symptomatology, we here test the hypothesis that children with ADHD have proactive cognitive control impairments and that these impairments are reflected in the PFC oscillatory activity. We recorded EEG signals from 29 male children with ADHD and 25 typically developing (TD) male children while they performed a Go-Nogo task, where the likelihood of a Nogo stimulus increased while a sequence of consecutive Go stimuli elapsed. TD children showed proactive cognitive control by increasing their reaction time (RT) concerning the number of preceding Go stimuli, whereas children with ADHD did not. This adaptation was related to modulations in both P3a potential and lateral prefrontal theta oscillation for TD children. Children with ADHD as a group did not demonstrate either P3a or theta modulation. But, individual variation in theta activity was correlated with the ADHD symptomatology. The results depict a neurobiological mechanism of proactive cognitive control impairments in children with ADHD.
Neural Dynamics of Improved Bimodal Attention and Working Memory in Musically Trained Children
(2020-10) Kausel, Leonie; Zamorano, Francisco; Billeke, Pablo; Sutherland, Mary E.; Larraín-Valenzuela, Josefina; Stecher, Ximena; Schlaug, Gottfried; Aboitiz, Francisco
Attention and working memory (WM) are core components of executive functions, and they can be enhanced by training. One activity that has shown to improve executive functions is musical training, but the brain networks underlying these improvements are not well known. We aimed to identify, using functional MRI (fMRI), these networks in children who regularly learn and play a musical instrument. Girls and boys aged 10-13 with and without musical training completed an attention and WM task while their brain activity was measured with fMRI. Participants were presented with a pair of bimodal stimuli (auditory and visual) and were asked to pay attention only to the auditory, only to the visual, or to both at the same time. The stimuli were afterward tested with a memory task in order to confirm attention allocation. Both groups had higher accuracy on items that they were instructed to attend, but musicians had an overall better performance on both memory tasks across attention conditions. In line with this, musicians showed higher activation than controls in cognitive control regions such as the fronto-parietal control network during all encoding phases. In addition, facilitated encoding of auditory stimuli in musicians was positively correlated with years of training and higher activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left supramarginal gyrus, structures that support the phonological loop. Taken together, our results elucidate the neural dynamics that underlie improved bimodal attention and WM of musically trained children and contribute new knowledge to this model of brain plasticity.
Oscillatory activity underlying cognitive performance in children and adolescents with autism: a systematic review
(2024) Soto-Icaza, Patricia; Soto-Fernández, Patricio; Kausel, Leonie; Márquez-Rodríguez, Víctor; Carvajal-Paredes, Patricio; Martínez-Molina, María Paz; Figueroa-Vargas, Alejandra; Billeke, Pablo
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that exhibits a widely heterogeneous range of social and cognitive symptoms. This feature has challenged a broad comprehension of this neurodevelopmental disorder and therapeutic efforts to address its difficulties. Current therapeutic strategies have focused primarily on treating behavioral symptoms rather than on brain psychophysiology. During the past years, the emergence of non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (NIBS) has opened alternatives to the design of potential combined treatments focused on the NEurophysiopathology of neuropsychiatric disorders like ASD. Such interventions require identifying the key brain mechanisms underlying the symptomatology and cognitive features. Evidence has shown alterations in oscillatory features of the neural ensembles associated with cognitive functions in ASD. In this line, we elaborated a systematic revision of the evidence of alterations in brain oscillations that underlie key cognitive processes that have been shown to be affected in ASD during childhood and adolescence, namely, social cognition, attention, working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. This knowledge could contribute to developing therapies based on NIBS to improve these processes in populations with ASD
Patients recovering from COVID-19 who presented with anosmia during their acute episode have behavioral, functional, and structural brain alterations
(2024) Kausel, Leonie; Figueroa-Vargas, Alejandra; Zamorano, Francisco; Stecher, Ximena; Aspé-Sánchez, Mauricio; Carvajal-Paredes, Patricio; Márquez-Rodríguez, Víctor; Martínez-Molina, María Paz; Román, Claudio; Soto-Fernández, Patricio; Valdebenito-Oyarzo, Gabriela; Manterola, Carla; Uribe-San-Martín, Reinaldo; Silva, Claudio; Henríquez-Ch, Rodrigo; Aboitiz, Francisco; Polania, Rafael; Guevara, Pamela; Muñoz-Venturelli, Paula; Soto-Icaza, Patricia; Billeke, Pablo
Patients recovering from COVID-19 commonly exhibit cognitive and brain alterations, yet the specific neuropathological mechanisms and risk factors underlying these alterations remain elusive. Given the significant global incidence of COVID-19, identifying factors that can distinguish individuals at risk of developing brain alterations is crucial for prioritizing follow-up care. Here, we report findings from a sample of patients consisting of 73 adults with a mild to moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection without signs of respiratory failure and 27 with infections attributed to other agents and no history of COVID-19. The participants underwent cognitive screening, a decision-making task, and MRI evaluations. We assessed for the presence of anosmia and the requirement for hospitalization. Groups did not differ in age or cognitive performance. Patients who presented with anosmia exhibited more impulsive alternative changes after a shift in probabilities (r = − 0.26, p = 0.001), while patients who required hospitalization showed more perseverative choices (r = 0.25, p = 0.003). Anosmia correlated with brain measures, including decreased functional activity during the decision-making task, thinning of cortical thickness in parietal regions, and loss of white matter integrity. Hence, anosmia could be a factor to be considered when identifying at-risk populations for follow-up
