Philip Tseng

Taipei Medical University | TMU · Graduate Institute of Mind Brain and Consciousness

Background: Evidence on the long-term comparative effectiveness of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) psychotherapies in adults remains unknown. Therefore, we performed an extensive network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to determine the comparative effectiveness of psychotherapies for people diagnosed with PTSD. Methods:...

Despite numerous investigations of the prevalence effect on medical image perception, little research has been done to examine the effect of expertise, and its possible interaction with prevalence. In this study, medical practitioners were instructed to detect the presence of hip fracture in 50 X-ray images with either high prevalence ( N signal =...

In this letter we focus on the cognitive science of consciousness. The general message is that, while this interdisciplinary area has made much progress in recent years, there is a tendency of downplaying conceptual issues, and therefore underestimating the difficulties of various problems. We briefly focus on a few prominent examples only, due to...

Microsaccade is a type of fixational eye movements that is modulated by various sensory and cognitive processes, and impact our visual perception. Although studies in monkeys have demonstrated a functional role for the superior colliculus and frontal eye field (FEF) in controlling microsaccades, our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying...

Subitizing refers to ability of people to accurately and effortlessly enumerate a small number of items, with a capacity around four elements. Previous research showed that “canonical” organizations, such as familiar layouts on a dice, can readily improve subitizing performance of people. However, almost all canonical shapes found in the world are...

Neurobiological and cognitive evidence suggests that working memory is processed through three distinctive and well-characterized phases: encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Several studies have reported that applying theta transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to the right prefrontal and parietal cortices can significantly improve...

Visual working memory (VWM) relies on sustained neural activities that code information via various oscillatory frequencies. Previous studies, however, have emphasized time-frequency power changes, while overlooking the possibility that rhythmic amplitude variations can also code frequency-specific VWM information in a completely different dimensio...

This article is a critical evaluation of a commonly used detection task, the Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) task, in the exploration of visual statistical learning. Results from four experiments show how this task, which has been used in numerous studies, can be misleading due to an inherent bias, which we term the 'stream location effect'...

Investigations of the "fat-face" illusion have unanimously agreed that the illusion is face-specific. Here, we offer several manipulations to highlight that the fat-face illusion is not restricted to the bottom image, isn't a property of internal features, facial contour/texture, and in general isn't even specific to faces. We propose the axis of h...

Background: The reaction time-based Concealed Information Test (RT-CIT) is a memory paradigm used to detect crime-related knowledge. However, this would also imply that the RT-CIT would be vulnerable to factors that are known to compromise object recognition or memory integrity. From this perspective, one key issue is whether "guilty" memory can b...

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is an important cognitive function that acts as a temporary storage for visual information. Previous studies have shown that VSTM capacity can be modulated by the location of one’s hands, where hand proximity enhances neural processing and memory of nearby visual stimuli. The present study used traditional event-rela...

Objectives: We aimed to analyze the effects of multi-domain attention training on alertness, sustained attention, and visual-spatial attention in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Design: Two-arm, parallel group, double-blind randomized controlled trial. Setting and participants: Seventy-eight older adults with MCI (mean age:...

The Sequin Illusion can be seen when shapes are drawn in dotted lines, against a background of different brightness. This can be done either with bright dots over a dark background or with dark dots over a bright background, though the latter usually works better. The illusion appears as a wave of dark (or bright) spots inside the dotted shapes (li...

The influential hypothesis by Markus & Kitayama (Markus, Kitayama 1991. Psychol. Rev. 98, 224) postulates that individuals from interdependent cultures place others above self in interpersonal contexts. This led to the prediction and finding that individuals from interdependent cultures are less egocentric than those from independent cultures (Wu,...

Background: memory training is a potential intervention for retaining memory and reducing dementia risk in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Objective: this study examined the effect of virtual interactive working memory training (VIMT) in older adults with MCI. Design: single-blind, two-arm parallel-group, randomised controll...

Objectives: To examine the immediate and long-term effects of executive attention training on selective attention, focused attention, and divided attention in older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Methods: A double-blind, multisite randomized controlled trial at five sites. Seventy participants (mean age: 78.19 ± 7.22 years) were assigned...

People prefer to lie using altered truthful events from memory, perhaps because doing so can increase their credibility while reducing cognitive and working memory (WM) load. One possible way to counter such deceptive behavior is to track WM usage, since fabricating coherent lies or managing between truth and lies is likely to involve heavy WM load...

The work of Bruce Bridgeman touches on a wide range of topics that include masking, saccadic suppression, microsaccades, space constancy, perception, action, and consciousness. In this tribute, I try to introduce some of Bruce's work, while adding some personal stories. I hope this tribute would serve as a pointer for the readership to more of Bruc...

Learning regularities that exist in the environment can help the visual system achieve optimal efficiency while reducing computational burden. Using a pro- and anti-saccade task, studies have shown that probabilistic information regarding spatial locations can be a strong modulator of frontal eye fields (FEF) activities and consequently alter sacca...

