Human intraparietal sulcal morphology relates to individual differences in language and memory performance.

The sulco-gyral pattern is a qualitative feature of the cortical anatomy that is determined in utero, stable throughout lifespan and linked to brain function. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is a nodal associative brain area, but the relation between its morphology and cognition is largely unknown. By labelling the left and right IPS of 390 healthy participants into two patterns, according to the presence or absence of a sulcus interruption, here we demonstrate a strong association between the morphology of the right IPS and performance on memory and language tasks. We interpret the results as a morphological advantage of a sulcus interruption, probably due to the underlying white matter organization. The right-hemisphere specificity of this effect emphasizes the neurodevelopmental and plastic role of sulcus morphology in cognition prior to lateralisation processes. The results highlight a promising area of investigation on the relationship between cognitive performance, sulco-gyral pattern and white matter bundles.

Are numerical abilities determined at early age? A brain morphology study in children and adolescents with and without developmental dyscalculia.

The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) has been associated with numerical processing. A recent study reported that the IPS sulcal pattern was associated with arithmetic and symbolic number abilities in children and adults. In the present study, we evaluated the link between numerical abilities and the IPS sulcal pattern in children with Developmental Dyscalculia (DD) and typically developing children (TD), extending previous analyses considering other sulcal features and the postcentral sulcus (PoCS). First, we confirm the longitudinal sulcal pattern stability of the IPS and the PoCS. Second, we found a lower proportion of left sectioned IPS and a higher proportion of a double-horizontal IPS shape bilaterally in DD compared to TD. Third, our analyses revealed that arithmetic is the only aspect of numerical processing that is significantly related to the IPS sulcal pattern (sectioned vs not sectioned), and that this relationship is specific to the left hemisphere. And last, correlation analyses of age and arithmetic in children without a sectioned left IPS indicate that although they may have an inherent disadvantage in numerical abilities, these may improve with age. Thus, our results indicate that only the left IPS sulcal pattern is related to numerical abilities and that other factors co-determine numerical abilities.

Mother-child similarity in brain morphology: A comparison of structural characteristics of the brain's reading network.

BACKGROUND: Substantial evidence acknowledges the complex gene-environment interplay impacting brain development and learning. Intergenerational neuroimaging allows the assessment of familial transfer effects on brain structure, function and behavior by investigating neural similarity in caregiver-child dyads. METHODS: Neural similarity in the human reading network was assessed through well-used measures of brain structure (i.e., surface area (SA), gyrification (lG), sulcal morphology, gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT)) in 69 mother-child dyads (children's age~11 y). Regions of interest for the reading network included left-hemispheric inferior frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobe and fusiform gyrus. Mother-child similarity was quantified by correlation coefficients and familial specificity was tested by comparison to random adult-child dyads. Sulcal morphology analyses focused on occipitotemporal sulcus interruptions and similarity was assessed by chi-square goodness of fit. RESULTS: Significant structural brain similarity was observed for mother-child dyads in the reading network for lG, SA and GMV (r = 0.349/0.534/0.542, respectively), but not CT. Sulcal morphology associations were non-significant. Structural brain similarity in lG, SA and GMV were specific to mother-child pairs. Furthermore, structural brain similarity for SA and GMV was higher compared to CT. CONCLUSION: Intergenerational neuroimaging techniques promise to enhance our knowledge of familial transfer effects on brain development and disorders.

Do Emotions Benefit Investment Decisions? Anticipatory Emotion and Investment Decisions in Non-professional Investors.

Increasing financial trading performance is big business. A lingering question within academia and industry concerns whether emotions improve or degrade trading performance. In this study, 30 participants distributed hypothetical wealth between a share (a risk) and the bank (paying a small, sure, gain) within four trading games. Skin Conductance Response was measured while playing the games to measure anticipatory emotion, a covert emotion signal that impacts decision-making. Anticipatory emotion was significantly associated with trading performance but the direction of the correlation was dependent upon the share's movement. Thus, anticipatory emotion is neither wholly "good" nor "bad" for trading; instead, the relationship is context-dependent. This is one of the first studies exploring the association between anticipatory emotion and trading behaviour using trading games within an experimentally rigorous environment. Our findings elucidate the relationship between anticipatory emotion and financial decision-making and have applications for improving trading performance in novice and expert traders.

Evidence for a visuospatial bias in decimal number comparison in adolescents and in adults.

There is a close relation between spatial and numerical representations which can lead to interference as in Piaget's number conservation task or in the numerical Stroop task. Using a negative priming (NP) paradigm, we investigated whether the interference between spatial and numerical processing extends to more complex arithmetic processing by asking 12 year olds and adults to compare the magnitude of decimal numbers (i.e., the prime) and, subsequently, the length of two lines or the luminance of two circles (i.e., the probe). We found NP effects when participants compare length but not luminance. Our finding suggests that decimal comparison is impacted by a visuospatial bias due to the interference between the magnitude of the numbers to be compared and their physical length. We discuss the educational implications of these findings.

Inhibition of the whole number bias in decimal number comparison: A developmental negative priming study.

