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Higher performers upregulate brain signal variability in response to more feature-rich visual input
Douglas D Garrett1, Samira M Epp1, Maike Kleemeyer2
1Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Berlin, London, UK; Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Lentzeallee 94, 14195, Berlin, Germany.
Neuroimage
|April 14, 2020
Summary
Older adults who better adjusted brain signal variability to sensory input complexity showed improved cognitive performance. This highlights brain signal variability
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Neuroimaging
- Aging Research
Background:
- Neural differentiation, the variation in brain responses to cognitive demands, is linked to cognitive function in older adults.
- Investigating within-person neural differentiation through moment-to-moment brain signal variability is an emerging area.
- Factors influencing brain signal variability fluctuations during tasks are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test the hypothesis that individuals with higher cognitive performance modulate brain signal variability based on sensory input complexity.
- To examine if upregulating brain signal variability during processing of more feature-rich stimuli correlates with better cognitive outcomes in older adults.
Main Methods:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record brain activity in 46 older adults passively viewing face and house stimuli.
- Low-level image analyses and computational modeling (HMAX) assessed stimulus feature richness, particularly in V1/V2 layers of the ventral visual stream.
- Brain signal variability modulation (face vs. house stimuli) was correlated with performance on offline visuo-cognitive tasks.
Main Results:
- House images were found to be more feature-rich than face images, especially in early visual processing layers.
- Participants showing greater upregulation of brain signal variability for houses compared to faces in V1/V2 demonstrated superior accuracy, speed, and consistency in cognitive tasks.
- Modulation of the mean brain signal, unlike variability, was not significantly related to offline cognitive performance, underscoring the role of variability.
Conclusions:
- The capacity to dynamically adjust brain signal variability in response to perceptual input richness is associated with enhanced cognitive performance in older adults.
- Brain signal variability, rather than mean signal changes, appears crucial for understanding individual differences in cognitive function and behavior.