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to people's ability to maintain and manipulate visual information on line. Its capacity varies between individuals, and neuroimaging studies have suggested a link between one's VWM capacity and theta power in the parietal cortex. However, it is unclear how the parietal cortices communicate with each other in order...

The trolley dilemma and its many variations have been used as a tool for investigating moral judgment. • People are usually willing to pull the switch and sacrifice one person's life in order to save five others • But this inclination decreases dramatically when the one person has to be physically pushed down the bridge by the main actor. • This co...

Background Cognitive dysfunction is commonly observed in diabetic patients. We have previously reported that anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex can facilitate visuospatial working memory in diabetic patients with concomitant diabetic peripheral neuropathy and mild cognitive impairment, but...

Visuospatial working memory refers to the short-term memory mechanism that enables humans to remember visual information across visual blackout periods such as eyeblinks or eye movements. In recent years, neuroscientific studies have made great progress in uncovering the brain regions that support visuospatial working memory. In this review, we foc...

Some investigators of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) have suggested that when standard RHI induction procedures are employed, if the rubber hand is experienced by participants as owned, their corresponding biological hands are experienced as disowned. Others have demurred: drawing upon a variety of experimental data and conceptual considerations, t...

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has been extensively used to examine whether neural activities can be selectively increased or decreased with manipulations of current polarity. Recently, the field has reevaluated the traditional anodal-increase and cathodal-decrease assumption due to the growing number of mixed findings that report t...

Diabetes mellitus can lead to diabetic polyneuropathy (DPN) and cognitive deficits that manifest as peripheral and central neuropathy, respectively. In this study we investigated the relationship between visuospatial working memory (VSWM) capacity and DPN severity, and attempted to improve VSWM in DPN patients via the use of transcranial direct cur...

How does the brain enable us to remember two or more object representations in visual working memory (VWM) without confusing them? This “gluing” process, or feature binding, refers to the ability to join certain features together while keeping them segregated from others. Recent neuroimaging research has reported higher BOLD response in the left te...

We provide empirical examples to conceptually clarify some items on Firestone & Scholl’s (F&S’s) checklist, and to explain perceptual effects from an attentional and memory perspective. We also note that action and embodied cognition studies seem to be most susceptible to misattributing attentional and memory effects as perceptual, and identify fou...

We provide empirical examples to conceptually clarify some items on Firestone & Scholl’s (F&S’s) checklist, and to explain perceptual effects from an attentional and memory perspective. We also note that action and embodied cognition studies seem to be most susceptible to misattributing attentional and memory effects as perceptual, and identify fou...

The ability to inhibit impulses and withdraw certain responses are essential for human's survival in a fast-changing environment. These processes happen fast, in a complex manner, and require our brain to make a fast adaptation to inhibit the impulsive response. The present study employs multiscale entropy (MSE) to analyzing electroencephalography...

Over the past 10 years, perception scientists have uncovered a surprising connection between people's vision and their hands. There is now compelling evidence that how people perceive, attend to, think about, and remember visual information depends on how close they have their hands to that information. With their hands near, people perform figure-...

Previous research has demonstrated that brain stimulation can improve inhibitory control. However, the neural mechanisms underlying such artificially induced improvement remain unclear. In this study, by coupling anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) with functional MRI, we found that atDCS over preSMA effectively improved stopping...

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) refers to our ability in remembering visual information for a limited amount of time. In the VSTM literature, mixed findings have been reported regarding whether items are encoded individually or globally in the context of other items. This study adopted a color change detection task and manipulated color and spatial...

The psychological effect of being watched by others has been proven a powerful tool in modulating social behaviors (e.g., charitable giving) and altering cognitive performance (e.g., visual search). Here we tested whether such awareness would affect one of the core elements of human cognition: emotional processing and impulse control. Using an emot...

While the cognitive benefits of aerobic fitness have been widely investigated, current findings in young adults remain unclear. Specifically, little is known about how these effects are reflected in the time-frequency domain. This study thus assessed the relationship between aerobic fitness and neural oscillations during visuo-spatial attention. A...

Emotional faces are often salient cues of threats or other important contexts, and may therefore have a large effect on cognitive processes of the visual environment. Indeed, many behavioral studies have demonstrated that emotional information can modulate visual attention and eye movements. The aim of the present study was to investigate (1) how i...

The effect of hand proximity on vision and visual attention has been well documented. In this study we tested whether such effect(s) would also be present in the auditory modality. With hands placed either near or away from the audio sources, participants performed an auditory-spatial discrimination (Experiment 1: left or right side), pitch discrim...

The abilities to inhibit impulses and withdraw certain responses are critical for human's survival in a fast-changing environment. These processes happen fast, in a complex manner, and sometimes are difficult to capture with fMRI or mean electrophysiological brain signal alone. Therefore, an alternative measure that can reveal the efficiency of the...

The dorsal attentional network is known for its role in directing top-down visual attention toward task-relevant stimuli. This goal-directed nature of the dorsal network makes it a suitable candidate for processing and extracting predictive information from the visual environment. In this review we briefly summarize some of the findings that deline...

