Almudena Capilla

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | UAM · Faculty of Psychology

Ongoing brain activity preceding visual stimulation has been suggested to shape conscious perception. The underlying mechanisms are still under adebate,lthough alpha oscillations have been pointed out as the main explanatory candidate. According to the pulsed-inhibition framework, bouts of functional inhibition arise in each alpha cycle, allowing i...

Our sensory system is able to build a unified perception of the world, which although rich, is limited and inaccurate. Sometimes, features from different objects are erroneously combined. At the neural level, the role of the parietal cortex in feature integration is well-known (Humphreys, 2016; Shafritz et al., 2002). However, the brain dynamics un...

There is broad consensus supporting the reciprocal influence of working memory (WM) and attention. Top-down mechanisms operate to cope with either environmental or internal demands. In that sense, it is possible to select an item within the contents of WM to endow it with prioritized access. Although evidence supports that maintaining an item in th...

It has been proposed that alpha oscillations reflect the endogenous modulation of visual cortex excitability. In particular, alpha power increases during the maintenance period in Working Memory (WM) tasks have been interpreted as a mechanism to avoid potential interference of incoming stimuli. In this study we tested whether alpha power was modula...

Brain oscillations are considered to play a pivotal role in neural communication. However, detailed information regarding the typical oscillatory patterns of individual brain regions is surprisingly scarce. In this study we applied a multivariate data-driven approach to create an atlas of the natural frequencies of the resting human brain on a voxe...

Alpha-band oscillations (8-14 Hz) are essential for attention and perception processes by facilitating the selection of relevant information. Directing visuospatial endogenous (voluntary) attention to a given location consistently results in a power suppression of alpha activity over occipito-parietal areas contralateral to the attended visual fiel...

While traditional studies claim that visuospatial attention stays fixed at one location at a time, recent research has rather shown that attention rhythmically fluctuates between different locations at rates of prominent brain rhythms. However, little is known about the temporal dynamics of this fluctuation and, particularly, whether it changes ove...

Brain oscillations are considered to play a pivotal role in neural communication. However, detailed information regarding the typical oscillatory patterns of individual brain regions is surprisingly scarce. In this study we applied a multivariate data-driven approach to create an atlas of the natural frequencies of the resting human brain on a voxe...

One's own face is recognized more efficiently than any other face, although the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon remain poorly understood. Considering the extensive visual experience that we have with our own face, some authors have proposed that self‐face recognition involves a more analytical perceptual strategy (i.e., based on face f...

Alpha-band oscillations (8-14 Hz) are essential for attention and perception processes by facilitating the selection of relevant information. Directing visuospatial endogenous (voluntary) attention to a given location consistently results in a power suppression of alpha activity over occipito-parietal areas contralateral to the attended visual fiel...

Self-related information, such as one's own face, is prioritized by our cognitive system. Whilst recent theoretical developments suggest that this is achieved by an interplay between bottom-up and top-down attentional mechanisms, their underlying neural dynamics are still poorly understood. Furthermore, it is still matter of discussion as to whethe...

Although considerable progress has been made in understanding the neural substrates of simple or global stopping, the neural mechanisms supporting selective stopping remain less understood. The selectivity of the stop process is often required in our everyday life in situations where responses must be suppressed to certain signals but not others. H...

This study aimed to elucidate whether distinct early processes underlie the perception of our own face. Alternatively, self-face perception might rely on the same processes that realize the perception of highly familiar faces. To this end, we recorded EEG activity while participants performed a facial recognition task in which they had to discrimin...

The relation between attention and consciousness is a highly debated topic in Cognitive Neuroscience. Although there is an agreement about their relationship at the functional level, there is still no consensus about how these two cognitive processes interact at the neural level. According to the gateway hypothesis (Posner, 1994), attention filters...

Working memory (WM) supports temporary maintenance of task-relevant information. This process is associated with persistent activity in the sensory cortex processing the information (e.g., visual stimuli activate visual cortex). However, we argue here that more multifaceted stimuli moderate this sensory-locked activity and recruit distinctive corti...

Selective attention can enhance Working Memory (WM) performance by selecting relevant information, while preventing distracting items from encoding or from further maintenance. Alpha oscillatory modulations are a correlate of visuospatial attention. Specifically, an enhancement of alpha power is observed in the ipsilateral posterior cortex to the l...

The interplay between exogenous attention to emotional distractors and the baseline affective state has not been well established yet. The present study aimed to explore this issue through behavioral measures and event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants (N = 30) completed a digit categorization task depicted over negative, positive or neutral...

Working Memory (WM) maintains flexible representations. Retrospective cueing studies indicate that selective attention can be directed to memory representations in WM improving performance. While most of the work has explored the neural substrates of orienting attention based on a spatial retro-cue, behavioral studies show that a feature other than...

The present event-related potentials (ERPs) study investigated the effects of mood on phonological encoding processes involved in word generation. For this purpose, negative, positive and neutral affective states were induced in participants during three different recording sessions using short film clips. After the mood induction procedure, partic...

