Biology subjects

Shing, Y. L.

Publications and source records attributed to Shing, Y. L..

14 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

How the eyes move, not where they land, predicts what we remember across the lifespan

Where and how we move our eyes through a natural scene depends jointly on the scene and on the viewer. How the spatial and temporal organization of viewing changes across the lifespan, and whether those changes relate to memory, remains unclear. We recorded eye movements from a lifespan cohort (N = 179, ages 5-79) during free viewing of naturalistic scenes, then tested recognition across graded levels of image degradation. Characterizing each observer by how closely their viewing corresponded to that of age peers, young adults, and a stimulus-driven salience model, we found a developmental dissociation: consistency in where the eyes were directed increased monotonically with age, whereas consistency in how they moved -- saccade direction, length, and fixation duration -- followed an inverted-U peaking in young adulthood. Recognition sensitivity followed an inverted-U of the same form. Across all three reference frames, typicality in how the eyes moved, but not in their spatial targeting, predicted recognition.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Preliterate symbolic language processing sets the neural stage for learning to read

Formal writing is evolutionarily recent, yet the brains of literate adults contain regions - the OTS-words subregions - that respond more strongly to written text than other stimuli. We tested a novel solution to this multi-disciplinary paradox: Does symbolic language processing, which emerged early in human history, lay the neural foundation for reading? In a longitudinal fMRI study, we followed 17 children through their first year of literacy training and related neural responses to text, symbolic language processing, and emerging reading skills over time. We found that middle OTS-words is engaged in symbolic language processing before children learn to read, and that this early engagement predicts later text selectivity and reading ability. These findings suggest that literacy builds on a pre-existing neural scaffold linking vision and language.

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bioRxiv2025

Propofol differentially modulates consolidation of schema-congruent and -incongruent memory

Congruency of newly learned information with previous knowledge (i.e. a mental schema) leads to facilitated encoding and rapid integration into neocortical memory networks. It is less known whether this is associated with a differential involvement of the hippocampus in consolidation of schema-congruent and -incongruent information. Here, we used the GABAA-ergic anesthetic propofol to transiently modulate hippocampal neural activity shortly after encoding of schema-congruent and -incongruent information in human patients. We found a significant difference in memory of schema-congruent and -incongruent words in patients that was absent in controls. This effect was driven by a benefit for schema-congruent words, thus suggesting that propofol administration facilitated consolidation of previously encoded schema-congruent items. Our results suggest that schema-congruency of newly learned information significantly modulates involvement of hippocampus-dependent networks during memory consolidation. They further support the hypothesis of a competitive interaction between hippocampus and extra-hippocampal networks during early memory consolidation.

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bioRxiv2023

Neural Correlates and Reinstatement of Recent and Remote Memory: A Comparison Between Children and Young Adults

Memory consolidation tends to be less robust in childhood than adulthood. However, little is known about the corresponding functional differences in the developing brain that may underlie age-related differences in retention of memories over time. This study examined system-level memory consolidation of object-scene associations after learning (immediate delay), one night of sleep (short delay), as well as two weeks (long delay) in 5-to-7-year-old children (n = 49) and in young adults (n = 39), as a reference group with mature consolidation systems. Particularly, we characterized how functional neural activation and reinstatement of neural patterns change over time, assessed by functional magnetic resonance imaging combined with representational similarity analysis (RSA). Our results showed that memory consolidation in children was less robust and strong (i.e., more forgetting) compared to young adults. Contrasting correctly retained remote versus recent memories across time delay, children showed less upregulation in posterior parahippocampal gyrus, lateral occipital cortex, and cerebellum than adults. In addition, both children and adults showed decrease in scene-specific neural reinstatement over time, indicating time-related decay of detailed differentiated memories. At the same time, we observed the emergence of generic gist-like neural representations in prefrontal brain regions uniquely in children, indicating qualitative difference in memory trace in children. Taken together, 5-to-7- year-old children, compared to young adults, show less robust memory consolidation, possibly due to difficulties in engaging in differentiated neural representations in neocortical mnemonic regions during retrieval of remote memories, coupled with relying more on gist-like generic neural representations. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTSChildren showed less robust memory consolidation across short and long delay compared to young adults. From short to long delay, children show differential neural upregulation for remote versus recent memory compared to young adults. Over time, both children and young adults showed reduced scene-specific reinstatement of neural patterns. Children relied more on gist-like neural representations in medial and ventrolateral prefrontal brain regions.

