Biology subjects

Jednorog, K.

Publications and source records attributed to Jednorog, K..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Association between Cortical Thickness and Functional Response to Linguistic Processing in the Occipital Cortex of Early Blind Individuals

Blindness has been shown to induce changes in the structural and functional organization of the brain. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between these structural and functional changes. In this study, we examined cortical thickness within occipital regions of interest in 38 early blind individuals and explored its relationship to functional activation during linguistic processing. Participants engaged in tactile Braille reading and auditory processing tasks involving words, pseudowords, and control conditions to assess various aspects of linguistic processing. Linear mixed models revealed a significant association between cortical thickness and functional activation in the occipital cortex during linguistic tasks. Specifically, lower cortical thickness in the middle occipital gyrus, the calcarine sulcus, and the parieto-occipital sulcus were linked to increased activation during orthographic processing in blind participants (Braille pseudowords vs. Braille nonsense-symbols). Similarly, lower cortical thickness in the calcarine sulcus and parieto-occipital sulcus was associated with greater functional activation during phonological processing (auditory pseudowords vs. auditory control). These findings align with prior research suggesting that structural and functional adaptations in the visual cortex of blind individuals may be influenced by developmental mechanisms such as pruning or myelination. This study highlights the interplay between cortical structure and functional reorganization in the blind brain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Reading Acquisition Drives Linguistic Cross-Modal Convergence in The Left Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex

Reading acquisition requires linking visual symbols with speech sounds, leading to the development of neural sensitivity to print. While prior studies have shown the importance of cross-modal integration in spoken language areas, the higher-level visual area (lvOT) processing printed words remained more context-dependent. This longitudinal study investigated whether the lvOT undergoes cross-modal reorganization to facilitate print-speech integration during reading development and how these changes relate to reading skills. We followed children over two years, beginning at the onset of formal reading instruction. We examine lvOT responses to print-specific, speech-specific, and its convergence at whole-brain, region of interest and voxel-based levels. Results showed that with reading experience, the Initial print-specific responses in the lvOT are transformed into responses to both print and speech input. This transformation positively correlates with reading skills, especially in early acquisition stages. These findings suggest that reading acquisition drives cross-modal reorganization within the lvOT, enabling the area to integrate print and speech. They shed light on the broader neural mechanisms supporting reading development.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

CLIMATE BRAIN - Questionnaires, Tasks and the Neuroimaging Dataset

Climate change presents a fundamental threat to human populations and ecosystems across the globe. Neuroscience researchers have recently started developing ways to advance research on this topic. However, validated questionnaires, experimental stimuli, and fMRI tasks are still needed. Here we describe the CLIMATE BRAIN dataset, a multimodal collection of questionnaire, behavioural, and neuroimaging data related to climate change, acquired from 160 healthy individuals. In particular, it includes data from (1) various questionnaire measures, including the Inventory of Climate Emotions (ICE); (2) a neuroimaging task for measuring emotional reactions to standardized Emotional Climate Change Stories (ECCS); and (3) a neuroimaging task based on Carbon Emission Task (CET) to measure climate action-taking. For technical validation, we provide image quality metrics and show the evidence for the effectiveness of tasks consistent with prior studies. To our knowledge, the proposed dataset is currently the only publicly available resource specifically designed to investigate human brain responses to climate change.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Reevaluating the Neural Noise Hypothesis in Dyslexia: Insights from EEG and 7T MRS Biomarkers

The neural noise hypothesis of dyslexia posits an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) brain activity as an underlying mechanism of reading difficulties. This study provides the first direct test of this hypothesis using both EEG power spectrum measures in 120 Polish adolescents and young adults (60 with dyslexia, 60 controls) and glutamate (Glu) and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) concentrations from magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at 7T MRI scanner in half of the sample. Our results, supported by Bayesian statistics, show no evidence of E/I balance differences between groups, challenging the hypothesis that cortical hyperexcitability underlies dyslexia. These findings suggest alternative mechanisms must be explored and highlight the need for further research into the E/I balance and its role in neurodevelopmental disorders.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Emotion schema effects on associative memory differ across emotion categories at the behavioural, physiological and neural level

Previous behavioural and neuroimaging studies have consistently reported that our memory is enhanced for associations congruent or incongruent with the structure of our prior knowledge, termed as schemas. However, it remains unclear if similar effects exist if encoded associations are emotional. Do emotional schemas also facilitate learning and subsequent retrieval? Does it depend on the type of experienced emotions? Using a novel face-word pair association paradigm combined with fMRI and eye-tracking techniques, we demonstrated and replicated in two independent studies that congruency with emotion schemas and emotion category interact to affect associative memory. Overall, emotion schemas facilitated memory for associative context, paralleled by the recruitment of left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) during successful encoding of emotionally congruent vs. incongruent pairs. However, emotion schema effects differed across two negative emotion categories: disgust and fear, with disgust remembered better than fear. The IFG engagement was higher during successful encoding of congruent vs. incongruent pairs, but only in the case of disgust, suggestive of more semantic processing involved in learning disgust-related associations. On the contrary, the encoding of congruent vs. incongruent fear-related pairs was supported by activity in right fusiform gyrus (FG), suggesting greater sensory processing of faces. Successful memory formation for congruent disgust-related pairs was associated with a higher loading of pupil dilation component related to sympathetic activation, longer gaze time on words compared to faces, and more gaze switches between the two. This was reversed for fear-related pairs where the faces attracted more attention, as reflected by longer gaze time (compared to words). Overall, our results at the behavioural, physiological, and neural level converge to suggest that emotional congruency influences memory similar to semantic schemas. However, encoding processes and neural effects vary depending on emotion category, reflecting the differential role of semantic processing and visual attention processes in the modulation of memory by disgust and fear.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Universal brain signature of emerging reading in two contrasting languages

Despite dissimilarities among scripts, a universal hallmark of literacy in adults is the convergent brain activity for print and speech. Little is known, however, how early it emerges. Here we compare speech and orthographic processing systems in two contrasting languages, Polish and English, in 100 7-year-old children performing identical fMRI tasks. Results show limited language variation, with speech-print convergence evident mostly in left fronto-temporal perisylvian regions. Correlational and intersect analyses revealed subtle differences in the strength of this coupling in several regions of interest. Specifically, speech-print convergence was higher for transparent Polish than opaque English in right temporal area, associated with phonological processing. Conversely, speech-print convergence was higher for English than Polish in left fusiform, associated with visual reading. We conclude that speech-print convergence is a universal marker of reading even at the beginning of reading acquisition while minor variations can be explained by the differences in the orthographic transparency.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Dissociable brain mechanisms for long-term memory of disgust- and fear- related associations

Remembering events that evoke emotions such as disgust or fear is critical to our survival. However, previous studies investigating the interplay between emotion and memory disregarded the effects of specific emotions, leading to inconsistent results. Also, the role of amygdala throughout memory stages has been poorly understood. Here, we show that after 3 weeks delay, word pairs evoking disgust were remembered better than pairs evoking fear. These two emotions distinctly modulated neural mechanisms of memory. Successful encoding of disgust-evoking information was mediated by univariate activation in amygdala and perirhinal cortex, in contrast to fear-evoking memories that engaged hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus. Critically, univariate activation in the amygdala during encoding was correlated with memory reinstatement of individual word pairs, and more so for disgust than for fear. Together, these findings shed a new light on the role of the amygdala and medial temporal lobe regions in encoding and reinstatement of specific emotional memories.

neuroscience↗