A review of laboratory studies on the acute effects of movement and exercise on cognition in children
Romain Meeusen, Sabine Schaefer, Phillip Tomporowski, Richard Bailey in Physical Activity and Educational Achievement, 2017
A study by Schaefer, Lövdén, Wieckhorst, and Lindenberger (2010) asked 9-year-old children and young adults to walk on a treadmill in two conditions: either at their preferred speed, or at a fixed speed of 2.5 km/h, which was slower than preferred. Participants were also asked to perform a working-memory task, n-back, under different difficulty conditions. For the n-back task, participants are presented with a series of numbers over loudspeakers. They had to indicate whether the current number is identical to the number presented n positions earlier in the sequence. The easiest condition was n-back 1 (comparing the number to the previous number), and the most difficult condition was n-back 4 (comparing the number to the number that was presented four positions earlier). Since the task requires a constant updating of memory, it is rather demanding. When performing the task while walking at their preferred speed as opposed to sitting, participants were more successful in the cognitive task, and this effect was more pronounced in the children (Figure 10.1). However, when the treadmill speed was fixed, performances in n-back did not differ between walking and sitting. The authors argue that preferred-speed walking might have optimized arousal levels, whereas walking at a slower than preferred speed requires some attention, such that the cognitive task does not profit from this task condition.
Application of Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy in Brain Mapping
Yu Chen, Babak Kateb in Neurophotonics and Brain Mapping, 2017
fNIRS has been a valuable tool in monitoring the brain activation at cortical regions during the execution of functional tasks. Several studies have compared the accuracy of fNIRS with that of fMRI, signifying the ability of fNIRS to probe the cognitive function of the brain (Maggio, 2014; Müller and Osterreich, 2014; Panerai et al., 2005; Wong et al., 2008). fNIRS measurements, performed during several widely used function tasks, such as N-Back and Go/No-Go, are used to investigate the neural basis of working memory processes and response inhibition in prefrontal cortex (PFC) region, respectively. In short, in a classical N-Back paradigm, 0-back, 1-back, and 2-back conditions can be investigated. For a 0-back task, subjects will press the button when the target signal (e.g., “X”) appears. For 1-back and 2-back tasks, the subject is instructed to press the button if the presented cue matches one and two letters/images back, respectively. In Go/No-Go task, the Go and No-Go cues are displayed on the screen and subjects are asked to respond when they observe the Go signal and vice versa when No-Go cue is shown. Visual, auditory, and motor tasks are other examples of functional tasks that are often used in fNIRS studies investigating brain function and activation at the occipital lobe, Broca’s area, and motor cortex regions. Table 3.1 provides examples of studies applying fNIRS at different cortical domains and using various functional tasks.
Home Use of tDCS
L. Syd M Johnson, Karen S. Rommelfanger in The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics, 2017
When attempting to measure the effects of tDCS in the face of “n-of-1” experimental constraints, some users, particularly those interested in self-treating a mental disorder, rely on a subjective feeling of improvement (Wexler, 2015a). Other home users, particularly those interested in cognitive enhancement, take a more empirical approach to the enterprise and attempt to quantify their performance on cognitive tests (Wexler, 2015a). One of the most popular strategies is to track scores on open-source versions of dual n-back tests, performance measures often used in scientific studies that assess working memory ( Jwa, 2015). Some attempt to control for potential confounding factors, such as the practice effect, but few individuals control for the placebo effect (Wexler, 2015a), even though it is an oft-discussed topic on the subreddit. Whether based upon empirical results or subjective impressions, home users do not universally report that tDCS achieves the aims they were hoping for. When assessing the perceived effects of tDCS, respondents reported success more often than failure, yet the single most common response was the midpoint on a scale whose anchors indicated “extremely successful” and “totally unsuccessful” ( Jwa, 2015). Nonetheless, 92% of respondents reported that they would continue using tDCS ( Jwa, 2015).
