Papers by Marinella Cappelletti
Brain and Language, 2000
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bioRxiv, 2021
Middle adulthood – the period of life between 40 and 60 years of age – is accompanied by importan... more Middle adulthood – the period of life between 40 and 60 years of age – is accompanied by important physical and emotional changes, as well as cognitive and neuronal ones. Nevertheless, middle age is often overlooked in neuroscience under the assumption that this is a time of relative stability, although cognitive decline, as well as changes in brain structure and function are well-established by the age of 60. Here we characterized the middle-aged brain in the context of healthy younger and older adults by assessing resting-state electrophysiological and neuromagnetic activity in two different samples (N = 179, 631). Alpha and beta oscillations – two key ageing signatures – were analyzed in terms of spectral power and burst events. While posterior alpha power and burst rate features changed linearly with age, similarly to behavioral measures, sensorimotor beta power and burst rate properties varied non-linearly, with inflection points during middle age. The findings suggest that age...
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ABSTRACT Target Audience: Those interested in multivariate analysis of tissue microstructure and ... more ABSTRACT Target Audience: Those interested in multivariate analysis of tissue microstructure and the alterations that occur during aging. Purpose: Quantitative magnetic resonance (MR) parameters are a direct reflection of intrinsic tissue microstructure. Microstructural changes that occur during aging are known to be reflected by quantitative changes in these MR parameters 1 . Here regional changes in brain and spinal cord microstructure that accompany healthy aging are assessed by analysing quantitative maps of longitudinal relaxation rate (R1), transverse relaxation rate (R2*) and magnetisation transfer (MT). Methods: 100 healthy subjects (42 male, age range 18-74yrs, mean 36yrs, std. dev. 18yrs) were scanned on a 3T whole body system (TIM Trio, Siemens). Multi-echo 3D fast low angle shot (FLASH) datasets with 1mm isotropic resolution were acquired each with predominantly T1, PD or MT weighting 2,3 along with calibration sequences to correct for B1 inhomogeneities 4 . The quantitative maps were derived from this data using bespoke MATLAB tools (The Mathworks, USA). The MT maps were segmented into grey and white matter using SPM8 (Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, London). To maximise precision of inter-subject alignment and to preserve the quantitative values in the maps, spatial normalisation was performed using the DARTEL algorithm as described in Draganski et. al 1 with an isotropic smoothing kernel of 3mm full width at half maximum. Voxel-based statistical analysis was carried out using a whole-brain approach with covariates of age, gender, total intra-cranial volume and measures of cross-sectional cord area, mean spinal cord MT and R 2 * defined on 15 axial slices superior from C2.
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Neurobiology of Aging, 2014
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frontiersin.org
Home; About; Submit. Register; Login. Science: Genetics: Applied Genetic Epidemiology; Behavioral... more Home; About; Submit. Register; Login. Science: Genetics: Applied Genetic Epidemiology; Behavioral and Psychiatric Genetics; Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; Cancer Genetics; Epigenomics; Evolutionary and Genomic ...
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Cognitive Psychology, 2014
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European Journal of Neuroscience, 2021
The ability to flexibly manipulate memory representations is embedded in visual working memory (V... more The ability to flexibly manipulate memory representations is embedded in visual working memory (VWM) and can be tested using paradigms with retrospective cues. While valid retrospective cues often facilitate memory recall, invalid ones may or may not result in performance costs. We investigated individual differences in utilising retrospective cues and evaluated how these individual differences are associated with brain oscillatory activity at rest. At the behavioural level, we operationalised flexibility as the ability to make effective use of retrospective cues or disregard them if required. At the neural level, we tested whether individual differences in such flexibility were associated with properties of resting-state alpha oscillatory activity (8-12 Hz). To capture distinct aspects of these brain oscillations, we evaluated their power spectral density and temporal dynamics using long-range temporal correlations (LRTC). In addition, we performed multivariate patterns analysis (MVPA) to classify individuals' level of behavioural flexibility based on these neural measures. We observed that alpha power alone (magnitude) at rest was not associated with flexibility. However, we found that the participants' ability to manipulate VWM representations was correlated with alpha LRTC and could be decoded using MVPA on patterns of alpha power. Our findings suggest that alpha LRTC and multivariate patterns of alpha power at rest may underlie some of the individual differences in using retrospective cues in working memory tasks.
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a b s t r a c t The magnitude dimensions of number, time and space have been suggested to share s... more a b s t r a c t The magnitude dimensions of number, time and space have been suggested to share some common magnitude processing, which may imply symmetric interaction among dimensions. Here we challenge these suggestions by presenting a double dissociation between two neuropsychological patients with left (JT) and right (CB) parietal lesions and selective impairment of number and time processing respectively. Both patients showed an influence of task-irrelevant number stimuli on time but not space processing. In JT otherwise preserved time processing was severely impaired in the mere presence of task-irrelevant numbers, which themselves could not be processed accurately. In CB, impaired temporal estimation was influenced by preserved number processing: small numbers made (already grossly underestimated) time intervals appear even shorter relative to large numbers. However, numerical estimation was not influenced by time in healthy controls and in both patients. This new double diss...