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bioRxiv2023

Longitudinal Changes in Value-based Learning in Middle Childhood: Distinct Contributions of Hippocampus and Striatum

The hippocampal-dependent memory system and striatal-dependent memory system modulate reinforcement learning depending on feedback timing in adults, but their contributions during development remain unclear. In a 2-year longitudinal study, 6-to-7-year-old children performed a reinforcement learning task in which they received feedback immediately or with a short delay following their response. Childrens learning was found to be sensitive to feedback timing modulations in their reaction time and inverse temperature parameter, which quantifies value-guided decision-making. They showed longitudinal improvements towards more optimal value-based learning, and their hippocampal volume showed protracted maturation. Better delayed model-derived learning covaried with larger hippocampal volume longitudinally, in line with the adult literature. In contrast, a larger striatal volume in children was associated with both better immediate and delayed model-derived learning longitudinally. These findings show, for the first time, an early hippocampal contribution to the dynamic development of reinforcement learning in middle childhood, with neurally less differentiated and more cooperative memory systems than in adults.

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bioRxiv2021

From Learning to Remembering: How Memory Consolidation Differs in Term and Preterm Born Children from Young Adults

From early to middle childhood, brain regions that underlie memory consolidation undergo profound maturational changes. However, there is little empirical investigation that directly relates age-related differences in brain structural measures to the memory consolidation processes. The present study examined system-level memory consolidations of intentionally studied object-location associations after one night of sleep (short delay) and after two weeks (long delay) in normally developing 5-to-7-year-old children (n = 50) and young adults (n = 39). Behavioural differences in memory consolidation were related to structural brain measures. Our results showed that children, in comparison to young adults, consolidate correctly learnt object-location associations less robustly over short and long delay. Moreover, using partial least squares correlation method, a unique multivariate profile comprised of specific neocortical (prefrontal, parietal, and occipital), cerebellar, and hippocampal subfield structures was found to be associated with variation in short-delay memory consolidation. A different multivariate profile comprised of a reduced set of brain structures, mainly consisting of neocortical (prefrontal, parietal, and occipital), and selective hippocampal subfield structures (CA1-2 and subiculum) was associated with variation in long-delay memory consolidation. Taken together, the results suggest that multivariate structural pattern of unique sets of brain regions are related to variations in short- and long-delay memory consolidation across children and young adults. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTSO_LIShort- and long-delay memory consolidation is less robust in children than in young adults C_LIO_LIShort-delay brain profile comprised of hippocampal, cerebellar, and neocortical brain regions C_LIO_LILong-delay brain profile comprised of neocortical and selected hippocampal brain regions. C_LIO_LIBrain profiles differ between children and young adults. C_LI

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bioRxiv2021

Disentangling Age and Schooling Effects on Inhibitory Control Development: An fNIRS Investigation

Children show marked improvements in executive functioning (EF) between 4 and 7 years of age. In many societies, this time period coincides with the start of formal school education, in which children are required to follow rules in a structured environment, drawing heavily on EF processes such as inhibitory control. This study aimed to investigate the longitudinal development of two aspects of inhibitory control, namely response inhibition and response monitoring and their neural correlates. Specifically, we examined how their longitudinal development may differ by schooling experience, and their potential significance in predicting academic outcomes. Longitudinal data was collected in two groups of children at their homes. At T1, all children were roughly 4.5 years of age and neither group had attended formal schooling. One year later at T2, one group (P1, n = 40) had completed one full year of schooling while the other group (KG, n = 40) had stayed in kindergarten. Behavioural and brain activation data (measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy, fNIRS) in response to a Go/No-Go task and measures of academic achievement were collected. We found that P1 children, compared to KG children, showed a greater change over time in activation related to response monitoring in the bilateral frontal cortex. The change in left frontal activation difference showed a small positive association with mathematical ability, suggesting certain functional relevance of response monitoring for academic performance. Overall, the school environment is important in shaping the development of the neural network underlying monitoring of one owns performance. Research HighlightsO_LIUsing a school cut-off design, we collected longitudinal home assessments of two aspects of inhibitory control, namely response inhibition and response monitoring, and their neural correlates. C_LIO_LIFor response monitoring, P1 children showed a greater difference over time in activation between correct and incorrect responses in the bilateral frontal cortex. C_LIO_LIThe left frontal activation difference in P1 children showed a small association with mathematical ability, suggesting some functional relevance of response monitoring for academic performance. C_LIO_LIThe school environment plays an important role in shaping the development of the neural network underlying monitoring of one owns performance. C_LI

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bioRxiv2021

Concurrent contextual and time-distant mnemonic information co-exist as feedback in human visual cortex.