Gestures and vocal elements interact from the early stages of language development, but the role of this interaction in the language learning process is not yet completely understood. The aim of this study is to explore gestural accompaniment's influence on the acoustic properties of vocalizations in the transition to first words. Eleven Spanish ch...

Memorizing emotional stimuli in a preferential way seems to be one of the adaptive strategies brought on by evolution for supporting survival. However, there is a lack of electrophysiological evidence on this bias in working memory. The present study analyzed the influence of emotion on the updating component of working memory. Behavioral and elect...

Visual stimulation is frequently employed in electroencephalographic (EEG) research. However, despite its widespread use, no studies have thoroughly evaluated how the morphology of the visual event-related potentials (ERPs) varies according to the spatial location of stimuli. Hence, the purpose of this study was to perform a detailed retinotopic ma...

The activation of G-protein coupled receptors by agonist compounds results in diverse biological responses in cells, such as the endocytosis process consisting in the translocation of receptors from the plasma membrane to the cytoplasm within internalizing vesicles or en-dosomes. In order to functionally evaluate endocytosis events resulted from ph...

This work addresses the developmental changes in vocalizations acoustic features in relation to its coordination with communicative gestures in the transition to first words. Our hypothesis is that gestural-vocal coordination facilitates early lexical development, so that the acoustic features of vocalizations will be more similar to those of words...

Mechanisms underlying exogenous attention to central and peripheral distracters were temporally and spatially explored while 30 participants performed a digit categorization task. Neural (event-related potentials -ERPs-, analyzed both at the scalp and at the voxel level) and behavioral indices of exogenous attention were analyzed. Distracters were...

Modulations of occipito-parietal α-band (8-14 Hz) power that are opposite in direction (α-enhancement vs. α-suppression) and origin of generation (ipsilateral vs. contralateral to the locus of attention) are a robust correlate of anticipatory visuospatial attention. Yet, the neural generators of these α-band modulations, their interdependence acros...

Auditory deviance detection occurs around 150 ms after the onset of a deviant sound. Recent studies in animals and humans have described change-related processes occurring during the first 50 ms after sound onset. However, it still remains an open question whether these early and late processes of deviance detection are organized hierarchically in...

The capacity of the two types of non-symbolic emotional stimuli most widely used in research on affective processes, faces and (non-facial) emotional scenes, to capture exogenous attention, was compared. Negative, positive and neutral faces and affective scenes were presented as distracters to 34 participants while they carried out a demanding digi...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have repeatedly provided evidence for temporal voice areas (TVAs) with particular sensitivity to human voices along bilateral mid/anterior superior temporal sulci and superior temporal gyri (STS/STG). In contrast, electrophysiological studies of the spatio-temporal correlates of cerebral voice processin...

Despite the importance of change detection (CD) for visual perception and for performance in our environment, observers often miss changes that should be easily noticed. In the present study, we employed time-frequency analysis to investigate the neural activity associated with CD and change blindness (CB). Observers were presented with two success...

Two representative subjects at two different stimulation rates (Experiment 1). The figure shows the transient template, the synthetic waveform and the recorded waveform for two subjects in the 7.1 rev/s and 20 rev/s conditions of Experiment 1. (0.55 MB TIF)

Voltage topography for both recorded and synthetic data synchronized to 100 ms (Experiment 2). As figure 8, the figure shows the scalp voltage topographies for the dominant frequency of each condition (rows) and phase angle (columns). In this figure, however, phase angles are referred to the common positive component corresponding to P100 (i.e. 0°...

Synthetic data using the traditional transient template (Experiment 1). A, Traditional template for the transient response. The template was extracted from the isochronic condition with the largest SOA (2.7 rev/s isochronic condition). To remove the influence of subsequent responses (shaded in dark grey), the template comprised a 500 ms time window...

One common criterion for classifying electrophysiological brain responses is based on the distinction between transient (i.e. event-related potentials, ERPs) and steady-state responses (SSRs). The generation of SSRs is usually attributed to the entrainment of a neural rhythm driven by the stimulus train. However, a more parsimonious account suggest...

The tip-of-the-tongue state (TOT) in face naming is a transient state of difficulty in access to a person's name along with the conviction that the name is known. The aim of the present study was to characterize the spatio-temporal course of brain activation in the successful naming and TOT states, by means of magnetoencephalography, during a face-...

In functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) studies, the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signal displays intrinsic spontaneous and task-independent very low frequency (VLF) oscillations (< 0.1 Hz). Most prominent during rest, when they persist into task sessions they can predict trial-to-trial variability in both evoked behavior and brain responses...

Participants • 21 healthy subjects (8 male), aged between 18 and 34 years (24,67±5,34). All subjects were right-handed and had normal or corrected to normal vision. Stimuli • Displays with four sinusoidal gratings (25% contrast, 2,6 cpd, 1º visual angle, 5 cd/m 2) each one oriented either vertically or horizontally. Gratings were disposed on a gray...

Event-related studies have provided indirect evidence that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children have abnormalities in signal detection and discrimination, and in information processing. Moreover, studies suggest that there exist very low frequency fluctuations modulating underlying neuronal events. This paper presents an event-r...