In normal situations, we feel that our awareness resides inside our body. This concept of self-consciousness, as well as how it interacts with one's body boundary, has been a central question in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In the past five years, studies utilizing virtual reality technology have discovered that our consciousness of bo...

The interaction between goal-directed and stimulus-driven attentional control allows humans to rapidly reorient to relevant objects outside the focus of attention-a phenomenon termed contingent reorienting. Neuroimaging studies have observed activation of the ventral and dorsal attentional networks, but specific involvement of each network remains...

Inhibitory control, or the ability to suppress planned but inappropriate prepotent actions in the current environment, plays an important role in the control of human performance. Evidence from empirical studies utilizing a sport-specific design has shown that athletes have superior inhibitory control. However, less is known about whether this supe...

Orienting attention to the to-be-tested representations can enhance representations and protect them from interference. Previous studies have found that this effect on feature and bound representations was comparable despite their difference in stability. This may have occurred because participants were tested in a block design, which is susceptibl...

An exciting new line of research that investigates the impact of one's own hands on visual perception and attention has flourished in the past several years. Specifically, several studies have demonstrated that the nearness of one's hands can modulate visual perception, visual attention, and even visual memory. These studies together shed new light...

Visual working memory (VWM) capacity in humans is reached when individuals show an asymptotic activation level in the posterior parietal cortex, at around 3-4 items. We found that artificially increasing posterior parietal activity via positively-charged noninvasive anodal electric current, known as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), c...

The limits of human visual short-term memory (VSTM) have been well documented, and recent neuroscientific studies suggest that VSTM performance is associated with activity in the posterior parietal cortex. Here we show that artificially elevating parietal activity via positively charged electric current through the skull can rapidly and effortlessl...

Witnessing emotional events such as arousal or pain may impair ongoing cognitive processes such as inhibitory control. We found that this may be true only half of the time. Erotic images and painful video clips were shown to men and women shortly before a stop signal task, which measures cognitive inhibitory control. These stimuli impaired inhibito...

Many studies have used static and non-biologically related stimuli to investigate bistable perception and found that the percept is usually dominated by their intrinsic nature with some influence of voluntary control from the viewer. Here we used a dynamic stimulus of a rotating human body, the silhouette spinner illusion, to investigate how the vi...

Predictive information exists ubiquitously in the visual environment. Such information signals the probability or likelihood of upcoming events, thus facilitating the visual system in preparing optimal responses in advance. This ability of the visual system to implicitly acquire predictive and probabilistic information has been well documented by b...

Predictability in the visual environment provides a powerful cue for efficient processing of scenes and objects. Recently, studies have suggested that the directionality and magnitude of saccade curvature can be informative as to how the visual system processes predictive information. The present study investigated the role of the right posterior p...

We present two experiments that examine sensory processing during conditions of inattentional blindness. A large rectangular frame that normally induces a Roelofs effect can go unreported due to inattentional blindness. Even when participants fail to report the frame, they mislocalize an attended target in a way consistent with having processed the...

The visual system possesses a remarkable ability in learning regularities from the environment. In the case of contextual cuing, predictive visual contexts such as spatial configurations are implicitly learned, retained, and used to facilitate visual search-all without one's subjective awareness and conscious effort. Here we investigated whether im...

The antisaccade task, where eye movements are made away from a target, has been used to investigate the flexibility of cognitive control of behavior. Antisaccades usually have longer saccade latencies than prosaccades, the so-called antisaccade cost. Recent studies have shown that this antisaccade cost can be modulated by event probability. This ma...

Perception is interpreted as a set of capabilities that facilitate two functions necessary for survival; learning about the environment and controlling real-time behavioral interactions with it. Perceptual capabilities evolve in the context of an organism and its environment, adapted to an organism's ecological niche. The relation between embodied...

Recent studies have suggested altered visual processing for objects that are near the hands. We present three experiments that test whether an observer's hands near the display facilitate change detection. While performing the task, observers placed both hands either near or away from the display. When their hands were near the display, change dete...

This experiment examined the influence of action on weight perception and the size-weight illusion. Participants rated the perceived heaviness of objects that varied in mass, length, and width. Half of the participants lifted each object and placed it down on the table and half placed the object on a pedestal before reporting their perception of he...

The visual system constantly utilizes regularities that are embedded in the environment and by doing so reduces the computational burden of processing visual information. Recent findings have demonstrated that probabilistic information can override attentional effects, such as the cost of making an eye movement away from a visual target (antisaccad...

In a number comparison task, it is easier to respond faster when the two numbers are further apart than when they are close. This inverse relationship between the size difference and the time to judge such difference is called the numerical distance effect (NDE). In this study we investigated whether attention plays a critical role in the surfacing...

Implicit change detection demonstrates how the visual system can benefit from stored information that is not immediately available to conscious awareness. We investigated the role of motor action in this context. In the first two experiments, using a one-shot implicit change-detection paradigm, participants responded to unperceived changes either w...