Ankle-foot orthoses improve walking but do not reduce dual-task costs after stroke
Published in Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation, 2021
Richard Drake, Kim Parker, Kerry-Lee Clifton, Stefan Allen, James Adderson, Anita Mountain, Gail A. Eskes
The secondary task was an auditory n-back task programmed in Empirisoft’s DirectRT (http://www.empirisoft.com/directrt.aspx). N-back tasks involve listening to a series of stimuli in order to judge whether the currently presented stimulus is the same as the one presented n-times ago. In this study, participants heard a sequence of letters through a wireless headset and responded ‘yes’ to matches and ‘no’ to non-matches via voice-operated relay. Response times and accuracy were recorded. Blocks consisted of 18 stimuli, six of which were matches. The task was first performed while seated and at an n-level of 1 in order to measure participants’ ability to perform the task. Individuals who scored less than 13 out of 18 were excluded from the study. For those who achieved at least 13 on the 1-back, one block of the 2-back test was then performed while seated (single-task condition). Individuals with scores greater than 13 on the 2-back were given the 2-back during the dual-task gait testing, while individuals with scores lower than 13 on the 2-back were given the 1-back. Participants completed four blocks of the n-back task per each of the two dual-task walking conditions. Accuracy (percent correct) and response times (RT, ms) were collected. The validity of the letter n-back task as a measure of working memory has been supported through behavioral and neuroimaging data.34
Positive effects of a computerised working memory and executive function training on sentence comprehension in aphasia
Published in Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 2018
Lilla Zakariás, Attila Keresztes, Klára Marton, Isabell Wartenburger
Our aim was to investigate whether a training focusing on WM (maintaining and updating WM representations) and EF processes (specifically interference control) leads to improvement on the same processes measured by tasks not practised during the training sessions (i.e., near transfer effects), and in spoken sentence comprehension (i.e., far transfer effects) in IWA. Based on a study by Novick, Hussey, Teubner-Rhodes, Harbison, and Bunting (2013), we designed an n-back task with “lures” for the training of IWA. The n-back task is a widely used, complex task involving multiple processes (e.g., encoding incoming stimuli, monitoring, maintaining, and updating WM representations, establishing and maintaining bindings between memory contents and their temporal context). With the inclusion of lures (distractor items) we were able to target interference skills (e.g., Kane, Conway, Miura, & Colflesh, 2007; Novick et al., 2013), and potentially recruit brain areas known to be involved in spoken sentence processing (e.g., LIFG, see Friederici, 2002 ; Thompson-Schill et al., 2005). As previous research has shown, the amount of transfer following training depends on the extent of the overlap between cognitive and neural resources shared by the trained and the untrained tasks (Dahlin, Neely, Larsson, Bäckman, & Nyberg, 2008; Novick et al., 2013). Therefore, it was expected that training with an n-back task that includes lures would result in transfer to spoken sentence comprehension in IWA.
The evidence for working memory training transfer effects on sentence comprehension and functional communication in persons with aphasia is inconclusive1
Published in Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention, 2019
Intervention: Participants were trained on two sets of WM n-back tasks one block at a time, a visual task with pictured items and an auditory task involving listening to spoken words. A continuous stream of randomized sequences of stimuli (and foils) were presented on a ThinkPad or IdeaPad. Participants indicated (pressed the spacebar) when the stimulus (picture or spoken word) presented at the time was identical to the stimulus presented a specified number of trials beforehand (e.g., n + 1 or n + 2, with n = 1, n = 2, etc), referred to as n-back tasks. Each task consisted of eight sets of testing stimuli from varying semantic categories that were trained across eight sessions (64 total stimuli). Task difficulty was automatically adjusted based on participant performance.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Working Memory
- Dual-Task Paradigm
- Raven'S Progressive Matrices
- Intelligence Quotient
- Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
- Neuroimaging
- Premotor Cortex
- Cingulate Cortex
- Prefrontal Cortex