Event-related studies have provided indirect evidence that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) children have abnormalities in signal detection and discrimination, and in information processing. Moreover, studies suggest that there exist very low frequency fluctuations modulating underlying neuronal events. This paper presents an event-r...

It has been suggested that the human brain is intrinsically organised into dynamic, anti-correlated functional networks. This paper presents a study on the so-called default mode network - which is active when the brain is apparently at rest - and on brain activity related to a given task. This work involves the analysis of low frequency magnetoenc...

Objective: To determine whether performing a recognition task under interference conditions produces changes in brain activity pattern compared with the activity seen under conditions of passive interference. Population and methods: Twenty healthy elderly subjects were subjected to magnetoencephalography. In each patient we applied the Wechsler Mem...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients represent an intermediary state between healthy aging and dementia. MCI activation profiles, recorded during a memory task, have been studied either through high spatial resolution or high temporal resolution techniques. However, little is known about the benefit of combining both dimensions. Here, we invest...

Most of human cognitive activity involves, to a greater or lesser extent, the integration of information from different modalities, a process also referred to as 'binding'. Although the neural basis of several forms of binding has been extensively investigated, the neurobiological mechanisms of the encoding phase of integration of words and their s...

ABSTRACT The occurrence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) during childhood may dis- rupt ongoing brain development and, consequently, the development of cogni- tive and behavioural skills. However, cognitive and behavioural outcome after TBI is variable, depend- ing upon morbid and psychosocial fac- tors. The interaction between these two main groups...

The presentation of stimuli interfering with the maintenance of previous information makes difficult the subsequent recognition of it. The interference resistance decreases in normal aging, which is evidenced as a worse performance in tasks affecting working memory and that could be related to an executive dysfunction. Our aim was to establish if p...

The neural processes underlying tactile decisions in the human brain remain elusive. We addressed this question in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using a somatosensory discrimination task, requiring participants to compare the frequency of two successive tactile stimuli. Tactile stimuli per se engaged somatosensory, parietal, and fro...

Learning disabilities constitute a heterogeneous group of disorders that involve significant alterations in different cognitive domains (acquisition and use of language, reasoning, mathematical skills, visuospatial abilities, and so forth) that are not accounted for by a low level of intelligence, inadequate sociocultural development or lack of aca...

Current theories suggest a role for frontal-striatal circuits in the pathogenesis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure event-related brain activity during a simplified version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in children with DSM-IV combined type ADHD (ADHD-C) or predominantly inatten...

Arabic writing differs greatly from western scripts. To evaluate the influence of written Arabic on the pattern of language-related brain activation, a group of native Arab speakers and a control group of native Spanish speakers were scanned with magnetoencephalography during a reading task. In both groups, brain activity was strongly left laterali...

Changes in spatiotemporal profiles of brain magnetic activity were investigated in healthy volunteers as a function of varying demands for phonological storage of spoken pseudowords. Greater activity for the phonological memory task was restricted to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in the left hemisphere. During performance of the memory...

Animal studies have suggested that working memory may be affected after lesions in the medial temporal lobe, although this assumption has not been corroborated by neuropsychological studies in humans. However, very recently, several functional neuroimaging studies in humans have successfully observed activation of the medial temporal lobe during wo...

Several neuroimaging studies have consistently demonstrated the critical involvement of prefrontal cortices and medial temporal lobes during long-term encoding. While the contribution of prefrontal lobes to working memory is well established, the role of the MTL structures remains controversial. To address this issue, we registered the neuromagneti...

Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the spatiotemporal patterns of brain magnetic activity responsible for maintaining verbal and spatial information in either an integrated or an unintegrated fashion. Considering time dimension, we noted a greater activation of a fronto-parietal network in early latencies during the maintenance of integr...

Introduction and development: Current theories postulate that the core cognitive deficit in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is an executive dysfunction. Neuroimaging studies on the whole have provided both anatomical and functional evidence supporting the fronto-striatal dysfunction hypothesis in ADHD. However, recent neuroimaging...

Development of executive functions (EF) during childhood and adolescence is closely related to frontal lobe maturation and its connections with other cortical and subcortical structures. The main maturative processes are myelination and synaptic pruning, both of which work on the brain following a hierarchical model. Different studies agree with th...

Several studies have shown that memory circuits can be reorganised as a function of age. Brain magnetic activity evoked by a memory task was recorded in 19 healthy elderly subjects divided into two groups, a young-elder group (mean age of 62) and senior-elder group (mean age of 76). The young-elder group showed greater activity over the left medial...

Introduction and development: Frontal lobe, more specifically prefrontal cortex, is one of the brain regions that undergoes more protracted ongoing development. The wider the developmental window of one brain structure, the more vulnerable the functions related to it. Hence, executive functions, which are mediated by prefrontal networks, seems to...

The development of tolerance to the effects of ethanol is not uniform and may vary according to the actual and previous pattern of consumption. In this experiment we assessed body temperature and the recovery of two reflexes after a high dose of ethanol in rats submitted to chronic and acute ethanol consumption. Animals were previously submitted to...