Selective Attention and Inhibitory Control of Attention Are Correlated With Music Audiation
(2020-06) Grinspun, Noemí; Nijs, Luc; Kausel, Leonie; Onderdijk, Kelsey; Sepúlveda, Nicolás; Rivera-Hutine, Antonio
Executive functions (EFs) are cognitive functions needed for adaptive and targeted behavior. Music aptitude is the potential or capacity for musical achievement. A key element of music aptitude is audiation, defined as the process through which sound becomes music and meaning is attributed to that music. In this paper, we report on the association between audiation skills and executive skills. Not only is this important to consider the validity of the audiation tests, but also to better understand the concept of audiation and its link to cognitive skills. We conducted an empirical study, in which a sample of second grade school students from two elementary schools, one from Ghent, Belgium (N = 36) and the other from Santiago, Chile (N = 25), were administered both a musical aptitude and an attention and inhibitory control test. We hypothesized that a positive correlation exists between sustained attention, inhibitory control and music aptitude.
"There Is No (Where a) Face Like Home": Recognition and Appraisal Responses to Masked Facial Dialects of Emotion in Four Different National Cultures
(2021) Tsikandilakis, Myron; Yu, Zhaoliang; Kausel, Leonie; Boncompte, Gonzalo; Lanfranco, Renzo C.; Oxner, Matt; Bali, Persefoni; Leong, Poutasi Urale; Qing, Man; Paterakis, George; Caci, Salvatore; Milbank, Alison; Mevel 14, David Carmel
The theory of universal emotions suggests that certain emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, sadness, surprise and happiness can be encountered cross-culturally. These emotions are expressed using specific facial movements that enable human communication. More recently, theoretical and empirical models have been used to propose that universal emotions could be expressed via discretely different facial movements in different cultures due to the non-convergent social evolution that takes place in different geographical areas. This has prompted the consideration that own-culture emotional faces have distinct evolutionary important sociobiological value and can be processed automatically, and without conscious awareness. In this paper, we tested this hypothesis using backward masking. We showed, in two different experiments per country of origin, to participants in Britain, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, backward masked own and other-culture emotional faces. We assessed detection and recognition performance, and self-reports for emotionality and familiarity. We presented thorough cross-cultural experimental evidence that when using Bayesian assessment of non-parametric receiver operating characteristics and hit-versus-miss detection and recognition response analyses, masked faces showing own cultural dialects of emotion were rated higher for emotionality and familiarity compared to other-culture emotional faces and that this effect involved conscious awareness.
Theta and alpha oscillations may underlie improved attention and working memory in musically trained children
(2024) Kausel, Leonie; Zamorano, Francisco; Billeke, Pablo; Sutherland, M.E.; Alliende, M. I.; Larrain-Valenzuela, J.; Soto-Icaza, Patricia; Aboitiz, F.
Introduction: Attention and working memory are key cognitive functions that allow us to select and maintain information in our mind for a short time, being essential for our daily life and, in particular, for learning and academic performance. It has been shown that musical training can improve working memory performance, but it is still unclear if and how the neural mechanisms of working memory and particularly attention are implicated in this process. In this work, we aimed to identify the oscillatory signature of bimodal attention and working memory that contributes to improved working memory in musically trained children. Materials and methods: We recruited children with and without musical training and asked them to complete a bimodal (auditory/visual) attention and working memory task, whereas their brain activity was measured using electroencephalography. Behavioral, time–frequency, and source reconstruction analyses were made. Results: Results showed that, overall, musically trained children performed better on the task than children without musical training. When comparing musically trained children with children without musical training, we found modulations in the alpha band pre-stimuli onset and the beginning of stimuli onset in the frontal and parietal regions. These correlated with correct responses to the attended modality. Moreover, during the end phase of stimuli presentation, we found modulations correlating with correct responses independent of attention condition in the theta and alpha bands, in the left frontal and right parietal regions. Conclusions: These results suggest that musically trained children have improved neu ronal mechanisms for both attention allocation and memory encoding. Our results can be important for developing interventions for people with attention and working memory difficulties.

Browsing by Author "Kausel, Leonie"

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