A major source of errors in decimal magnitude comparison tasks is the inappropriate application of whole number rules. Specifically, when comparing the magnitude of decimal numbers and the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), using a property of whole numbers such as "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" may lead to erroneous answers. By using a negative priming paradigm, the current study aimed to determine whether the ability of seventh graders and adults to compare decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point was partly rooted in the ability to inhibit the "the greater the number of digits, the greater its magnitude" misconception. We found that after participants needed to compare decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.9 vs. 0.476), they were less efficient at comparing decimal numbers in which the largest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.826 vs. 0.3) than they were after comparing decimal numbers with the same number of digits after the decimal point (e.g., 0.981 vs. 0.444). The negative priming effects reported in seventh graders and adults suggest that inhibitory control is needed at all ages to avoid errors when comparing decimals where the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point.

How interindividual differences in brain anatomy shape reading accuracy.

The capacity to read develops throughout intensive academic learning and training. Several studies have investigated the impact of reading on the brain, and particularly how the anatomy of the brain changes with reading acquisition. In the present study, we investigated the converse issue, namely whether and how reading acquisition is constrained by the anatomy of the brain. Using multimodal MRI, we found that (a) the pattern (continuous or interrupted sulcus) of the posterior part of the left lateral occipito-temporal sulcus (OTS) hosting the visual word form area (VWFA) predicts reading skills in adults; that (b) this effect is modulated by the age of reading acquisition; and that (c) the length of the OTS sulcal interruption is associated with reading skills. Because the sulcal pattern is determined in utero, our findings suggest that individual difference in reading skills can be traced back to early stages of brain development in addition to the well-established socioeconomic and educational factors.

Inhibitory control and decimal number comparison in school-aged children.

School-aged children erroneously think that 1.45 is larger 1.5 because 45 is larger than 5. Using a negative priming paradigm, we investigated whether the ability to compare the magnitude of decimal numbers in the context in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.45 vs. 1.5) is rooted in part on the ability to inhibit the "greater the number of digits the greater its magnitude" misconception derived from a property of whole numbers. In Experiment 1, we found a typical negative priming effect with 7th graders requiring more time to compare decimal numbers in which the largest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.65 vs. 1.5) after comparing decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits after the decimal point (1.45 vs. 1.5) than after comparing decimal numbers with the same number of digits after the decimal point (1.5 vs. 1.6). In Experiment 2, we found a negative priming effect when decimal numbers preceded items in which 7th graders had to compare the length of two lines. Taken together our results suggest that the ability to compare decimal numbers in which the smallest number has the greatest number of digits is rooted in part on the ability to inhibit the "greater the number of digits the greater its magnitude" misconception and in part on the ability to inhibit the length of the decimal number per se.

The forest, the trees, and the leaves: Differences of processing across development.

To act and think, children and adults are continually required to ignore irrelevant visual information to focus on task-relevant items. As real-world visual information is organized into structures, we designed a feature visual search task containing 3-level hierarchical stimuli (i.e., local shapes that constituted intermediate shapes that formed the global figure) that was presented to 112 participants aged 5, 6, 9, and 21 years old. This task allowed us to explore (a) which level is perceptively the most salient at each age (i.e., the fastest detected level) and (b) what kind of attentional processing occurs for each level across development (i.e., efficient processing: detection time does not increase with the number of stimuli on the display; less efficient processing: detection time increases linearly with the growing number of distractors). Results showed that the global level was the most salient at 5 years of age, whereas the global and intermediate levels were both salient for 9-year-olds and adults. Interestingly, at 6 years of age, the intermediate level was the most salient level. Second, all participants showed an efficient processing of both intermediate and global levels of hierarchical stimuli, and a less efficient processing of the local level, suggesting a local disadvantage rather than a global advantage in visual search. The cognitive cost for selecting the local target was higher for 5- and 6-year-old children compared to 9-year-old children and adults. These results are discussed with regards to the development of executive control. (PsycINFO Database Record

Taking a Third-Person Perspective Requires Inhibitory Control: Evidence From a Developmental Negative Priming Study.

To determine whether the growing ability to take a third-person perspective (3PP) is explained in part by the growing ability to inhibit a first-person perspective (1PP), 10-year-old children (n = 49) and 22-year-old adults (n = 52) performed a negative priming adaptation of the own body transformation task. Both children and adults were less efficient in adopting a 1PP after they adopted a 3PP-with a smaller amplitude of the negative priming effect with older age-and adults' and children's performances in the own body transformation task were predicted in part by their Stroop interference scores. These results suggest that the growing efficiency to adopt a 3PP is rooted in part in the growing efficiency to inhibit the 1PP.

The cost of blocking the mirror generalization process in reading: evidence for the role of inhibitory control in discriminating letters with lateral mirror-image counterparts.

Mirror generalization is detrimental for identifying letters with lateral mirror-image counterparts ('b/d'). In the present study, we investigated whether the discrimination of this type of letters in expert readers might be rooted in the ability to inhibit the mirror-generalization process. In our negative priming paradigm, participants judged whether two letters were identical on the prime and two animals (or buildings) were identical on the probe. In Experiment 1, participants required more time when determining that two animals (but not two buildings) were mirror images of each other when preceded by letters with mirror-image counterparts than without mirror-image counterparts ('a/h'). In Experiment 2, we replicated the results with different letters without mirror-image counterparts and with the type of probe stimuli (animal or building) manipulated as a within-subject factors. Our results suggest that expert readers never completely "unlearn" the mirror-generalization process and still need to inhibit this heuristic to overcome mirror errors.