Biology subjects

Azanon, E.

Publications and source records attributed to Azanon, E..

5 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

The Role of Visual Imagery in Face Recognition and Confidence Revisited: New Evidence from Aphantasia, Sampling Context Effects, and a Meta-Analysis

The absence of voluntary visual imagery, known as aphantasia, offers a unique lens into the role of visual imagery in visual memory processes such as face recognition. While aphantasics often report difficulties, behavioral differences in standard tasks have generally been small. One possibility is that the contribution of visual imagery becomes apparent only when face recognition is especially demanding. We compared age- and gender-matched aphantasics and typical imagers on the more challenging long-form version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT+) and on a measure of inverted face recognition. We also included tasks assessing object recognition and face perception. No group differences emerged for face perception or object recognition. By contrast, typical imagers outperformed aphantasics under high visual and mnemonic demands in face recognition in the laboratory cohort, particularly at the highest difficulty level of the CFMT+ and in inverted face recognition. This effect was attenuated or even absent in the online cohort. Drift-diffusion modelling indicated that this discrepancy was primarily driven by reduced response caution in online typical imagers. A meta-analysis of published short-form CFMT studies (total N = 432) revealed a moderate and reliable advantage for typical imagers (hedges g [≤] 0.41). Finally, across cohorts and tasks, aphantasics reported consistently lower subjective confidence, independent of accuracy. Overall, these findings suggest that visual imagery benefits face recognition, and highlight the need for caution in online testing, the predominant approach in aphantasia research.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

A domain-general neural signature of serial order memory across action and perception

Remembering events in the correct order, and generating ordered sequences of actions, are fundamental abilities across species. Behavioral studies, and theoretical work, raise the possibility that the brain represents serial order by a domain-general neural code, following the principle of Competitive Queuing. However, direct neurophysiological evidence for Competitive Queuing exists only in the motor domain. When humans and non-human primates prepare for a series of movements, several of the upcoming movements are represented in parallel, with their representational strength reflecting ordinal position in the sequence. We test the generalizability of this so-called primacy gradient across motor sequences and memorized auditory sequences. Using a multivariate decoding approach, Experiment 1 replicated the presence of a Competitive Queuing primacy gradient in magnetoencephalography (MEG) data of young healthy adults (n = 23) when they prepared a sequence of finger movements from memory. Importantly, we observed a similar primacy gradient when participants anticipated a sequence of tones they had learned before, in the absence of any movement. In Experiment 2 (n = 23; naive cohort), we rule out the possibility that this primacy gradient in auditory memory is explained by any learnt association between tones and movements, or by MEG signal fluctuations that are unrelated to discrete sequential events. In sum, we find a similar neural signature of serial order coding when humans prepare a sequence of movements, and when they anticipate a sequence of sounds. This lends support to the generalizability of Competitive Queuing.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Autosuggestion and Mental Imagery Bias the Perception of Social Emotions

Cognitive processes that modulate social emotion perception are of pivotal interest for psychological and clinical research. Autosuggestion and mental imagery are two candidate processes for such a modulation, however, their precise effects on social emotion perception remain uncertain. Here, we investigated how autosuggestion and mental imagery, employed during an adaptation period, influence the subsequent perception of facial emotions, and to which extent. Separate cohorts of participants took part in five experiments, where they either mentally affirmed (autosuggested, Experiments 1a and 1b) or imagined (Experiment 2) that a neutral face would be expressing a specific emotion (happy or sad). Subsequent facial emotion perception was then assessed by calculating points of subjective equality (PSEs) along a happiness-sadness continuum. Our results show that both autosuggestion and mental imagery induce a bias toward perceiving facial emotions in the direction of the desired emotion, with larger Bayes factors supporting autosuggestion. Experiment 3 confirmed no effects when emotional words were presented instead, suggesting a reduced role of response bias to drive this effect. Finally, experiment 4 validated the experimental setup by demonstrating standard contrastive aftereffects when participants are adapted to actual, physical emotional faces. Together, our findings provide an initial step toward understanding the potential of intentional cognitive processes to modulate social emotions, specifically by biasing emotional face perception. With comparable effect sizes observed for both autosuggestion and mental imagery, both strategies show promise for self-directed interventions. Their practical applicability may vary due to individual responses, preferred cognitive strategies, and potential overlaps in underlying cognitive mechanisms.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

"Micro-offline gains" convey no benefit for motor skill learning

While practising a new motor skill, resting for a few seconds can improve performance immediately after the rest. This improvement has been interpreted as rapid offline learning1,2 ("micro-offline gains", MOG), supported by neural replay of the trained movement sequence during rest3. Here, we provide evidence that MOG reflect transient performance benefits, partially mediated by motor planning, and not replay-mediated offline learning. In five experiments, participants trained to produce a sequence of finger movements as many times as possible during fixed-duration practice periods. When participants trained during 10-second practice periods, each followed by a 10-second rest period, they produced more correct keypresses during training than participants who trained without taking breaks. However, this benefit vanished within seconds after the end of training, when both groups performed under comparable conditions, revealing similar levels of skill acquisition. This challenges the idea that MOG reflect offline learning, which, if present, should result in sustained performance benefits, compared to training without breaks. Furthermore, sequence-specific replay was not necessary for MOG, given that we observed persistent MOG when participants produced random sequences that never repeated, preventing any effect of (sequence-specific) replay on the performance. Importantly, we observed diminished MOG when participants could not pre-plan the first few movements of an upcoming practice period. We conclude that "micro-offline gains" represent short-lived performance benefits that are partially driven by motor pre-planning, rather than replay-mediated offline learning.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Reduced dimension stimulus decoding and column-based modeling reveal architectural differences of primary somatosensory finger maps between younger and older adults

The primary somatosensory cortex (SI) contains fine-grained tactile representations of the body, arranged in an orderly fashion. Using ultra-high resolution fMRI data to describe such detailed individual topographic maps or to detect group differences is challenging, because group alignment often does not preserve the high spatial detail of the data. Here, we use shared response modeling (SRM), a technique that allows group analyses by mapping individual stimulus-driven responses to a lower dimensional shared feature space, to detect age-related differences in sensory representations between younger and older adults using 7T-fMRI data. Using this method, we show that finger representations are more precise in Brodmann-Area (BA) 3b and BA1 compared to BA2 and motor areas, and that this hierarchical processing is preserved across age groups. By combining SRM with column-based decoding (C-SRM), we further show that the number of columns that optimally describes finger maps in SI is higher in younger compared to older adults in BA1, indicating a greater columnar size in older adults SI. Taken together, we conclude that SRM is suitable for finding fine-grained group differences in SI fMRI data at ultra-high-resolution, and we provide first evidence that the columnar architecture of a functional area changes with increasing age.

neuroscience↗