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Flexible manipulation of memory representations is a crucial ability embedded in working memory (... more Flexible manipulation of memory representations is a crucial ability embedded in working memory (WM) that can be tested using retro-cue paradigms. While most studies have shown improved performance when the information to be remembered is consistent with the cued one (valid retro-cue), less consensus is found when it is incorrectly cued (invalid retro-cue). Here we used an established retro-cue working memory paradigm specifically assessing the flexible manipulation of memory representations underlying the processing of invalid cues. We tested whether past inconsistent findings may reflect individual variability and tested whether this could be predicted prior to task execution. WM performance and resting state EEG were collected in 30 healthy young participants divided into subgroups, depending on the different level of flexibility shown in performance associated with invalid retro-cues. Subgroup differences were found for the alpha band power (8-12 Hz) in a parieto-occipital clust...
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Experimental Brain Research
Working memory (WM)—the ability to keep information in mind for short periods of time—is linked t... more Working memory (WM)—the ability to keep information in mind for short periods of time—is linked to attention and inhibitory abilities, i.e., the capacity to ignore task-irrelevant information. These abilities have been associated with brain oscillations, especially parietal gamma and alpha bands, but it is yet unknown whether these oscillations also modulate attention and inhibitory abilities. To test this, we compared parietal gamma-transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to alpha-tACS and to a non-stimulation condition (Sham) in 51 young participants. Stimulation was coupled with a WM task probing memory-based attention and inhibitory abilities by means of probabilistic retrospective cues, including informative (valid), uninformative (invalid) and neutral. Our results show that relative to alpha and sham stimulation, parietal gamma-tACS significantly increased working memory recall precision. Additional post hoc analyses also revealed strong individual variability befo...
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Behavioural Brain Research
Processing numerosities relies on the innate capacity to understand and manipulate the number of ... more Processing numerosities relies on the innate capacity to understand and manipulate the number of items in a set, and to additional abilities such as inhibitory skills -which are known to be linked to brain oscillations in the alpha range. Whether these inhibitory skills are causally linked to numerosity processing and critical for it is unclear. To address this question, we used alpha-based brain stimulation (transcranial alternate current stimulation, tACS) to target inhibitory abilities in the context of numerosity discrimination. Twenty-nine young adults received bilateral tACS to the parietal lobe, a brain region critical for numerical processes. tACS at target (alpha, 10 Hz), control oscillation frequencies (theta, 4 Hz; beta, 22 Hz; sham, no stimulation), and control areas (bilateral frontal regions) was paired to an established numerosity paradigm that allows distinguishing between congruent and incongruent numerosity trials, the latter requiring to inhibit task-irrelevant information. Performance significantly and specifically worsened in incongruent numerosity trials following bilateral parietal alpha-tACS relative to sham and to the other stimulations used, possibly due to the desynchronization of parietal neuronal oscillations in the alpha range. No significant changes in performance were observed in parietal beta and theta-tACS, relative to sham, nor in frontal alpha-tACS. Likewise, there were no changes in performing congruent numerosity trials. We therefore concluded that parietal alpha oscillations are causally linked to inhibitory abilities, and reinforced the view that these abilities are intrinsic to numerosity discrimination.
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Neurobiology of Aging
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The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, Jan 2, 2018
Aging adults typically show reduced ability to ignore task-irrelevant information, an essential s... more Aging adults typically show reduced ability to ignore task-irrelevant information, an essential skill for optimal performance in many cognitive operations, including those requiring working memory (WM) resources. In a first experiment, young and elderly human participants of both genders performed an established WM paradigm probing inhibitory abilities by means of valid, invalid, and neutral retro-cues. Elderly participants showed an overall cost, especially in performing invalid trials, whereas younger participants' general performance was comparatively higher, as expected.Inhibitory abilities have been linked to alpha brain oscillations but it is yet unknown whether in aging these oscillations (also typically impoverished) and inhibitory abilities are causally linked. To probe this possible causal link in aging, we compared in a second experiment parietal alpha-transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) with either no stimulation (Sham) or with two control stimulation...
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Experimental aging research, Jan 22, 2018
Background/study context: Recent studies have shown that young adults better remember factual inf... more Background/study context: Recent studies have shown that young adults better remember factual information they are curious about. It is not entirely clear, however, whether this effect is retained during aging. Here, the authors investigated curiosity-driven memory benefits in young and elderly individuals. In two experiments, young (age range 18-26) and older (age range 65-89) adults read trivia questions and rated their curiosity to find out the answer. They also attended to task-irrelevant faces presented between the trivia question and the answer. The authors then administered a surprise memory test to assess recall accuracy for trivia answers and recognition memory performance for the incidentally learned faces. In both young and elderly adults, recall performance was higher for answers to questions that elicited high levels of curiosity. In Experiment 1, the authors also found that faces presented in temporal proximity to curiosity-eliciting trivia questions were better recogn...
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Psychological Research, 2016
The temporary storage of serial order information in working memory (WM) has been demonstrated to... more The temporary storage of serial order information in working memory (WM) has been demonstrated to be crucial to higher order cognition. The previous studies have shown that the maintenance of serial order can be a consequence of the construction of position markers to which to-be-remembered information will be bound. However, the nature of these position markers remains unclear. In this study, we demonstrate the crucial involvement of time in the construction of these markers by establishing a bidirectional relationship. First, results of the first experiment show that the initial items in WM result in faster responding after shorter time presentations, while we observe the opposite for items stored further in WM. Second, in the next experiment, we observe an effect of temporal cueing on WM retrieval; longer time cues facilitate responding to later WM items compared with items stored at the beginning of WM. These findings are discussed in the context of position marker theories, reviewing the functional involvement of time in the construction of these markers and its association with space.
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Neural Plasticity, 2016
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Oxford Textbook of Cognitive Neurology and Dementia, 2016
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Papers by Marinella Cappelletti