Efficient processing of visual environment necessitates the integration of incoming sensory evidence with concurrent contextual inputs and mnemonic content from our past experiences. To delineate how this integration takes place in the brain, we studied modulations of feedback neural patterns in non-stimulated areas of the early visual cortex in humans (i.e., V1 and V2). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analysis, we show that both, concurrent contextual and time-distant mnemonic information, coexist in V1/V2 as feedback signals. The extent to which mnemonic information is reinstated in V1/V2 depends on whether the information is retrieved episodically or semantically. These results demonstrate that our stream of visual experience contains not just information from the visual surrounding, but also memory-based predictions internally generated in the brain. One-Sentence SummaryFeedback activity in human early visual cortex contains concurrent contextual and time-distant mnemonic information.

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bioRxiv2021

Longitudinal developmental trajectories do not follow cross-sectional age associations in hippocampal subfield and memory development

Many cross-sectional findings suggest that volumes of specific hippocampal subfields increase in middle childhood and early adolescence. In contrast, a small number of available longitudinal studies observed decreased volumes in most subfields over this age range. Further, it remains unknown whether structural changes in development are associated with corresponding gains in childrens memory. Here we report cross-sectional age differences in childrens hippocampal subfield volumes together with longitudinal developmental trajectories and their relationships with memory performance. In two waves, 109 healthy participants aged 6 to 10 years (wave 1: MAge=7.25, wave 2: MAge=9.27) underwent high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging to assess hippocampal subfield volumes, and completed cognitive tasks assessing hippocampus dependent memory processes. We found that cross-sectional age-associations and longitudinal developmental trends in hippocampal subfield volumes were highly discrepant, both by subfields and in direction. Further, volumetric changes were largely unrelated to changes in memory, with the exception that increase in subiculum volume was associated with gains in spatial memory. Importantly, the observed longitudinal patterns of brain-cognition coupling could not be inferred from cross-sectional findings. We discuss potential sources of these discrepancies. This study underscores that childrens structural brain development and its relationship to cognition cannot be inferred from cross-sectional age comparisons. HighlightsO_LIThe subiculum undergoes volumetric increase between 6-10 years of age C_LIO_LIChange across two years in CA1-2 and DG-CA3 was not observed in this age window C_LIO_LIChange across two years did not reflect age differences spanning two years C_LIO_LICross-sectional and longitudinal slopes in stark contrast for hippocampal subfields C_LIO_LILongitudinal brain-cognition coupling cannot be inferred from cross-sectional data C_LI

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bioRxiv2019

Memory quality modulates the effect of aging on memory consolidation during sleep: Reduced maintenance but intact gain

Successful consolidation of associative memories relies on the coordinated interplay of slow oscillations and sleep spindles during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, enabling the transfer of labile information from the hippocampus to permanent memory stores in the neocortex. During senescence, the decline of the structural and functional integrity of the hippocampus and neocortical regions is paralleled by changes of the physiological events that stabilize and enhance associative memories during NREM sleep. However, the currently available evidence is inconclusive if and under which circumstances aging impacts memory consolidation. By tracing the encoding quality of single memories in individual participants, we demonstrate that previous learning determines the extent of age-related impairments in memory consolidation. Specifically, the detrimental effects of aging on memory maintenance were greatest for mnemonic contents of medium encoding quality, whereas memory gain of weakly encoded memories did not differ by age. Using multivariate techniques, we identified profiles of alterations in sleep physiology and brain structure characteristic for increasing age. Importantly, while both aged sleep and aged brain structure profiles were associated with reduced memory maintenance, inter-individual differences in neither sleep nor structural brain integrity qualified as the driving force behind age differences in sleep-dependent consolidation in the present study.

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bioRxiv2019

Oscillatory Mechanisms of Successful Memory Formation in Younger and Older Adults Are Related to Structural Integrity

We studied oscillatory mechanisms of successful memory formation in 47 younger and 52 older adults in an intentional associative memory task with cued recall. While older adults showed reduced memory performance, we found subsequent memory effects (SME) in alpha/beta and theta frequency bands in both age groups. Using logistic mixed effect models, we then investigated whether interindividual differences in structural integrity of memory regions that were functionally linked to oscillatory dynamics in previous studies (Hanslmayr et al., 2011) could account for interindividual differences in the strength of the SME. Structural integrity of inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and hippocampus (HC) was reduced in older adults. SME in the alpha/beta band were indeed modulated by the cortical thickness of inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), in line with its hypothesized role for deep semantic elaboration. Importantly, this structure-function relationship did not differ by age group. However, older adults were more frequently represented among the participants with low cortical thickness and consequently weaker SME in the alpha band. Thus, our results suggest that differences in the structural integrity of the IFG are the basis not only for interindividual, but also for age differences in memory formation.

