Análise da Viabilidade de Uso do FNIRS em Atividades Educacionais com Crianças e Jovens com Deficiência Intelectual e Autismo / Analysis of FNIRS Usability in Educational Activities with Children and Young People with Intellectual Disability and Autism

RESUMO: Métodos em neurociência cognitiva podem auxiliar o planejamento educacional de docentes no contexto da Educação Especial, por favorecerem práticas personalizadas que valorizem a velocidade individual de aprendizagem de estudantes com transtorno do espectro do autismo (TEA) e/ou deficiência intelectual (DI). Assim sendo, este estudo objetivou verificar a viabilidade de uso da Espectroscopia Funcional de Infravermelho Próximo (fNIRS) em situação naturalística clínica com crianças e jovens com TEA e/ou DI durante tarefas de ensino. Ademais, o estudo buscou identificar as estratégias de treino para que as crianças e os jovens utilizassem o equipamento durante a realização da atividade. Sete estudantes com diagnóstico de TEA e/ou DI foram treinados com atividades de matemática, leitura e expressividade emocional, de acordo com seus respectivos currículos educacionais prévios. Cada participante foi exposto a duas tarefas em cada atividade, uma na qual já apresentava domínio e outra que necessitava de apoio para emitir uma resposta independente. Os resultados indicaram a viabilidade de uso do fNIRS nesse contexto natural da criança e do jovem e forneceram medidas implícitas para além das medidas observacionais de acerto e erro na tarefa. Esta é uma importante demonstração da viabilidade do uso do fNIRS em experimentos no contexto da Educação Especial.

ABSTRACT: Methods in cognitive neuroscience can assist educational planning of teachers in the context of Special Education, as they favor personalized practices that value individual students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Intellectual Deficiency (ID). Therefore, this study aimed to verify the feasibility of using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) in clinical naturalistic situation with children and young people with ASD and/or ID during teaching tasks. In addition, the study sought to identify training strategies so that children and young people use the equipment during the activity. Seven students diagnosed with ASD and/or ID were trained with mathematics, reading and emotional expressiveness, according to their respective previous educational curricula. Each participant was exposed to two tasks in each activity, one in which he/she already had a domain and one that needed support to issue an independent response. The results indicated the feasibility of using fNIRS in this natural context of the child and the young student and provided implicit measures beyond the observational arrangement measures and task error. This is an important demonstration of the feasibility of using fNIRS in experiments in the context of Special Education.

Differences in perceived durations between plausible biological and non-biological stimuli.

Visual motion stimuli can sometimes distort our perception of time. This effect is dependent on the apparent speed of the moving stimulus, where faster stimuli are usually perceived lasting longer than slower stimuli. Although it has been shown that neural and cognitive processing of biological motion stimuli differ from non-biological motion stimuli, no study has yet investigated whether perceived durations of biological stimuli differ from non-biological stimuli across different speeds. Here, a prospective temporal reproduction task was used to assess that question. Biological motion stimuli consisted of a human silhouette running in place. Non-biological motion stimuli consisted of a rectangle moving in a pendular way. Amount and plausibility of movement for each stimulus and frame-rate (speed) were evaluated by an independent group of participants. Although the amount of movement perceived was positively correlated to frame rate both for biological and non-biological stimuli, movie clips involving biological motion stimuli were judged to last longer than non-biological motion stimuli only at frame rates for which movement was rated as plausible. These results suggest that plausible representations of biomechanical movement induce additional temporal distortions to those modulated by increases in stimulus speed. Moreover, most studies reporting neural and cognitive differences in the processing of biological and non-biological motion stimuli acquired neurophysiological data using fMRI. Here, we report differences in the processing of biological and non-biological motion stimuli across different speeds using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a less costly and portable form of neurophysiological data acquisition.

Rats can learn a temporal task in a single session.

Fixed interval, peak interval, and temporal bisection procedures have been used to assess cognitive functions and address questions such as how animals perceive, represent, and reproduce time intervals. They have also been extensively used to test the effects of drugs on behavior, and to describe the neural correlates of interval timing. However, those procedures usually require several weeks of training for behavior to stabilize. Here, we investigated a variation of the Differential Reinforcement of Response Duration (DRRD) task with a target time of 1.2 s. We compared three types of training protocols and reported a procedure in which performance by the end of the very first session nearly matches the performance of long-term training. We also showed that the initial distribution of the responses is uni-modal and, as training evolves (and rats improve their performance), a second peak emerges and progressively shifts toward longer times. This one-day training protocol can be used to investigate temporal learning and may be especially useful to electrophysiological and neuropharmacological studies.

Beyond the target area: an integrative view of tDCS-induced motor cortex modulation in patients and athletes.

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive technique used to modulate neural tissue. Neuromodulation apparently improves cognitive functions in several neurologic diseases treatment and sports performance. In this study, we present a comprehensive, integrative review of tDCS for motor rehabilitation and motor learning in healthy individuals, athletes and multiple neurologic and neuropsychiatric conditions. We also report on neuromodulation mechanisms, main applications, current knowledge including areas such as language, embodied cognition, functional and social aspects, and future directions. We present the use and perspectives of new developments in tDCS technology, namely high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS) which promises to overcome one of the main tDCS limitation (i.e., low focality) and its application for neurological disease, pain relief, and motor learning/rehabilitation. Finally, we provided information regarding the Transcutaneous Spinal Direct Current Stimulation (tsDCS) in clinical applications, Cerebellar tDCS (ctDCS) and its influence on motor learning, and TMS combined with electroencephalography (EEG) as a tool to evaluate tDCS effects on brain function.

Low-frequency cortical oscillations are modulated by temporal prediction and temporal error coding.

Monitoring and updating temporal predictions are critical abilities for adaptive behavior. Here, we investigated whether neural oscillations are related to violation and updating of temporal predictions. Human participants performed an experiment in which they had to generate a target at an expected time point, by pressing a button while taking into account a variable delay between the act and the stimulus occurrence. Our behavioral results showed that participants quickly adapted their temporal predictions in face of an error. Concurrent electrophysiological (EEG) data showed that temporal errors elicited markers that are classically related to error coding. Furthermore, intertrial phase coherence of frontal theta oscillations was modulated by error magnitude, possibly indexing the degree of surprise. Finally, we found that delta phase at stimulus onset was correlated with future behavioral adjustments. Together, our findings suggest that low frequency oscillations play a key role in monitoring and in updating temporal predictions.

Visual Causality Judgments Correlate with the Phase of Alpha Oscillations.

The detection of causality is essential for our understanding of whether distinct events relate. A central requirement for the sensation of causality is temporal contiguity: As the interval between events increases, causality ratings decrease; for intervals longer than approximately 100 msec, the events start to appear independent. It has been suggested that this effect might be due to perception relying on discrete processing. According to this view, two events may be judged as sequential or simultaneous depending on their temporal relationship within a discrete neuronal process. To assess if alpha oscillations underlie this discrete neuronal process, we investigated how these oscillations modulate the judgment of causality. We used the classic launching effect with concurrent recording of EEG signal. In each trial, a disk moved horizontally toward a second disk at the center of the screen and stopped when they touched each other. After a delay that varied between 0 and 400 msec after contact, the right disk began to move. Participants were instructed to judge whether or not they had a feeling that the first disk caused the movement of the second disk. We found that frontocentral alpha phase significantly biased causality estimates. Moreover, we found that alpha phase was concentrated around different angles for trials in which participants judged events as causally related versus not causally related. We conclude that alpha phase plays a key role in biasing causality judgments.