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bioRxiv2019

Neural pattern similarity differentially affects memory performance of younger and older adults

Age-related memory decline is associated with changes in neural functioning but little is known about how aging affects the quality of information representation in the brain. Whereas a long-standing hypothesis of the aging literature links cognitive impairments to less distinct neural representations in old age, memory studies have shown that high similarity between activity patterns benefits memory performance for the respective stimuli. Here, we addressed this apparent conflict by investigating between-item representational similarity in 50 younger (19-27 years old) and 63 older (63-75 years old) human adults (male and female) who studied scene-word associations using a mnemonic imagery strategy while electroencephalography was recorded. We compared the similarity of spatiotemporal frequency patterns elicited during encoding of items with different subsequent memory fate. Compared to younger adults, older adults memory representations were more similar to each other but items that elicited the most similar activity patterns early in the encoding trial were those that were best remembered by older adults. In contrast, young adults memory performance benefited from decreased similarity between earlier and later periods in the encoding trials, which might reflect their better success in forming unique memorable mental images of the joint picture-word pair. Our results advance the understanding of the representational properties that give rise to memory quality as well as how these properties change in the course of aging. Significance statementDeclining memory abilities are one of the most evident limitations for humans when growing older. Despite recent advances of our understanding of how the brain represents and stores information in distributed activation patterns, little is known about how the quality of information representation changes during aging and thus affects memory performance. We investigated how the similarity between neural representations relates to subsequent memory quality in younger and older adults. We present novel evidence that the interaction of pattern similarity and memory performance differs between age groups: Older adults benefited from increased similarity during early encoding whereas young adults benefited from decreased similarity between early and later encoding. These results provide insights into the nature of memory and age-related memory deficits.

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bioRxiv2018

I know that I don’t know: Structural and functional connectivity underlying meta-ignorance in pre-schoolers

Research Highlights[1] Children develop the ability to report that they do not know something at around five years of age.\n\n[2] Children who could correctly report their own ignorance in a partial-knowledge task showed thicker cortices within medial orbitofrontal cortex.\n\n[3] This region was functionally connected to parts of the default-mode network.\n\n[4] The default-mode network might support the development of correct metacognitive monitoring.\n\nAbstractMetacognition plays a pivotal role in human development. The ability to realize that we do not know something, or meta-ignorance, emerges after approximately five years of age. We aimed at identifying the brain systems that underlie the developmental emergence of this ability in a preschool sample.\n\nTwenty-four children aged between five and six years answered questions under three conditions of a meta-ignorance task twice. In the critical partial knowledge condition, an experimenter first showed two toys to a child, then announced that she would place one of them in a box behind a screen, out of sight from the child. The experimenter then asked the child whether or not she knew which toy was in the box.\n\nChildren who answered correctly both times to the metacognitive question in the partial knowledge condition (n=9) showed greater cortical thickness in a cluster within left medial orbitofrontal cortex than children who did not (n=15). Further, seed-based functional connectivity analyses of the brain during resting state revealed that this region is functionally connected to the medial orbitofrontal gyrus, posterior cingulate gyrus and precuneus, and mid- and inferior temporal gyri.\n\nThis finding suggests that the default mode network, critically through its prefrontal regions, supports introspective processing. It leads to the emergence of metacognitive monitoring allowing children to explicitly report their own ignorance.

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bioRxiv2018

Youth-like Precision of Slow Oscillation-Spindle Coupling Promotes Memory Consolidation Across the Adult Lifespan

Memory consolidation during sleep relies on the precisely timed interaction of rhythmic neural events. Here, we investigate differences in slow oscillations (SO) and sleep spindles (SP) and their coupling across the adult human lifespan and ask whether observed alterations relate to the ability to retain associative memories across sleep. We demonstrate that the fine-tuned SO-SP coupling that is present in younger adults diffuses with advanced age and shifts both in time and frequency. Crucially, we show that the tight precision of SO-SP coupling promotes memory consolidation in younger and older adults, and that brain integrity in source regions for the generation of SOs and SPs reinforces this beneficial SO-SP coupling in old age. Our results reveal age-related differences in SO-SP coupling in healthy elderly individuals. Furthermore, they broaden our understanding of the conditions and the functional significance of SO-SP coupling across the entire adult lifespan.

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